When Francis Fukuyama described the end of the Cold War as the “end of history” I guess no one imagined just how much the unemployed underclass would challenge the political order. Today, everyone tries to understand the Gen Z phenomenon in our politics and proffer solutions. But this is simply a moment of new thinking. The triumph of democracy, symbolised by the collapse of the Berlin Wall, should have marked the commencement of the golden age. Central to the idea of democracy, is the concept of free market economy. An economic structure erected on, to quote Adam Smith, a system of free enterprise that unlocks the potential of individual man and woman.
Today, both free market economy and democracy are in serious jeopardy. The technological advancement has upended entire industries while output per worker is contracting precisely at a time when technological innovations go up. Today, the owners of factors of production such as capital, technology and intellectual property have all invested in areas where with minimum input, they are able to derive maximum profit.
If we called the colonial economy extractive, this one now is the superlative form of extractive economic model. In its wake, its profits have flowed more and more into the hands of the ultra-rich minority that holds the wealth. As a consequence, the gap between that tiny number of the super-rich and everyone else has accelerated in every country and region but in Africa generally and Kenya in particular, it has reached crisis levels.
As the 1 per cent of the population that controls the capital, the economy and politics live in plenty; the classical Kenyan dream, everyone else has had to contend with diminishing wages. I know some people will attack me, arguing that yearly salary increases in the civil service and private sector mean wages’ growth. But let me tell them that if that growth does not surpass the inflation rate, then it’s still a declining wage. If energy and food prices are out of reach of so many households, it means higher malnutrition levels in children. It means lower quality of life. It means shorter productive hours. It’s what economists call incomes declining in relative terms.
For many working-class Kenyans who have been left behind to their own devices, their incomes have declined in absolute terms. Delays in county salary disbursements have left workers with months of unpaid wages. As a consequence, many civil servants, once pillars of middle–class stability now struggle to pay rent, school fees and hospital bills. The SMEs sector has seen increased business closures as customers disappear while the cost of running business continues to soar, finally exposing the famous slogan “Kazi ni kazi” for what it is. A fantastic lie peddled at the altar of political expediency.
So while free market economy has produced rising income inequalities that are now threatening the social order as we knew it 20 years ago, the democratic system of governance has also not helped matters. It’s not uncommon to hear many commentators proclaim that democracy is dead.
The biggest undoing of democracy, especially in our context, is that we have constantly elected timid leaders who have spoken a good game about areas of reforms and investment but who quickly taper to the whims of forces of patronage, cronyism and ethnic exclusion once in office. All the five presidents we have had are guilty of this but the current one and his predecessor are worse.
A case in point is how infrastructural development, which is a critical economic catalyst, has been misimplemented so ignominiously that the SGR, for example, led the economy into debt with little to no return on investment. It’s precisely for this reasons that we must continue to rely on the wisdom of Carne Ross in his book, The leaderless revolution that real political and social change must come from ordinary people acting directly. This is because the traditional structure of power, especially in politics, is no longer capable of solving complex intractable problems. To the MPs sponsoring draconian Bills, we will outlast you.
Mr Kidi is the convener of Inter-Parties Youth Forum
By Kidi Mwaga