For ordinary voters, there is almost nothing at stake in the next election

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By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted  Saturday, March 17  2012 at  17:54

IN SUMMARY

• Identical: The policies of the main presidential candidates are all but identical. They have served in the Kibaki Cabinet, and only a wild-eyed optimist expects fundamental change from them

Winston Churchill did not think very highly of Kenyans. After one visit to the country, the future Prime Minister concluded that the locals were “light-hearted, if brutish children ... capable of being instructed”.

Mr Churchill advised that the colonists should not use overwhelming force to conquer Kenya for Queen and country.

Back in London where he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Colonial Office, Sir Winston reacted in horror when he read a dispatch that the colonists had killed “100 Gusii” in a “pacification” exercise in Western Kenya.

He told officers on the ground that the expedition in 1908 seems to have engaged in “a butchery” and warned that if the House of Commons learnt about it the whole East Africa project would be “under a cloud”.

“Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale,” he wrote.

Sir Winston advocated pacification of Kenyans through propaganda and deception and by the demonstration of British superiority.

Mr Churchill’s views on this hardened when the Mau Mau war broke out and he became an advocate of the use of force to maintain the colonial “possession” by all means.

Mr Churchill, as many historians, including British writer Nigel Jones, have noted, held views considered too right wing even by conservatives at the time and dismissed groups including Indians, Muslims and Chinese with choice insults founded on stereotype.

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Yet nearly 100 years after the British settled on these shores, one has to confront the uncomfortable truth that Mr Churchill was not entirely off the mark in describing the relationship between ordinary Kenyans and their governing elite.

Then, as now, one can make the case that the political leadership and the mwananchi exist in the sort of unequal partnership between an adult and an obedient child “capable of being instructed”.

Many in the Kenyan electorate do not have minds of their own. The leaders of their ethnic community will typically read a draft constitution for them and then advise them whether to be in the Banana or Orange camp.

On the question of the International Criminal Court, everybody has taken a position which is transparently driven by where their man stands in the debate.

And, going into the next election, it is already obvious that this will be one of the most expensive and bitterly contested presidential races in our history. Yet the curious thing is that this is an election in which, for the ordinary voter, there is almost nothing at stake.

There is not a single discernible difference in the economic policies the three men that excite the most passions, Raila Odinga, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, will pursue while in office.

None of them has said he will do away with all taxes on petrol or introduce compulsory army service to tackle Al-Shabaab.

None of the presidential candidates is a Chavez type who will suddenly nationalise your posho mill once he – or she – is installed in State House.

Their policies are all but identical. They have served in the Kibaki Cabinet and only a wild-eyed optimist expects fundamental change from them.

Like politicians everywhere, they are seeking the highest office for personal self-actualisation, and the only people who will directly and disproportionately benefit from their time in power are a very narrow elite connected by familial, ethnic and old-school ties to the candidates.

There is no good reason why, as a nation, we should be so tensed-up and excited about the elections that investors have to put off their plans and tourists cancel their holidays because they fear that the election will be violent.

Instead, the electorate should perceive Kenyan politics for what it is: an entertaining game, great for newspaper circulation, but that means very little on a practical level to them.

We should turn Churchill’s description on its head, ignore the political leadership and, when challenged to explain the election campaigns to an outsider, point out warily that we are just stuck with politicians who behave in the fashion of “light-hearted children”.

mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com