Society faces two generational crises. Both are extinction level in seriousness and are getting worse. The first one is our national inability to manage our affairs efficiently, effectively and for the common good.
The cause of this is our collective inability to choose good, patriotic and honest leaders. This is not the failing of any one class; Kenyans as a whole do not know what a good leader looks like or what good leadership does.
So they settle for “success”, generosity and drama. This means that any person who has money, contributes to harambees, is always available for funerals and drives around in juggernauts, wears goggles or loud expensive clothes and has scandals involving the opposite sex, is aggressive, dramatic and abusive and provides lots of entertainment, is a leader.
So, naturally, there is a profusion of tender thieves, drug dealers, wash-wash millionaires, con men and criminals of various levels in our politics and party leadership. But there are also exemplary women of great character and accomplishment in leadership too, only that the thugs tend to go further because they have created an inbuilt advantage as a result of their ill-gotten riches: they just buy the big positions either from the people or from bigger thugs. The risk of a rogue ruling class is major: resource theft and misallocation, subversion of the instruments of State, failure to respect the law and customs and the collapse of decency and moderation, required for democracy to thrive.
The most debilitating is the loss of the capacity to apply resources efficiently in service of society, the protection of its interests or even its survival. Although thugs are not always stupid, sometimes you might run into one whose talents don’t include an ability to rationally and wisely weigh policy alternatives. They become cross-eyed when faced with large amounts of data and the need to make complex associations.
Now, this does not apply to the national government only. It happens in the counties too. You have county governments where the governors are borderline loonies: they call executive committee meetings at odd hours, address them in mother tongue and only the governor speaks, the rest shut up unless they are asked questions. The governor’s advisors are makanga and other village idiots, professionals are just window dressing with no clout. No work of any value is done, entire focus being on corrupting voters and cultivating popularity or exhibiting an excess of drama.
The poor leadership is an extension of weakness in the population where the majority make poor choices because of ignorance and a culture of selfishness, greed and corruption. It is a problem that, paradoxically, can be cured by good leadership and civic education.
Swiftly pivoting to the second conundrum: Sometimes back I met a decent gentleman who told me about the peculiar problem he was having with his son. The boy was healthy and well behaved, he was not doing drugs or any of that drama. But the school called him, sat him down and told him: “Look here Caruthers, we have a problem. Your son just doesn’t seem interested in anything.” Not football, not girls, not science, not cars, not music, not boxing, not accounting, not business, not military stuff, nothing. When you think about it, it is a problem worse than drugs. Drugs can be beaten out of you, ambition can’t be beaten into you.
We seem to be losing the capacity to produce viable males required for reproduction, defence and sustaining society. Instead, have developed an enduring capacity to bring forth beautiful pets – who just want to sit in the house, go shopping and come and cook with their mum – and drunks. There are many families where the guys in their 40s and 50s will probably be the last of their lineage.
Their sons are rolling in the mud, drunk and battered. They spend all their time stealing and drinking and nobody seems to have a clue what to do. These lineages will be finished and forgotten in a matter of generations, and so will bigger social units as time goes on until the whole society is severely damaged.
Today, girls are what boys used to be: strong, smart, driven. They dominate STEM and they will take leadership of society from men before long. Sadly, evolution did not design the daughters to stay in the old homestead and tend the graves of the ancestors. They move away.
In the Mt Kenya region, the crisis is caused by the fact that boys are now raised by the church. Traditionally, circumcision and rites of passage gave a boy purpose – you are a man now, fight for your place, earn the respect of your woman, protect your own – and iron-clad discipline – if you talk back at your mother, we will break your legs and throw you down the cliff. The church raises soft milksops with a few Hail Marys in their pockets. Boys have no purpose, that’s why their lives are only about pleasure, and they have no self-respect, so achievement is not important.
The biggest tragedy is that the thugs at the top of the pile either have no clue or don’t care that we have a manhood crisis.
