
President William Ruto leads members of the Cabinet in a prayer during a meeting at State House, Nairobi, on December 17, 2024.
Living in Kenya these days feels like you are inside one of those face-me ramshackle, being ridden at top speed and in danger of falling to pieces at any moment.
There is a frenetic sense of activity, but no apparent movement, a flurry of disjointed and hasty decisions but no good outcomes.
Whose bright idea, for example, was it to throw in our lot with the Janjaweed Rapid Support Forces at about the precise moment when the tide of war was turning in favour of the unforgiving Sudan Armed Forces and most of the Middle East that supports it? What is Kenya’s interest in mixing with the Janjaweed?
Kenya Kwanza easily has the most unstable Cabinet since independence. Tenures are awfully short, with Cabinet Secretaries in and out in the blink of an eye.
These are complex responsibilities with a significant learning curve. When you go in, you spend some time familiarising yourself with the government maze. It helps if the candidate has some knowledge of the ministry’s focus.
Economists do well at Treasury, lawyers and diplomats at Foreign Affairs. The thing about big bureaucracies like the government is that the excellence at the core is the sum total of the excellence of the component parts.
I think that State House does not improve the delivery of a ministry by interfering, I think a non-performing ministry is likely to bog down an interfering State House and cast a damper on the rest of the government.
The interesting thing is that, on average, Cabinet Secretaries are not appointed for delivery purposes but to serve political ends in a complex, Machiavellian plot with re-election in 2027 in mind. Some have been folk with fake degrees and barrels of arrogance.
Others are bewildered villagers, fresh from the cow pen. Kenyans have argued that some appointments are made as political favours and the appointees are unworthy of the Cabinet.
In other words, the Cabinet is lapping up the function of parastatal boards as a place for rewarding supporters and funders. Cabinet is pork, reward for political favours or a favour in the expectation of political reward.
In fairness, all new governments fumble. And the public initially will look down on the newbies as nobodies trying to fit in the boots of giants; think of it as a Francis Muthaura in 2002 trying on the boots of former Chief Secretary Simeon Nyachae.
But with time – and performance – they warm their way into the hearts of the people, they are accepted and respected. Perhaps the learning curve has been steeper for some members of the current government.
And also, name recognition, reputation and respect are built over time through public exposure. This government has senior officials and civil servants who have less exposure to the public than any other in my lifetime.
These days I have discovered the magic of solitude, sitting in a suburb café, getting lost in thought. But I can’t help overhearing what people are talking about sometimes. It is the same things I hear in the countryside: a belief that we can’t make it.
There is no money, taxes are too high, the government is taking all the money to God knows where. There are no development projects, the government is fibbing, and so on.
I’m tempted to push back. For example, the economic mess is also rooted in borrowing huge amounts of money and not investing all of it in the intended projects.
I remember the fight we had with the Jubilee government when it took the Eurobond around 2014 and the cash appeared to have vanished into thin air. But then I keep quiet because from observations and experience, there is no doubt that the government is neither prudent nor particularly efficient at managing public finances.
A good organisation pays suppliers, a chaotic one does not. A school has taken 160 bags of maize from my little farm.
They told me there is no capitation therefore they can’t pay and the bursar no longer takes my desperate calls.
Basically, they buggered my capacity to feed them.
I see many people who believe the solution to this hopelessness is firing the government in 2027. I also see more and more people convinced that the “only way government can win is through rigging – biased IEBC, voter suppression, fake votes and imported voters from neighbouring countries”. I’m not sure what to think of all that, but what happens if Kenya Kwanza is declared winners?
But it is not just the Executive which is going through strange times. At the Judiciary, lawyers are trying to have the Chief Justice and the entire bench of the Supreme Court fired.
They have accused them of corruption though the evidence is still not public. In politics, it is not easy to tell where the opposition ends and the government starts.
Key opposition figures serve in government but opposition leader Raila Odinga says he is not in government. He was merely asked by President Ruto to help and he sent experts to save the country.
Maybe I’m the only one discombobulated.
mmutuma@Steward-Africa.com.