In the furore around the fate of those with responsibility for the violence in Kenya last year, the chair and utility of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission and how to manage simultaneous food, power and water shortages, several things have become abundantly clear. Our political leadership is unable and unwilling to govern foresightedly in the public interest. It has only managed, with reluctance and only when pushed to the wall, to lurch directionless from one crisis to the next, sometimes propelled by the unavoidable scale of public need (as with the decision about addressing famine in the country) and sometimes propelled by external actors (as with all of the feeble and half-hearted attempts to at least appear to be moving on the mediation process agreement). But never (never) propelled by reliance on data and planning in line with a public vision. And always, regardless of the direction taken, torn in half by considerations of economic and political self-interest.

Maybe this has always been the case. Maybe the optimism we felt at having (finally!) turned the page in 2002 was an exception – merely a taunt, a tease – to keep us on the treadmill of working fruitlessly for change. Maybe this is the sad norm. Maybe it is ridiculous to keep demanding change from those who see nothing but personal economic and political costs in change and nothing but personal economic and political gains in the status quo. Maybe until such as time as we can all conceive of being able to make good livings in manners apart from robbing the public purse, change will continue to be a mirage – an oasis glimpsed wavering in the distance only to disappear upon drawing near, leaving nothing but the thirst for it.

That being the case, we could just all wash our hands of the dirty game of it. Stop dignifying all the desultory efforts at appearances of normalcy and progress with our earnest attempts to engage those efforts. Retreat into cocooned absorption with simpler things – family, work. We could and perhaps we should.

Except for the fact that we’d be leaving our hard-earned money (yes, some of us actually work for what we have – most of us, in fact) to the political leadership. All of us pay tax, one way or another. And although the Kenya Revenue Authority is finding it difficult to meet its collection targets – after years of upward collections – it is still raking it in: our income tax; our value added tax; customs duties; et cetera; et cetera; et cetera. Something rankles at the idea that we can have no control over what is actually ours.

In addition, there is the question of public resources: our forests; our land; our water catchments; and so on. Left to the avarice of those running every level of government, if we all turned our backs, we could turn around again and find nothing left, save for expanding desert.

What is it then that we could do?

Two options present themselves. First, a national tax boycott, on the lines of the Karen-Langata Residents’ Association’s tax boycott of the Nairobi City Council, scaled upwards to the national level. Let those running every level of government do what they want to do, but not with our money. The devil is in the detail, for sure. But the detail can be worked out.

Second, prepare for new elections. Some religious organisations have already called for the same. But the fact is we are not ready for new elections. We have not yet changed the electoral system to effect proportional as well as direct representation. We have not yet agreed on electoral boundaries, to address old and new gerrymandering as well as concerns of equitable representation. We do not have a national voters’ register. And, most importantly, we do not have strong political parties that actually respect their membership rather than serving as vehicles to advance feudal lords who believe political leadership is simply a question of genetics, or their inevitable hangers-on and sycophants.

But addressing all of those limitations is something we can and must do. We have already wasted a year and a half playing into the energy- and time-sapping pretence of a follow-up to agenda items 1, 2 and 4. We cannot waste any more time. And we must begin to focus on the abject failure (actual inability) of agenda item 3 – the establishment of the Grand Coalition Government – to take us anywhere except further into the depressing, debilitating dumps. The political settlement brought us relative calm. But that calm is fragile, shaky, because apparently even what happened last year was not enough of a shock to propel rational action on the past and rational movement forward. And the political settlement has reached its limits – as is clear from the parliamentary and cabinet stand for impunity – whether over the violence or over as obvious (to us) an issue as the Mau forest.

The political settlement has reached its limits. Let us deprive the Grand Coalition Government of our money. And let us focus all our energies now on moving our politics forward.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
* This article was originally published by The East African.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.