Pray tell, where is this country, Kenya, headed?

He painted Gachagua as an incompetent and petty man, who sensed slights that did not exist. Gachagua has hit back with damning claims of his own. He accuses Ruto of being the mastermind and beneficiary of major corruption.

It’s impossible to tell who between Ruto and Gachagua is telling the truth, which in itself is a grave indictment of the two. Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that both men did not start their political careers as altar boys.

Ruto began his career as a key member of the shady vehemently and violently pro-Kanu outfit dubbed YK’92. Gachagua was a vicious District Officer, mercilessly enforcing decrees of the Kanu dictatorship. Those are hardly training camps for nurturing truthfulness and integrity.

But that be as it may, the exchanges between the two, given our status as a poor Third World country faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, paint a picture of a leadership totally unsuited to the Herculean job at hand.

The exchanges beg the existential question: Kenya, where are we headed?

In the 1960s, Kenyan scholar, Abdilatif Abdalla, posed in a famous poem: ‘Kenya Twendapi” – Kenya, where are we headed? He was promptly detained without trial by the Jomo Kenyatta regime. But his question is more urgent today than it was then.

I say this because, even though by the late 1960s there was a universal sense that we were not headed towards prosperity, equity and freedom, the population remained largely subdued. The country was easily manipulated by tribal rhetoric.

Many were persuaded by government propaganda that democracy was divisive and would undermine development. Other people could still not believe that their own African government could betray the goals of the freedom struggle. By the time people began to speak out , the dictatorship was solidly entrenched.

Today however, we have an educated youthful population that has grown up in the post-Kanu era. They have tasted a little freedom, and now want all of it.

They do not want reduction in thievery; they want its complete stoppage. They do not want to replace one member of the current political class with another; they demand a generational change of leadership. They are not satisfied with traditional economic policies.

They want a rethinking , reimagining, and reinvention of the political economy. They do not want a piecemeal approach to development; they want an approach that will leapfrog into the future. They do not want token reforms of the broken system; they want its complete overhaul.

The present political class – ruling and opposition – are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

They are culturally and ideologically not equipped to lead a Kenyan renaissance.