Political cartooning in Kenya has never been without risk. Cartoonists have faced expulsion, state-engineered censorship, lawsuits from angry politicians unhappy with their depictions, and even the occasional phone threat. 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, or the “Nyayo Mistake” that gripped the country from 1978 to 2002, cartoonists were not directly targeted by the state. Newspaper publishers saw their printing presses destroyed, and editors and writers – including satirists such as Wahome Motahi – detained for long periods without trial. However, cartoonists were spared the worst excesses of the regime.

That changed with the kidnapping of Gideon Kibet, known as Kibet Paul, a young cartoonist who became famous online for his bold use of silhouettes to mock President William Ruto’s administration, which had taken an increasingly authoritarian turn after its legitimacy was falsified. It has come into question due to youth-led street protests across the country.

The regime responded with a brutal crackdown that killed dozens and a kidnapping campaign of prominent activists that continues to this day. According to the Kenya National Human Rights Commission, for at least the past seven months 82 people They were taken and about a third of them are still missing. Kibet and his brother, Ronnie Kiplagat, disappeared in the capital, Nairobi, on Christmas Eve after meeting with opposition lawmaker Okiya Umtatah.

The police’s involvement in the duo’s disappearance was partly confirmed by reports that officers had stormed his home in Nakuru, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital, in a desperate attempt to arrest him there. Police have also been involved in previous kidnappings, including that of a veteran journalist. Macharia JeethuWho was kidnapped from the police station where he took refuge.

By going after Kibet, Ruto’s regime demonstrated its fragility. According to one theory, the cartoon is based on the political system. While in totalitarian regimes, the artist is forced to praise the regime and condemn its enemies, and in democracies, the cartoonist serves as a watchdog, keeping those in power honest and accountable, in authoritarian regimes some dissent is allowed, and when regimes become fragile, cartoonists mercilessly expose their strict follies.

For six decades, Kenya has been an aspiring democracy, where people have constantly had to resist the authoritarian tendencies of their rulers. Ruto, who was elected with barely a third of the vote in 2022, was particularly insecure about his position, initially trying to build a place for himself on the international stage to cover his lack of domestic legitimacy. The mid-year protests, which forced him to withdraw unpopular tax measures, reshape his government, and launch a youth movement focused on ousting him, also heightened his authoritarian tendencies, fostered by none other than Moi himself.

Through his cartoons, Kibet Paul mercilessly exposes Ruto’s tough-as-nails idiocy, attracting the regime’s attention and anger, as well as winning the admiration of millions of Kenyans both online and offline. He now joins dozens of young people who have disappeared at the hands of Ruto’s regime, some of whom reported being tortured and others killed. That the kidnappings were the work of state agents is not seriously in doubt and has drawn condemnation from a large segment of Kenyan society as well as human rights groups.

In recent days, Ruto has vowed to end the kidnappings, which many Kenyans interpreted as an admission of complicity. In his New Year message to the country, he acknowledged that there were “cases of excessive and extrajudicial measures by members of the security services,” but seemed to suggest that the real problem was not police misbehavior, but citizens promoting “extremism and individualism.” And violence.” Selfish interpretations of rights and freedoms.”

Ruto, who has in the past shown disdain for the teaching of history in Kenyan schools, claiming that Kenyans need to focus on more “marketable” disciplines, would benefit greatly from reading about Kenya’s recent past. Over the past seven decades, Kenya’s rulers – from British colonialists to his predecessors in the presidency, including his fellow ICC indictee for crimes against humanity, Uhuru Kenyatta – have learned the same painful lesson: lack of legitimacy is crucial. It is fatal to their regimes and its brutality will not save them.

Ruto is the weakest of all and he knows it. Barely halfway through his term, he is already planning to change the rules for handing over power to give himself greater control over the process, even though the next elections are more than two and a half years away. As he floundered, he made several major government reshuffles and even engineered the impeachment, dismissal, and replacement of his deputy. Having successfully run a populist campaign for the presidency against the “dynasties” – the political families that have dominated Kenyan politics since independence – he was forced to swallow his words and court their support.

But the same weakness, insecurity, fear and desperation is what makes Ruto so dangerous. This is what makes him target young people whose only crime is demanding the better life he promised them. This is what makes his regime tremble with ridicule and see online cartoons as an existential threat. This is what makes him a threat to the nation and its constitutional order – a threat that all Kenyans must live by.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.