In the wake of the ignominious expulsion of Willy Mutunga, Martha Karua, Hanifa Adan, and a coterie of other George Soros-funded agitators from Tanzania, alongside the theatrical arrest of the insufferable Boniface Mwangi from his Serena Hotel room in Dar es Salaam, a cadre of benighted Kenyans has unleashed a vitriolic campaign against their southern neighbor. With a barrage of puerile memes and scathing insults, they deride Tanzania’s leadership, ostensibly in solidarity with these deplorable provocateurs.
This outburst stems from a deeply ingrained, yet utterly fallacious, sense of Kenyan exceptionalism – a delusion that mirrors the sanctimonious rhetoric of Barack Obama, whose flawed and self-aggrandizing worldview led him to proclaim American superiority over lesser nations in a speech so steeped in hubris it reeks of intellectual bankruptcy in his 2009 Cairo address, where he waxed lyrical about America’s supposed moral preeminence.
Activist Huss Khalid (far left), former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and Hanifa Adam
Obama’s sanctimonious drivel, cloaked in the veneer of eloquence, posited Americans as a breed apart, elevated above the global rabble – a notion as risible as it is myopic. While he peddled this fiction, the United States languished, bereft of transformative infrastructure projects akin to China’s awe-inspiring bullet trains or utopian metropolises. Distracted by media circuses, Americans failed to notice their nation’s stagnation, much like Kenyans now revel in a fabricated narrative of democratic and economic supremacy, blissfully ignorant of their own systemic rot.
Kenya’s vaunted democracy is a sham, a hollow edifice propped up by a corrupt and sycophantic media machine that parrots government propaganda. Since 2013, the absence of a genuine opposition has been glaring, with the so-called Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) slavishly aligning with the ruling regime’s agenda in Parliament.
The nadir came in 2018, when the perfidious Raila Odinga, in a craven act of capitulation, clasped hands with the venal Uhuru Kenyatta, extinguishing any pretense of political resistance. Media freedom, too, is a mirage; mainstream outlets, tethered to government advertising revenue, bend their editorial spines to the whims of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), churning out narratives that serve the state’s nefarious interests.
The judiciary, once a bastion of hope, has devolved into a farcical institution, expending its meager energies over the past eight months hounding activists and bloggers while turning a blind eye to the real malefactors – establishment politicians and criminal syndicates like Mungiki’s odious Maina Njenga, whose cases were conveniently withdrawn by the shameless Director of Public Prosecution, Renson Ingonga.
The civil society, stripped of its former vigor, now grovels at the altar of Western social experiments, peddling divisive agendas like gay rights and matriarchal households, transforming Kenya into a laboratory for foreign ideologies.
Amid this decay, social media remains the last redoubt of free expression, a fact that rankles the likes of Noordin Haji, the Director of National Intelligence, who resorts to sponsoring vacuous threats of regulation through pliable media and social media charlatans. Yet, while Kenyans wallow in their illusory democratic triumph, they have the audacity to cast aspersions on Tanzania – a nation that supplies their onions, as Kenyan agriculture lies in ruins, sabotaged by the rapacious duo of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, whose import-driven policies enrich their own coffers.
Tanzania’s cultural ascendancy is undeniable; its music, a vibrant tapestry of artistry, is devoured as a staple by Kenyans, signaling a flourishing creative ecosystem. Its tourism sector, bolstered by enlightened policies, has eclipsed Kenya’s once-dominant industry, as exorbitant fees at parks like Maasai Mara deter ordinary citizens, while Tanzania incentivizes accessibility.
Activist Boniface Mwangi shortly after his arrest at the Serena Hotel Daresalam
Most galling, perhaps, is the revelation that fuel in Tanzania, at 3,000 TZS per liter (approximately 144 KES), is 40 shillings cheaper than Kenya’s 176 KES per liter, despite transiting through Mombasa’s port and incurring additional costs via the Kenya Pipeline Company. This discrepancy – Kenya’s fuel should logically retail at 135 KES per liter – lays bare the rapacity of a system rigged to fleece the masses.
The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA), under the stewardship of the complicit Daniel Kiptoo, orchestrates this daylight robbery. EPRA’s pricing formula, ostensibly based on landed costs, taxes, and margins, is a facade for systemic plunder, with inflated prices benefiting a coterie of connected elites. This culture of venality, epitomized by Kiptoo’s deference to his overlords, underscores a governance model that prioritizes personal enrichment over public welfare.
Despite docking in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa, Tanzanian fuel has a pump price Kshs. 40 cheaper than Kenya.
Contrast this with Tanzania’s resolute stand during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the late John Pombe Magufuli defied Western diktats and preserved national sovereignty, while Kenya, under the craven Uhuru Kenyatta, succumbed to curfews and lockdowns at the behest of Bill Gates and his ilk. Tanzania’s democracy, unencumbered by the cacophony of sponsored agitators masquerading as opposition, prioritizes the livelihoods and freedoms of its people – a stark rebuke to Kenya’s illiterate masses, who cling to fraudulent media narratives of prosperity while their nation crumbles.
For Kenyans to taunt Tanzania, armed with fictitious statistics and delusions of grandeur, is the height of absurdity. Tanzania’s model of governance, however imperfect, does not suffocate its citizens’ economic aspirations or constitutional liberties. If they choose to forgo the media circus and paid provocateurs that define Kenya’s political landscape, that is their prerogative. What hubris possesses Kenyans to impose their warped, dysfunctional “democracy” on a neighbor that has outstripped them in pragmatism and progress?
The revolution, as the adage goes, begins with self-reflection. Kenyans would do well to mend their fractured house before casting stones at a neighbor whose foundations stand far firmer.
