Kenyans tired of Ruto's mythic tales amid stretched economy

President William Ruto could make a great writer of fiction. He could sit well with literary virtuosos like HG Wells, Jules Verne, Aldus Huxley, and Yevgeny Zamyatin. He invites us to suspend both belief and disbelief. He can take us around the world in 80 seconds, through Wells’ Time Machine.  

His machine can transfer us, in real time, from our present time and space, to locate us in wonderland. He could churn out fictional masterpieces with titles like Journey to Singapore and Back in One Eighty Seconds; Kenyans in Wonderland; and The Return of Frankenstein. He can cast himself at once as Frankenstein and as a motley of neo-neanderthal Frankenstein creatures.  

The President is richly gifted with the capacity to create mythic realities that only artists like George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, and Mary Shelley could contrive. His State of the Nation Address on Thursday did not disappoint. It brought home the portrait of a grand performer in his own drama. 

As lived reality, the State of the Nation address painted the picture of a President living in his own head. Or, conversely, it presented an artist who has diffused the borders between imagination and reality. Hence, this artist literally lives on the stage. When he is invited to present the Executive audit of the nation over the past one year, he arrives fully-loaded with mythical historical narratives, and fictional dreams of tomorrow; both as theatre arts.  Many questionable bold claims were made in health, education, housing, road construction, agriculture and food production, and in macroeconomic stability. The sources of the statistical indicators in these sectors remain mysterious. The stats are especially rendered vulnerable by the fact that they detract from the lived reality. What is this lived reality?  

Away from the glossy numbers and political theatre, the lived reality for ordinary Kenyans in 2025 is painful. It is more complex and harsher than Ruto’s Paradise Found narratives. The human-scale picture contrasts punitively with Ruto’s, in the manner of the Orwellian universe. That is to say Kenyans live in a country increasingly wealthy and successful, without the people themselves getting any wealthy and successful.  As I have previously recited elsewhere, Orwell writes of a hugely successful farm owned by animals, “Somehow, it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer – except, of course, the pigs and the dogs.” Metaphorically speaking, do Kenya’s pigs and dogs get richer at the expense of the rest of the animals? Is this the primary factor behind the disparity between the lived reality and official State reports?  

Moreover, Orwell writes further of “mysterious things called ‘files, reports, minutes, and memoranda... These were large sheets of papers which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace.” Do President Ruto’s reports and memoranda metaphorically get burnt in the furnace, once they are covered before a cheerful parliament of owls?  Placed under scrutiny, the human-scale reality in Kenya speaks of hardship. Food is expensive; families have reduced meals per day, and the portions are smaller than ever; money pays for far less than it did three years ago; transport costs are ever on the rise – even when fuel pump prices seem to drop; rents are permanently on the rise, despite narratives of “affordable housing”; salaries are depressed, and, often, they don’t come, or they arrive in droplets. 

Taxes are on the rise, without much to call tax justice; youth unemployment is a crisis; the youth wallow in frustrations and lost dreams; healthcare glows on paper, but dithers in reality. Kenyans are forever conducting harambees online, to pay for hospital bills. The dead are detained in hospitals over hefty bills. Where is SHA, when wealthy politicians have to step in for optics, to rescue bodies detained in mortuaries?  

Kenyans don’t feel richer. They feel stretched and thinner. President Ruto’s utopia speeches are just that; rich imaginations and expanded myths. We could go on endlessly. The mood in the country is one of fatigue and distrust. In the slums, in the villages, and in exclusive places, the mood is the same. Kenyans are emotionally drained.  

They are tired of President Ruto’s dramatic performances, his unending promises, and the choral ovations by the political class. They are fed up with being called “pessimists” just because they state their lived reality. The country may not be collapsed as yet, but Kenyans are tired. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke