Of Climbing Mt Kenya and Crossing Chania River; The Unhealthy Relationship in Kenya’s Democracy 

With all the presidential hopefuls scrambling for Mt. Kenya’s 6.5 million votes against a total number of 19.6 million registered voters going by the IEBC 2017 data, any visitor in Kenya should be forgiven to imagine that ours is an oligarch state as opposed to a democratic one. What our political pundits call the two horses in the race are both struggling to be the first to win the heart of the House of Mumbi with the region being the most visited by politicians, some legislators being there more than the number of times they have attended to their parliamentary duties in the august house in the name of accompanying their “fifth” to climb the mountain. Self-proclaimed spokespersons of the community definitely know the political worth that has been attributed to the vote rich region and have gone ahead to add tax to it with some demanding up to eight cabinet positions from whoever wants Central Kenya’s support. It is the entitlement for me and it all started from somewhere. 

During Jomo Kenyatta’s reign, a group (in)famously referred to as the “Kiambu Mafia” warned that “uthamaki”, Agikuyu for “leadership” would never cross Chania River which is the boundary of what is now Kiambu and Murang’a counties. A story is told of how a sacred oath was taken at Kenyaa’s Ichaweri home to never allow the presidential motorcade to cross River Chania and leave Kiambu where the president came from. Perhaps in a spirit of uniting the House of Mumbi and keeping it more fortified, the Kiambu Mafia Group later on expanded the term “crossing Chania River” to mean that the presidency should not leave Central Kenya. Of the 58 years of Kenya’s existence, the presidency has been occupied by a ‘Mt. Kenyan’ for 34 years.  

The beauty of this is that it shows that the presidency can be occupied by any other Kenyan, as it should be, but on second thought it also shows that the so called ‘Mt. Kenya Mafia’ may stop at nothing to ensure that they are the ones to determine who is to be president of an independent republic of forty five recognized ethnic communities. It is for this reason that I want to take the Mt. Kenya Mafia alias Mt. Kenya Foundation to the cleaners today. 

Truth is the tycoons of Mt. Kenya afford the price tag that accompanies choice making them believe that they can solely choose the country’s government. These are men who run some of the most successful business empires in town and even the region and do not shy away from using their money for political influence. I also want to be rich, filthy so, and so I am not sneezing at their achievements, all I am saying is their influence derails democracy and therein lies the rub. German born Italian sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, “Political Parties”, introduced a political theory called the ‘Iron Law of Oligarchy”. The theory states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible.  

Oligarchy, as we all know, is a system where a small group of people have control over a country or organization. A business group might be defined as an oligarch if it satisfies the following conditions: 

1. Owners are the largest private business owners in the country. 

2. It possesses sufficient political power to promote its own interest. 

3. Owners control multiple businesses which intensively coordinate their activities. 

As is to human, I have been wrong on a number of things but this I am certain of, Robert Michel’s assertion on the above quoted theory has no legs to stand on in a constitutional democracy like Kenya’s. The drafters of our constitution were not short of ideas to have stated that all sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya as opposed to it belonging to a secluded group of the population. Our country needs to be freed from the shackles of state capture for us to progress. One of the distasteful things about such a capture is that once a “deep state” favoured government gets into power, it serves the interests of its masters and not those of the nation. Even the Mt. Kenya electorate whose numbers are (mis)used to achieve a political objective suffer with the rest of the country. Electoral justice is the best gift this country can ever get, it is in its hands that everyone can be safe.  

My appeal to the Mt. Kenya mafia and others who form the country’s “deep state” is to exercise their political rights within the limits of constitution. Some of us are tired of living in a country where presidential candidates and their supporters cannot be sure of their victory until Tharaka Nithi votes have checked in.