Accountability Gone Missing in Kenya

In the wake of last year’s Gen Z protests, Kenyan President William Ruto had two choices. He could accept the youthful population’s rejection of business as usual and get serious about cleaning up corruption in government, aiming to ride the wave of enthusiasm for change to usher in a new political paradigm based on delivering for voters rather than knitting together a coalition of self-serving elites. Or he could revert to darker days of Kenyan history, using political violence to suppress dissent and cow the public. He chose the latter path.  

Scores of Kenyans have been abducted with no regard to the law or due process. But in an Orwellian twist, Ruto and his security officials have signaled that Kenyan citizens and partners are supposed to pretend they are unaware of this choice. They have repeatedly promised “investigations” into the abductions and disappearances, as if they had nothing to do with their authorization. Yet when the son of Kenya’s Attorney General Justin Muturi was swept up, Muturi went straight to President Ruto, who reportedly ordered his son’s immediate release. For speaking publicly about the incident, he has earned repeated rebukes from powerful Ruto allies.  

Who is this charade for? The Kenyan people are well aware of the state’s role in these abductions. Perhaps it is a signal of the president’s intention to live, publicly at least, in a fantasy world in which he continues to be held in high regard abroad. While he makes common cause with authoritarian leaders in Turkey, Uganda, and Rwanda, deporting dissidents residing in Kenya or permitting their security services to sweep up opponents on Kenyan soil, he continues to invoke democratic ideals in his public discourse as he trades favors to build a coalition that can secure another—potentially extended—term in office. Perhaps years of experience with international partners who set aside concerns about governance to advance counter-terrorism cooperation have given Ruto and his inner circle a sense that anything goes as long as national security is invoked. Perhaps, for the domestic audience, he is primarily reasserting his power—to shape the broader political narrative, to eliminate voices of dissent, and to instill fear. These are easier muscles to flex than those required to meaningfully respond to popular demands for reform. 

The result is, as the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops put it, an attempt to make everyone complicit in a “culture of lies.” In a statement issued last November, the group lamented, “Basically it seems that truth does not exist, and if it does, it is only what the Government says.” It's a political scenario that deserves close watching. How does a society that has lost faith in its political class but not necessarily in its own ability to affect change react to obvious untruths coming from official sources, to threats and violence, and to an attempt to distort the very idea of truth? How can Kenyans continue to center the ideas that energized a nationwide movement for change while contending with old attempts to divide them and this latest intentional shirking of responsibility at the very top? The answers will matter a great deal to Kenya’s future, and to the prospects for democracies in peril far beyond Kenya’s borders.