Debunk Live

Just over a year ago, we cautioned the Inspector General of Police, Japheth Koome @IG_NPS, who resigned today, that much as the police commit atrocities against Kenyans under his watch while citing “orders from above”, in the end, it will all fall at his feet. He didn’t listen… debunk.media/sleep-with-the-…

Looks like the President watched the movie we recommended… Read more: debunk.media/does-william-ru…

1/3🧵 Dear Mr Odinga, As someone who prides themselves as being an avid student of history – at least that’s the impression we get from your perpetual recitation of this or that bit of Kenyan history whenever you get an opportunity to speak, you must beware that across the breadth of history, in Kenya and elsewhere, change in any society is always driven by the youth.  Nelson Mandela, one of the men whose history you like to revisit, borrow from and deploy, alongside his comrades such as O.R. Tambo and Walter Sisulu (with whom your comrade James Orengo is posing with on his Twitter/X header), changed the history of the South African anti-apartheid struggle in 1944 when they founded the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC), against the wishes of seniors within the ANC, who reportedly feared the youth’s militancy. In fact it was Anton Lembede, who was elected leader of the Youth League, who radicalised Mandela, making him embrace militancy as a strategy. It is little wonder that it is out of that Youth League that the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, was founded. To Mandela, Sisulu and others, the old folk, including future Nobel Laureate Chief Albert Luthuli, had made their contribution in the liberation struggle, but it was now time for new tactics and strategies, it was now time to inject new valour and vigour in the struggle, it was now time to organise the youth and simultaneously take up arms. And so whatever strides the ANC and the struggle made thereafter – including building an army that fought the apartheid government, credit has always gone to the 1944 Youth League, which changed the course of history. Yet Mandela, Sisulu and their youthful comrades didn’t have an easy ride making this raft of history-altering changes. The old guard, as is always the case, got jittery (and everyone has been hoping that Gen Z haven’t made you and others jittery) and made various attempts to either subvert or slow down these changes. Winnie Madikizela Mandela (whom you’ve named your own daughter after) tells a story of how ANC president James Sebe Moroka showed up at Mandela’s home one evening in 1949 and angrily told Winnie, “Who does that Nelson think he is? Does he think he owns the ANC?” Moroka then left in a huff, having registered his strong displeasure with the radical path Mandela and the Youth League were taking the ANC.  But maybe we don’t even need to travel far and wide to borrow historical lessons, because the part of your own history which you like taking so much pride in, the Young Turks era when yourself and other comrades – in your 20s and early 30s – powered the second liberation while coalescing around a number of old men, including your own father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and his comrade Pius Henry Masinde Muliro.  Yourself, Paul Muite, Gitobu Imanyara, James Orengo, Mukhisa Kituyi, Anyang’ Nyong’o, Kiraitu Murungi, and others like Michael Wamalwa Kijana who joined you later in the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), and others like Martha Karua and Wangari Maathai who weren’t in FORD, and many others such as George Anyona, literally lay your lives on the line in the push for the return of multipartism (President William Ruto, with whom you are now highly suspected to be working in cahoots with to subvert Gen Z’s historical and generational mission and pacify the will of the people, was on the opposite side of this struggle as part of Youth for KANU 1992, meaning he may not relate to Gen Z’s clamour for change. But will you, as someone who claims to have been on the right side of history in 1992, side with him or Gen Z?).

We agree, @RailaOdinga can do whatever he wishes, but at this particular juncture in our country’s history when his grandchildren’s agemates are seeking to reimagine a new Kenya for themselves, we ask that he avoids the temptation to usurp their moment & movement. It is only fair. Read more: debunk.media/dear-mr-odinga-…

1/2🧵 As the #Occupy movement led by Gen Z has risen, floundered and risen again over the last fortnight or so, President William Ruto’s various reactions – first calling the #OccupyParliament brigade treasonous; then doubling down and feigning a call for national dialogue; before quickly enacting a Twitter Space which has resulted in nothing more than backlash for Osama Otero (the erstwhile Gen Z mobiliser turned William Ruto co-host on the Twitter Space); to forming a national debt audit task force which appears dead on arrival following the decline by the Law Society of Kenya and its President to participate in it, deeming it an unconstitutional exercise; among other gaffes – the President is either being hard headed or is completely lost at sea. Whatever it is – whether the President is being a kichwa ngumu or hashiki rada – the truth is that whatever is unfolding in the country cannot and should not be taken lightly, whether by the President or by anyone else. The fact that the hallowed grounds of Parliament were breached, parts of the Supreme Court and office of the Chief Justice were vandalised, and that the promise to #OccupyStateHouse seemed real, must all be seen as microcosms of something bigger. That something bigger, which has resulted in Members of Parliament hiding from their constituents for fear of public reprimands, or Cabinet Secretaries driving without mounted flags on their fuel guzzlers in a bid to be nondescript all speak to the fact that whatever was seen on the national stage as embodied by the #Occupy movement has slowly but surely permeated into the grassroots, if not the other way round – that the volcano started boiling from the grassroots and only erupted on the national stage, soiling the various seats of power before returning to gather even more momentum from the hinterlands. As the Gen Z say, they will not believe. This state of organised chaos – if we may loosely call it that – points to and calls for one thing and one thing only, that President William Ruto needs to move and be seen to be moving with speed. That speed needs to be applied and be seen to be applied in reversing some of his punitive policies; in initiating a raft of reforms that anchor accountability, transparency and real, tangible public participation; in forming a lean, competent and fit for purpose government; in adopting new pro-people policies as regards education, healthcare, cost of living, anti-corruption, youth employment and taxation; and more importantly and urgently in riding himself and his government of all political baggage (could there be some garbage in there to?).  If he hasn’t watched it already, maybe it’s time for the President to watch the film Triple Frontier, in which ex-Delta Force teammates attempt to smuggle $3 million drug money on a chopper across the South American mountainside. Weighed down by the weight of the loot, the chopper starts meandering, at which point the crew attempts to throw out as much money as they can to make the chopper lighter. They don’t manage to offload into the wilderness as much money as quickly as they should have, and eventually the chopper crashes under the weight of the money.  Much as they eventually make it out with the money after fighting with the locals on the ground and along their way to the beachfront where they catch water transport and elope, the crew has to fight the fights of and for their lives, losing lives and limb and sustaining lifelong scars.  It is this exact spot that William Ruto finds himself today, where he either quickly drops off as much baggage (which, like the money in the movie, he thinks he needs) for his chopper to keep flying, or else he keeps offloading the baggage slowly (at the rate at which he is currently doing) and risk the chopper crashing, after which everything will be uncertain.

The poet Maya Angelou warned us that if someone shows you who they are, believe them. Time & again @RailaOdinga has shown us who he is. We didn't believe him. Today he's once again shown us who he is - a deal maker moonlighting as a revolutionary. Shall we finally believe him? Read more: debunk.media/is-raila-odinga…

Can someone please lend President @WilliamsRuto a pair of glasses? Because, it appears, the President doesn't seem to appreciate the magnitude of whatever's in front of him as regards Gen Z's #Occupy movement. But to save him time, we've recommended a movie & a history lesson. Read more: debunk.media/does-william-ru…

It is June 2022. Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for the Treasury Ukur Yatani has presented President Uhuru Kenyatta’s final budget to Parliament. To finance the ambitious KSh 3.3 trillion budget (a 10 percent increase from the previous one), Yatani, through the Finance Bill 2022, has proposed an avalanche of new taxes – including a 3 percent tax on digital services. Far from the city, William Ruto, Kenyatta’s estranged deputy at the time, is out there doing what he had spent the better part of his second term perfecting – campaigning to the hustlers, what his boss called tangatanga-ing. Atop his armoured SUV (which was invisible to the naked eye owing to the throngs of hustlers rallying around him), Ruto rises to the people in a spirited protest against Kenyatta’s budget, pronouncing in Kiswahili: “Nyinyi mnajua budget imesomwa juzi. Hiyo budget inataka kuongeza bei ya maji, sijui iongeze bei ya mkate, sijui iongeze bei ya unga, sijui iongeze bei ya nduthi. Sisi tunataka kuwaambia hiyo budget haiwezi kupita kwa bunge na ikipita kwa bunge, miezi mitatu baadaye tutaibadilisha iwe ni budget ya mtu wa kawaida.” [“You all know that the budget was tabled the other day. That budget wants to tax your water, tax your bread, tax your flour, tax your motorcycle… We want to tell you that we will not allow that budget to sail through and if it does, we will overturn it in the next three months to ensure it is the common man’s budget.”] On the vehicle next to him, a fiery Ndindi Nyoro, then a pivotal mobiliser for Ruto in Central Kenya and today the Chairperson of the Budget and Appropriations Committee in the National Assembly, adds fuel to the flames of the hustler campaign, proclaiming; “Sisi kama Kenya Kwanza, sisi kama UDA, kitu ya kwanza tutafanya ni supplementary budget ambayo itapeleka maisha ya Wakenya, bei ya bidhaa ikuwe chini.” [“The first thing that we, as Kenya Kwanza, we, as UDA will do, is to pass a supplementary budget which will alleviate the lives of Kenyans and that will lower the price of basic commodities.”] The hustlers cheer. Ruto is going to save them. As fate would have it, three months later, William Ruto would become president, and in the classic David Ndii-esque did-you-really-take-the-campaign-promises-seriously attitude, Ruto makes an about-turn on his promise of a mwananchi-friendly budget. In 2023, President Ruto’s first Finance Bill which aimed to underwrite an even bigger budget (KSh 3.7 trillion), introduced even harsher taxes, including the housing levy and a 16 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and other petroleum products – a move leading to the rise in the price of food and other commodities. In 2024, Ruto pushed even further – this time going right to the doorstep of the hustler – demanding more taxes to fund his KSh 3.9 trillion budget. Before public uproar forced him to reconsider, there was a proposal to introduce 15 percent VAT on bread, an eco-levy on diapers and sanitary towels, and an inexplicable 2.5 percent annual motor vehicle tax, among others, signals that Ruto the president is a total and complete stranger from Ruto the man campaigning to hustlers two years earlier (or was it always a charade, he a masquerade?). Then came 18 June 2024. Young Kenyans are on the streets protesting against Ruto’s new taxes. Across the country, hustlers are complaining. Enters President William Ruto, standing pensively at a press conference at State House following a Parliamentary group meeting with MPs from his ruling party. His Leader of Majority in the National Assembly, and his counterpart, the Chairperson of the Budget Committee, announce that they have “listened to Kenyans” and declare an abandonment of the earlier mentioned VAT on bread, the motor vehicle tax, the eco-levy on locally manufactured goods. Here was Ruto again, sweeping in to save the hustlers. Only difference is that this time, Ruto was saving hustlers from himself. Granted, as the president’s advisors continue to claim, the Ruto government inherited a heavy public debt burden from the previous regime (to which Ruto was Deputy President for a decade). But for a president who campaigned on the promise of providing a better, more affordable life for one of the country’s most economically vulnerable groups – the hustlers, it is a disgrace that he could even consider taxing the most basic food item in a hustler’s household – bread. Judging by the President’s feeble attempts at saving face following public uproar over proposals contained in the Finance Bill 2024, one would like to imagine that perhaps in a last-minute reflection, the President remembered one of his many milk-and-honey promises to the hustlers. Or perhaps he has remembered that not too long ago, a long-sitting president in a country not too far from his was toppled (by his own hustlers) over the price of bread and fuel. PS: As Ruto campaigned to the hustlers, the then National Assembly Minority Whip, John Mbadi, an MP from Raila Odinga’s opposition party, called him out as a ‘‘rogue Deputy President’’ and a ‘‘ghost worker’’. Mbadi was at the time supporting Uhuru Kenyatta’s controversial tax proposals in the Finance Bill 2022 (Raila’s ODM was aligned with the ruling party following Odinga’s infamous handshake with Kenyatta in 2018). Today, as Ruto proposes his punitive taxes, Mbadi sings a different tune – demanding that Ruto lessen the tax burden on Kenyans. In the wise words of Eminem – can the real John Mbadi please stand up?

Maybe we should take @DavidNdii for his word whenever he laughs at us for complaining that @WilliamsRuto is doing the complete opposite of what he promised during his presidential bid. Because, how do you curse at @4thPresidentKE & his high taxes, only to take over & do worse? Read today's editorial: debunk.media/jesus-wept-will…

Big day @NAssemblyKE as the second reading of the contentious #FinanceBill2024 kicks off. As MPs dive into debate, our partners @IBPKenya break down whether the Kenyan government can afford the KSh 3.9 trillion #Budget2024 unveiled last week by CS @KeTreasury Njunguna Ndung’u.

Planning to call your MP about #RejectFinanceBill2024? If you need a hint on how they’re likely to vote next week, have a look at their voting record from last year when the (controversial) Finance Bill 2023 sailed through at the National Assembly: debunk.media/national-assemb…

Two stories are unfolding in Kenya today: On one side of town, @KeTreasury have presented their budget to the National Assembly (complete with their famous briefcase ritual), and on the other side, MPs' phones have been blowing up with calls from citizens to #RejectFinanceBill2024 (which proposes some additional hefty taxes). Whichever story you were following, our partners at @IBPKenya want you to remember one thing - read between the numbers! #Budget2024

Debunk Quarterly, a magazine of Politics & Culture (out Dec 2023) seeks reportage/nonfiction pitches for 4,000 word pieces from DR Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, S. Sudan, Uganda & Tanzania. Honorarium: $400 & a limited reporting budget. Pitch quarterly@debunk.media by Aug 31st.