Political cartooning in Kenya has never been without its risks. Cartoonists faced state-engineered firings and censorship, lawsuits from angry politicians unhappy with their portrayals, and even the occasional threat by phone. However, until this week, they had never had to endure arbitrary detention.
Even during the worst days of Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year dictatorship, the “Nyayo fault” that ravaged the country from 1978 to 2002, cartoonists were not directly targeted by the state. Newspaper publishers saw their presses destroyed, and editors and writers – including satirists such as Wahome Mutahi – were detained for long periods without trial. Cartoonists, however, were spared the worst excesses of the regime.
That changed with the kidnapping of Gideon Kibet, better known as Kibet Bull, a young cartoonist who became an internet sensation for his bold use of silhouettes to mock President William Ruto’s administration, which has increasingly taken an authoritarian turn after its legitimacy was called into question by youth street protests across the country.
The regime responded with a brutal crackdown that killed dozens and a campaign of kidnapping prominent activists that continues to this day. According to the Kenya National Human Rights Commission, at least in the past seven months 82 people were taken, and almost a third of them are missing. Kibet and his brother Ronnie Kiplagat disappeared in the capital Nairobi on Christmas Eve after meeting opposition MP Okiya Omtatah.
That the police are behind the duo’s disappearance is partly confirmed by reports that officers had previously broken into his home in Nakuru, about 150 km (93 miles) from the capital, in a futile attempt to capture him there. Also, the police were involved in previous kidnappings, including the kidnapping of a veteran journalist, Macharia Gaithowho was abducted from the area of the police station where he sought refuge.
Going to Kibet, Ruto’s regime showed its fragility. According to one theory, caricature depends on the political system. While in totalitarian regimes the artist is forced to praise the system and condemn its enemies, and in democratic ones the cartoonist is a watchdog, keeping the rulers honest and accountable, in authoritarian regimes some dissent is allowed, and when regimes become fragile, cartoonists mercilessly expose their rigid stupidity .
For six decades, Kenya was an aspiring democracy, and the people constantly had to confront the authoritarian tendencies of their rulers. Ruto, who was elected in 2022 with barely a third of the vote, was particularly insecure about his position, initially trying to carve out a place for himself on the international stage to cover his lack of domestic legitimacy. The mid-year protests, which forced him to roll back unpopular tax measures, reshuffle his cabinet and launch a youth movement aimed at ousting him, also reinforced his authoritarian tendencies, nurtured by none other than Moi himself.
Through his cartoons, Kibet Bull relentlessly exposed Ruto’s rigid stupidity, attracting the attention and ire of the regime, as well as winning the admiration of millions of Kenyans, online and offline. He now joins dozens of young people who have been disappeared by the Ruto regime, some of whom have reported being tortured and others killed. There is no serious doubt that the abductions were the work of state agents and have drawn condemnation from a large section of Kenyan society as well as human rights groups.
In recent days, Ruto has promised to end the kidnappings, which many Kenyans interpreted as an admission of complicity. In his New Year’s message to the country, he acknowledged “instances of excessive and extrajudicial actions by members of the security services,” but seemed to suggest that the real problem was not bad police behavior, but citizens promoting “radical, individualistic and self-centered interpretations of law and freedom”.
Ruto, who has in the past shown disdain for the teaching of history in Kenyan schools, arguing that Kenyans should focus on more “marketable” subjects, would actually do well to read up on Kenya’s recent past. Over the past seven decades, Kenya’s rulers – from the British colonialists to his predecessors as president, including fellow ICC indictee for crimes against humanity, Uhuru Kenyatta – have all learned the same painful lesson: a lack of legitimacy is fatal to their regimes and their brutality will not save them.
Ruto is by far the weakest of them all and he knows it. Only halfway through his term, he already plans to change the rules on handovers to give himself more control over the process, even though the next election is more than two and a half years away. While he is banging around, he has had several major government reshuffles and even engineered the impeachment, removal and replacement of his deputy. After successfully running a populist campaign for the presidency against the “dynasties” – the political families that have dominated Kenyan politics since independence – he has been reduced to mincing his words and seeking their support.
But it is this same weakness, insecurity, fear and despair that makes Ruto so dangerous. This is exactly what makes him target young people whose only crime is seeking the better life he promised them. This is what makes his regime shudder at ridicule and see internet cartoons as an existential threat. And that is what makes him a threat to the nation and its constitutional order – one that all Kenyans must be alive to.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
