WANJAWA & YAMBO-ODOTTE: Why Kang’ata’s ‘truths’ fail democracy so tail wags dog

Murang’a Governor Irungu Kang’ata — popularly branded Kang’ata wa barua — has once again settongues wagging with a blunt treatise on what it takes to win Kenya’s presidency. His nine-pointprescription, circulating widely and eagerly consumed, is being hailed as rare honesty in anindustry of politics built on euphemism.

Many applaud the realism. Others admire the courage to say aloud what is usually whispered.Yet applause cannot silence a deeper problem. Kang’ata’s missive is not dangerous because itlies. It is dangerous because it tells the truth about a broken political system — and then acceptsthat brokenness as destiny.

What Kang’ata offers is not a vision for democratic leadership. It is a manual for acquiringpower within a hollowed-out democracy. That distinction is not semantic; it is foundational.

The logic animating his argument is unmistakably Machiavellian. The politician is the primemover. The people are variables. Issue-based politics is a mirage.

Institutions are inconveniences.Ideas are optional accessories to ethnic arithmetic and elite brokerage. Elections, in thisworldview, are not moral exercises in consent but technical exercises in control. Winning iseverything; governing is an afterthought.

This is why Kang’ata’s nine ‘truths’ read less like political wisdom and more like politicalsurrender. They teach aspirants how to adapt to decay rather than confront it. They instruct thenext generation of leaders not to fix the system, but to master its dysfunction. Power becomessomething to be assembled through calculation, not earned through persuasion.Defenders will insist this is simply realism.

But realism without reformist intent is nothing morethan resignation. It normalises failure and trains ambition to thrive on it. By this logic, tribalmobilisation is excusable because it works; propaganda is acceptable because it convertsnumbers; mercenary politics is necessary because it shields candidates.

Once victory becomesthe only ethic, democracy is reduced to theatre and citizenship to choreography.Perhaps the most telling absence in Kang’ata’s framework is the citizen.

The people appear onlyas blocs to be consolidated, regions to be penetrated, audiences to be managed. They are nevertreated as thinking subjects, moral agents, or co-owners of the republic. Power circulates amongelites, brokers, financiers and tacticians; voters merely ratify deals struck elsewhere.

Yet the most basic democratic fact remains stubbornly true: no politician elects themselves. Notpresidents. Not governors. Not the cleverest Machiavelli-in-chief. Power originates with thepeople — even when distorted, coerced, confused, or cynically mobilised. To erase the citizenfrom the story of power is to invert democracy itself.

This inversion is precisely what Kang’ata’s thesis normalises. It is a politics where the tail wagsthe dog — where ethnic kingpins, media tacticians, attack dogs, influencers and political mercenariesdictate the fate of the sovereign citizen.

The consequences are visible everywhere: endless campaigns,shallow debates, recycled manifestos, loud politics and quiet governance. We elect constantly and governpoorly.

This outcome is not accidental. It is structural. When visibility outperforms credibility andarithmetic outmuscles ideas, leadership becomes performative and temporary. Leaders risehighly skilled in conquest but dangerously untrained in stewardship. The state mutates from apublic trust into a private prize.

It is precisely here that we at Development Through Media locate our democraticpurpose. If politicians are perfecting the art of manipulation, civil society has a constitutionalobligation to disrupt it. Not by endorsing candidates or crafting counter-campaigns, but byrestoring political agency to citizens themselves.

At DTM we exist to do what Machiavellian politics fears most: deepen civic literacy, strengthenmedia ethics, foreground lived realities and reconnect power to those who constitutionally ownit.

Our task is not to teach Kenyans how to vote ‘correctly,’ but to ensure they understand whythey vote, what they consent to, and how to hold power accountable long after rallies end.

This work is slow and unglamorous. It does not trend. It does not manufacture spectacles. But itis the only work capable of making Kang’ata’s rules obsolete rather than merely controversial.

If Kang’ata’s essay is a mirror, Kenya’s task is not to admire the reflection but to repair what itreveals. Democracy, in its factory settings, assumes something radically different.

It assumescitizens deliberate rather than merely mobilise; institutions mediate interests rather than bend tothem; ideas compete openly; leaders persuade rather than manipulate.The real question, then, is not whether Kang’ata is right about how Kenyan presidents are made.

Evidence suggests he largely is. The harder question — the one that should trouble us — is whetherKenya can produce leaders who win despite these rules, not because of them.As long as citizens are treated as spectators rather than sovereigns, Kang’ata’s ‘truths’ willmasquerade as wisdom. But they are not truths. They are symptoms of democratic malaise.

Kenya does not need better princes skilled in manipulation. It needs more powerful citizenscapable of choice. Until the dog wags the tail again, every election will feel familiar, everycampaign cynical and every victory faintly hollow.And that — not Kang’ata’s ‘honesty’ — is the real scandal.

Wanjawa teaches globalisation and international development at Pwani University and is a programmes associate at DTM, a media CSO and Yambo-Odotte,  a media practitioner and social psychologist, is the executive director of DTM