How Ruto's self-worship, romantic rhetoric mask reality on ground

The ubiquitous presence of the government can be suffocating. It literally sucks the air out of your lungs. It leaves you gasping for breath, wondering when the state will allow citizens to live. President William Ruto is especially abundantly present. 

He is here, there, everywhere, saying the same things over and over. He is launching and relaunching the same stuff. He suffocates you with the same self-praise and the self-same refrain. You could utter ahead of him his next dozen sentences, word-for-word. You have heard him so many times, you want to yawn and go to sleep.   

Leadership and management gurus universally agreed that a leader’s excessive presence is not proof of vitality and performance. It does not represent efficacy or delivery. It is rather about personal fears and grand insecurities. It speaks to the creation of optics and illusions. Yes, the leader who disappears in the mountains, like the biblical Moses, will return to find the people worshipping a cow. Visibility and clear communication are inspiring. It makes for good modelling of examples. Yet, Peter Drucker reminds us, delegation, empowerment and strategic absences are just as vital. Do not suffocate the people with excessive presence. You will become your own echo chamber. Together with your messages, you will become so common that people will get tired of you. Is that where President Ruto is headed? Does his message begin sounding like an old gramophone record? What premium is in this ubiquitous presence? Governance is felt in people’s lived experience and in their felt needs. It is not seen on TV or at mammoth public gatherings. Nor is it about heroic dramas at marketplaces.  

We may want to ask, then, why is the African state – and the William Ruto state, especially – perpetually enacting its own heroism? Why is it so full of grand narratives that rarely resemble the lived reality? The Ruto state’s engagement with the public is spectacular! You see the spectacle on billboards, in every county headquarters, in the President’s joint mugshots with the local governor. They are up to one thing or the other. You have taken over church services on Sundays and funerals on Saturdays. It dominates weddings and graduations, and you see it in school playgrounds and in public sports fields. Visibility in public has substituted functionality. The philosophy is simple: if you cannot deliver, create illusions of delivery. It is a good gamble. Repeated so many times in every village, the people could begin believing you. Through iterative narrative, failure seeks to package and present itself as success. The President’s romantic rhetoric is mind-boggling. He is turning Kenya into a first-world country. His dreams are at strange odds with the lived reality. In his own words, he is “the chosen one,” sent to “rescue the hustler nation”.  

We drove him to power on vows to empower the poor. While he has recently been awarded his performance eight out of ten points, the nation smarts under multiple taxes and economic hardship. The grand puzzle is whether, as he cuts across the country, President Ruto believes the things he has been saying, or whether he knows that he is only spinning political yarns? Does he seriously believe that he is Kenya’s solitary grand warrior and a reformer, being fought by tribalists (as he calls them), sceptics, and betrayers?  

One thing is not in doubt, however. President Ruto is a giant of rich imagination. Here, he certainly deserves eight out of ten points; perhaps even the jackpot of ten. He is a hero in motion, holding conferences and launching projects. At the base, poverty and inequality remain. So, too, does inefficiency in government, and attendant tall stories, now being taken everywhere.  

In Ruto’s unending itinerary across the country, Kenyans are witnessing vigorous optical illusions. A panicky, non-delivering state on the campaign trail appears to be doing things it should have done. Its presence everywhere is a mask that hides emptiness. Hence, don’t expect them to stop anytime soon.  Prepare, instead, to see more endless inspection of decayed and decaying roads, launches of flagship programmes, grand announcements of “empowerment” whose funds few will be lucky to see, and even more appearances of doing. For in these grand theatres of political drama, hyper presence and hyperactivity are substitutes for public service. The government is the lead actor in its overzealous and noisy self-congratulatory plays. Prepare for more state bluster and mythmaking, everywhere. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke