Some years back when I was occasionally invited to give a lecture on media commentary to journalism students, there is an anecdote I liked to use to illustrate the point that no media commentator should ever be too certain of his assessments of an evolving political drama.
I thought of this story as I learnt that from now on, we may expect every Monday and Thursday to be marked by demonstrations – peaceful or otherwise – led by opposition politicians.
The point here is that these opposition leaders have evidently managed to harness public grievance over the insupportable cost of living which has driven many Kenyans to desperation and despair. And this extreme level of desperation and despair automatically recruits into the marching mobs of opposition supporters, ever-growing numbers of protestors.
Demonstrations of just this kind marked the agitation for an end to single-party authoritarian rule in the early 1990s.
In those days, there were weekly (and mostly peaceful) demonstrations in Nairobi, led by what we generically referred to as 'multiparty activists' many of whom were diehard supporters of Kenneth Matiba, the former Cabinet minister who led the fight to restore a multiparty electoral system in Kenya.
And now to my story: I was on my way to the airport here In Nairobi, to take a flight to Mombasa where I lived at that time. And the taxi driver in whose car I made this trip, without any invitation from me to engage in conversation, started to curse Kenneth Matiba.
It turned out that a week or so earlier, he had run into a mob of protestors, and they had surrounded his taxi and sang and danced around it. Which seemed innocent enough, only after the crowd had left, he realised that someone had plucked off his side view mirror. He now had to replace it at some cost. And he blamed Matiba for that.
He emphasised that he was from Murang’a District and so would be assumed to be an automatic supporter of Matiba. But he was not. For one he had noticed a sharp drop in the number of foreign tourists landing at JKIA. This meant less work for taxi drivers like himself.
And now adding insult to injury, his side view mirror had been stolen by 'Matiba’s supporters'.
He went on and on, absolutely furious at this damage to his car, by what was supposed to be a crowd agitating for a just cause.
I had all along wondered how President Daniel Moi could possibly be persuaded to bring back genuinely competitive “pluralist” politics, which would very likely see the end of his rule.
This passionate speech by the taxi driver then, supported my suspicion that Matiba’s was a lost cause. Here was an 'ordinary Kenyan' from Matiba’s own political backyard in Murang'a, declaring that what mattered in this country was peace and stability to allow people like himself to make an honest living. Matiba, in his view, was the bringer of anarchy.
Also, that taxi driver insisted that he spoke for a silent majority in Central Kenya, who had no time for the political shenanigans of Matiba and his activists.
But he was wrong of course. And so was I.
For it was the likes of Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Jaramogi Odinga, Masinde Muliro and their supporting cast of 'Young Turks' who were on the right side of history. It was Moi’s ruthless efforts to cling to the dictatorial power he wielded over the single-party state that were an exercise in futility and doomed to ultimate failure.
And now here we are at yet another political crossroads, at which it is not easy to tell who is on the right side of history.
Will opposition leader Raila Odinga and his many supporters manage to sustain a level of agitation that leaves the Ruto administration with no choice but to make some painful compromises and broker a deal with the opposition?
Or is it Raila Odinga who will be revealed to be relying on methods that may have been effective 30 years ago, but which cannot make much headway in the current political dispensation?
