MUSAU: Cry, the beloved country lost to goons, pathetic politicians

The greatest playwright of all time, William Shakespeare, clearly nursed a particular disdain for politicians.

This enduring scorn is beautifully preserved in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, where the titular prince stumbles upon two gravediggers casually tossing human skulls around with reckless abandon.

Guessing who these bony remains once belonged to, Hamlet hazards a few choices between a politician, a lawyer, a courtier and a landowner:

“That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as it were Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder.”

For the courtier and landowner, he mocks a tragicomic shift in fortunes—from serving royalty to serving as a buffet for worms, and from owning vast estates to occupying a plot the size of a grave.

For the lawyer, he jeers at a legacy of spent “quiddities, quillets, and tricks,” wondering why the man now tamely condones a literal battery upon his skull.

Yet, Hamlet reserves his sharpest, most venomous taunt for the politician: “It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?”

Shakespeare was undeniably one of the most perceptive, deductive thinkers in human history.

His grand deduction? The average politician conducts themselves in direct, delusionary competition with God.

Armed with a microscopic sliver of worldly power, they somehow convince themselves they wield incorporeal favour.

They are utterly consumed by the toxic spirit of pride—the exact corporate blunder that cost Lucifer his prime real estate in heaven.

Their primary preoccupation is the masses, whose corresponding qualities in Plato’s Republic are labelled as base, simple and uninspiring.

Consequently, a politician's conception of power is equally low-rent, crude and frankly laughable from a distance.

They are unmitigated scoundrels who stop at nothing in their daily skullduggery.

Even a properly educated person—a distinguished professor from academia—can dive into politics and promptly misplace their soul.

Overnight, they mutate into unmitigated scoundrels, running their mouths with pompous words, wearing colorful clothes and stomping around in unearned pride.

Yet, it is a double tragedy and double trouble when the uneducated access political power.

Just recently, a politician from my own backyard swore by his kith and kin that he would rather die or go to prison than lose to a rival. I actually heard him warning the mothers of his competitors to advise their children to keep off his seat!

Your average, everyday politician simply does not believe in accountability. They are self-appointed lords of impunity who confidently expect to get away with everything.

They firmly believe the law was written for everyone else. They sneer at the very citizens they lead, deride their daily struggles and openly mock their ambitions.

They pass swift sentences upon rivals, pronounce harsh judgments against circumspect supporters and effectively enslave the true sovereigns.

A staggering number of them are megalomaniacs living in a fool’s paradise. When their luck inevitably runs dry, they drown in their own misplaced confidence; the harder they come, the harder they fall.

Yet, in truth, the practice of politics remains a necessary evil. Like death and taxes, it is an inescapable feature of human existence.

The process through which a society's resources and values are accessed and distributed is always political.

The ultimate trick is to ringfence this chaotic circus with watertight laws and robust institutions to oversee them.

Both the law and its enforcement mechanisms must be strong enough to resist abuse by politicians, but also sturdy enough to avoid being overrun by the masses—who can occasionally prove far more dangerous than the politicians themselves.

Kenya is presently teetering on a dangerous brink. There is a throbbing, terrifying unity of purpose between the rogues of our politics, the pathetic figures in our public offices and the goons ruling the streets.

This unholy alliance poses an existential threat to the soul of our republic. If we do not stop them in their tracks, the epitaph for our country will be brief, brutal and cold: Here lies the republic we lost to the unholy union of the pitiful politician and the base street goon.

Musau, an Advocate of the High Court, is a Senior Project Manager with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The views expressed here are his own