What became of Kenyans’ optimism?

Finally in Kenya after a three year absence, I am alarmed.

It feels like a ship whose cargo is a terrible future of violence has already set sail from the distant hell of Africa’s past and is heading for our shores. It will dock in the near future.

And we, the politicians, political activists, writers and intellectuals, are simply bickering over what exactly this ship may contain.

And more than that, the leaders and elites of countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe — where governments are meant to be managing and ultimately stabilising the balance between the rich and poor — are unable to take heed.

We do not learn well from each other and much less from history.

When our past finally comes calling, it will be a terrible and unforgiving teacher.

Contrast the Kenya I saw in 2006 and the Kenya of 2009, and you might as well be looking at two different countries.

In 2006, a year before the elections, it was a time of hope.

In spite of rampant crime that turned people into prisoners in their own homes at night, and poverty that could no longer be hidden behind World Bank economic policies of less is more, political discussions were energised.

There seemed to be a belief that the majority could wrest the government from the grip of the elite.

In 2009, a year or so after the violent aftermath of rigged elections, and neighbour turning against neighbour where each ethnic homeland has become a fortified barrack, what strikes me the most is not the political indifference (understandable), or the disgust at Kenyan politicians (a gut reaction), or even the shock that Kenyans could turn against each other so unforgivably (guilt).

What is most striking is the presence of a deformed individualism.

It is not a libertarian individualism that becomes an argument for less government, or a free market individualism that at least leaves room for collective selfishness; this individualism is something informed by uncertainty, desperation and despair.

The individual Kenyan now sees himself or herself as the only resource.

Ethnic identity has failed to produce wealth for those who sought refuge in it.

Class consciousness has failed to take root.

The government and its political institutions have once again betrayed the people.

The only recourse is to look out for yourself — only you can get what is yours, with your own two hands.

No society can function for long much less flourish when the people have lost faith in it, when they no longer have faith in other people.

Kenya is a country that has the dubious distinction of having the largest slum in Africa, one so famous that it has become a tourist attraction.

Life is cheap. People die all the time — from car thieves, shoot-outs between the police and bank robbers, extra-judicial killings, car accidents, not to mention diseases such as Aids, malaria and even typhoid.

Child kidnapping, for ransom, are on the rise.

And for $100 you can have someone assassinated.

Most of the people I spoke to all agree that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga are eating from the same trough.

When they both announced that instead of being taken to the Hague, those suspected of committing crimes against humanity in the aftermath of polls in 2007 would be tried by local courts, there was an immediate sense that justice was being thwarted.

But it did not turn into an uproar.

It only further justified the individualism of a people who have turned their backs against all hope except in their own two hands.

The politicians, whether masked as progressive or pro-democracy, do not understand that they have finally managed to break the will of the people — and there will be hell to pay.

The political activist and the civil society organisations that have been forced to take on the role of the opposition do not understand that this individualism that says society can go to hell is like no other they have witnessed.

For them, they are operating on a rational plane, where oppression breeds resistance.

Where when faced with the choice of uniting or going the anarchic way of Somalia will triumph, people will choose unity.

Even we, the writers and intellectuals, with our jet set lives and our NGO-sponsored cosmopolitanism, do not understand that we are living in a world completely divorced from the reality of the majority.

And that we have finally run out of time.

It scares me to say that, in spite of the relative calm that is Kenya now, a terrible history has already set sail.

We can no longer rely on the famous African resilience that I have applauded in this column in the past.

Catch up

Not with South Africa breathing down the heels of a Kenya that wants to catch up to Somalia, and a Nigeria that wants to be book marked by the Biafran war of the past and DR Congo-like war in the future.

Hail Ghana and hail Botswana as beacons for the continent, but two out 52 is not progress, it is a reminder of the enormous task ahead.

Only the people themselves, through some miracle that allows them to see less difference and more similarity, can catch up to the fast-sailing ship and walk the captains down the plank.

But we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that such a miracle might not be forthcoming: As Steve Biko once said, “God is not in the habit of coming down from Heaven to solve people’s problems on Earth.”

Ngugi is the author of Nairobi Heat and a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine where this article first appeared.