Seven political reads for this election season

In the Aeneid, Virgil writes of Aeneas, describing the destruction of Troy to queen Dido of Carthage, who welcomes the refugees from Troy. Aeneas intimates his concerns that either the Greek are hiding in this monster, or it’s some trick of war, a spy, or engine, to come down on the city and Trojans, do not believe this horse. Whatever it may be, I fear the Greeks, even when bringing presents”. From a Kenyan who loves our political soap opera and five-year seasonal aggressive engagements, here are seven political reads showing  that we’re possibly better off taking Aeneas’ advice in regarding our politicians even if they come wielding gifts.

HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION (COMMENTARIOLUM PETITIONIS) BY QUINTUS CICERO

We’ve brothers and people related by blood helping one another in Kenya to rise to various political offices but it didn’t start the other day. Marcus Tullius Cicero was running for the Roman Republic consulate around 64 B.C. His younger brother and a senator in Rome purportedly decided to get him elected. Quintus Tullius Cicero sent his elder brother a letter about conducting himself during the campaigns. It remains a timeless, practical and no-holds-barred counsel to anyone campaigning for any office. We can argue whether it was really from younger Cicero, written in the Trajan or Augustus times, but we can't refute the fact that the carefully laid out propaganda in the essay is the fodder feeding modern political campaigns, with the Kenyan situation eerily in mind here.

The Commentariolum Petitionis (small electioneering handbook) sets out an elaborate strategy to capture political office that's so familiar it's hard to believe it was written around 64 B.C.

EDWARD J. LARSON’S A MAGNIFICENT CATASTROPHE

Clearly a book the typical Kenyan garnering for political office seems to have read, it has the Kenyan raucous political campaigns written all over it. Thomas Jefferson is said to have written to his daughter Martha at the height of the 1800 electioneering period that politics in itself is tormenting. His advice to those he loved was to avoid mixing with politics and for a good reason. Jefferson was running against a close friend, the incumbent John Adams. The campaign was long and emotive, featuring personal attacks, mudslinging and slander; one of those campaigns that engraved the dirty tactics of modern political campaigns in history.  A Pulitzer Prize winner, Larson lays down the action and intrigues as they happened in the long and tedious rematch that buried the Federalist Party and ushered in the era of Republican-Democratic Party dominance as it’s to date. Definitely a campaign to read about and purge our political demons as we head into August 8.    

KENYA'S QUEST FOR DEMOCRACY: TAMING LEVIATHANBY MAKAU MUTUA

Makau Mutua is a distinguished professor and a controversial figure nationally. He has imprinted his consciousness in the mind of virtually every Kenyan who finds his writings a critical take on what is happening in the country. In Taming Leviathan, the Kenyan post-colonial state is laid bare and the African constitution-building process well elucidated. His scholarship not in question, Mutua's keen and observant eye balances the comprehensive incisive study of a tortuous Kenyan constitutional process and the convoluted efforts by different players to reform our country. A meticulous, insightful and excellent guide in an intriguing election year, the book will help you weigh in on the quest for democracy and how far we've tamed the Leviathan as of August 8, 2017.   

DAVID PIETRUSZA’S 1920: THE YEAR OF THE SIX PRESIDENTS

2013 might be the year when the heavyweights of the Kenyan political elite sought the presidency, but 2017 also has its own little-known candidates tactfully seeking relevance, perhaps for posterity. Considering Kenyans are notoriously allergic to reading, especially tired, dull and sluggish history written in textbook style, The Year of the Six Presidents is a perfect choice for us. It uses compelling anecdotal, factual and verifiable information in an involving and riveting take on an election that had many firsts.

Women were voting in the US election for the first time. Six past and future presidents — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge — were battering each other for the White House. The publicity undertaken was unprecedented as newsreel and newspaper coverage entered the election. The 1920 census solidly indicated that the country had accomplished urban status through access to easy credit, development of modern chain stores and unparalleled mass production as automobiles made America a driving nation.

Pietrusza cultivates real tension and leaves nothing to the imagination. He covers racial politics and the Ku Klux Klan resurrection, without leaving even small details, such as the colour of the suit Herbert Hoover donned in his wedding. It’s the perfect book for a Kenya who wants to parallel the little matter of Kenyan tribalism, intractable social media, the small number of women running for office and our urban consciousness.

DEVIL ON THE CROSSBY NGUGI WA THIONG'O

Originally written in Gikuyu as Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ, this Ngugi masterpiece fuses a range of themes and multiple literary principles to bring out a classic take on institutionalised corruption. Glimpse at the so familiar habit of funnelling the blood and sweat of the typical African to foreigners in a satirical freak show where women and land are brazenly sold. Workers and peasants contend with buying the air they breathe as their blood and sweat is milked via pipes. There are warnings about swallowing “foreign customs whole” to competing voices in the story that engrave in your mind the Kenyan story is far from over and constantly being written. Ngugi, through the heroine of the day, Warĩĩnga, echoes the cry of many today as she prays to “God” to “help Kenya, my love” in a book written on toilet paper secretly in prison. 

HUNTER S. THOMPSON’S FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ’72

If you thought its only Kenyan presidential hopefuls who refuse to attend highly awaited and rated national debates, think again. In the 1972 US election, there was none. From exaggerating events hilariously, employing compulsive impropriety in an insightful and terrifyingly readable style, Thompson sketches the 1972 presidential campaign. Senator George S. McGovern was facing off with President Richard M. Nixon. Unabashedly hateful against the incumbent, Thompson is brutally honest about many things in a political campaign, from small decisions like what to tell young voters in a school gymnasium to choosing the right words for the folks of the Milwaukee Polish district. 

Future leaders are introduced in the book, such as the then Georgia governor and future American president Jimmy Carter. There’s an unspoken truth in the book about the way the media refused to present all political stories but focused on what they wanted covered, a delirious complaint that echoes the love-hate liaison between the Kenyan media and politicians.

Thomson criticises the '72 journalists for their slothful engagement in pack journalism just like we’re reminded journalists went for ‘tea’ in State House and the age-old accusation of a brown envelope exchanging hands under the table.   

NOT YET UHURUBY JARAMOGI OGINGA ODINGA

Kenyans are alleged to exalt villains, kill messengers and denigrate saints and Adonijah Obadiah (Jaramogi Odinga Odinga) makes this jarringly familiar observation. The authoritative, impassioned and honest autobiography might be a bit scanty on the personal life of the author but lays down historical haunting anecdotes that continue to plague the Kenyan nation perhaps more than ever before. A refreshing take on the Kenya we believe we know from the words and eyes of its first vice-president to the eventual aftermath of his falling-out with the ruling clique of independent Kenya.