• Increasingly, businesses have embraced disruptive models to stay ahead of competition and maintain a healthy financial status.
• Nations that have had disruptive moments in their history such as Germany under Adolf Hitler have emerged to be the leading successful economies of the world.
Image: PSCU
Once in a while, nations and leaders find themselves presented with opportunities to alter the course of history.
It is upon them to take advantage of such moments to improve or destroy the fortunes of their nations on the basis of the actions they take.
Such moments require bravery and rare character to execute a people’s agenda that would be disruptive to the existing social normative structures.
Ordinarily, people prefer the comfort zone that is the status quo unless circumstances push them to the edge.
However, it is during times of confusion and distress that societies have found opportunities to reinvent themselves with renewed vigour to be more successful.
Recently and increasingly, businesses have embraced disruptive models to stay ahead of the competition and maintain a healthy financial status. It has worked previously for political organisations in exceptional circumstances, and now being entrenched as a rule in “on the move business enterprises”.
A disruptive business model reorganises the market by addressing to the repressed demands, those demands that have been ignored by the leading providers and manufacturers of the industry, and providing solutions the current industry has failed to deliver or is incompetent to do so.
These business models are powered by disruptive innovation which helps them create a new niche within an existing market or create a new market altogether by creating, disintermediating, refining, reengineering or optimizing a product/service.
DISRUPTIVE MODELS AND STATES
Nations that have had disruptive moments in their history such as Germany under Adolf Hitler have emerged to be the leading successful economies of the world.
Hitler, with all his vile weaknesses, ensured that elite engineering technology in the automobile was delivered to the ordinary German in the Volkswagen Beetle vehicle. He built the world’s widest motorways, Autobarns so that every German would enjoy the comfort of the car most conveniently.
Image: DPPS
Likewise, if you look at the history of every successful company right now, you’ll notice that almost all of them have their roots in disruptive innovation.
This separates them from the other players who work within a homogeneous market with a mediocre offering.
Disruption requires a lot of resilience and commitment from the leaders’ end. Most of the times customers don’t even know what they desire, which makes them ignore the many opportunities that may be presently available.
What Kenya has engaged in since Independence has been more evolutionary which aims to improve on the existing systems and structures. Time is now ripe for a political innovation that is beyond revolutionary and embraces the establishment of a new set of value system and a radical leadership structure.
At the height of Kenya’s political development, Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga were the epitome of nationalism.
They appeared to push the nation towards unity for development. So domineering they were that whatever they desired for the country was taken as a novel. Their thoughts were the principles upon which the government development agenda was designed.
ETHNIC MOBILISATION POLITICS
Politics in Kenya has been organised on the basis of ethnic mobilisation since pre-Independence days. The forbearers of this have been the Luos and the Kikuyus.
Later the Coastals and the Kalenjins joined the fray out.
The Kalenjins joined of fear of marginalisation, while the Coastals were pushed into the struggle out of fear of domination.
The rest of the country’s tribal constellation would participate more as supporting cast than strategic partners.
This trend has not been reversed and is largely responsible for the nation’s relative backwardness in terms of civilisation.
In the meantime, cleavages of self-interests and parochial pursuits galvanized themselves and soon overrode their national valour.
The fallout between Kenyatta and Jaramogi was so catastrophic to the country and watered the young seeds of tribalism complete with a top dressing.
The seedlings grew in an unimaginably faster rate. In tandem, commitment to the public good was abandoned and theft of public resources entrenched.
Corruption, as theft of public resources has come to be known, has since become a way of life in the entire national leadership strata.
It feeds on the ethnic vulnerability of the leaders and sustains an inept, timid and insecure political system.
The government operates only as a national system to the extent of taxation but rarely in terms of resource distribution. The lopsided resource management within government agencies has allowed a sense of alienation on one hand and entitlement, on the other hand, to fester into the political system.
Since the first elections after the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1992, the combination of tribalism and corruption has been the first choice and potent weapon of victory.
The twin vices have deployed in a mixture of varying doses to manipulate the electoral process to maintain the status quo. The citizens have been the losers. Even the leaders who appear to be the beneficiaries have had collateral losses in colossal magnitude.
The three preeminent political leaders of our time, Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga and William Ruto are products and beneficiaries of this retrogressive system. They have actively used nepotism and corruption or taken advantage of the same to attain their respective current exalted status.
The unity of purpose of the three for the pursuit of the public good would drastically alter the genetic make-up of Kenya’s politics. The alliance of any two of the three would still have a significant and long-lasting impact on the structure and direction of the nation.
In the current arrangement, Uhuru, by virtue of his position, is the natural leader of the three. Ruto is the President’s constitutional principal assistant and until the handshake happened the heir apparent to the presidency.
Raila is Uhuru’s long-time political brother but now official partner and bosom friend. To upset the status quo and establish a fresh political structure with a new value system, Uhuru is called upon to demonstrate true statesmanship.
This is a rare moment that would tax heavily his mental faculties as it draws deep into the reservoir of his courage.
He must deploy his leadership dexterity to persuade his allies that the country must abandon the current path and direction if the citizens have to benefit from their investments as tax.
CARTELS OF TRIBAL BIGOTRY
The President should be brave to the advantage of the political plateau created by the handshake to dismantle the cartels of tribal bigotry and lords of corruption.
In their stead, he should lead the country to create a responsive governance structure and value system that is people-sensitive.
In this arduous task, he has the responsibility to carry along his two allies, but at the very least Raila. If he fails to deliver on this calling, then he will have missed another golden chance to rewrite its polygenetic makeup once again.
It will be business as usual and all the vision of a democratic, prosperous and equitable nation may only happen as a function of chance or fate but not as guided by the national leadership.
It is also crystal clear that if the country continues on its current path of political development, then the danger of civil strife and economic stagnation will forever hang on the nation’s neck like an albatross.
The politics of annihilation and obliteration being perpetrated currently by the Kieleweke and Tangatanga teams serve to further consolidate the status quo.
Uhuru has to find ways of dispersing them to the four winds for him to chart a new political path of economic development that is supported by nationalism and buttressed with patriotism.