The President is beating drums of war against his own people

President William Ruto’s “shoot in the legs” instructions to the Kenya Police have left many in shock, both because of the substance and the bustling anger with which the instructions were delivered.

The ended week could easily come to be defined as the season when the President of Kenya made a war cry that sunk his country into the abyss of darkness and damnation. 

The President has all but called the nation to war, with thundering drums. The world will be wondering if the Eldorado of East Africa will survive the high-level passions that are driving the political space.

Will the Kenyan nation survive a state-driven apocalypse, or is it making a return to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, with its topmost political leadership at the forefront?

Coming only hours behind the President’s “shoot to maim” order was Belgut MP, Nelson Koech, who felt that the President’s order was deficient. Koech adjusted the call, stating that the police should, in fact, “shoot and kill.”

Not one to mince his words, the UDA lawmaker on Thursday sucked in an entire ethnic community from the Rift Valley, stating that they would not accept “the nonsense of one term” for President Ruto’s tenure in State House. 

Koech, in essence, let the cat out of the bag. Kenyans have been astounded by nervous and angry tirades that border on rashness by high state officials.

President Ruto has himself been rich in outbursts. He hardly waits for his adversaries’ words to sink in before rushing out, shooting from the hip. He displays absence of caution about the consequences of his words and actions. He challenges anyone who dares to take him on to bring it on.

“Come for me, if you are man enough,” President Ruto challenged his former deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, who is embarked on what he calls a “one term Ruto presidency” campaign.

Gachagua is happy to see Ruto spin in anger, for that is his objective. But what is this one thing that is making William Ruto so restless that he would ask the police to shoot Kenyans in the legs and maim them, perhaps even kill them? Is it the thought that he might not have a second term in State House, after August 2027?

First was the Gen-Z “Ruto must go” clarion call that the united Opposition swiftly adopted, making it its call of the bugle. This call is clearly gnawing at the president’s political soul, and at the very essence of his being.

Would President Ruto go down with the entire Kenyan nation, if those calling for him to go home in 2027 were to make good their call? Or, would he keep his head cool, accept the people’s verdict and saunter away quietly?

A silent departure does not seem likely. Is the President now giving the country a taste of things to come? If he is to go, he will go fighting loudly, and with lots of collateral damage. That seems to be the message.

The deaths witnessed this far could only be early warnings of the damage. The exit of a President is never a one-day event. It is a process over time, and President Ruto knows this. Expect, therefore, a lot of thunder and damage in the coming days, as Ruto fights back.  

The president’s Wednesday explosion of anger went beyond the pale. The Kenyan constitution burdens the head of state and government with the yoke of uniting the country. He is especially yoked when the country’s collective solidarity, on any one issue, is at the nadir of its fortunes. The President is expected to put his best foot forward as the unifying symbol of the country’s diverse political opinions and leanings; the competing and disjointed ethnic communities and identities; and any attendant hostilities. In moments of tribal tensions, he is expected to place his own ethnic identity on the back burner, to save the nation, even if that calls for self-sacrifice.

The Koech outburst spoke to intra-group concerns and panic, sparked by ethnic considerations in the President’s innermost sanctums.  The Belgut MP is a rank member of this circle.

Insider sources indicate that this caucus assembles regularly in State House, in the evening. It is a members-only gathering that reflects on the state of the nation, and especially what this means for group interests, now and in the future. It is a “no phones, no cameras, and no-nothing” caucus. The group’s perceived truth is tabled and explored, with no holds barred.

The conversations centre around ensuring that President Ruto will get a second term in 2027. The  President’s loss of following in the Mt. Kenya region is a recurrent item on the menu. But most important of all, in recent times, has been the rise of the Gen-Z youth in the Kenyan political space, and the risk they pose for the much desired second term. Potential intersection between the Gen-Zs and the Opposition is a living nightmare for the State House caucus. 

The greatest fear about an emerging united Opposition is the possibility that it could not only hold together, but snowball into a political behemoth all the way to the August 2027 elections. But if anything keeps State House awake at night, it is the possibility that a united Opposition could find a meeting point with a unified frustrated Gen-Z  population, to march together to the ballot box in 2027.

Accordingly, it has become useful to sidestep the issues that the Gen-Zs have been raising. It is strategically important, instead, to demonize the turbulent youthful energy. Hence the presentation of the Gen-Z uprising as a tribal ploy to unconstitutionally overthrow the Kenya Kwanza Government. 

According to the gameplan in State House,  the Mt Kenya populations of Embu, Meru, Tharaka, Chuka, Mbere, Kikuyu and allied derivatives should be lumped together to be addressed as one ethnic population. They should, moreover,  be angrily painted in the colours of a greedy people, who “believe that they own the country,” according to State House sources. They should, accordingly, be shewn as a demographic whose political elite wishes to establish a dominant political, social and economic hegemony over the rest of the Kenyan peoples.

Hence, the perception should be made that they are the sponsors of the Gen-Z restlessness. President Ruto has in this regard angrily wondered why the Gen-Zs are raising questions on unemployment, the economy generally, and related concerns, as if these challenges only began under him. “Why didn’t you raise these questions under Presidents Kibaki and Uhuru?” a furious President Ruto quipped on Wednesday.

But it was Koech who drove the message home. “If it is scheming, let them not imagine that we do not know how to scheme,” Koech told an ethnic gathering in the Rift Valley, “It is just that we love peace. And let them be very careful about this peace! Kibaki completed his (two terms in office); Uhuru completed his. Are we imbeciles so that we should do only one term? We shall romp home with two terms! Two terms!” he roared before a cheering partisan audience. 

It is instructive that Koech is the chairperson to the Defence, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly. His words carry a lot of weight, especially in the trying times that Kenya is going through. But he also knows the truth about President Ruto’s political rating today. He says that there will be no Kenya, if President Ruto does not get re-elected in 2027.

So where does the Kenyan nation go from here? Ordinarily, President Ruto would be the person to slow down the tempo and call the country back to order. President Moi was a consummate master of this game. His political gadflies and sundry sounding boards would go out with war cries against both real and imagined political adversaries. They would brandish iron fists and veritably call the country to war. An all-out war of words would follow. The message home and dry, however, President Moi would call out the antagonists and order everyone to put away their verbal artillery. 

President Ruto does the converse. After Interior Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen shocked the country with the first shoot-to-kill directive, the President was next with “shoot in the legs.” He missed the chance for greatness of heart. The parakeets are picking up the cue with irate “shoot and kill”  echoes. Not a word has been said about 31 Kenyans who died in Saba Saba demonstrations.

An angry President Ruto and his lawmakers have been low on human fellow-feeling in moments of tragic grief.  They are, instead, rich in self-laudation, in the aftermath of what goes down in history as a massacre.  

Something is awfully wrong with State communications. They are easily baited to a lowly public mud sling with the Opposition. Once in the mud, they pull out the ethnic card, as their trump card. It is not about governance, taxation, cost of living, education, Medicare, or any of the public grievances.  It is that “Mt. Kenya is tribal.” Never mind that the Mountain electorate overwhelmingly voted for President Ruto in 2022. It would appear that the voters had forgotten that Ruto was not from their tribe. They would seem to have only woken up to this reality.

The country has never been here before. Presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Moi, Kibaki and Uhuru, each encountered the ethnic dragon in their times. Mzee Kenyatta, indeed, had to address not just ethnic concerns at the national level, but also internal divisions among the wider Kikuyu peoples of Kiambu, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, and Murang’a and their diasporas in the country.  Ethnic based oaths are believed to have been given, to secure solidarity within this population at the time, and in the future. This remains a sensitive touch-and-go affair that Kenya is shy to address. 

Regardless, Mzee Kenyatta never made incendiary public pronouncements about people “planning” or “intending” to overthrow his government. Even when an alleged scheme, with what looked like ethnic dimensions, was unearthed in 1971 against Mzee Kenyatta’s government, the old man remained cool and level-headed about the ethnic composition. He instead methodically removed senior persons from command positions in the armed forces and the judiciary. But he would also make measured condemnation of people he called quislings, working with foreigners against “serikali yetu tukufu (our immaculate government).” 

President Moi suffered a practical coup attempt in August 1982, but emerged from it to address the country with deep and sad coolness. He also steered clear of apportioning the coup effort to any one tribal community. Moi, however, exploded into anger from time to time, but retreated with equal speed, to pacify the nation. He spoke vaguely about “disgruntled people” who were “not satisfied” with what his government was doing for the country, and about a  shadowy “General Odongo.” But he never got anywhere near where President Ruto is. 

Yet, if ever the President encountered a tribal onslaught, that President was Mwai Kibaki. President Kibaki contended with open and defiant propaganda of “forty-one tribes against one” in the 2007 explosive electoral season. Throughout the campaign and in the subsequent post-election violence, Kibaki remained very cool. It was difficult to tell that he was the individual under a flurry of pointed ethnic slurs from the Opposition, and especially from the then overwhelmingly popular ODM party.  

Enter President Uhuru Kenyatta, and you witness a President who would burst into a fit of anger, only for it to transform into laughter, and a smiley “anyway, haidhuru, mimi nawaambia tu (…it doesn’t matter, I am only telling you). Uhuru appreciated the futility of his tirades, to the extent of laughing at himself. 

And now there is President William Ruto. His fiery eloquence is legendary. He spews descriptive anger at supersonic pace. He dresses it up in strong language that flies with angry words. They descend with the force of a mighty waterfall. He agitatedly swings from side to side, ready to pounce. Is there a need for public communication therapy in State House? It is not all about loud eloquence. It is about sense of occasion, public sensibility, and what your message wants to achieve. 

It is also about your messengers, and what the audience thinks of all of you, even before you open your mouth. Angry warlike messengers who tell Kenyans that the Government is “scheming about 2027” and that they “will never accept one term” for President Ruto do him more harm than good. But the President himself should be his own finest messenger. Does he need lessons in self-containment? Must he rise up to respond to every public provocation by his adversaries? When his estranged former deputy calls him nasty names, must he hurriedly convene a public meeting, “to inspect affordable houses,” as a platform to answer back? 

Managers of final resort, especially, need to be slow and very measured in what they say. President Ruto undermines himself when he thinks that he should be the one to speak about everything. You will often wonder where the highly competent communications experts in Ikulu have gone. They know very well that when the manager of final resort has spoken, there is no room at the top for correction, or disowning what has been said. They also know about the slippery path of pointed words and descriptive language.

That was why Presidents Moi and Kibaki often spoke in vague language, leaving the audience to grapple with the gaps in their messaging. It was not that they were unenlightened.  They knew about the need to wriggle out of a message that turned counterproductive. Their escape route lay in the vague spaces in what they said. But when the President has angrily ordered the police to shoot people in the legs, he has no escape route. 

Young Rex Masai was shot in the leg in June last year. He became the first Gen-Z casualty in the face of state brutality. The messages to shoot in the legs and to shoot to kill are eventually one and the same.

The President shoots himself in the foot with such messages. His restlessness about 2027 may need better management. But even better is management of the emotions that the restlessness generates in State House.

When angrily displayed in public, they breed counter tension and restlessness. Eventually, they point towards violent physical engagement. State House may have to rethink its approach to public discourse.