By Clement Wasike
Kenya’s political arena at this point in time echoes with copious honeyed promises of liberation from hard-wired demagogues promising utopia.
The opposition firebrands weaving visions of Nirvana with their rhetoric dripping with saccharine allure of instant solutions is a spectacle to be carefully examined. For the majority of them, beneath the gilded veneer of rectitude often lies deep-seated hypocrisy and skeletons of iniquity most foul.
Today, Kenya stands at a precipice where we might end up swallowing elixirs of false hope as we risk utter disillusionment and devastation in the foreseeable future. History’s darkest chapters warn that charismatic saviours frequently morph into tyrants, leaving nations scarred by the very chaos they promised to eradicate.
Consider Caligula, Rome’s third emperor. His reign began with euphoric hope. The young heir, once beloved by soldiers as “Little Boots” embodied renewal after Tiberius.
He pardoned exiles, abolished unfair taxes, and funded spectacular games as he declared himself the “first emperor admired by all the world.” Romans rejoiced because they thought their prince had arrived.
However, sooner than later, power unmasked the demagogue. Recovering from a near-fatal illness—perhaps even a psychological break—Caligula mutated into a paranoiac despot. He executed rivals, including his adopted heir Tiberius Gemellus, and demanded worship as a living god.
Youths stage demos in Nairobi to Oppose Finance Bill 2024. Photo: The Star Source: X
His infamous horse, Incitatus, was allegedly nominated for consul, itself, a grotesque mockery of the Senate he despised. The populist who vowed liberation now lamented Rome lacked “a single neck” for him to sever. His assassination in 41 AD left Rome drenched in blood, a testament to promises twisted into tyranny.
Caligula’s nephew Nero perfected this bait-and-switch melodrama. Crowned at 16, he initially played the reformer, pledging to uphold justice and end corruption. The Senate initially cheered his vows of moderation.
Yet behind this youthful idealism festered a narcissist. Nero eliminated threats with chilling precision. With time, he poisoned his stepbrother Britannicus and executed his wife Octavia. Ultimately, he orchestrated his mother Agrippina’s murder by stabbing her womb while snarling, “Smite the womb that bore a monster!”
While Nero sang on stage and built his “Golden House,” Rome burned in 64 AD. Rumours swirled that he ignited the inferno to clear land for his palace. When public fury mounted, he scapegoated Christians, burning them alive as torches for his gardens. The populist artist became a pyromaniacal butcher, proving that poetic rhetoric often masks a soul putrefied by power.
Today, Kenya’s would-be revolutionaries echo these ancient scripts. Their rallies resemble Nero’s theatre for they are mere spectacles over substance, and emotion over evidence. The skeletons in our demagogues’ closets are not mere gossip. They are prophecies. Nero’s mother Agrippina, herself a manipulative schemer, famously declared, “Let him kill me, provided he rules.”
Her gamble birthed a monster. Likewise, backing Kenya’s modern firebrands based on slogans rather than scrutiny courts calamity. Rome’s citizens learned too late that a leader’s past cruelty predicts future barbarism.
Kenyans face a choice. They can either swallow seductive fictions or demand substance. True progress going forward requires vetting, not baseless veneration. We must scrutinise our leaders’ histories and unearth their hypocrisy in private versus public deeds.
We should listen in and separate policies from poetry and dismiss messianic rhetoric when it is aired. We need from them cogent economic plans, not mere chants. Besides, we should demand peaceful accountability as we shun demagogues who encourage the burning of Kenya to hog political limelight.
Caligula and Nero did not emerge in vacuums. They rose because desperate citizens mistook demagoguery for principle. Kenya’s soul is too precious to gamble on gilded lies. When a demagogue’s promises taste like honey, beware that more often than not, poison lingers beneath.
Do not fall to the seduction of the Johnny come lately summons to an imagined Bantu “cousinage” or the honey-coated rhetoric of Johnny Bravo, the showman and so-called “Super CS” of the immediate past regime. Do not allow your mind to be charmed senseless by a dance party of a slogan-mouthing cast of crackpots masquerading as messiahs.
The on-going oppositionist razzmatazz we are watching is a preening spree that will no doubt fade away sooner rather than later.
Let us not trade temporary sugar for permanent scars. Stay warned!
Wasike is a former banker turned social critic and political commentator.