On a day like today next year, Kenya will be 19 days from the General Election, celebration and gnashing of teeth, depending on which side you backed, as the next president is picked. But even at that late hour, we will still be struggling to see through the fog of propaganda being thrown up by the disinformation industry, including a well-oiled fake opinion poll machinery. Neither will we be seeing clearly through the fake bravado of the losers and other distractions and disruptions, including the possibility of some very serious violence.
Kenyans are a crazy lot, completely boiro. Every five years they do the same thing – play identity politics and agree to be bribed with money, gas cylinders, motor boats and so on – and expect a different result. They support jokers from their tribe and expect the economy to be fixed, public affairs managed competently and corruption fought. Sheer madness.
Get used to this idea: one of these five men will enter (or re-enter in the case of William Ruto) State House, but I wouldn’t hold up much hope of massive changes in Kenya, for the country’s problems go deeper than personalities and will take more than one man to fix. It is not all gloom and doom though, miracles do happen and among the folks lining up for the job are some who are quite competent and could surprise us all.
Ruto is seeking re-election against considerable odds. He will tell you – and he will tell you often, and at length – that he has a plan, a policy, a manifesto, a track record. Well, a fat load of good that has done us these past four years; we pay more taxes, we are poorer (because we have higher bills, the cost of living has gone through the roof and opportunities are reserved for a special few) and the national debt has ballooned.
Campaigning against the incumbent
In 2022, he had a winning origins story: he once sold chickens barefoot for survival. The problem with the Hustler narrative is that it works beautifully on the campaign trail, and somewhat less beautifully as a governance blue print. He enters 2027 carrying the weight of a very good story and a heavily contested delivery record.
Rigathi Gachagua, son of the Mau Mau, is what happens when you give a very angry man a platform and no filter. The leader he worshipped rejected and publicly humiliated and fired him, and he has spent his considerable energy, mobilisation abilities and homespun oratory skills, not campaigning for office as such, but against the incumbent: exposing deals, criminality in the system and taking apart policy and supposed achievements of the regime. He may not have sold policy, but he has broadcast Ruto’s failings widely and with glee.
Kalonzo Musyoka has been running for president for a long time. He has been a minister, a vice-president, a running mate, a coalition partner, and a “watermelon”. That last description – green outside, red inside – has followed him with the loyalty of a very committed stray dog. And yet Kalonzo has survived. One appreciates the persistence. The worry is that by now, the country knows Kalonzo’s moves the way you know the plot of a film you have watched several times. The ending is always a coalition. Still, he does come with some good qualities: he has avoided the wanton corruption of his peers, he is courteous in his demeanour and moderate in his politics.
Fred Matiang’i is the candidate who never actually ran for anything until recently, which in Kenya is almost a qualification. He was the Super Minister – the man Uhuru Kenyatta unleashed on problems the way you deploy a very large hammer on a particularly stubborn nail. Education reforms: hammer. Security: hammer. Judiciary: also hammer. The question for Kenya is whether a man whose political instinct is to reach for the hammer has the temperament for the presidency, which requires, occasionally, the use of other tools.
The Linda Mwananchi movement
He enters the race as Jubilee’s man, which means he is also Uhuru’s man, which means he is running on a legacy that the current president has spent three years trying to demolish. The irony is architectural. But he comes with a basket of assets: a record of accomplishments a mile long, enviable international exposure and a history of blunt competence.
And then there is Edwin Sifuna, who is 44, which in this company makes him practically a teenager. The Nairobi senator rode the 2024 protest wave like a surfboard, converted it into the Linda Mwananchi movement, and in July looked into the camera and essentially said: yes, I am running. His base is the generation that does not watch the news on television because they do not own televisions. They are on TikTok, they are angry, and they are many.
The challenge for Sifuna is the oldest one in Kenyan politics: how do you convert urban thunder into rural votes? Unlike the others, he does not yet have enough of a record to be held accountable for.
So there they are. Five men: The chicken seller. The guerrilla’s son. The eternal runner. The hammer. And the kid. One of them will be sworn in next August. We are, as I said, a deeply optimistic people. It is our greatest flaw, it is also, perhaps, our greatest asset.
