President William Ruto addresses wananchi at Karugia trading centre in Murang’a after he launched the construction of Karugia market and Kaihii Irrigation water project in this third day of his Mt Kenya development tour on April 3, 2025.
Almost every protagonist in literature is lonely. Charlotte Brontë's character Jane Eyre (in the novel Jane Eyre), Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet (in Pride and Prejudice), Charles Dickens’ Pip (in Great Expectations), J.D Salinger’s Holden Caulfield (in The Catcher in the Rye), Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo (in Things Fall Apart) and Prof Kithaka wa Mberia’s Mwelusi (in Kifo Kisimani).
All these characters suffer a certain kind of tragic isolation — when the protagonist is all alone (and often very sad) — seemingly cut off from the rest of the world.
“Even the silences here were mine," the character Julius, deep in the woods of Maine (USA), says in Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan.
On Monday, March 31, 2025, President William Ruto cut the figure of the lonely fictional hero and the isolated titular protagonist as he fielded questions from journalists at Sagana State Lodge ahead of his 5-day working tour of Mt Kenya from April 1 to April 5.
Questions were asked but the president was in his usual mental element — flexible, quick-paced, with sudden swerves, and his sly wit almost too quick to pin down. He gave off a crackling energy, somewhere between enthusiastic and aggravated.
President William Ruto addresses residents at Kagio trading centre in Kirinyaga during his second day of Mt Kenya tour on April 2, 2025.
He lobbed accusations against his former Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua. At times the president looked in command and at other times, he looked rattled.
In far-away Sagana, away from State House, Nairobi, with its shimmering lights, maybe the president knew that no matter how hard the interview, a little later, it would be over, and the evening would be casually put away.
It was probably different from Nairobi where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its abrupt close.
Before the 2022 presidential election, Dr Ruto (then Deputy President) achieved only what other politicians dream of.
Also Read: Ruto: I am still the king of the Mountain
Though not from the region, Mt Kenya backed him fully (in the end getting over 80 per cent of the votes from the region). Winning such a substantial percentage of Mt Kenya votes stands among the litter of flashier reputations of the president’s storied political career.
Winning Mt Kenya, for a politician, with its millions of voters, is what American writer Joan Didion would describe as a perfect dream: “An infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining… dream itself”. With Mt Kenya region on one’s side as a presidential candidate in 2022, nothing was impossible; everything was within reach — like finally grasping and holding a mirage.
But now, seemingly the laughter and afternoon rallies and happy songs in Mt Kenya have faded for President Ruto, as the rumble of discontent like cannon-fire sweeps across the region.
The stories and rumours of displeasure are many — melodramatic, overwrought, dark and graphic. The president probably wonders when the rain started beating him. “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion would add.
Somewhere, the magic spell over Mt Kenya voters was broken and, according to pundits, President Ruto suddenly has an uphill task especially with his former deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, leading the onslaught against the president with all the force of a Roman legionnaire — the thrusting of spears in fiery words — and the fury of a gladiator in the colosseum that is Kenya’s political stage.
As President Ruto, like a solitary literary character, wanders through the post-election world of Mt Kenya, searching for something beyond his loneliness, he can employ literary tactics to win back the minds and hearts of Mt Kenya voters who could have left his camp.
It’s all about narrative. The president is king of the political narrative. He is brilliant at tilting a situation a few subliminal degrees in the minds of voters so that they see him in more generous light, no matter how disillusioned voters are.
He often depicts a world that is utopian, but he has a brilliant sense of place — constantly shifting and evolving depending on where he is and often offers a humorous geography of the places he visits — with places and roads named accurately and sequentially like his famous speech when he was referring to the Isiolo—Modogashe—El Wak—Mandera road.
He won Mt Kenya over with stories. And one of the most poignant stories is the biblical one of the prodigal (lost) son.
The story of the prodigal son is about a son who left home, took his share of inheritance and wasted it. With no place to call home, the prodigal son probably looked back with nostalgia, and looked forward with frayed hope.
Though an imperfect figure, to some Mt Kenya voters, the president is like a prodigal, now far from home (Mt Kenya), like a wanderer with a nomadic fate who can never rest until he finds his way back home.
Maybe some voters see the president like a lost son scrambling back home. The prodigal son asked for forgiveness and was accepted home.
President Ruto is a master of grand narratives and maybe the story of the prodigal son and how he won back his father’s heart could help him win back not just Mt Kenya voters but also others from other regions who view him as a lost son who has wandered away from “home” after winning the presidency.
The writer is a book publisher based in Nairobi. johnmwazemba@gmail.com
