Kenya’s authoritarian turn sands with Ruto’s carefully constructed image as an international ally

The good image of William Ruto (58) is stolen. In his own country, after his election in 2022, the Kenyan president was praised as the Sjacheer der Armen. He also praised internationally. In Washington, US President Joe Biden received him last year on a generous dinner with five hundred guests. Now that his authority is crumbling, Ruto is looking for support for something else: his faith. The president, who has been profiling himself as a convinced Pentecostal believer for some time, wants a church with eight thousand seats, the cost price – one million dollars – he says he pays from his own pocket. Such an expensive project is poor in a time of deadly riots, cuts and abductions by secret agents of young dissidents. But the president ignores that criticism: “I don’t have to apologize, whatever the devil thinks about it.”

Don’t shoot them, just break their legs

Ruto is engaged in a hard fight with rebellious young people on the Nationale Toneel. In the past few weeks, more than fifty people have been killed in the past few weeks. The youth is fed up with the flashy corruption and arrogance of the political elite and has turned against the Kenyan government since the summer of last year – largely non -shared and in satirical way. Ruto is increasingly emerging as an autocrat, swears solemnly ‘enough is enough’ and from now on treats his opponents as terrorists.

“Don’t shoot them, just break their legs,” he ordered the police earlier this month. On social media, young activists hit back with protest songs and videos in which young people permanently march on crutches and in wheelchairs. Although Ruto insists on parents to better educate their children, the traditional respect and the fear of rulers and the president, however, appears to have disappeared. The youth protest can no longer be suppressed and the call for the resignation of Ruto sounds louder and louder.

The coincidence of an economic crisis due to a heavy -duty debt and demands the problems of increasingly articulate and entire youth caused the problems. In his election campaign in 2022, he threw himself up as a defender of the interests of the poor and promised to put an end to the rule of the political dynasties of rich families who have been in service since Kenyan independence. He claimed to take it up for the common man and would create jobs for young people, he visited churches and youth groups and promised subsidies for small farmers and unemployed young people. Little came of his election promises: the corruption of the politicians did not stop and the courses made in the prospect were not forthcoming.

Ally Washington

At the start of his term of office, Ruto was the majority of his time abroad where he shone on international stages. He addressed conferences for the reform of the international financial system and argued in the climate discussions for the fate of Africa. In this way he ran like a spokesperson for Africa.

Zoom in

The crown on his reputation was that he was one of the few African leaders to visit Biden. He came back with all kinds of financial delicacies and his American official appointed him Washington’s first “great non-NAVO ally” in Sub-Saharan Africa. On American request, Ruto delivered a thousand police officers to the Haiti plagued by Bendegeweld, provided that the US would pay for it. That promise did not keep Bidens successor Donald Trump and there is no question of a special relationship with Kenya under the new American regime.

While the government is holding out to its image of stability and alliance, reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Kenyan human rights committee are stacking: they signal a pattern of excessive violence against demonstrators, intimidation of activists and disappearances that remain structurally unestraft.

Nowadays the crisis forces Ruto to stay at home. Kenya was previously on the edge of the abyss, such as at the beginning of 2008, when large -scale violence almost led to a civil war after falsified elections. The protests were then supplied by politicians, who ultimately swear the crisis through a political hand: by simply moving extra seats at the Elite discussion table.

System

But with Gen Z as an opponent, that kind of opportunism no longer works. These young people have not designated or elected leaders; Their movement is supported by digital keyboard arguments that uncover corruption scandals and convert anger into protest. They are not all about positions, but about principles. They do not fit into the self -serving patronage system of Kenya, where political, tribal and business interests are entangled. With the rise of Gen Z, the political power game has changed fundamentally.

That is why compromises seem excluded. “We are the children of the broken promises: well trained and unemployed,” wrote Hanifa Adan, a 29 -year -old activist and journalist recently in the Daily Nation. “Perhaps the government will survive our protests, but it will not survive radicalization. We no longer want to reform the system, but destroying and rebuilding.”

To share





Mail the editors