Are Kenyans able to break the cycle of repetitive compulsion and seize this national moment to transform systemic issues that have festered and finally burst? Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud explored the concept of repetitive compulsion a century ago. Repetitive compulsion is the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat their response to a past traumatic event expecting new consequences. Rather than analyze what has happened and choose how to respond, individuals hit repeat. The concept can be applied to our national behaviour today.
Several dramatic and traumatic incidents occupied our consciousness this week. The horror of multiple bodies found in Kware. Violent protest policing in several counties and large crowds violently fighting with police officers and destroying businesses. Mass arbitrary arrests of protesters and the preferring of charges ranging from drunk while protesting, to criminal damage and robbery with violence. Bodies of missing protesters showing up in mortuaries or being prayed for at funerals that publicly raged against police brutality. Several abductions and the mistaken police kidnapping of one of Kenya’s most respected journalists and editors Macharia Gaitho in a police station where he had gone for safety.
Much of this drama and trauma is familiar for most. Unrests in 2008, 2017 and 2023 saw many of these scenes play out with little difference. Despite this we must demand an end to the violence. Since the 25 June 2024 protest, 53 people have died and there have been 574 injuries, 1,201 arbitrary arrests and 59 forced disappearances. Put another way, 2 protesters have died or been abducted, 26 injured and 54 arrested every day for the last month.
The past two columns have explored the differences between this moment and the post-election violence of 2008 and 2017 and the cost-of-living protests last year. The cross-class solidarity of the Gen Z movement, the clarity of their policy demands and the support of the middle class they currently enjoy has been different. So too, is the absence of ethnicity, political class patronage and paid participation. X space and media shows are showing up as spaces for citizens to dialogue, clarify their policy demands, strategise and educate each other.
Kenya is in a teachable moment. Teachable moments are unplanned opportunities for us to examine our biases, look beyond past responses to create new ways to deepen our national values, address governance shortfalls and move us closer to the country that is a match for our constitution.
For example, what if the Gen Z movement intentionally showed up en mass to peacefully register for IDs and voter’s cards at huduma centres and immigration offices? Voter registration is continuous and doesn’t require IEBC commissioners. What if the Directorate of Criminal Investigations abandoned that 1980s practice of seize, disappear and interrogate and uniformly introduced summons for those they wished to interview?
What if the Presidency didn’t shake down the country with another handshake and recycle politicians back into the national cabinet but appointed leaders based on values not vices, merit not patronage? President Ruto must not squander the opportunity of a clean slate to appoint a future cabinet that is leaderless in the eyes of Gen Z and the nation.
What if the Interior Ministry and their bloggers resisted the tired old line of “NGO foreign masters”? That line was applied this week on the Ford Foundation, a development agency that has transparently built a national culture of constitutionalism and social justice in Kenya and the region for decades. Predictably, unless interrupted, a series of vengeful administrative and public profiling attacks on NGOs and activists working on policing accountability, budget transparency, human rights and good governance may be imminent. Should this happen, middle level administrators will sabotage the promise of the President and international goodwill when he commenced the Public Benefits Organisations Act in May. NGO sector State relations will be plunged back a decade, another nation-building opportunity will evaporate, and the repetitive compulsion cycle will continue.
Let’s resist repetitive compulsive disorder, lance the systemic boil Gen Z has exposed and drain the pus in all the spaces we occupy.
This opinion was also published in the Saturday Standard, 20 July 2024.
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