The 'ungoverning' of Kenya
is the title of an opinion piece about the current strife in Kenya. The protests over the last couple of months have left 50 protesters dead. The writer uses a very particular language factor that is a part of Kiswahili that distinguishes a verb and it's opposite to show what she means by "ungoverning". It is an instructive read because it describes for us several of the dangers facing us if we allow the path of the GQP/MAGA to regain power and what can happen if we don't repair the institutions already damaged by them.
An austerity/finance bill has been attempted to be rammed through but the country erupted and it was obvious to the people that, after years of autocratic rule, the independence of their institutions from each other to be a check and balance as promised in their hard won Constitution was being "ungoverned".
This writer points out very directly "I call this sequence of events “ungoverning” because these are not passive outcomes of an unavoidable situation but active decisions being taken by those who wield power in the country to misuse or undermine the political institutions of the country in order to strengthen the person of the executive – the president – against enemies of his own making."
In fact one of the most important points made in the article for us to remember is the idea that, like Kenya, our Constitution and the "checks and balances" approach assumes that the people in those 3 branches actually want that. As she puts it "It is important to note that many of the mechanisms that exist in Kenya’s constitution presume a legislature that wants to be independent of the president and not one that seeks to be their lapdog." The same would obviously hold true for a Supreme Court.
The opinion writer goes on to give just a brief paragraph of how governing was under the authoritarian rule before the rewrite of their Constitution. "Kenya is severely hobbled by a toothless, sycophantic National Assembly. Under the authoritarian state, Parliament was systematically defanged and one of the most common tactics for killing legislation was the presidential veto, in which the president would simply refuse to assent to any bills that reduced his power. Thus Article 115 of the 2010 constitution has a provision that allows for the National Assembly to work around the president if they refuse to assent to or amend a bill that basically means that after a back-and-forth process, the bill can pass if two-thirds of both the Parliament and the Senate vote for it. Until it finally happened in late July, it was unclear whether or not Parliament would actually reject the finance bill or await further instructions from the executive."
So the"ungoverning" has several aspects as it likely would for us in the US. The original Kenya Finance bill was rejected by their Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2023. So their President came back in 2024 with a proposal to drastically hike taxes on things like bread, vegetable oil etc. and to impose a tax on the value of any vehicle you own of 2.5% per year. Those provisions drew widespread condemnation and got pulled from the bill but then the refiled plan imposed huge cuts to basic services and the strife has continued. An inequitable taxing/services scheme is always sure to draw fire and it certainly has in Kenya.
Another aspect covered is the violent response by police to repress protests despite the right to protest being specifically spelled out in their Constitution. The previous repression of protest also played a part in blowing up into an attack on Parliament that was in response to a continued effort to jam through the bill. As the writer puts it "But perhaps the clearest element of Kenya’s ungoverning is the refusal to allow people to protest, and the violent policing of unarmed protesters. Kenyans are being shot and killed merely for the act of gathering to express dissent. The 2010 constitution envisions protest as a democratic act that must be undertaken if the government fails to listen to people through elections or mechanisms of public participation. But the presidency is reading any act of dissent as a threat and responding with the aforementioned disproportionate use of force. The mere act of gathering is being criminalised, with people being abducted and disappeared for holding placards or for creating protest materials. Kenyans are not only being squeezed by austerity measures; they are also being punished for expressing their unhappiness about it." This is the style of repression that the GQP/MAGA crowd and their Project 2025 are about. Remember what happened when peaceful protesters around the White House were forcefully driven away?
As a final tie in to our situation the writer gives examples that "Ungoverning is not a uniquely Kenyan experience. It is the United States Supreme Court’s campaign of undoing several hard-won protections in law and in the Conservative Party’s steady dismantling of the United Kingdom’s welfare state. It is the attempt to decriminalise female genital mutilation (FGM) in The Gambia and the draconian drug wars in Central America. Ungoverning is what populist administrations do because they have sharpened their ability to gain power but have no idea what to do with government once they control it. Ungoverning is watching a cartoon in rewind – it looks like governing because it has so many of the trappings of power but it’s all happening in reverse. And protest is the language of people who are frustrated with being deliberately unheard by political institutions that are solely focused on gaining power."
The "ungoverning" therefore is a singular term for describing a multi-faceted/multi-phased conscious effort that leads to authoritarian rule under the guise of the "reform" using catchphrases like "getting rid of the deep state", "remaking institutions", "reigning in activist judges", "rule of law", etc. The use of police and/or military to violently suppress those citizens protesting various issues or the slide to authoritarianism is a universal feature we have seen from history around the world when the "ungoverning" gets to the point of the average person being at the receiving end of it all.
The situation in Kenya has many twists and turns regarding things like the IMF driving the proposed bill, the open abductions of prominent protest figures by the police, the apparent police abduction/disappearance of a respected journalist, violent reaction to repression, reaction to that reaction and many others. It is not some "identical" fit to our situation and that is not what this comparison is about. Nor is it about any leaning of the writer one way or the other. It is about the concept of "ungoverning" and how one country is experiencing it and how the definition and certain aspects as given by the writer have useful reference for discussion for other countries including the US. I found it to be so for various tangents as well as the ability to apply a single term to a multi faceted/multiple component political malady. I enjoyed the reference to the aspect of language and I think having the term can allow a simple communication of what the GQP/MAGA is all about.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/1/the-ungoverning-of-kenya
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