The Grand Deception: How Kenya’s Ruling Class Manufactures Ethnic Illusions to Conceal Class Domination
The Choreography of Power and the Mirage of Change: Kenyan statecraft has long resembled an ever-mutating masquerade, in which a narrow coterie of elites incessantly reshuffles partners, costumes, and slogans, while the material script remains obstinately the same. Presidents and members of Parliament switch from sworn foes to bosom allies with vertiginous speed, baptising each new arrangement as a “national unity” initiative, a “roadmap to peace,” a “national dialogue,” or, more recently, a “broad-based government.” To grasp the cyclical theatrics at play,one only needs to recall President William Ruto’s May 2025 memorandum with perennial opposition doyen Raila Odinga. It was…