Obsessions and history

One of the obsessions of the Uhuru Kenyatta presidency had to do with legacy. The president, and his minions and acolytes, initiated projects, programs and initiative designed to secure his legacy. He wanted to be remembered the way his father, his father's successor and his father's successor's successor had been recognised. Jomo Kenyatta, his father, had the good fortune to be rounded up on the same night Kenyan freedom fighters were rounded up and detained by the colonial government in October 1952. He ended up being Kenya's first president-for-life.

Jomo Kenyatta's successor, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, once dismissed as a passing cloud, went on to rule, with an increasingly iron fist, for twenty-four years. Roads, shambas, hospitals and stadia are named in his honour. Mwai Kibaki, who succeeded the perfidious, murderous and utterly corrupt Moi presidency, will be remembered as the President who unleashed Kenya's economic potential before throwing it away and plunging the nation into a constitutional crisis that it has never recovered from, progressive "new" constitution notwithstanding.

Uhuru Kenyatta was in many respects an unfortunate president. He did not have an original idea of his own; the bulk of his proposals, programs, plans and initiatives were ersatz copies of things his predecessors had initiated or accomplished. The only difference is that Uhuru Kenyatta's initiatives also turned out to be the most corrupt. He built a new Uganda railway that never quite reached Uganda. Billions were lost in the bargain to corruption. He built an expensive elevated expressway whose economic utility remains doubtful to date. Billions more were stolen in the bargain. His "universal healthcare" program is a study of how quickly a ministry can squeeze tens of millions of dollars from "mobile clinics" that consist of nothing more than shipping containers branded with the national coat of arms.

Uhuru Kenyatta will get a legacy when the annals of Kenya's history are written. Only, the legacy is one of unmitigated graft. Pheroze Nowrojee, reportedly when asked why he and his colleagues in the Second Liberation Movement filed futile suit after futile suit in the corrupt courts of law, answered that it was "For the record! Nothing is more powerful in history than the record!" Uhuru Kenyatta did everything in his power to write his own history. History will show that he failed in that endeavour.

President William Ruto, over whom we pray that he receives the wisdom of Solomon and the conscience of David, looks set to repeat the mistakes of the Uhuru Kenyatta presidency - a reckless desire for legacy. He is faced with an intractable economic problem: a national debt that threatens to overwhelm whatever good the available national revenue can do. If he wants to win the legacy race, he should abandon the search for legacy. He should do the things he swore that he would do: obey the constitution and serve the public good. Legacy will take care of itself.