Seen this movie before.

That lovable loser, Charlie Brown, in the eponymous comic strip, Peanuts, represents, surprisingly, Kenya at Fifty. Kenya and Kenyans have been the Charlie Brown to the political class's Lucy van Pelt; every time the politicians promise they will not yank away the football of political sanity and economic stability. But when Kenya and Kenyans kick with all their might at the football, expecting a field goal, the football is yanked away by the political class. And Kenya and Kenyans end up on their asses.

It is why when one reads the editorials and commentaries in Kenya's dailies, one is struck by the naivete displayed by the editors and commentators. All of them are calling for "maturity" and "leadership" from the political class as Parliament resumes sitting. The editors and commentators should have saved the space and ink for more profitable ventures.

In fifty-one years of Madaraka, while the number of institutions of learning have increased hundred-fold, the quality of learning has plummeted to depths that rival those found in war-torn Somalia, Afghanistan, tribal Pakistan and the forgotten bits of Latin America. While the number of listed companies on the Nairobi Securities Exchange has doubled, the quality of private sector is defined by rent-seeking, low and stagnating wages, and manipulation by foreign powers and capitalists. While Kenya has managed to avoid the scourge of military coups or civil wars, it endured forty years of dictatorships which destroyed the green shoots of intellectual discourse and shattered the foundations for the creation of a civil society.

If there is one word that defines the political class, it is "corruption." Even when they achieve something noble, the natural instinct of a people who have suffered their politicians for too long is unrelenting suspicion; what else are they hiding behind their backs and how much will it cost us? So why should the good editors of the Daily Nation, the Standard and the other rags in Nairobi, waste valuable newsprint asking for the impossible?

It is time Kenya and Kenyans outgrew their politicians; we will keep electing them to positions in Nairobi and at the headquarters of the forty-seven other thiefdoms we have created. But let us no longer be in thrall at them. Their consistency in failure is actually pretty spectacular; and it is the principle reason for Kenya and Kenyans to let them do their thing without troubling us to listen to them, heed their counsel or follow them off the cliffs they habitually send us over. We've seen this movie before, Daily Nation, et al, and we ain't buying a ticket this time around.