Preying on the People’s Hunger

Oversimplified guide on how to use hunger for political power in
Kenya(not a guide a bashing)

Much has been said about the 2027 elections and this is not a new perspective, not at all. But I found it rather interesting how interconnected our political journey in Kenya has been, We follow almost the same trend each election cycle, and what do I mean by that? In each election cycle, we face a contradiction, a contradiction that has not been solved since we were colonised, between the systemic elite and working class or in Kenya the majorly underemployed, statistically speaking.

I mean its systemic because it’s the same people in both classes each time, they change each year, but it’s character the same. The same 0.1 percent own more than 99.9 percent of Kenya every day, it doesn’t matter about the individual but the inequality remains the same and gets worse every year.

Inequality is constant, during elections or during “normal days”, difference is that during elections, the contradiction is either worse, or negligible each cycle, and how it is determines a whole lot politically. This provides a unique avenue for people seeking influence and power in Kenya’s political landscape, they can use a systemic failing to justify their savior complex.

What does this mean? I mean the Kenyan ruling class, use our hunger to get power and maintain their position through rallying us using same conditions we complain about. I will try and explain how we are kept in this perpetual cycle of change that is never coming, but feeling renewed hope each election cycle. They follow a pattern, not too detached from the masses but not offering anything substantial in the long run.

First step usually is the identification of crisis facing the people at that particular moment and if the contradictions have sharpened. Kenya’s workers and masses living conditions are in shambles, food security is highly volatile, the healthcare system has never been worse, education is a gamble, and jobs are nowhere to be found. It would be hypocritical for us to say this is a recent occurrence, ever since I was born, prices have been surging and they won’t stop, maybe you can say in health and food security was abit better, but this is result of the neoliberal markets we use.

With these markets we shouldn’t be shocked , when economic inequality is severe, wealth and opportunities heavily favor those who already possess assets and capital. But one thing we can agree on
is conditions have become relatively worse, each passing second feeling worse than the last. Different regimes buy consent differently from the masses under these terrible conditions. Some like Uhuru did so with visible infraustructure and economic incentives that superficially stabilized the economy(like using the dollar reserve and taking fresh loans)but as time went on these were not enough to fix the pending
economic hit the regime had to face.

As we can remember Ruto’s campaign period was synonymous with one of the worst hikes in living
conditions is our country. A packet of Unga(what a deragatory measure of life) was 230 shillings. This was under Uhuru and him as deputy also don’t forget that.

Secondly, putting a label to the crisis and weaponising it as a slogan for the people. Because Ruto touched on real material things that affected the masses, that is the cost of living, high taxation, he resonated highly with the part of the mass that felt the pinch of the recession at that
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particular moment.

By giving the crisis an identity, you feel more connected to that particular politician. Youth felt Ruto understood them when he promised jobs, mama mboga feels seen because he promised to help them, informal worker feels Ruto is with them because he’ll support them, politics is not only a contest of ideas. It is also psychology, and the politicians who win are usually the ones who have mastered the art of building an identity for their followers.

The pattern starts the same way every time. A politician shows up and makes people feel seen. “I’m here for you” costs nothing to say, and that isn’t the problem. The problem is what follows. Once someone has handed you an identity, you begin to see yourself through it. People are made to feel the politician is part of them, when he is nowhere close to being part of their lives.

The second step is to create an enemy, a single, definite culprit responsible for all your suffering. Many of us remember when the great evil in Kenya was “dynasties,” and the story was hustlers against dynasties. The sentiment was valid. But there is a difference between a sentiment and a weaponised one, and the weaponised version ignores something inconvenient: many of those now cast as enemies were once allies. Regimes the loudest critics once served have conveniently become the villain.

The third step is a promise. Once the enemy falls, we are told, there will be little left to do. The economy will be steered to safety, and the inequalities we live with will be fixed as if by magic. All you need to do is help finish the enemy and hand over power. A mix of real grievances and superficial solutions gives a battered public renewed hope, and that is where the loving, caring, heroic leader is born in the Kenyan context.

The 2027 playbook

If this sounds familiar, it should, because the road to 2027 is showing us these steps in real time. It is opportunism dressed up as liberation, a “breath of fresh air.”

Some politicians rely on ethnic chauvinism to buy consent. Gachagua is the obvious example. Others sell the promise of better leadership, and others simply run on opposition to Ruto. Most of the concerns are valid on the surface, tribalism aside. Our core crisis has barely changed, but the stated reason for it has. Today, according to the opposition, the reason is Ruto.

I am not saying Ruto is not part of the problem. But demanding ideological purity while ignoring our material conditions is hypocrisy. If these issues keep repeating under different leaders, is any one leader really the problem? Perhaps the underlying issue is not the person at the top but the economic system itself.

Scapegoating works elsewhere too. In South Africa, xenophobia is built on the claim that unemployment is high because immigrants take jobs for lower pay. Blame is redirected from structures to a convenient group of people. Our own politicians have tried similar tactics, and we have so far resisted being divided by that kind of chauvinism.

A systemic failure

Inequality in Kenya is stark, and it is far bigger than one administration failing. Politicians know this. Ruto admitted as much in 2022, yet he never explained how it would be fixed. They can’t fix it alone, and the ballot alone won’t fix it either, because these inequalities are woven into how our society runs. Only collective effort from the majority can undo them. Anything less is a lie.

None of this happens overnight, and in the current landscape we still have to vote for the sake of our immediate living conditions. So what comes next?

Thinking past heroes

We have to think beyond heroism and identity. The good news is that whatever has been drilled into us can be undrilled. Our ideas about how to fix the nation can be rewired.

We should be honest that 2027 will not solve most of our problems. Those get solved only when we choose to organise and plan how we do things, without waiting for a hero to save us. We need to imagine alternatives together, to a system where the one who is already full eats from the plate of the one still begging for food, and watches it go cold.