Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua during his impeachment hearing at the Senate in Nairobi on October 16, 2024.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears… men have lost their reason… If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…” so says the character Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar. If we put the words “Friends, Kenyans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” we could swap Mark Antony with former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, starting with his address to the media on October 7, 2024, to his speech the next day in his defence in Parliament.
His defence, both in the press conference and Parliament, was at times fiery and defiant but also emotional — and Shakespearean. Mr Gachagua evoked his late brother’s family and his own children as victims caught in the crosscurrents of Kenya’s politics. Sentimental man that I am, I would like to imagine that if the Members of Parliament baying for his blood had seen the sad faces of his children and his late brother’s children, they would probably have allowed him to complete his full term as Deputy President.
At the end of his submission in Parliament, he told Members of Parliament that he was exactly in the same position President Ruto was in when he served as Deputy President under President Uhuru Kenyatta — when then DP Ruto was allegedly being politically persecuted. Mr Gachagua appealed to MPs to consider his case conscientiously, and as he bowed at the end of his speech before he exited Parliament, for the last time as DP, he cut the figure of a lonely man in a land of lost things — God-forsaken, woebegone and deserted by even some of his closest friends. In the end, he was impeached by Parliament after 281 MPs supported the motion to remove him from his position. Where were his friends? Where was President William Ruto, a man he earlier considered not only his boss but also friend and brother? It’s this aspect of being abandoned to his sorrow in his moment of need that makes the whole affair have a Shakespearean twist.
Conspiracy
In Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, there is a conspiracy by several senators to assassinate Julius Caesar. One of Caesar’s closest friends is Brutus. Brutus stands watching Caesar bleeding after he is stabbed by the conspirators. A critic sums it well, “Brutus stands, watching Caesar dying… Julius Caesar staggers towards his friend, appealing to him, but Brutus stabs him. Unbelieving, Caesar cries out in Latin, ‘Et tu Brute? (‘You too, Brutus?’). Then fall, Caesar.” What killed Caesar, it is inferred, was not the swords of his enemies but the sword of his friend Brutus. The sword of a friend is deadly.
“Et tu Brute. Then fall, Caesar,” cried the dying leader. Oh, how poignant those words are! The website NoSweatShakespeare dissects these words ‘et tu brute?’, thus, “And so, Shakespeare uses these three words — et tu brute — for maximum theatrical effect. To ask that question of your best friend, who is in the process of murdering you, has to be one of the most moving utterances ever made. It is the trademark of Shakespeare as a writer to squeeze huge amounts of significance into just a word or three. And because it is so spectacularly loaded a phrase, it has come to mean a great deal more beyond the confines of the text. It does not just mean betrayal but the unbelievable betrayal of trust by the last person on earth that one would expect to betray one. That has to be the most hurtful thing one could experience, and anyone being asked ‘Et tu Brute?’ would know how badly he or she has hurt someone who has had complete trust in them.”
In many ways, therefore, the scenes leading to the impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua in Parliament echo Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. First, both Gachagua’s and Julius Caesar’s cases are in an environment soaked with political intrigue. In both cases, the political intrigues come from changing power dynamics and future political calculations. For Gachagua’s detractors, the impeachment would end his career. Second, in both Julius Caesar’s and Gachagua’s cases, there are clear consequences of political decisions. In Caesar’s case, a successor had to be found and if the Senate impeaches Gachagua and the courts uphold the impeachment, a successor would have to be found. That has far-reaching implications because it could potentially alter the presidential succession calculations.
As the dagger of impeachment was being thrust through Gachagua, I wonder if he asked, “Et tu, Mr President? Even you, Mr President?” Or if he wondered about his other friends in Parliament, “Et tu, friend? Even you, friend?” Even you, are twisting the dagger in my heart? In a case of art imitating real life, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar comes to life in Gachagua’s impeachment saga — and it’s uncanny how we relive Shakespeare’s works in 2024. We hope, though, in all this that we shall have a united country and, in the words of our national anthem, “May we dwell in unity/Peace and liberty/Plenty be found within our borders”.
The writer is a book publisher based in Nairobi. [email protected]
