A political spectacle

Exuberant showmanship is one enduring face of Kenyan political life. A nineteenth-century European traveler records the scene his own party provoked at a Gikuyu assembly: “the speeches were rather screamed out than spoken, the meaning being emphasized with a club till it was reduced to splinters. The whole bearing of the speakers was aggressive and insolent.” A century later, on a more peaceful occasion, some two hundred people sit in a grassy clearing in Mt. Kenya's foothills. On this sunny day in March 1979, just months after the inauguration of President Moi, I heard a politician tell them: “Not long ago, before we had our new president, there were many things that were spoiling citizens here. There used to be a lot of drunkenness, bribery, corruption.” People have “spoiled the footsteps,” fallen away from the path they should have followed, he went on to say. Now, however, Kenya is a nation “on the move,” “on the run” toward rapid “development,” asserts a fellow politician. He warns the crowd that those who cannot keep up with the new president's rapid footsteps will be left behind in a ditch. The talk is emphatic, vigorous. Though clubs are absent, threats are not.

A great change had occurred, implied orators of the time. Gone were the days when a citizen must “cook tea” (pay a bribe) in return for routine government services.