Over the past year, one feels that Kenya has been operating in a twilight zone — somewhere between a state of flux and a state of funk.
The first speaks to entropy and waste; the second to fear and uncertainty.
The optimism of early 2003 happened a lifetime ago.
It isn’t that the country we call Kenya has totally collapsed. Kenyans will tell you they are getting on with their daily lives.
Last week a friend who strongly believes in Kenya and is an active private sector player and Kepsa member asked me if we are already in the “lame duck” national leadership mode in the first year of the Jubilee administration’s second term in office.
Resisting the temptation to respond in jest, I realised that this could be a genuine question given our penchant for noisy leadership.
Over the past year, one feels that Kenya has been operating in a twilight zone — somewhere between a state of flux and a state of funk.
The first speaks to entropy and waste; the second to fear and uncertainty. The optimism of early 2003 happened a lifetime ago.
It isn’t that the country we call Kenya has totally collapsed. Kenyans will tell you they are getting on with their daily lives.
Government will claim it is working. Business will continue to express confidence in public, not private, while the religious sector will sing glory to our steadfast peace, love and unity. In other words, as we all say when we’re called by family or friend to ask how we’re doing, “I’m OK”.
This week marked 20 years since the terrible event we refer to as the Bomb Blast. It’s also a year since our annulled presidential election. I am not convinced we have learnt enough from either.
It doesn’t help that our “shauri ya mungu” (in the hands of God) attitude to life has always marked August as our terrible month. So we preface “I’m OK” with “maisha ni ngumu” (life is hard).
It isn’t that we lack motivation or ideas. We punch above our weight on international indices that measure “level three” stuff like innovation and market sophistication. We have an educated populace, yet we continually import skills, leaving “hustlers and tenderpreneurs” as a local by-product. We used to describe our private sector as opportunistic; now we ask questions about regulation and competition.
More than half a century after independence, we’re still struggling with our “level one” stuff like good governance and respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Therein lies the rub. Kenya is entering its third post-independence generation. Most Kenyans have no experience of a Kanu that lasted a generation and a half. The post-Kanu era has consumed half a generation, with Jubilee reversing several important, if not fundamental, gains that Narc and its successor Grand Coalition achieved.
Yet, as Kenya’s Generation 3 begins, we continue to be inundated with political nonsense about 2022 as an end of times event.
Which brings us back to that “lame duck” question. I have a couple of thoughts. First, leadership is demonstrated, not displayed. In the early Narc days President Uhuru Kenyatta famously expressed disdain towards a leadership that was “hands off, eyes off, ears off”. That statement brought to mind a little heralded saying that “leadership is doing what is right when no one is watching”.
Essentially, leadership isn’t showbiz; an apt observation given Narc’s relative success. Maybe we are learning. Or maybe there’s a different point. While our headlines have been dominated by endless streams of breaking news about high profile graft-related arrests and, more recently, demolition of illegal structures, two generations of experience have made Kenyans wary of rocking-chair style motion without movement.
In the meanwhile, endless speculation surrounds the state of the “handshake”, the true status of the Big Four and our relations with the IMF.
New questions are emerging around the proposed digital ID project, a fine idea which is already running aground amid concerns over individual privacy and government transparency.
Recall that older issues relating to the state of the economy and the fiscus present challenges not simply for today’s generation, but the future that Generation 3 faces. No one wants a return to noisy leadership.
Yet, without the national conversation that many have long suggested, social media is fast filling an important vacuum in the way we communicate with one another as Kenyans.
When phrases like “lame duck” are the more polite parts of today’s conversations, we might do well to remember that peace, especially our uneasy one, is not the absence of war.
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