President William Ruto addresses aspirants for the 2027 General Election at State House, Nairobi on February 04, 2026.
I am not in a position to advise UDA. I am not a party official, and there are many more competent people at the table. What follows is offered humbly from the outside and is entirely unsolicited.
Like a Nairobi matatu heading to Kariobangi, politics runs on addition, not subtraction. The driver’s logic is simple: Keep the matatu full to the brim. When passengers start to complain about being squashed in, simply turn up the volume and let Shaggy’s ‘Mr. Boombastic’s " Drown Out the Noise.
Politics works much the same way. Every time you remove someone from government, you create a critic with a grievance and a platform. They leave in anger, then return to organise resistance in regions where votes are plentiful. Consider the Rigathi Gachaguas, Edwin Sifunas, Kawira Mwangazas and Kimani Wamatangis of this world.
Lyndon Johnson summed up this reality perfectly when he spoke about the Director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover: “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”
The point is practical, not moral. It’s better to keep your rivals close enough to manage them than to let them organise against you from outside. UDA has already learned this lesson the hard way. Several influential figures have been forced out and are now seeking revenge where it hurts most: in the ballot boxes of Meru, Kiambu and beyond. The party increasingly appears to demand complete ideological uniformity. However, governance, like policing, cannot be based solely on uniforms. There are plainclothes officers and invisible intelligence operatives for a reason.
Even loyalty can be transactional. In the Bible, for example, David survived by serving as a mercenary in King Achish’s army after fleeing from Saul, before eventually returning to claim Israel. His motivation was survival, not ideology, yet he managed to keep his army intact. UDA should do the same. Keep the army together. A broad coalition — even one containing mercenaries — will almost always defeat a pure but isolated movement.
Political memory
The second lesson concerns time and political memory. Citizens have short memories and even shorter patience. A governing party must behave like a mother cooking pilau for impatient children. Before the rice is ready, she takes some meat out of the pot and gives it to the children to chew on while they wait. By the time the pilau is fully cooked, the children are too busy eating to complain about how long it took.
Moses learned this lesson the hard way. He unleashed the plagues of Egypt, parted the Red Sea and led the Israelites to freedom. Yet when he stayed too long on Mount Sinai, the people forgot. In his absence, they melted their gold and built a calf. UDA’s housing programme may be good, but it is a slow-cooking policy. Infrastructure and structural reforms take time. If you only offer long-term projects, you risk finding your audience either asleep or angry by the time the meal is served. Governments survive by combining long-term vision with short-term relief. Immediate economic relief buys patience for delayed transformation.
This brings us to the third lesson: anaesthesia matters. Any good surgeon knows that noble intentions alone are not enough if the patient dies screaming on the operating table. In October 1846, dentist William T. G. Morton demonstrated ether anaesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. He anaesthetised a patient, enabling surgeon John Warren to remove a neck tumour without causing any pain. Surgery changed overnight.
Before ether, operations were brutal and often fatal due to shock. The political lesson is equally clear. Even if you have the correct treatment plan, if you do not numb the pain first, the patient will reject the procedure altogether. Housing levies, fuel price hikes and tax increases may all be economically necessary. But to ordinary households, they feel like cuts inflicted on a conscious body. Therefore, governments need political anaesthesia in the form of cheaper school costs, visible employment programmes, lower food prices and targeted relief. Such measures do not stop the surgery; they merely make it more bearable.
This connects directly to the fourth lesson: Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs remains politically relevant. Human beings climb the pyramid from the bottom up. People worry about food, school fees, transport fares and rent long before they think about mortgages or future housing schemes. A government that ignores the base of the pyramid will eventually discover that the top means little to citizens who are struggling.
Free secondary education
Free secondary education, for example, would benefit households more immediately and emotionally than housing levies, the rewards of which may only materialise years later. Politics is not exempt from psychology. Meet immediate needs first, and then sell the long-term dream.
The fifth lesson is simple: In politics, leaders set their own exams. In school, external examiners decide the questions. In politics, leaders write the exam paper themselves through the promises they make. Promises are like babies: sweet during conception, painful during delivery. A wiser strategy is to promise modestly and over-deliver. If you promise one thing and deliver two, the public will award you 200 per cent. If you promise ten and deliver five, however, you will only score 50 per cent, despite your substantial achievements.
The Kikuyu have a proverb: “The clan of doing was discovered before it could speak.” Action is more persuasive than explanation. Demonstration always defeats narration. The aim is to reduce the number of unhappy people. Political change depends on someone’s ability to organise resentment. David understood this instinctively. While Saul pursued him, David gathered together the distressed, the indebted and the discontented in the Cave of Adullam.
These outcasts eventually became his army. Jesus understood the same truth. His message alienated the Sadducees and Pharisees, but it resonated with tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, Samaritans and those rejected by society. He met people where they were, and they became the foundation of a movement.
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Dr Kang’ata is the governor of Murang’a County. [email protected]
