Anti-government protesters march along Moi Avenue in Nairobi on July 23, 2024.
Kenyan politics should come with a health warning. It can give a diplomatic and foreign journalist a heart attack.
Take just three days. On Tuesday the big story you are keeping your eyes on is the latest round of the Gen Z protests. This time they are planning a march on Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to protest the alleged lease of the airport to an Indian company. The alleged lease first broke on the floor of Parliament (which was recently overrun by protesters sending members fleeing for safety).
Hours before the protest, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi appeared in Parliament and said there were no plans to put the airport on sale. Nevertheless, the protest proceeded. The first appearance of protesters turn out not to be anti-government protesters, but pro-government supporters riding by the dozens on bodabodas.
Before long, they are clashing down with another group of bodaboda protesters – this time anti-government ones. Injuries, blood flowing on the street, and a motorcycle burning.
The “pure” Gen Z protest now gets underway with a march to JKIA. Though there are now soldiers on the streets in numbers unseen before, their protest is largely peaceful. In keeping with their unorthodox methods, in another part of the protest, the Gen Z face off with the soldiers. This is going to end in a lot of tears and body bags, you think. But no, the protesters start cheering and praising the soldiers. However hard-hearted you are, you will not easily shoot someone who is cheering you.
Big story
However, while focussing on this drama, you learn that you have missed a big story in Parliament. President William Ruto has sent a list of the first batch of 11 new ministers he nominated less than a week ago, having dissolved nearly the entire cabinet on July 11. Nothing there, you think, until you learn that he shuffled the list, and some people were no longer ministers in the portfolios he announced last week. Now this is getting interesting; do you jump off to the Cabinet story, or stay with the protest?
You decide to do the Cabinet, call up sources for comment, and file your story or diplomatic cable. As you return to the protests, you learn that there was a small wrinkle you missed. The list the President sent back to Parliament had ten, not 11, names that he read out. The person slated to be Attorney-General was missing from the list. Dropped, or there was a famous typing error? That is for tomorrow.
Some of the ministerial names who had been in the dissolved Cabinet and had been returned had already celebrated and thanked the President for renewing confidence in them. Now they have to thank him again for reassigning them and to delete the social media photographs they had posted of them celebrating their appointment to the powerful docket they had previously been assigned.
Some supporters are in a quandary; do they send a message of condolence to the favourite person whose name is missing from the list, or wait to see if it was a mistake? It is a difficult situation because, unlike congratulations, condolences go cold if not promptly delivered.
All this came as you were grappling with two other handfuls. One is the discovery of nine dismembered bodies of women in a quarry in the Mukuru kwa Njenga area of Nairobi. A suspected serial killer arrested following the grim find had confessed to killing 42 women including his wife, police said. However, when the fellow appeared in court, he said he had been tortured into confessing. The identity of most of the women remains unknown, and few have so far stepped up to say they are missing a relative, a puzzling thing in Kenya.
Orange Democratic Movement
Then there was opposition doyen Raila Odinga and his Azimio la Umoja coalition he took to the 2022 election, and his stubborn Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Raila had been making obliquely supportive noises about rival President Ruto.
At the signing early July of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Bill setting the stage for the appointment of the chairperson and commissioners of the electoral body, Raila was in attendance. He spoke about the need for unity in a time when the country was in crisis, and after the dissolution of the Cabinet, there was speculation that President Ruto would form a national unity government, with ODM getting a slice of the spoils.
Ruto had also been scratching Raila’s back and publicly supported his quest to be elected the next chairperson of the African Union Commission. On the weekend, however, Raila came out attacking Ruto and suggested an attempt to buy him out of politics by the government. He said he was ready to drop the AU bid and fell to the side of the ODM leaders who had rejected going into government with President Ruto, but later in the day there were opposite signs that ODM figures would be named in a new government.
That is beside the news of the slide of the shilling to its lowest level in two months against the US dollar, new figures on national debt, the Olympics team, Anguka Nayo Gen Z revolutionary dance, and pastors shaking trees with their sermons. You can die trying to keep up.
The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3
