On May 28, 2024, Kenya’s most prominent author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, sent a scathing open letter to President William Ruto, just days after the head of state returned from a state visit to the United States.
“Ruto, you have chosen to betray to become an agent of the West. Ruto, you have chosen to sell your country cheaply. Why, oh, why?” wrote Thiong’o in his letter.
The author of “The River Between,” “Decolonising the Mind” and other respected titles said he was disturbed by the image of Ruto sitting on Joe Biden’s chair, grinning, while the US President stood behind him, “his face beaming with satisfaction.”
Thiong’o’s criticism elicited eye-rolls from Kenyans who saw it as selective and jingoistic tribalism. For example, when Kenya last November requested China’s support for its bid to join BRICS, Thiong’o and other opposition figures remained mum.
“Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o becomes engaged and agitated about Kenyan politics the moment a KALE (Kalenjin) occupies State House,” said senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi on X, a day later.
Abdullahi has recently called the “Ruto Must Go” chant, which is mainly driven by Mount Kenya politicians and their supporters, dangerous “tribal politics” that could “divide Kenyans.”
Abdullahi’s sentiment is shared by many other Kenyans who consider vitriolic personal attacks on Ruto as reductive and misleading in a country whose history is marred by massacres, political assassinations, abductions, murders and purposeful underdevelopment of certain regions and peoples.
Those Kenyans say the obsession over Ruto gives the impression that Kenya, before him, was an oasis of freedom and prosperity, which it was not the case.
Critics of Ruto have been intentionally eliding the blood-soaked record of his predecessors, zeroing in instead on the blunders of his two-year-old government, such as its human rights abuses, less-than-stellar economic performance and rampant corruption, even when he saved the country from default, stabilized the shilling and reduced inflation.
Of course, the government’s lopsided application of the law which seems to focus mainly on the youth rather than the masterminds, who are let scot-free to spew their divisive politics, didn’t help matters.
“Ungrateful Mount Kenya”
Well before the Gen Z protests gripped the country in June, government officials privately expressed their displeasure with Mt Kenya politicians, whom they accused of being ungrateful and of trying to topple a government which their fellow tribesmen occupied almost half of Cabinet positions.
The acerbic, anti-Ruto rhetoric from individuals like businessman Jimmy Wanjigi (who was apparently the one who coined the “Ruto Must Go” slogan) and politician Martha Karua (who dubbed Ruto’s rule a “total eclipse”) has only lent credence to such concerns.
Although voters in the Mount Kenya region had overwhelmingly supported Ruto during the 2022 elections, there were always murmurs of disapproval of Ruto among the region’s populace. During the campaigns, President Uhuru Kenyatta had warned his people of electing Ruto, saying if they do so they would regret their decision.
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Uhuru has since reconciled himself to the new reality, but that did little to dampen the “Ruto Must Go” chants now threatening to pit the Mount Kenya people against the rest of the country.
In a world, where social cohesion is key to survival, the new tribal rhetoric is harmful to the very idea of Kenya, which has so far escaped the fate that had befallen Somalia, Sudan and Libya.
President Ruto is yet to publicly name the true forces behind his demonisation, although he has, at times, used disparaging epithets against his critics and once blamed an American organisation for funding the youth-led demonstrations in June and July.
Riggy G’s ouster
The schism between Mount Kenya politicians and Ruto widened on Oct. 18, 2024 when the Senate ousted former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who had buttressed the anti-Ruto rebellion as soon as it curdled into a “Ruto Must Go” crusade.
Ruto’s outreach to Raila Odinga, who is unpopular among Mount Kenya residents, has only deepened the mistrust between the head of state and the region.
For decades, Raila was Mount Kenya elites’ favorite bogeyman in their push to rally their people and retain the presidency. One can safely say that, during all hotly contested elections since 2007, the region would wake up early and line up at polling stations to vote out Raila rather than vote in whoever it chose.
The new toxic “us (Mount Kenya region) vs. him (Ruto)” agitation seems to be following the same script of demonization that was used against Raila. Other Kenyans are left with one option: Either buy Ruto’s hope message that better days are ahead or believe in the gloom and doom peddled by the opposition.
Across the country, a new order – characterized by paradigm paralysis, the inflexibility to think beyond one’s world – is taking shape, ending an era when Kenyans cared about their country, feared the government and respected their leaders.
And the New Year, 2025, could be a year of moral and political clarity.
The heated exchange on January 3, 2025 between Trans Nzoia Governor George Natembeya and National Majority leader Kimani Ichung’wah over who’s behind the abductions in the country was just an early foretaste for what Kenyans could expect in 2027: An opposition hell-bent on discrediting Ruto to make him a one term president and a government determined to defend its record and eager to take on its enemies head-on.
Gen Z protests
Since his inauguration on September 13, 2022, President Ruto has been grappling with a low-intensity rebellion, alleged coup attempt, derogatory caricatures and social media insults.
The Mount Kenya region’s apparent rejection of other communities’ rule has played a significant role in the longevity of the anti-Ruto agitations, originally started by Gen Zs using online platforms.
It seems that Ruto, like Moi before him, is up against a new Mount Kenya Mafia similar to the one that tried to frustrate Moi’s ascent to power and later fought against the government — and Gachagua, who has been driving an anti-Ruto onslaught, is the new outfit’s leader.
“History is repeating itself,” he said earlier this month. “In the late ’80s and early ’90s, during the reign of Daniel arap Moi, the government then destroyed the economy and became very intolerant and dictatorial. And when the people of this region started saying no, a criminal gang was formed to come and punish the people because they were saying no to bad governance.”
Others were blunter and more ominous, if their views were laced with pure hatred for Ruto as a person.
Francis Gaitho, a firebrand activist, wished the president death, writing on X that Ruto “doesn’t need to live an extra day on this earth,” adding that “even the devil is waiting for Ruto with open arms.”
Other Mt Kenya politicians have said as much, further opening up a Pandora’s box in a country made up of a mélange of 44 tribes, who just 17 years ago tumbled into weeks-long civil war after the 2007 post-election dispute.
In their attempt to unseat the president, Gachagua and other critics have thrown decency, respect and any sense of shared destiny out the window. To them, nothing short of the head of state’s removal from office is enough, unconstitutional as it is.
“Exit that office as soon as possible. We may make you be somebody who flees this country and never comes back,” Wanjigi said last year, claiming that Ruto “has lost his legitimacy to solve our problem.”
Government supporters have, too, been inciting against the Mount Kenya people, whom they accused of trying to overthrow a democratically elected leader through extra-Constitutional means.
In this tug-of-war, the country finds itself smack in the middle of a zero sum game in which each side tries to outmaneuver the other, putting its political stability, unity, economic recovery and global image at grave risk.
Kenyans’ intolerance of each other’s views and the unrestrained insults against Ruto are a part of the dizzying societal change taking place in the country, with citizens with easy access to information and mobile phones pushing the envelope.
President Ruto’s outreach to Uhuru and Raila has calmed some people’s nerves, but the initiative has not brought about the much-needed, wider national reconciliation that could have tamped down tribal chauvinism in Mount Kenya.
Ruto supporters’ pushback
Emboldened by the introduction of the broad-based government, President Ruto and his supporters are fighting back and are specific and vicious in their attack lines and selection of targets.
What they once left unsaid is now proclaimed in public and in plain English and Kiswahili: Ruto is being fought on the basis of tribal politics. Last month, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen accused anti-Ruto critics of basing their views on tribalism and not on facts.
This pushback is helping paint the Mount Kenya people as self-centered who would not accept to live under the rule of a president from other communities.
There’s an element of truth in that accusation.
Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu has recently gone tribal and questioned the quality of leaders hailing from outside Mount Kenya, saying those from Rift Valley — which he meant former President Moi and incumbent President Ruto — tend to destroy the economy and oppress Kenyans when they’re in power.
He also accused President Ruto of condoning the abductions and his party, UDA, of “isolating some of us.”
“Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Kenya, for once, keep your promise,” said Nyutu, who in another function condemned the head of state for appointing a replacement to former deputy president within a week, saying, “We’re Africans. We should have given it sometime in order for people to heal then we replace Riggy G.”
Gachagua, however, represented an imminent risk to Ruto’s rule, according to Eric Wamumbi, the current lawmaker of Mathira constituency.
Wamumbi told NTV last month that Gachagua confided to him his plan to run for President in 2027, well before the June and July Gen Z protests, a revelation that raises fresh questions about whether the young protesters were indeed Mount Kenya region cut-outs. Government officials called the agitation a coup attempt.
Wamumbi said he told Gachagua, who is best known as Riggy G, to “slow down” and “stop” inciting people against the government.
“I wish the former deputy president was patient and was humble,” he said, adding that it was “too early (for Riggy G) to show ambition” for the office of the president.
There was “no way,” Wamumbi said, he could have fought a government barely two years of its formation.
Junet Mohamed, the Minority Leader of the National Assembly, expressed the same views, saying his party, Orange Democratic Movement, was not “ready” to take part in any plot to illegally remove the president.
“People who made a conscious decision to elect a candidate for five good years have come back to say ‘help us remove this person.’ I am not doing that this time. You have to wait for another election,” said Mohamed “… That is why we’re a constitutional democracy. That is why we must respect our Constitution. If you have tired too early, there are others who’re not.”
Unapologetic Riggy G
Still, hardline Mount Kenya politicians don’t signal that they’re dialing down their opposition to Ruto anytime soon.
On January 3, Riggy G kept up his anti-Ruto rhetoric.
“The problem in Kenya is the issue of lies,” he said, visibly scornful of President Ruto’s statements on the abductions and Ichungwah’s “foolish” claim that he had a hand in the kidnappings.
Rigathi claimed that his beef with the President came after the head of state tried to divide the Mount Kenya region into two, telling the congregants to unite because, he said, “Our strength is our unity.”
“Can you respect the people of Kenya? …You deceived the people until you’ve started to believe your own lies,” he said.
Gachagua, who once said a major political decision on the region’s political destiny would be made later this month, has recently been huddling with elected leaders from his region, a team he dubbed Sauti Ya Mwananchi (the voice of the citizen.)
A week earlier, Gachagua claimed that there was a “unit of police officers that were not under the commanders of the inspector general (IG) of police that are carrying out these abductions and killings.” He threatened to disclose the building from where the alleged unit operates and the full names of its leader and his cousin in the government.
“Kenyans are very worried people,” he said.
Stopping people from meeting, he said, would not solve the government’s problems, but could instead “magnify an already bad situation.”
“I can tell them it will not work. It’s an exercise in futility,” he said with his characteristic flamboyance.
Gachagua’s seeming Haki yetu mantra (similar to the Haki Coalition that sprang from Limuru III last May) is likely to face Team Kenya Project if President Ruto could succeed in rallying the rest of Kenyans against tribal agendas.
Already, Ruto’s alliance with Raila deflated the nationwide anti-government protests and sent their architects to the drawing board. Many Kenyans have since tuned out after seeing the light.
Ruto’s counter-narrative has recently received a boost after key opposition figures — Junet Mohamed, National Assembly minority leader and Hassan Joho, the Cabinet Secretary of Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, and others —became some of the government’s boldest defenders.
On January 3, that defense moved up another notch when Ichungwah blew up at Natembeya, who said “our children” were being abducted and killed and termed any claims refuting his assertion as “insensitive and unacceptable.”
In his explosive rejoinder, Ichung’wa laid the blame at Natembeya’s door.
“Shame on you. You can’t claim abductions when you are the key abductor and murderer of Kenyans under the previous regime,” said Ichung’wa, as the hall erupted in “Kenya, Kenya, Kenya.”
Ichung’wa appeared as someone who was apparently pained by his tribesmen’s anti-government positions that portray them as selfish.
“We are together as one people, one nation and under one flag, under one president, one speaker, and we are all united as people of Kenya,” he said. “We will not allow you to divide the people along ethnicity, on incitement.”
In an interview with KTN’s Ken Mijungu last month, Ichung’wa said he understood Kenya’s impatience with the government, but time will vindicate it.
“Facts will speak for themselves,” he said. “… I know where we were. I know where we’re and where we’re going.”
He said, “None of us is more important than the other. None of us desires poverty” and all Kenyans want to excel and prosper in life.
“Why,” he asked, “do we want to alienate ourselves and make other Kenyans believe that we are this special people who must be treated with kid gloves in certain way and it’s our way or the highway and if you don’t treat us this way we threaten you with bolting out so that you accede to the demands of our leaders, not even the demands of the people.”
Francis Atwoli, the Secretary General of the Central Organization of Trade Unions or COTU, has also come to the government’s aid.
In his speech at the Bungoma funeral service, Atwoli said there were individuals abducting themselves to get funds from international organizations, like Amnesty International.
“Let’s not do that to incite and inflame the country,” he said, counseling government critics to respect the office of the president and reminding the youth that their “overall human rights” don’t include a right to “trample on other people’s rights.”
Atwoli called on Kenyans to protect their country and let it not go the way of failed countries.
Despite the ongoing anti-Ruto activism, things seem to be changing for the better for the head of state, especially after the broad-based government punctured many schemes against his rule.
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