The naming of culprits behind the recent spectacular corruption scandals like the second edition of the NYS heist, and the scandal du jour, the importation of toxic sugar, is deeply frustrating. Kenyans are being treated to spectacles of fighting against corruption, but in reality, nothing is really changing. All we Kenyans are doing is participating in a blood sport, reminiscent of the Roman Empire, where people have a space to vent their anger and violence, but return to the same oppressive state of affairs.

​The blood sports, whose visibility has been maintained in Western civilization today through Hollywood films and video games on gladiators, were a cathartic spectacle that sustained the Roman empire. Because Rome inevitably used brutal war to capture every area that it added to the empire, violence necessarily became the lifeblood of Rome.  But also, as various ethnicities, nationalities and classes were brought together, blood sports in the stadiums became one way to keep the empire united through gross displays of valor and power. Gladiators, slaves, prisoners, Christians and wild exotic animals were subjected to torture and excruciating death for the entertainment of the crowds. Scholars say that the games provided an outlet for citizens to express increasingly violent aggression while the state contained the violence within the walls of the colosseum.

In 2009, Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, caught the world by storm with her book Dead Aid, in which she argued that foreign aid does not deliver the development that it promises to Africa.

Dr. Moyo is as mainstream as they come: she was educated at Harvard and Oxford, she speaks impeccable English, does most of her speaking circuit in the West.

And her idea was not new. Africans have questioned foreign aid since independence, because of the strings attached to foreign aid. They have said that our economic dependence on the same people who enslaved and colonized us essentially meant we were not truly independent.

​What was different about Dambisa Moyo?

As the world moves on after Kenya’s stunning stamp on democracy, namely the nullification of an election of an incumbent president, we Kenyans have been subjected to drama na vindeo from State House. After a cleaner version of “I don’t agree but I accept,” clearly targeted at an international audience, the off-the cuff version of Uhuru’s disbelief was displayed before crowds where an apparently inebriated president called the Supreme Court judges “wakora.”

​Unfortunately for the president, the Chief Justice, now a hero, comes from an ethnic community which NASA have argued was one of the areas where the voting tally is largely suspicious. So in order to back track and appeal for their vote, he had to explain why he was displaying such unpresidential behavior at one of their own. His explanation? I’m only human.

Reflections on the tyranny of evidence (LONG READ)

​In January 2008, at the height of the post election violence, I penned a blog post, then at Zeleza Post, in which I voiced my shock at seeing African intellectuals justifying the violence in the country. In that post, I intended to argue that whatever political side we were sympathetic to, our obligation as intellectuals was to affirm freedom and life. For that reason, I said, it was possible to defend life and argue that no election, no matter how flawed, was worth the loss of life.

To my shock, I was attacked for taking PNU's side. One academic, not a Kenyan, even attacked me as a “Kibaki intellectual” and seemed to have been so bothered to find out my ethnicity, but not my gender, because he kept referring to me as “he.” ​That blog post has entered academic studies on Kenya’s post-election violence of 2007 as evidence of how intellectuals offered “problematic” support for election rigging. 

​Never in my life, did I imagine that in the name of democracy, a massive fraud would be committed against the Kenyan people with the participation of the international community. The Kenyatta oligarchy, having bought the complicity of the international community through inviting them to buy into the privatization of our schools and hospitals, turned against the Kenyan people and made international players like UNDP, John Kerry and the Carter Center cheer them along. Never has the victory of racism been so complete in Kenya. It has made the world expect so little of Africans that they do not care whether the freedom we have is genuine, or whether the elections are fairly done.

​“Accept and move on” means this unease about the election. It means people moving their families to their rural areas until after the elections. It means us holding our breath as political parties go in and out of the courts debating machines (BVR kits), poll counting, judiciary independence and "credibility vs peace." It means a king kicking tantrums against the judiciary in the open field, in what seems dramatizing the judiciary's independence to the international gallery.

​In a normal democracy, these are minor items which we shouldn't be debating because they're obvious. Judiciary independence should be a given. Technology should work. Accurate figures should be sent from polling stations. The technicalities of elections should be such a non-issue, that by now Kung Fu Panda should be running for president and an avocado should be on the Nairobi governor ballot. Like seriously. Like Lord Buckethead run against Theresa May.

In their book “The Big Conservation lie,” Mbaria and Ogada chronicle how KWS’s historical disregard for science and scientists has made the organization fail to protect the sovereignty of this nation, which includes our biodiversity and wildlife. 

One major element of this failure is the fact that KWS directors have rarely been scientists. Based on the managerialist myth that all organizations are run well if run as businesses, KWS has appointed a succession of directors who put more emphasis on business-style management than on actual environmental science or the sovereignty our nation. And by the Kenyan nation, I mean every living thing here, not just human beings.