One of the most shocking and disgusting scenes the world has ever witnessed in recent years was the standing ovation accorded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by US Congressmen and women when he was invited to speak to the Congress last month. This blatant display of racism and impunity by America’s ruling elite, both Democrats and Republicans, was a confirmation that the United States of America has never been a beacon of democracy or an advocate for human rights. For the families of the Palestinian women, children and men who have been killed in the tens of thousands in Gaza, this single act was yet another demonstration that the United States does not care for human rights or for the suffering of the world’s people. That the rules set by the so-called Policeman of the World are for the benefit of those doing the policing, not those being policed.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of that disgraceful episode was that the world finally understood who controls the United States. Israel and rich and influential Jewish American lobby groups have held every US president in the palms of their hands since Israel was created in 1948. Israeli governments have almost total control over US presidents and can literally order them to do their bidding, including aiding and abetting a genocide. Meanwhile, the United Nations looks on as Gaza is decimated before the world’s eyes, because it too is beholden to the US, which provides almost a quarter of its budget and has veto-holding powers in the UN Security Council. This means that any sanctions against Israel will be automatically vetoed by the US.
A few weeks after that shameful event in the US Congress, a British teenager, the son of Rwandan immigrants, stabbed three girls in a dance class. The murder of the girls elicited mass mourning in the UK, with even the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer sending condolences to the grieving families. This same Prime Minister has not shed a single tear for the tens of thousands of children who are being killed or maimed by weapons supplied to Israel by Britain. Britain’s ultra-right movement decided to use the identity of the teenage boy and the murder of the girls to carry out racist anti-immigrant protests. Mosques were vandalised even though the boy charged with the murders was not a Muslim.
It gets stranger. The US is currently preparing for an election where a convicted felon with a history of misogyny and corruption might become president – for the second time. For those watching from afar, the ascent of Donald Trump to the highest political office in the US is as astounding as it is disturbing. If Trump embodies the values of the majority of Americans, then what hope is there for the rest of the world? Were we fooled into believing that this country stood for what is right?
Black people in America have long understood that American democracy is a sham. A country built on slavery and the genocide of indigenous populations cannot claim any moral superiority over other nations. It has no right to lecture the world on how to protect the rights of the vulnerable and the weak. This is a country that for centuries denied Black people the right to vote. The scars of the wounds of racism are visible even today. But the majority of white Americans have chosen to forget this injustice because remembering and acknowledging their dark past denies them the authority to lecture the world and to live under the illusion that America is “great” because of some inherent greatness embedded in the population that is not accessible to the rest of the world.
Let us also not forget that almost every war waged since the end of the Second World War has either been fought or funded by the United States. The war in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq, the civil wars and coups in Latin America and in some parts of Africa in the 1980s and ‘90s, the wars in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, and now the genocide in Gaza would not have been possible without American funding and weapons, something that China is quick to point out. Despite its military might, China has not invaded a single country in the last seven decades, except for a few skirmishes along its border with India. China relies on “soft power” to exert influence around the world through infrastructure projects and the like. It does not send its military to decimate populations in far-off lands.
Cognitive dissonance
But then in Kenya we are now used to such bizarre scenarios. In 2013, we elected two men who were indicted by the International Criminal Court for orchestrating violence, chaos, death and displacement after the disputed 2007 election. But voters in 2013 chose to ignore this fact and decided to allocate the presidency of the country to Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.
What’s worse, the courts and the national electoral body allowed them to run for office despite the fact that they did not meet the threshold of integrity as per Chapter Six of the Constitution and that a significant number of ICC witnesses in the Kenya case had allegedly disappeared into thin air or had been killed, thereby severely diluting the cases against the duo. (The only potential witness left standing – lawyer Paul Gicheru who was accused by the ICC of witness tampering – also died in mysterious circumstances in September 2022.) In the 2022 election, voters also conveniently forgot that Ruto has a dodgy past that includes land grabs and corrupt dealings. How different are we from the Americans who believe Trump is their saviour? What level of cognitive dissonance has to occur for amnesia to set in?
In India, a similar scenario is being played out. Prime Minister Narendra Modi secured a third term despite his history of anti-Muslim and anti-minority rhetoric and his belief that India is a country for Hindus only. The world’s largest secular democracy is fast turning into a nation that only accepts one religion – an accusation successive Indian governments have levelled against neighbouring Pakistan, which was founded on the idea of a Muslim-only state. Under Modi, press freedoms have also been severely curtailed, with several journalists reporting having been harassed or attacked.
Meanwhile, European countries such as Italy are electing far-right leaders who are bringing out the most atavistic instincts in people. The European Union also re-elected Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission, a woman who has not said a single word against the atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza, and now in Lebanon. A world war is looming, but European leaders are cheering the perpetrators on, not realising that the war next door could spill into their borders.
Corporate interests
What the hell is happening in this world? When Uhuru Kenyatta rose to the presidency in 2013, I predicted that what we were witnessing in Kenya was a global trend that would see a rise in fascism and the corporatisation of political power. Political leaders would no longer represent the people – they would represent corporate interests.
In Kenya, these corporate interests often merge with politicians’ personal business interests because the politicians actually own the corporations or companies. This gross conflict of interest is what the ruling elite seek to maintain.
In this cut-throat world of wheeler-dealers, wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few, who rewrite society’s rules to their own advantage. Issues such as social justice have become peripheral. Democratic institutions are being weakened and the media and intellectuals are being vilified. Fascism – the feverish exaltation of ethnicity, race, nation or religion above the rights of the individual – has become the new normal.
The race to own and control the world’s resources and populations is so intense that the likes of billionaire Bill Gates have convinced presidents of poor countries, including in Kenya, that farmers in their countries should no longer rely on their own seeds; they must buy genetically modified seeds from Western corporations. Those flouting this rule should be severely punished – even imprisoned.
Meanwhile, a scandal-ridden Indian company somehow managed to convince Kenya’s transport cabinet secretary that the country’s largest and most strategic international airport should be run by that company for the next thirty years. The question Kenyans are asking is: Did the government invite this company or did greedy politicians invite it so they could benefit from kickbacks? Why was there no open and transparent tendering process?
This madness manifests at other levels too. At a time when hunger and poverty levels were rising in the country, and universities and schools were being defunded, the Treasury was allocating billions of shillings to the unconstitutional Office of the First Lady to do God-knows-what. (Apart from attending prayer rallies, it is not clear what the First Lady actually does.) Nurses and teachers who have been trained using Kenyan taxpayers’ money are being encouraged to find jobs abroad. Meanwhile, medical interns are being denied internships in hospitals. Higher education – the great equaliser – will now become the preserve of the rich as public university fees are set to rise threefold.
Capture of state institutions
There was a time when stories of millions of shillings being stolen by government officials shocked the Kenyan public; today, evidence presented by the Auditor General of billions of shillings being lost to corruption or misappropriation barely elicits a yawn. What we are witnessing in Kenya is the capture of state institutions by corrupt ethnic-based cartels who enjoy government protection. Under President Ruto, expect to see the authority and independence of the judiciary, the media, anti-corruption watchdogs and other institutions undermined. By the time Ruto leaves office (if he ever does), I predict we will be back to the bad old days of an imperial presidency and our Constitution will be in tatters.
But, as Chris Hedges, a pastor and one of America’s leading intellectuals, points out, those seeking to destroy democracy and to curtail people’s freedom are not an array of “dehumanised enemies” sitting in government offices but the “financiers, bankers, politicians, public intellectuals and pundits, lawyers, journalists and businesspeople cultivated in the elite universities and business schools who sold us the utopian dream of neoliberalism”. Hedges says that this tiny cabal of rich and powerful people “embod[ies] the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism”. This elite group is now working to deintellectualise and deindustrialise Kenya through excessive and predatory taxation that is suffocating small and medium-sized businesses and the manufacturing sector, and through the underfunding of key sectors that build economies and sustain present and future generations, particularly health and education.
The ultimate aim, perhaps, is to create a nation of ignorant and impoverished people. This is by design, not the result of lack of resources. The International Monetary Fund is merely the handmaiden facilitating this process through punitive neoliberal conditionalities attached to loans to Kenya; the real architects of this sinister scheme are sitting in State House and in corporate boardrooms.
Unfortunately, the opposition, led by Raila Odinga, has also decided to join this bandwagon. The highly cynical move by Raila to support the Kenya Kwanza government and President William Ruto has demonstrated without a doubt that when it comes to eating and enjoying the illicit spoils of power, both the ruling party and the opposition are joined at the hip. In fact, when it comes to ethics, values and integrity, they are pretty much on the same page.
Erasure of memories
In order to carry out their agenda, governments try to erase people’s memories so that the status quo appears normal or legitimate. So, in their efforts to “make America great (white) again”, white supremacists make non-white people in the United States feel like unwanted invaders or parasitic criminals, obscuring the fact that had it not been for the abominable transatlantic slave trade and the free labour provided by African slaves, America would not have become a prosperous nation.
In Kenya, government officials and church leaders have convinced the people that their poverty is self-inflicted. Ruto, for instance, has on several occasions told unemployed Kenyan youth that they had only themselves to blame for their joblessness because they were not applying for jobs as nurses, maids and drivers in Saudi Arabia. This despite reports of Kenyan domestic workers being mistreated and even killed while working in Saudi households.
Ruto never speaks of how his government has systematically disincentivised educated youth to find jobs in their own country. His punitive taxation policies have led to the closure of businesses and made the cost of doing business much higher. Jobs in the public service disproportionately favour certain ethnic groups, and standards in the civil service are dropping as many of those being employed lack the minimum qualifications. Several members of Ruto’s cabinet, including the Deputy President, have been linked to corruption cases in the past.
Hedges urges his fellow resisters to develop a critical mass that will force the centres of power to respond because, “the moment we defy power, we are victorious”. The Gen Z revolt in Kenya, I believe, has achieved a critical mass that no number of extrajudicial killings or abductions can suppress. May this movement – the only remaining opposition in Kenya – show Kenya and nations elsewhere that it is possible to mend this broken nation and dismantle all the powers that seek to exploit and control its people and resources. (Gen Zs in Bangladesh have already demonstrated the power of the people by forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee the country. This revolt, first led by university students, morphed into a mass nationwide movement that even Bangladesh’s military could not quell. In Nigeria and Uganda, young people are following Kenya’s lead by taking part in mass protests against bad governance. The tide is turning; leaders who ignore this wave will be doing so at their own peril.)
What Kenya’s leaderless Gen Z youth have shown me is that cooperation and altruism – not competition and individualism – are the moral standards by which we must judge society. Their selfless dedication to their comrades killed, injured, abducted, tortured or arrested by police is unparalleled. They have a clear understanding of the dangers that they and their children face if the status quo is maintained, and so they remain steadfast in their cause. They deserve all the support they can get because under their leadership we might have a chance to save Kenya from the forces that seek to destroy it.
