A “useful idiot” is a pejorative term deployed to describe someone who is unwittingly used by others to advance their agenda. In Kenya today, there are a lot of people who engage in political theatre and thoughtless propaganda without knowing whose, or what cause, they are advancing.
In the era of social media where information travels at warp speed, “useful idiots” are aplenty. They repeat, post, and copy-paste things without interrogating them. Much of it is fake news.
Many people, even educated ones, don’t read anymore. They are functionally illiterate. So, the simple social media post feels like highfalutin theory to them. That’s how the “wantam” moniker (corruption of “one term” used by those opposed to President William Ruto’s 2027 re-election) has entered into their dictionary.
It’s a useful slogan for simpletons. In Kenya, among certain demographics, demonising President Ruto is a kind of a macabre sport. Even grown men and women engage in the most pitiable language to attack the Head of State.
As they say, in a democracy the only thing that’s largely free is speech. You don’t have to pay to speak unless you defame or slander someone. In that case, you could lose more than your shirt. There are so many anonymised accounts on social media engaged in written diarrhoea. This week at the United Nations in New York, President Ruto alluded to such layabouts.
They say democracy is a contact sport. That’s why all those who are in the arena should expect to be bruised. But it’s one thing to get a so-called “black eye” and quite another to engage in a systematic campaign of hate. In the Rwandan genocide, Hutu extremists weaponised Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which radicalised the ethnic group to attack and kill the Tutsi in 1994. Today, social media can be used in the same way to stir and foment a genocidal frenzy. We’ve seen callous and thoughtless posts that seek to stir ethnic warfare. What’s bizarre is that those making such posts don’t see the log in their eye. To them, they are pure of malice.
The main problem is that they spew outright hate speech. Most of that speech has ethnic overtones. Mass hysteria, as we saw in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, is the easiest thing to foment. You will recall Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka’s famous quip aimed at a journalist – “your name betrays you.” He meant to disqualify speech solely on the basis of ethnicity. I think Mr Musyoka would agree today that was textbook hate speech.
DCP’s Rigathi Gachagua cannot complete a sentence without uttering an ethnic epithet. The man from Mathira is a walking dictionary of such speech. It appears he’s even running out of toxic language. Perhaps he will adopt another language to find more such verbiage.
Let me give you a little history on political filth of the hateful kind. I have not seen the kind of ethnic attacks levelled against two of Kenya’s great leaders. Up to this day, the most demonised leader was Raila Odinga, who died in October 2025. In some communities, to scare children into doing their homework or eating unpleasant but nutritious vegetables – such as broccoli – they tell them a monster called Odinga would come for them if they didn’t do as they were told. Former Mwai Kibaki administration senior minister Kiraitu Murungi told this story with some relish in the lead up to the 2022 elections. He openly said that Mt Kenya created the Odinga bogeyman and asked his kinsmen to retire it from the community lexicon.
President Ruto has similarly been subjected to venal calumny. His opponents will not compete on ideas or their records. That’s why, like gremlins and refuseniks, they have resorted to bilious, red-meat profiling, and outright bald-faced lies.
The side opposite, which wants power at all costs, knows it cannot hold a candle to President Ruto’s development record. It cannot. So it resorts to name-calling and demonisation. Each one of them knows, including their master Uhuru Kenyatta , that they are pathetic shadows of the leader Mr Ruto is. Mr Kenyatta himself, when he was president until 2022, slept and snored his way through ten years. Kenya lost years of Mr Kenyatta’s reign. He had nothing to show for it, except a smattering of underwhelming initiatives.
This is what makes the cry of “wantam” curious. It’s based on nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch! The assemblage of the has-beens that Mr Kenyatta has reportedly corralled to his side is a pitiable coterie of failures. Utter failures. Flops. Even their younger charges are unproven, and are like gazelles caught in the headlights: wide-eyed with nothing but vituperative impulses and runaway testosterone.
“Wantam” is shouted from the mouths of bereft heads. But I know this – the croaking of the frogs will stop nothing.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. On X: @makaumutua.
