A Nation on the Brink

Dispatch from Kenya

Dear Republic,

Continuing our Dark Times series this week is Ben Murigu, a novelist and English teacher from Kenya. Murigu writes that despite appearing stable, Kenya’s institutions are corroding quickly—and that its future depends on voting in 2027.

- ROL

A NATION ON THE BRINK

This may sound alarmist, but my motherland Kenya is sinking fast—choked not by open tyranny, but by a smiling, sermon-quoting dictatorship dressed in democratic clothing. Power has collapsed into a one-man show: a self-styled, Kaunda-suit-doning evangelical president; a Sugoi-born conman who spews half-truths, advises his own advisers, announces unilateral decisions as divine insight, and treats dissent as a personal affront rather than a constitutional right. Institutions still exist on paper, but in practice they have been hollowed out, bent, or ultimately captured.

This is not governance. Rather it is performance.

From the outside, we look fine. Nairobi still glitters at night. New highways curve confidently through the city. Glass towers rise. Conferences are held, investors are courted. The president smiles often, speaks the language of reform fluently enough to calm foreign ears.

But inside, we are rotting. Slowly. Surely.

Institutions in Name Only

Kenya’s Constitution promises—nay, guarantees—the existence of three arms of government, harmoniously working for Wanjku’s benefit. In reality, there is one: the executive. Parliament genuflects. Oversight bodies hesitate. The judiciary under the presently not-so-fierce Chief Justice Martha Koome fights bravely but increasingly alone, isolated, its rulings ignored, delayed, or selectively obeyed.

Parliament still sits, but rarely pushes. Barely enacts into Law any meaningful, life-bettering bills. Nothing gets passed if it irks the Big Man, disrupts his peace in the slightest!

The mainstream media, once East Africa’s loudest conscience, is slowly being muzzled—not always through outright bans, but through silent intimidation, boardroom pressure, selective access, and sometimes blatant legal harassment. Self-censorship, I daresay, has become a survival strategy of its own kind.

For LGBTIQ⁺ Kenyans like myself, the mask has fully slipped. After losing key court battles in our quest for recognition, our battle for legitimacy, our myopic leaders speak the language of tolerance while quietly wishing queer citizens out of existence. The message is hypocrisy wrapped in conscience:

“We love you, but we’d rather hear of you than from you.”

State capture is no longer a theory—it is lived reality. Public services tell the story most clearly. Education reforms like the recent Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) rollout have been chaotic, inequitable, and poorly planned. I know this personally. As a father to a Grade 10 student, I watched merit give way to favoritism, geography, and invisible hands that nudged certain children forward while others were quietly—sadly— left behind.

Healthcare is no better: underfunded, overstretched, and increasingly inaccessible to the poor. And don’t even get me started on the cruel and oh-so-expensive joke that’s the Big Man’s perilous pet project, the Social Health Authority (SHA)!

Then, of course, there is immigration—calamity packaged as opportunity. Fake overseas jobs, fraudulent travel agents shielded by powerful patrons, and a documentation process so hostile and cumbersome it feels designed to break hope. Nyayo House remains a monument to bureaucratic violence, where goonish officials demand bribes to ‘speed up’ what should be a basic civic service.

Why lock the door, I ask, and then proceed to punish the stranded child for knocking?

The Art of Appearing Stable

International donors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) included, are fed countless glossy reports of progress from all the of the beleagured 47 counties—percentages of GDP growth that exist merely to excite visitors, miracles happening on paper only, unseen by a whopping 56 Million-plus pairs of hopeful eyes!

The economy is said to be growing, yet the masses, emaciated and impoverished, feel none of it. Hunger, I contend, does not recognize statistics. Poverty, I insist, cannot be masked by rhetoric.

The opposition, once formidable, has been gradually compromised and so severely weakened—through co-optation, exhaustion, or simply fear. What remains to be seen is a warrior unit in utter disgrace; a strange dog, often loud but toothless.

Religion, too, has been expertly deployed as a sedative. National Prayer Days held inside posh hotels and attended by the very same oppressive ruling class, a sanctuary erected inside State House! We, the stunned masses, are urged to pray, to wait, to endure. Suffering is spiritualized. Poverty is being moralized, resistance is reframed as rebellion against God’s chosen leadership.

Silencing the Future

The bloodiest evidence of this decay, though, lies in the state’s undeniably reckless response to youth dissent. During Gen-Z–led protests of 2024 and 2025, young Kenyans reportedly numbering in the thousands—our most articulate, digitally aware, and economically frustrated generation—were met not with dialogue but with live bullets and raised batons. Lives were lost. Futures were extinguished. The message was clear: participation is not an option.

Worse still was the quiet weaponization of state machinery. Deaths explained away, investigations delayed, accountability blurred into bureaucratic fog. No-one was ever held to account. No-one was held responsible, forced to resign.

Then there is the uneasy question that hangs in the air whenever prominent opposition figures fall ill, collapse, or die under opaque circumstances. Whether or not foul play can be proven, the environment itself breeds mistrust. In a functioning democracy, citizens do not have to ask—to wonder—whether or not the state might be slyly eliminating its critics.

In Kenya today, that question no longer feels absurd—and that alone, in my opinion, is a damning indictment.

Conclusion: 2027 is a Reckoning

The consequences of Daktari William Ruto’s continual misrule are visible everywhere: slums in Nairobi and elsewhere have mushroomed, expanded with haste, becoming permanent warehouses for discarded lives. Suicide rates continue to rise, especially among young people who see no future and, worse, no exit. The brain drain accelerates as the thousands of cash-strapped professionals—medics, engineers, teachers—flee by the proverbial busload. Not because they hate Kenya, but because Kenya no longer cares...no longer values them. No longer loves them back.

Although the wounds, smelly and oozing puss, can be seen—and smelt—from afar, the remedy if sought in time can reverse the damage, end the malady once and for all.

Hope now rests dangerously on the ballot of 2027. Integrity is not a luxury; it is a survival requirement. If we fail to choose wisely, the future of our beloved Kenya—and, by extension, that of the entire East Africa—looks bleak.

See, Uganda groans in excruciating pain under the elephantine weight of Mzee Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Tanzania suffers shameful subjugation under the stubby thumb of Mama Samia Suluhu Hassan. And Big Sister Kenya, once the region’s undisputed anchor, can no longer help—because she herself is ailing, crippled by a smiling, saved dictator armed with a Ph.D. that does little to save us from endless want, does nothing to mend the badly torn fabric of this widely respected country.

When the time comes—and it will, certainly—we must vote. Wisely. En masse. Purpose in our minds, in our hearts to fight fiercely, fearless, in order to liberate ourselves from a monstrous regime...one hell-bent on finishing us kabisa!

History, in the end, will not ask whether we prayed enough.

No.

It will ask, instead, whether we—the real owners of the Land of Lions—were heroic or cowardly. Whether we, the proud descendants of the Mau Mau, stood up—showed up—when it really mattered.

Ben Murigu (he/him) is a versatile gay creative from Nairobi-Kenya who, while teaching high school English and raising his son solo, has produced a mental-health-themed short film Let It Go, authored an urban fiction novel Toy Soldiers, and hatched several raved-about theatrical productions. His works appear in a total thirty-six literary journals to-date.