Kenya’s political season has arrived early, and loud. In under three weeks, the Azimio coalition renamed itself the Ukombozi Alliance. Senator Edwin Sifuna unveiled The Equitable Party as his vehicle. A day later, Macharia Njeru, a commercial lawyer and bank board chair, declared for State House.
In Mombasa, businessman Suleiman Shahbal is running for governor. The President urged him to stay in business, pointing to the 10,000 jobs his investments are projected to create. Mr Shahbal’s answer: “It is competent people who should be encouraged to go into government and to go into politics so that we can change this country.”
Every podium carries the same promise. Value for citizens. Jobs for the young. So who actually creates the jobs? Not the podium. Kenya created about 822,000 jobs last year, according to the Economic Survey, and 87 percent were informal.
A government does not create a job by announcing it. It creates the conditions for one, or it destroys them.
The economy grew 5.3 percent in the first quarter. Yet by March the State owed suppliers Sh465.87 billion in pending bills, says the Controller of Budget. Payments stall. Firms close while the growth chart climbs. The optics say growth. The balance sheet says siege.
I have written to every government office I can name to close one ordinary transaction: the State owes my business, and my business owes the State. A frozen balance sheet that one signature could unlock. Not a single office has replied. Not even to say no. My taxes pay the salaries of people who will not answer my letter.
I have also asked members of Parliament to sponsor a private member’s Bill on commercial problems only the law can fix. It felt like asking for a favour. Soon the same offices will knock on founders’ doors for campaign money. One wonders who is doing whom the favour.
When letters go unanswered and calls go nowhere, one door stays open: the courts. Judicial review is the last rule left standing. But how long can you live in a courtroom? Every year spent filing is a year not building. Without ever choosing it, you stop being an entrepreneur and become a legal entrepreneur. Call it the absentee builder. We create the jobs, pay the taxes and carry the payroll, then stand outside the room where the rules are written, tweeting.
Our business associations were meant to be the bridge. Some have become political vehicles. Alone at midnight with a pending bill, the founder finds nobody to call. The elders warned us: usipoziba ufa, utajenga ukuta (If you do not fill the crack, you will build a wall). Now the wall is pending bills, punishing licences and silence.
This column endorses no candidate and no party. It endorses a posture. Imagine if 40 percent of our MPs, senators, governors and MCAs had met a payroll, survived a tax audit and waited years for a government cheque. Laws would be written by people who have felt them. Growth would be driven by prosperity, not patronage.
Voting is the minimum. A founder’s civic duty is to show up, run, or back someone who will. Fund the honest candidate before the dishonest one funds himself. Give your hours, not just your hashtags. Civic duty does not end at the founder’s desk. A founder is also an employer, and our people make choices every day that shape their own livelihoods as much as ours.
A company is a train: the engine pulls nothing if the carriages uncouple. Talk to your teams about what is at stake, never whom to vote for. A country changes when builders and the people they employ show up together.
When a fellow founder stands, do not leave them alone on the stage. Mr Shahbal and Mr Njeru will be judged on their records, as they should be. But the principle they are testing belongs to all of us: whether a builder can enter public life without being punished for it. Abandon every founder who tries, and we confirm the oldest lesson: only politicians may govern.
Hold up the five mirrors. Is politics a risk to manage or terrain to shape? Have we confused neutrality with safety? Has frustration hardened into cynicism? Will we stand beside the founder who steps forward? Is the country worth entering a room we despise? Nobody is coming to rescue us. Not the podium, not the courtroom. If you are not at the table, you are breakfast. Pull up a chair.