Audio By Vocalize
Protesters barricade the Nairobi-Namanga highway at Kitengela town in Kajiado County during demonstrations against high fuel prices. [Peterson Githaiga, Standard]
There is a sound rising from the streets, the markets, the matatu stages and the cramped rental rooms of this republic. It is not theatre. It is pain — unfiltered and undeniable. When Kenyans say they are pressed, they mean it. These are the same people who, when things ease, will tell you with equal candour that life has become manageable. They do not dramatise in either direction. Their testimony is their economics.
And yet something disturbing has become a signature feature of our national governance: a leadership that responds to the cries of its citizens not with compassion, but with scorn. We have a leadership that is telling its crying citizens, “Shut up! And if you do not shut up, we will shut you down.” It is not always said in those words. But this indifference is communicated unmistakably in the tone of press briefings and the posture of spokespersons. The people do not feel felt. And because they do not feel felt, they do not feel loved - they feel abused.
The tragedy of Kenya’s governance moment is not primarily economic. It is relational. The hard-times speech — the belt-tightening calls, the assurances that the global economy is to blame — is written for the poor and delivered from a helicopter.
