“Hustlers versus Dynasty”: Kenya’s New Class Politics

Can combative language about class be categorised as hate speech? Kenyan politics is grappling with this question as a language of “hustlers versus dynasty” grips the country.

A committee of members of parliament has put forward a bill to include class, termed “social status”, in the document, along with ethnicity as an inexcusable form of incitement. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), founded after the post-election violence that took place in Kenya in 2007–2008, appears to be in favour. According to an article in Kenya’s Daily Nation paper, the chairman of NCIC, Dr Samuel Kobia, said that the hustler-dynasty debate “risks plunging the country into chaos”. He advocated for quick, strong action, saying, “If this is not properly handled, it could lead the country the Rwanda way in 2022.”

The phrase “hustlers versus dynasty” was coined by Deputy President William Ruto, following a political upset. Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s current president, had agreed that he would support Ruto’s candidacy for the next presidential election in 2022. Then, in March 2018, Kenyatta reversed course. He invited his former political rival Raila Odinga to the presidential office and after a private meeting, the two men publicly sealed their new partnership with the now famous “handshake”.

Scorned and looking to bolster his position against the current president, Ruto labelled Kenyatta’s brand of politics as “dynasty” in contrast with his own hustler identity, one that he has long embraced, despite his now substantial wealth. Ruto’s humble background is well known – he talks of how he went to school barefoot, getting his first pair of shoes when he was about 15, and worked as a young man selling chickens by the side of the road.

In contrast, President Kenyatta and his former rival Odinga can boast of few hustler credentials. Kenyatta is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. Odinga is the son of the country’s first vice president, Jaramogi Odinga. Both grew up comfortably and studied internationally after secondary school, Kenyatta in the US and Odinga in Germany. Also part of the so-called dynasty team is Gideon Moi, the son of Kenya’s longest-serving president, Daniel arap Moi.

While ethnicity has been the dominant dividing line in Kenyan politics, some argue that a new language of “hustlers versus dynasty” suggests the emergence of a more class-based politics While ethnicity has been the dominant dividing line in Kenyan politics, some argue that a new language of “hustlers versus dynasty” suggests the emergence of a more class-based politics. Wycliffe Muga, a columnist of the Star newspaper, wrote, “Dr Ruto is offering the great majority of Kenyans (who are most definitely poor) a new form of identity politics. He invites his supporters to put behind them their usual focus on regional and linguistic tribal solidarity, and to embrace what amounts to a neo-Marxist theoretical framework that gives them a new identity as the betrayed and longsuffering ‘wretched of the earth’.”

But Ruto uses the term “hustlers”, rather than “the poor”, and that seems to be a key distinction. Scholars of Kenya’s “hustle economy”, such as Tatiana Thieme, describe how there is an appealing form of agency in the hustler identity. Hustlers are not victims, pure and simple, they are strivers.

Furthermore, politics of grievance are never about one axis of inequality, even if that is what appears on the surface. The hustler-dynasty frame is no exception; it resonates for reasons beyond class.

In particular, there is a gendered dimension to the term “hustling”. In my own research, though the informal economy is easy on no one, I found that young men were much more likely to describe themselves as hustlers or use hustling to describe their means of getting by. Given the political and economic landscape of Kenya, dynasty is also coded as male, with lineages of power carried on by men as is common elsewhere in the world.

A sense of marginalisation and disempowerment, particularly acute amongst low-income men, can help explain why the hustler-dynasty narrative resonates.A sense of marginalisation and disempowerment, particularly acute amongst low-income men, can help explain why the hustler-dynasty narrative resonates.   Scholars of masculinity in Kenya, including Chimaraoke Izugbara and Naomi van Stapele, show that men are expected, by themselves and others, to live up to a provider ideal. The harsh economy means that they often fall short, adding a particular sense of humiliation and shame to their experience of precarity.

My research focuses on another narrative of grievance in Kenya, that after years of focusing on girls’ and women’s empowerment, “the boy child has been forgotten”. As hustler-dynasty is not “just” about class, neither is the boy child narrative “just” about gender. Men often used it to direct attention to their experience of poverty or that of other men. For example, when I asked a 30-year-old man in central Kenya what he thought of the boy child, he replied, “Should I use the words? He is miserable.” From his shop where he sold medication for livestock, he gestured to a group of four men who were sitting on the grass some distance away, having not found work that day, saying, “Actually, even at my age, he just stands there around… So you see, the boy child is miserable.”

As with hustler-dynasty, there is an anti-authority dimension to the boy child narrative in that respondents often argue that those who are high up in policy simply do not understand the suffering of the boy child. When I asked a 25-year-old cleaner in a mall how the boy child could be neglected if men still dominated in politics, he answered me, “Don’t look there at the people in the big offices, look down here.”

As we have seen across the world, from the US to India, how politicians handle the grievances of economically precarious men can have serious implications. Could hustler-dynasty be translated into greater economic justice or could it fuel other underlying animosities, including around ethnicity and women’s advancement? What unfolds in Kenya in the coming months could provide clues to other countries where new languages are emerging to confront – or take advantage of – longstanding inequalities.