The Performance Abroad vs. The Reality at Home

The Stage of Global Compassion

Every September, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) becomes more than just a gathering of world leaders—it turns into a theater. Leaders deliver speeches not just to fellow diplomats, but to the watching world. Carefully scripted, laden with buzzwords like “dignity,” “justice,” and “humanity,” these addresses are performances. For many leaders, it is their chance to polish an image that at home may be bruised and battered by discontent.

When Kenya’s president stood before the UN and spoke passionately about Haitians as “humans who deserve dignity,” the words rolled off like poetry. They echoed the moral tone of a statesman eager to be remembered as a defender of the vulnerable, a voice for those who suffer. The world applauded—or at least, politely nodded—as it always does at such spectacles. For an outsider, the speech sounded inspiring. It carried the weight of empathy, responsibility, and statesmanship.

Yet to those who know Kenya intimately, the address was not just hollow—it was drenched in irony. It felt like watching an actor step into costume, deliver a moving soliloquy, and bow before a global audience, while the real script—the one unfolding back home—painted a starkly different picture. This “performance of compassion” exposes the growing chasm between the narrative leaders export and the lived experiences of their citizens.

For the international press, the performance may stand unchallenged, but for Kenyans, the disconnect is impossible to ignore.

The Reality of Teargas and Trauma

As the president spoke in New York, Nairobi was telling its own story—only there were no applause lines, no polished speeches. There was only the choking haze of teargas, the sharp crack of live bullets, and the cries of a generation pushed to the edge. Young Kenyans, protesting rising costs of living, corruption, and unfulfilled promises, found themselves not in dialogue with their leaders, but in direct confrontation with a state determined to silence them.

The irony is unbearable. On the same day Kenyans were being told that Haitians deserve dignity, protesters in Mathare, Kibera, and downtown Nairobi were being brutalized by police. Images circulated online of young men and women sprawled on pavements, some unconscious, others bleeding, and many dragged into police trucks like cattle. The state’s response to dissent was not engagement, but suppression.

The pattern is familiar. Protests in Kenya rarely end without casualties. Police brutality is not an exception; it is a norm. Journalists documenting abuses face harassment, activists are branded as “troublemakers,” and families bury loved ones killed in the name of “maintaining order.” Yet, abroad, Kenya markets itself as a beacon of democracy in Africa—a contradiction so glaring it would be comical, if it were not deadly.

This is the painful truth: dignity is easier to preach than to practice.

The Dissonance Between Word and Deed

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality is not accidental—it is carefully curated. Leaders understand the symbolic power of words on the global stage. A speech about dignity at the UN is not aimed at citizens back home; it is aimed at securing international legitimacy, courting donors, and polishing an image for history books.

But words have consequences. When a president proclaims himself a champion of dignity abroad while denying it at home, it corrodes trust. Citizens do not only suffer from the violence of the state; they suffer from the hypocrisy of watching their pain ignored in favor of international applause. The wound deepens when the rest of the world seems to buy into the performance, leaving ordinary Kenyans feeling unseen and unheard.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about “the banality of evil”—the normalization of cruelty through bureaucracy and denial. In Kenya, this banality manifests through contradiction: the president condemns injustice abroad while enabling it at home. The performance is not only dishonest—it is destructive. It teaches citizens that their suffering is invisible unless it serves an international agenda.

Meanwhile, the global audience is rarely interested in investigating the gap between the performance and reality. The applause drowns out the cries from Nairobi’s streets. For Kenyans, the dissonance between word and deed feels like betrayal layered upon brutality.

The Cost of Silence and Gaslighting

The most dangerous effect of this duplicity is psychological. When leaders deny the lived realities of their citizens while performing morality abroad, it creates a form of collective gaslighting. Citizens are told their pain is not real, or worse—that it is their fault for demanding too much.

This gaslighting corrodes civic morale. If you are teargassed today and tomorrow your president tells the world he stands for dignity, what are you supposed to believe? How do you reconcile your trauma with his performance? For many, the result is a growing numbness. People retreat into survival mode, losing faith in protest, activism, and even democracy itself. The state wins not only through bullets, but through silence.

The cost is immense. Whole generations grow up internalizing that speaking up leads only to violence, while the perpetrators of that violence continue to enjoy legitimacy abroad. This silence becomes self-reinforcing: the less people believe in their ability to demand dignity, the easier it becomes for the state to deny it.

And yet, truth has a way of seeping through the cracks. Social media, citizen journalism, and diaspora voices ensure that the performance is increasingly contested. The world may not always listen, but Kenyans are refusing to let silence erase them.

Toward a Politics of Integrity

The irony of the president’s UNGA speech should not only make us cynical; it should challenge us to imagine something better. Kenya—and indeed, the world—does not need leaders who can act compassion on stage. It needs leaders who can practice compassion on the ground. Dignity must not be a slogan for export; it must be the organizing principle of governance at home.

This requires a radical shift. First, accountability must not be selective. If the state demands respect for human dignity abroad, it must ensure the same for its own citizens. Police brutality must not be met with denial, but with justice. Second, dignity cannot be reduced to charity or aid. It is about creating systems where citizens are heard, protected, and given a fair chance at life.

Above all, integrity demands consistency. To speak of dignity while enabling repression is to strip the word of meaning. But to embody dignity—to face protesters not with teargas but with dialogue, to honor critics as part of democracy rather than enemies of the state—that is leadership worth remembering.

Kenya’s story need not remain one of contradiction. But until performances give way to practice, citizens will continue to live with the bitter knowledge that their leader speaks beautifully abroad while abandoning them at home.