Bursting the myth of Kenyan exceptionalism

For over four decades, we Kenyans allowed ourselves, and were encouraged by our multitude of foreign friends, to believe we were special.

Kenya was in Africa but different.

The country’s natural beauty and climate; our self-conscious, anglicised, urbanised, precocious middle class with its efficient Westernised perks — from banks to schools to insurance companies — all served to reinforce this feeling of the nation about itself.

Add to this steady economic growth and a reputation as an enclave of stability in one of Africa’s roughest neighbourhoods, and the case for exceptionalism seemed complete.

What we had in truth was a rapacious state dominated by a small elite that was prone to mobilise ethnically; had no real concept of national interest nor was even bothered to develop a coherent foreign policy.

It used violence, the threat of violence and economic exclusion, at will against individuals and entire sections of the population considered “hostile.”

This has been the reality covered tightly under a lid that hissed steam with every detention order, every assassination, every demonstration, every exile...

The cauldron bubbled through the first 30 years and boiled over with the reintroduction of political pluralism.

But this boiling over was directed by elements of the elite. In Kenya, historically, most political violence and all corruption emanate from only one office — the presidency.

From here, it spreads outwards like a malignant fungus.

A fungus that mutates thieves into “billionaire businessmen” and leads many young people to doubt whether it is worth wasting time “working” instead of looking out for a sweet deal.

Nothing has changed today except the reaction of the majority to this unhappy condition.

The fungus is now disfiguring our face and looking into a mirror has become painful.

It hurts when colleagues from Somalia, Nigeria, and Sudan commiserate with Kenya because of our troubles in 2007/8.

This really bothers us because the myth of Kenyan exceptionalism has been blown out of the water. This is particularly upsetting to the middle class.