Friday, 18 September 2026, was one of those memorable days when the long, winding and sometimes exceedingly demanding journey of academic pursuit finally yields to the splendour of fulfilment. The University of Nairobi graduation ceremony had unfolded with all its characteristic pomp and circumstance: the colourful academic processions, the magnificent array of gowns and hoods, the solemn pronouncements, the conferral of degrees and the unmistakable atmosphere of achievement that attends the culmination of years of intellectual labour. For me, the occasion carried a particularly satisfying significance. I was graduating with my second master’s degree, another milestone in a scholarly journey whose full story would require considerably more than a graduation programme to narrate. When the formal proceedings had concluded, we decided to venture into Nairobi’s Central Business District proper for a sumptuous lunch at Al Yusra Restaurant, still adorned in our full graduation regalia and carrying with us the unmistakable air of people who had earned the right to enjoy their afternoon. There is something wonderfully satisfying about walking through the streets in academic robes after graduation, the hood resting upon one’s shoulders, the gown announcing a completed intellectual pilgrimage, and the ordinary bustle of the city unfolding around one as though nothing particularly extraordinary has happened, while within oneself an entire chapter of life has just reached its triumphant conclusion. The mind was still basking in the glories of graduation, the stomach was beginning to make its own legitimate demands upon the afternoon, and Al Yusra beckoned with the promise of a well-deserved meal. Yet somewhere along those busy Nairobi streets, between the splendour of academic achievement and the anticipated pleasures of lunch, an altogether different intellectual banquet unexpectedly presented itself.
As we passed a newspaper stand, the Daily Nation caught my eye. I stopped for a glimpse, initially attracted by the day’s headlines, only for my attention to settle upon a particularly intriguing item in the upper right-hand corner of the front page. There was President William Ruto accusing his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, of sabotaging his administration. I looked again. Sabotage! Uhuru sabotaging Ruto! The historical reversal was too striking to be allowed to disappear into the afternoon’s passing impressions. Here was the former Deputy President, now occupying State House, accusing the man under whom he had served of undermining his government, while the memory of the Jubilee administration, its celebrated beginnings, its spectacular deterioration and the bitter estrangement between its two principal architects remained sufficiently fresh to make the accusation fascinating. I reached into my pocket, retrieved three twenty-shilling coins, and procured the newspaper for sixty shillings, reasoning that it would make interesting reading later as I continued basking in the satisfaction of graduating with a second master’s degree. The transaction was modest, but the intellectual possibilities were enormous. A newspaper purchased almost casually on the way to lunch had unexpectedly opened a corridor between contemporary Kenyan politics and one of the most haunting narratives in the Old Testament. As we resumed our journey towards Al Yusra, the words continued turning in my mind: sabotage, Uhuru, Ruto, the reversal of political fortunes, yesterday’s Deputy President accusing yesterday’s President, and the extraordinary capacity of political history to return upon those who imagine that a change of office has also changed the meaning of their previous conduct. Somewhere in the recesses of biblical memory, another story began stirring, one involving a king who possessed a sword, a responsibility left unfinished, a prophet who heard sheep bleating when the king declared obedience, and an Amalekite who eventually appeared carrying the crown of the fallen king.
There are moments in the affairs of nations when politics produces an irony so complete, so strangely symmetrical and so pregnant with the consequences of yesterday that ordinary political vocabulary seems almost too impoverished to describe it. One is compelled to reach backwards into those ancient galleries of Scripture where human choices cast shadows longer than their makers imagined, where expediency eventually encounters consequence, where neglected responsibility refuses burial, and where unfinished business waits patiently beyond the horizon until another season summons it home. President Ruto’s accusation against former President Kenyatta presented precisely such an occasion. The allegations that Kenyatta was sponsoring opposition activity or undermining the administration, and Kenyatta’s responses to them, belong to a political dispute; the allegations are not, merely by being uttered, established findings of unlawful conduct. Yet the historical reversal invites a question extending well beyond the immediate quarrel: what becomes of unresolved disputes when the men involved exchange constitutional positions, when yesterday’s subordinate becomes today’s superior, when yesterday’s government becomes part of today’s opposition landscape, and when the language once directed at one officeholder returns from the mouth of another? The newspaper had cost me sixty shillings, but the question it deposited into my afternoon was considerably weightier than the coins I had surrendered. To explore it, my thoughts travelled from Nairobi’s streets to the blood-darkened slopes of Mount Gilboa, and from the political language of sabotage to a name that echoes across the tragic final chapters of Israel’s first king: Amalek.
The story begins when Saul is still king, the sword is still firmly in his hand, the throne is still beneath him and the opportunity for obedience still stands before him. Through Samuel comes the command concerning Amalek, and Saul marches to battle possessing both authority and instruction; yet somewhere between hearing and doing, obedience becomes negotiation. Saul strikes Amalek but spares Agag and preserves the best of the sheep, oxen and livestock, and when Samuel arrives the king astonishingly announces, “Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD” (1 Samuel 15:13). Then Samuel asks one of Scripture’s most devastating forensic questions: “What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” (verse 14). The evidence is literally making noise around Saul while Saul declares compliance. He explains, rationalises, points towards the people and clothes compromise in sacrificial language. The animals were supposedly preserved for the Lord, as though an honourable-sounding intention could alter the nature of what had actually been done. But Samuel slices through the architecture of excuse with words that have thundered through three millennia: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (verse 22), followed by the terrible sentence, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king” (verse 23). Here lies the seed of the tragedy. Saul’s problem was not lack of opportunity, absence of authority or ignorance of responsibility. The matter stood before him while the sword was in his hand, yet he left unfinished what he had been commanded to finish. Saul may have imagined that when Samuel turned away, the Amalek episode had ended, that the preserved animals would eventually be sacrificed, that Agag would cease to matter, and that the affairs of kingship would resume their ordinary course. But human beings frequently confuse the end of an episode with the end of its consequences. Saul moved on. Scripture did not.
For Amalek remained alive in the narrative, and what survived one chapter returned with teeth in another. By 1 Samuel 30, Amalekite raiders descend upon Ziklag while David and his fighting men are absent, burn the city and carry away its inhabitants. David and his warriors return not to welcoming households but to smoke, ashes and emptiness, and these hardened men lift their voices and weep until, in Scripture’s almost unbearable description, “they had no more power to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4). David strengthens himself in the Lord, pursues the raiders and recovers what was taken, but the theological and literary shadow has already lengthened: Amalek has not vanished merely because Saul’s encounter with Amalek belongs to an earlier chapter. Then comes Mount Gilboa. The Philistine archers close upon Saul and wound him grievously. Knowing what capture might bring, Saul commands his armour-bearer to thrust him through; the terrified armour-bearer refuses; Saul therefore takes a sword and falls upon it (1 Samuel 31:3–4). The king’s reign collapses amid the catastrophe of battle. Yet when Second Samuel opens, another strand enters through the testimony of a young man arriving from the battlefield. He tells David that he encountered Saul in his final agony and that Saul, recognising death as inevitable, asked him to finish him. “So I stood upon him, and slew him,” the stranger says, “because I was sure that he could not live after that he was fallen” (2 Samuel 1:10). Then David asks the apparently ordinary question upon which the dreadful symmetry of the entire story suddenly turns: “Whence art thou?” The stranger answers, “I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite” (2 Samuel 1:13). And there, across the distance between 1 Samuel 15 and 2 Samuel 1, beginning and ending stare at one another. Saul once stood before Amalek with authority, opportunity and sword; now an Amalekite stands before David carrying Saul’s crown and bracelet, claiming that his hand administered Saul’s final blow. The accounts in 1 Samuel 31 and 2 Samuel 1 present Saul’s death from different narrative vantage points, the latter through the young man’s own testimony; the precise sequence need not be settled to appreciate the image before us. Saul had been commanded to finish Amalek; Saul had failed fully to finish Amalek; and at the end of Saul’s reign, an Amalekite appears claiming to have finished Saul. The name associated with Saul’s unfinished assignment returns in the final account of his kingship, and in the stranger’s hand rests the crown that once sat upon Saul’s head.
It would, of course, be reckless to convert this magnificent biblical narrative into crude political identification. Uhuru Kenyatta is not Saul; William Ruto is not an Amalekite; democratic opposition is not Amalek; and constitutional politics is not an Old Testament battlefield. Nor should Saul’s ancient command concerning Amalek be imported into modern politics as an instruction to destroy opponents, for that would be to exchange constitutional government for a dangerous caricature of biblical kingship. The analogy lies at a deeper level: unfinished responsibility, deferred accountability, inconsistent standards, political expediency and the durability of precedents allowed to survive because confronting them at the proper time was inconvenient. Kenya watched the Jubilee partnership disintegrate in full public view. The men who traversed the country together in 2013 and 2017, campaigned as a governing partnership and presented themselves as an inseparable political team eventually occupied increasingly hostile political positions while remaining President and Deputy President of the same Republic. Ruto maintained that the 2018 Handshake between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga progressively marginalised him from government; Kenyatta’s political allies offered a different account, portraying the Deputy President as having turned politically against the administration while continuing to hold constitutional office. These competing interpretations should not be retrospectively inflated into findings of treason or criminal guilt. Political disloyalty, however bitterly perceived, is not automatically a criminal offence or a ground for removal from office. But that legal caution sharpens rather than extinguishes the historical inquiry. If those within the Kenyatta administration genuinely believed that the conduct of its Deputy President had crossed the grave threshold of gross constitutional violation, serious criminality or gross misconduct, what evidence existed, what lawful options were considered, and why was removal from office not ultimately pursued? Was the evidence inadequate? Were the parliamentary numbers unavailable? Was impeachment judged too destabilising? Was restraint deliberate? Or was the dispute fundamentally political rather than constitutional? The historical record must answer such questions where it can; an analogy, however compelling, cannot answer them by itself.
The sword in this metaphor therefore requires careful handling, because Kenya is a constitutional republic rather than Saul’s monarchy, and Uhuru Kenyatta never possessed a personal presidential sword with which he could lawfully dismiss an inconvenient Deputy President. The sword of our Republic is the Constitution itself, and it may be wielded only through evidence, institutions and due process. Article 2 declares the Constitution supreme; Article 3 imposes upon every person the obligation to respect, uphold and defend it; Article 10 binds the exercise of public authority to national values including the rule of law; and Article 73 declares public authority a trust. Article 150 provides for the removal of a Deputy President on grounds of incapacity or through impeachment on specified grounds, including gross violation of the Constitution or another law, serious reasons to believe that a crime has been committed, or gross misconduct; it applies the procedures in Articles 144 and 145 with the necessary modifications. It does not authorise presidential dismissal merely because a governing partnership has broken down. Thus the historical question is not why Uhuru did not personally punish Ruto, for arbitrary presidential punishment would itself have offended constitutionalism. It is whether the allegations made during their estrangement were understood by those making them as grounds for constitutional accountability, whether the evidence could sustain such a course, and whether the responsible institutions were willing and able to act if the applicable threshold was met. There is a world of difference between mercy and institutional paralysis, between restraint and expediency, between refusing persecution and refusing accountability. Scripture itself distinguishes them. “He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding” (Proverbs 14:29), yet Ecclesiastes warns that “because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). The first verse restrains vengeance; the second warns against impunity. Between them lies the narrow road of constitutional government: never punish because somebody is your enemy, but never suspend lawful accountability merely because somebody is politically useful, institutionally inconvenient or temporarily too powerful to confront.
And herein lies the haunting resonance of Saul and the sword left in its sheath. There are decisions that appear prudent in the immediate political season because tomorrow seems distant and consequences appear negotiable. But Scripture repeatedly warns that tomorrow possesses a memory. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him” (Proverbs 26:27). “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him” (Ecclesiastes 10:8). These are not warrants for us to pronounce divine judgement upon named Kenyan politicians, for “the secret things belong unto the LORD our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29); they illuminate an enduring moral architecture in which actions generate consequences, precedents acquire afterlives and standards eventually encounter those who established them. What one tolerates because it is politically useful today may become intolerable when somebody else deploys it tomorrow. What one excuses in an ally becomes difficult to condemn in an adversary without exposing the crookedness of one’s scales. What one permits while powerful may survive one’s power. The sword may remain in its sheath, the administration may end, the motorcades may change direction, portraits may come down from government walls and the men who once occupied the highest offices may begin travelling through the Republic under very different arrangements, but the unresolved contradiction remains alive, walking quietly through the years until another political season gives it opportunity to knock upon another door.
That is what makes the present accusation of sabotage so striking in historical terms. William Ruto remained Deputy President until the end of Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency, contested the 2022 election against the candidate Kenyatta supported, won the presidency and succeeded the man from whose political camp he had become profoundly estranged. Whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs of that rupture, Ruto completed his tenure as Deputy President. The political dispute that had consumed Jubilee therefore crossed the finishing line without removal from office and entered another political age. Now the offices have reversed. Yesterday’s Deputy President sits in State House; yesterday’s President stands outside government; and the politician whose conduct Kenyatta’s allies once criticised as undermining their administration now publicly accuses Kenyatta of undermining his administration. The vocabulary has survived while the mouths have exchanged places. Yesterday’s accused underminer has become today’s accuser of undermining. Yesterday’s President has become today’s alleged saboteur. And across this reversal one can almost hear Samuel approaching again, his prophetic ears disturbed by an inconvenient sound: “What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears?” What do these old precedents tell us? By what standards should conduct be assessed when political positions change? When does disagreement within government become misconduct, and when does criticism from outside government remain the lawful exercise of political freedom? Those questions require distinctions that partisan vocabulary often obscures. The sheep are still bleating, not because a biblical metaphor has established anyone’s guilt, but because the earlier dispute remains part of the history through which the present accusation must be understood.
There is something profoundly dangerous about political standards whose legitimacy depends upon the identity of the person invoking them. Scripture calls such morality a false balance: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1). Constitutionalism demands one scale. If conduct is lawful when performed by one’s ally, it cannot become unlawful merely because an adversary performs it. If conduct constitutes constitutional misconduct when performed by an opponent, political friendship cannot baptise the same conduct into righteousness. Jesus expressed the principle with frightening simplicity: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2). David discovered the danger when Nathan told him the story of the rich man who seized the poor man’s lamb; David pronounced furious judgement before Nathan turned the mirror towards the king and declared, “Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:7). Haman built gallows for Mordecai only for the machinery of destruction he had prepared for another to become the instrument of his own demise (Esther 7:9–10). Adoni-bezek, having mutilated conquered kings, later suffered the same treatment and confessed, “As I have done, so God hath requited me” (Judges 1:7). Scripture’s gallery is crowded with accounts in which the measure, the pit, the gallows, the stone and the sword return towards those who once controlled them. The civic principle illuminated by those narratives is not that every political reversal proves divine retribution, but that a standard worthy of governing public life must remain intelligible and consistent when those who invoke it exchange places.
Ruto’s allegation against Uhuru should consequently be subjected to that single scale. If Kenyatta or anyone associated with him has committed an offence, let evidence be gathered, let institutions act and let due process determine responsibility. If what is being called sabotage consists instead of lawful criticism, political association, peaceful mobilisation or constitutionally protected opposition, then those freedoms remain freedoms even when their exercise inconveniences State House. Article 33 protects expression within constitutional limits, Article 37 protects peaceful assembly and Article 38 protects political rights. Conversely, constitutional freedoms cannot be invoked as camouflage for actual criminal conduct merely because the accused happens to oppose the government. The identity of the actor must not determine the content of the law. Justice cannot ask first whose jersey a man wears and only afterwards decide which statute applies. “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgement,” says Leviticus 19:15, while Deuteronomy commands, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgement” (Deuteronomy 1:17). That is the majestic simplicity of the rule of law: one Constitution beneath which President and pensioner, government and opposition, yesterday’s ruler and today’s ruler must all stand. The question is not whether political criticism causes discomfort to the incumbent, because constitutional liberty would be a remarkably impoverished thing if it protected only speech that pleased those in power. The question is whether particular conduct crosses an identifiable legal boundary, established through evidence and adjudicated according to law. Sabotage cannot mean merely whatever the government dislikes, just as opposition cannot be a magical word that converts unlawful conduct into constitutional virtue.
And therefore the deepest lesson of Saul is not, and must never become, that political opponents should be crushed while power permits it. That would be to baptise authoritarianism with Scripture and transform Amalek into an excuse for political persecution. The lesson is altogether more demanding: when lawful responsibility stands before you, discharge it lawfully, impartially, courageously and in its proper season. If evidence warrants accountability, pursue accountability. If evidence does not warrant it, restrain the hand of power. Do not prosecute because you hate; do not refrain because you fear; do not excuse because the offender is useful; do not condemn because the accused has crossed the political aisle. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There is a season for mercy and a season for judgement, a season for restraint and a season for lawful accountability, but there is never a season for crooked scales. The tragedy begins when political leaders mistake postponement for resolution, silence for settlement, survival for vindication and temporary advantage for permanent immunity from consequence. “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Seed disappears beneath the soil and appears to have vanished, but disappearance is not death. Beneath the earth it germinates. Roots descend. Shoots rise. Seasons turn. Eventually the field presents the farmer with the harvest of what he planted when nobody could yet see it. So too with public institutions: an inconsistent standard may appear harmless while it favours those who established it, only to reveal its full implications when another hand takes hold of it.
That agricultural image brings us finally back to Mount Gilboa and to one of the most haunting tableaux in all Scripture. Saul’s army lies shattered. Jonathan, the noble prince whom David loved, is dead. Saul’s sons have fallen. Israel’s soldiers have fled. The king who once towered physically above his people lies dead upon the mountain. The royal authority that once commanded armies has evaporated into silence. Far away David waits at Ziklag, unaware of the full catastrophe, until through the dust comes a young stranger with torn clothes and earth upon his head. In his possession are the insignia of fallen sovereignty: Saul’s crown and Saul’s bracelet. Imagine the weight of that crown in the stranger’s hand. It once rested upon the head of Israel’s first king; now it is being carried through the wilderness as evidence that a political age has ended. David asks what happened. The stranger tells his story. David asks who he is. And then comes the answer that reaches backwards through the entire tragedy, through Gilboa, through Ziklag, through years of decline, through Samuel’s rebuke, through bleating sheep and spared Agag, all the way to the day when Saul stood victorious with the sword still in his hand: “I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite.” The name returns, and with it the memory of an assignment Saul had not completed. The crown has changed hands. The sword no longer rests within Saul’s power. The king who once decided what to spare can decide nothing now. In the stranger’s account, the man who claimed to deliver Saul’s final blow belongs to the very people whose name marked the earlier failure. It is a haunting literary symmetry: Saul once encountered Amalek while the crown was on Saul’s head and the sword was in Saul’s hand; at the end of the story, an Amalekite appears while the sword has fallen from Saul’s hand and the crown is in the Amalekite’s hand.
And so my sixty-shilling newspaper, purchased on the way to a well-deserved graduation lunch, had offered more than an interesting headline. It had reopened a question about the relationship between political power, lawful responsibility and the afterlife of unresolved disputes. The graduation gown would eventually be folded away, the celebratory meal would become a pleasant memory, and the newspaper itself would pass into yesterday’s news; but the question raised by its headline would remain. What do holders of public authority leave unresolved because confronting it lawfully in its proper season is inconvenient? What constitutional standards are weakened because they restrain a present ally? What institutional weaknesses are tolerated because those in power imagine they will always control the institutions? What lawful swords remain sheathed when accountability requires courage, and what unlawful swords are recklessly unsheathed when vengeance offers immediate satisfaction? Scripture answers not by identifying a modern politician as Saul or Amalek, but by reminding every generation that the sheep keep bleating, the seed becomes harvest, the wind becomes whirlwind, the pit may receive its digger, the stone may roll backwards, and the measure returns to the one who measured. Political offices change hands; the obligation to apply the law impartially does not. Saul once stood before Amalek with the sword in his hand. At the end of Saul’s story, an Amalekite stood before David with Saul’s crown in his hand. Between the sword and the crown lies a warning that reaches beyond kingship into every institution entrusted with public power: what is left unresolved when lawful responsibility requires attention may survive the season, outlive the officeholder, cross from one administration into another, and return when the sword is no longer in the same hand.