I was going to Embu this past week – 150km – for no good reason. The excuse was that I was going to look for pasture for the cattle, Mwea has very good grass, but in actual fact I was just going for a couple of pleasant hours having a cup of tea and talking politics with folks.
And in the achingly beautiful, peaceful afternoon with the window way down, jamming to the same music we used to listen to in the dining hall – which became the dance hall on Saturdays – when I was in Form One in Siakago Boys 40 years ago, I had two revelations which, I insist, we should find space for in the Book of Revelations.
The first one is that the most powerful drug in a man’s life is not cocaine, tobacco, or even alcohol. It is a lack of stressful responsibilities. There is no drug more powerful than the absolute freedom to sneak out of town for no reason other than to have a pleasant conversation with perfect strangers, confident that there will be no one on the phone to bugger your day.
Of course this freedom comes at a cost: you slide down the food chain and become the kind of guy whose calls people don’t take and when they do, it is to chop them and not call back. If you don’t mind being a bottom feeder, a life without responsibility, is the best high on earth.
As I drove past a place called Ndifathas (it has something to do with Catholic priests, I suppose) which also has a bar creatively named Dubai Resort, somewhere between the Kutus junction and Embu town, Dennis Itumbi, the little bugger, came to mind, as he always does when I drive through this area. Someone told me he comes from here. I often have an unkind thought, or tweet something rude about the poor fellow when I drive past.
Trump’s unexpected sweeping victory
This is to be expected; he has a made a career out of hating and fighting us journalists. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made, this unending gall. In my heart, there was nothing, no cargo, no baggage. I suppose it is amusing to think or do something unkind about someone who dislikes you. But amusement at what cost?
There is nothing more futile, pointless or useless for a rational being to do than to act just to stimulate, manipulate or indulge their own emotions. And that is my second revelation. I have been seeing the triumphalism of Elon Musk and other right wing activists after Donald Trump’s rather unexpected sweeping victory in the US elections and being surprised at how self-indulgent and unworthy it all is.
When Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was nominated Attorney-General, I was horrified to see the gloating of Alex Jones, the Infowars nightmare of a sensationalist, that Gaetz was smart, mad and vindictive and that the Democrats were in for a horror of a time because Gaetz had been investigated for alleged association with teenage girls. It gives Mr Jones pleasure to gloat and taunt the Democrats this way and his taunts have no further practical application, useful or otherwise.
Like all Kenyans, I have seen both the positive signs of economic stability: the shilling is rock firm at 129 to the dollar, the debt is not galloping towards the abyss, the price of commodities is coming down and the strong shilling is making the balance sheets of parastatals look good for the first time in a long time.
Two years of torrents of bad promises
I have also seen the worrying signs of a shrinking economy: the Kenya Revenue Authority is collecting fewer taxes, Tanzania has overtaken Kenya as the biggest exporter to Uganda and companies are closing their factories here and fleeing to Rwanda. The chaos at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is beyond embarrassment; it is humiliating.
I think Kenyans, since the Gen-Z disaster, are in a bad mood. After two years of torrents of bad promises, and blame gaming, gloating and boasting, everyone is just in a negative frame of mind. Yet, we all know that nothing of value can be achieved when people are in a bad frame of mind. Even a family cannot achieve much when the dad and the mum are scowling each other from the corners of their eyes.
UDA is in a weak political position. It’s firmest pillar of power is the fact that there is no electoral commission. It is relying on allies who are fantastic, loyal folks but whose grip on their constituencies is like that on freshly slaughtered liver: slippery. Their key allies, God bless their souls, are ruthless political operators about whom only one thing is certain: if it makes political sense for them to stick you under a bus, they will do so with utmost dispatch and a cheerful heart.
My own view is that this is the season for political peace. There is no rational reason for passionate political disagreements; if the national mood is to change for the better, politicians need to stop bickering and circle the national wagons, unite the country.
Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [email protected]
