Audio By Vocalize
“A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” Proverbs 22:1.
Kenya had a Bill. The Bill had a bill and the bill was paid in insults. Yet the account is still open. That is not a riddle. That is a Tuesday morning in Kenya, where the President took to social media, addressed a media shareholder by name, called his newspaper’s journalism extortion and blackmail, and invited the institution to do its worst.
One point one million people read it before lunch. By evening, the context notes on X had supplied what the post had quietly omitted: the government owes Standard Media Group over Sh1.2 billion in unpaid advertising bills.
The insults arrived on time. But the money has not. In ancient Rome, emperors who could not silence critics by argument learned to silence them by ruin. Cut the supply lines. Dry up the contracts. When the voice falls quiet from hunger, call it peace. The method never went out of fashion. Only the tools changed. This week, the tool was a smartphone. And the silence, to the government’s visible frustration, has not arrived.
