Mr President, please heal ailing soul of our nation
By PD columnist, January 12, 2023
A bulging young population, a shrinking middle class, and high levels of both household and sovereign debt are just the tip of the iceberg of the problems President William Ruto has to grapple with. A diminishing middle class means that our capacity to create wealth is in jeopardy and young adults who had dreams of upward social mobility are now confronted with an economic nightmare.
We are a country at crossroads. We find ourselves in a moment of great peril and in a moment of greater hope. After 20 years of gauging our success on account of sky scrappers, the glitter of our superhighways, and the engine size of the motor vehicles we drive, this has proved to be a phony yardstick.
For we, as a country, have ended up with the proverbial tale of two cities. The minority few, the politically connected, the economically powerful, have ended up enjoying the splendour and the warmth of a shining city on a hill. However, to the rest of the people in the forgotten corners of this country, in the dark alleys of our city, plenty has not been found within our borders. For the teenage girl in Narok whose education was cut short because she was married off, there is nothing to smile about.
This brings me to the core of my article. The soul of our Nation.
It’s Plato who first introduced the idea that a Nation has a soul that is similar to that of a person. The soul, he said has the reason, the will and the appetite. According to Plato, in a healthy individual, reason directs the soul by orchestrating cooperation between the passions and the will. Accordingly, the healthy individual must possess (1) temperance (rational constraint over the appetites), (2) wisdom (knowledge and prudence) and (3) courage (not being afraid to do what is right).
A healthy State resembles a healthy individual. But our country sometimes does not demonstrate compassion, rationality and temperance. For far too long, we have let personal interest, especially of the ruling elite, supplant the national interest. Like Abraham Lincoln, the President has a real chance of leading us to a national rebirth. Ruto rode to power on the back of the hustlers, people who have been historically jettisoned to the periphery. Their painful living conditions were made worse by the pandemic and the contraction of the economy due to shocks that an election comes with.
Police in a healthy nation do not drop bodies on river banks; they investigate, arrest criminals, charge them and deter crime. Citizens of a healthy nation do not turn against each other during elections for their individual souls are not directed by ethnic hatred and desire to violence against others. Another indicator that our soul as a country is shrivelled, is our inability to address the question of transfer of power. In spite of the fact that the elections of August 9 were largely peaceful, the attendant tension cannot be gainsaid. Healthy states do not allow civil servants to meddle in politics even if political outcomes are not favourable to their interests.
True leaders do not proclaim themselves the protectors of only citizens who voted for them or agree with their views. Such is the stuff of dictators and authoritarian regimes.
A government of the people, by the people for the people must discard all elements of Darwinism in its policies and thinking, and extend a helping hand to those that are left behind and left out. In this country, we can surely afford to take care of our senior citizens and expectant mothers even as we make investments in areas of productivity and growth.
The President must focus on nurturing a more compassionate, temperate and brave country. A nation that turns a blind eye to the hardship of its citizens is a country that is nearing spiritual death, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it. After decades of infrastructure development, we must now invest in rejuvenating the soul of this Nation.
In 2023, exactly 60 years since we attained Independence, we can certainly reconcile this country to its highest ideals espoused in the Constitution and in the National Anthem. Let us not let the Soul of our nation wither like a corpse left in the field for vultures.
—The writer is a governance and policy expert —kidimwaga@gmail.com Twitter @KidiMwaga2