So who is the Real “Enemy?”

So, now that the screams have died down: the frenzied text-messages; the slogans and messianic leaders who will rescue the Gikuyu/Kalenjin/Luo/Luhya from the oppression of…erm…somebody somewhere..yes..yes, your neighbour as poor and fucked as you are…

Now that discussions have been had; negotiations; settlements – important people from around the world; presidents and secretaries of state – hyperpowers. Now that we have evicted Cyril Rhamophosa – had Graca beg us to be good; now that we have been Op-eded, Cnn-ed, Adis-ababa-ed. Now that angry arms have flapped in Dar and Kampala, and Kigali.

Now that the very Rift Valley, home to mankind, has groaned and shuddered. For a while, it seemed about to faultline again for the first time in a few million years, and drown this nation in a red sea. Now that planting is paralysed; national schools are balkanised; a city burnt down, “foreign” wives evicted to home areas. Now that whole slums of Nairobi packed up their paper bags and corrugated iron to move elsewhere; now that landlords evicted Luo tenants before asking who would come and rent; now that rich St Mary’s yuppies who once played rugby with chemical perms – have met in a chi-chi Nairobi bar to raise millions of shillings for a panga wielding militia to defend the honour of their “elected” president…

After all that.

We find one thing has not yielded. Every single Kenyan has had to make room these past few months: to lose homes, incomes, supermarkets, shares, land, hope, faith, schoolfees, food, jobs, whole industries, your oldest friends, many in-laws. Rich, poor, middle-class, rural, urban – we carry heavy shitty costs.

And we asked for them, screaming in text messages begging each other to follow our various messiahs. DAMU we said.

I am PNU damu. ODM damu. Blood, we laughed.

Mysteriously – all those people, the whole lot of them, the ODM, the PNU have lost nothing. The compromise for Kenya is the most cynical piece of politics we have seen since queue voting.

For the next five years, all economic activity in Kenya will be targeted at paying for peace. To pay for peace, you need to keep a warlord happy. And all warlords, all cash throwing, rent-a revolution, all militia-forming, all Mungiki funding, all paranoia-fuelling politicos have been legitimized with vast salaries, giving them great titles.

So, now that we are a proper tax paying nation, our feudal overlords – a thin skin of people from every tribe who used to collect tax from us in crude ways, have now legally assured themselves a place in a new monarchy. There are new Dukes, new Earls, and a Baroness or two. They will be paid, no longer in stolen grave-yards, and public toilets, and briefcases in state-house.

They will receive all we earn in cute little pink slips from the treasury.

We work, we pay tax, we beg donors. Then we pay them, and the balance of the money goes to them to give us “charity” in the form of Constituency Development funds.

We know this: that right now everything, from our grain silos, to our foreign policy, to food on every table is now at risk. But no number of deaths, no personal losses will affect the fabulous salaries of our now completely amoral political elite.

That vampire state, which started out asking all to pay tax for their huts, which received 90 percent of its revenue by taking the last cent from every starving African has finally completed its job. What was once a while elite, now is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic aristocracy.

It can take from us, and we can clap at it because it is rescuing us from the broke and desperate Kalenjin or Gikuyu, or Luo person next door. The real enemy, for wanting their elite to eat more than yours.

First published by Africa Confidential http://theafricareport.com