Kenya’s zero-sum games

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua (right) with Economic Advisor David Ndii, Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir and United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Secretary General Cleophas Malala (left) during the receiving of a fuel vessel MV Norddolphin at the new Kipevu Oil Terminal in Mombasa on April 13, 2023. The looting of public coffers itself is Exhibit Number One. It’s what Dr David Ndii euphemistically calls the “wastefulness” of public funds.

Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group

  

By Makau Mutua Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair the KHRC

This is the deep sense that, even if the state should always be looked upon with scepticism, it’s not cruel, uncaring or, worse, bent on the consumption of humans. Public officials serve not primarily themselves but the broad public. That there’s a nobler purpose than fattening the girth that drives you to join public service.

        I’ve written before that in history no society has ever become great without a dominant, visionary elite. But in Kenya, we are locked in a death spiral of primordial zero-sum games without a compelling raison d'être for our existence. Many Kenyans know not wherefore they exist.  Political society is the form that the common instrumentality known as the state takes. As a concept it sounds inanimate, but it’s actually a living, breathing organism, metaphorically and literally. 

            Metaphorically because it’s a conceptual crucible for programming humans. Literally, because it’s created and moulded by actual humans. It’s a receptacle and a funnel of culture by which I mean the accumulated wisdom of a people. 

Visionless

If that’s so, then it follows that the state is us, even if it’s imposed on us because we can overthrow it, and instead make one in our image, according to our wisdom. The problem with Kenya is that we’ve failed every time we’ve tried to recreate the state. Our elite are visionless.

            Let’s take 1963, the dawn of independence when we sent the white man packing. Sort of. We quickly assumed the worst proclivities of the white man. He saw us as natives — shifty, stupid and forever as children. He thought black Africans never grow up, and must thus be “guided” with a firm hand.

        Unfortunately, most of our independence leaders saw us as natives too — unformed, malleable and herd-like. That’s why they fostered the divisive cocoons given bile by British colonialists. Our ethnic, or tribal kingpins, if your like, have held us hostage ever since. We are like sacks of potatoes to them — to be tossed hither and thither during election time. They have robbed us of our agency. 

        A political democracy can’t exist in such a society. The mores, norms and rhythms of democracy can’t grow in such barren soil. Unfortunately, our elite have kept that boot firmly on our necks. But what they don’t realise is that the boot is really on their own necks. That’s because they can’t grow into a real dominant elite unless we are free. They enslave themselves by enslaving us.

        I saw this vividly in Nigeria in the 1990s. A very rich chap invited to me to dinner in a very wealthy part of Lagos. But we couldn’t get there by car since the roads were impassable. For the two-mile trip, we were airlifted by chopper and landed on his rooftop helipad.

            What sort of a country is that where a US dollar billionaire can’t drive a two-mile strip to go home? Is it really that hard to build a road? Kenyans should not laugh at Nigerians. Our elite have never seen the big picture. Even after fighting — and spilling blood — for the 2010 Constitution, the lesson didn’t sink. The so-called Second Liberation went up in smoke. 

            Our country and elite are more morally bankrupt today than at any time since independence. We are lost, ghosts of a people wandering naked in the moral universe. We are empty shells. The looting of public coffers itself is Exhibit Number One. It’s what Dr David Ndii euphemistically calls “wastefulness” of public funds.

            The education system in any country is the foundation of citizenship. Yet in Kenya we have gleefully destroyed our educational system out of greed, stupidity and myopia. There isn’t a single school in this country where students don’t cheat in exams. None.

            Our children are cheaters because we have raised them to be cheaters. These are the people who go on to become our leaders, our elite. We play a zero-sum game at everything. Even when we don’t have to cheat and lie, we do so without effort. Winning is everything. Only winning matters, and it doesn’t how we win. Cheaters used to be the dregs of society, but today they sit atop us, the crème de la crème.

Governance crisis 

I want to end this with a challenge to the bipartisan committee of MPs tasked to resolve our current governance crisis arising out of the last election. The committee has a huge task. Its role really is to start the process of rewiring us so that we can get our souls back.

            Are the members of the committee on both sides able to imagine a larger purpose for the Kenyan elite? Can they start to lead us out of the moral wilderness? Will we see them shun the zero-sum culture of our national zeitgeist? Who on that committee will become a voice of morality and a new Kenya? 

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.

Source: Sunday Nation tomorrow.