WANJAWA: When Mother Kenya weeps we all stand accused

Every May 10, we gather to celebrate mothers with flowers, songs, sermons and carefully crafted social media captions praising sacrifice, resilience and unconditional love. Yet as we celebrate motherhood, perhaps the harder question we must ask ourselves is this: if Kenya were our mother, would she feel loved by her children? Or would she feel abused, neglected, robbed, polluted, betrayed and abandoned by the very people she raised?

Truth be told, Mother Kenya is exhausted from carrying generations of citizens who demand everything from her while giving almost nothing back except noise, excuses, corruption, tribalism, whataboutism and endless political theatre. The tragedy of Mother Kenya today is not simply bad leadership. It is the collective collapse of national conscience. We have perfected the art of blaming politicians while refusing to confront the rot within ourselves.

Yes, political leaders deserve criticism. Fierce criticism. Many have converted public office into a feeding trough where loyalty matters more than competence, propaganda matters more than service and self-preservation matters more than the suffering of ordinary citizens. Election seasons have become auctions of deception where the poor are mobilised through anger, ethnicity, handouts and empty slogans, only to be discarded immediately after voting day.

From families that glorify wealth without questioning its source. From communities that celebrate corruption when “our son” benefits. From religious spaces that honour donations more than integrity. From professionals who forge documents, inflate tenders, manipulate systems and exploit the vulnerable while speaking polished English at conferences about ethics and governance.

The politician who steals billions does not operate alone. He and she are enabled by accountants who cook books, lawyers who sanitise theft, auditors who look away, academics who intellectualise mediocrity, clergy who baptise impunity and citizens who normalise it all because they hope to benefit one day.

Kenyans rage online about corruption while bribing police officers at roadblocks. We condemn poor governance while cheating in exams, dodging taxes and using connections to bypass merit. We demand accountability from the state while refusing accountability within our homes, workplaces, churches and communities.

Our intellectuals have abandoned courage for consultancy contracts. Universities that should shape critical citizens are increasingly producing credentialled opportunists whose education sharpens ambition but weakens conscience. Some lecturers no longer mentor students into ethical leadership but into survivalism and cynicism.

Many journalists chase sensationalism over truth because outrage sells. Some doctors exploit sick patients. Some teachers exploit desperate learners. Some NGOs have commercialised suffering into donor language and project proposals detached from lived realities.

Meanwhile, elders — once custodians of wisdom and moral order — have increasingly surrendered their authority to political patronage. Too many now gather not to counsel society but to negotiate relevance and handshakes with power. The moral voice of age has been replaced by transactional loyalty.

Even the youth, often described as the hope of the nation, must confront uncomfortable truths. Yes, many are victims of unemployment, exclusion and systemic failure. But victimhood alone cannot become identity.

A growing culture of shortcuts, online fraud, celebrity worship, drug abuse and performative activism is hollowing out the moral potential of an entire generation.

Some young people want success without discipline, visibility without substance and influence without responsibility. This country is bleeding from a moral wound far deeper than politics.

We are raising children in a society where dishonesty is rewarded, where greed is aspirational, where public humiliation has become entertainment and where humanity is measured by economic status. We no longer know how to disagree without hatred, compete without sabotage, or succeed without arrogance.

Even religion, which should anchor moral renewal, is struggling under the weight of commercialisation and celebrity culture. Sanctuaries are becoming stages. Faith is becoming branding. Prophets are becoming influencers. And congregants increasingly seek miracles without responsibility, prosperity without justice and blessings without transformation.

Yet perhaps the most dangerous thing in Kenya today is not corruption or unemployment. It is their normalisation.

We have normalised dysfunction so deeply that integrity now looks suspicious. We laugh at honesty as naïveté. We ridicule principle as weakness. We celebrate wealth before character. We have become a society where people no longer ask, “Is it right?” but “Can I get away with it?”

That is how nations decay and ours is in a hurry.

And so, as Mother’s Day passed with its speeches and celebrations, perhaps Mother Kenya is asking us a painful question: What kind of children have you become?

Because a nation is not destroyed only by leaders in high office. It is destroyed when citizens surrender conscience, when professionals abandon ethics, when elders lose courage, when youth lose direction and when truth itself becomes negotiable.

Kenya does not merely need economic reforms or political realignments. She needs moral rehabilitation.

Until then, Mother Kenya will continue to weep — not because she lacks resources, beauty, or potential — but because too many of her children are consuming her faster than they are willing to heal her.