Cartoonist Kibet Bull makes witty comeback with coded messages to government

Remember when we used to wake up to funny Kasongo silhouettes accompanied by text criticising the government?

Kenyans on X would have a field day with these threads.

These silhouettes were famous beyond the X corridors, flooding other social media platforms like WhatsApp statuses. It was hard to go a day without bumping into one.

Gideon Kibet, aka Kibet Bull (the man behind the hilarious memes), as he is known to netizens, had a knack for cutting through political hypocrisy with nothing more than silhouettes.

His silhouettes spoke louder than press conferences, his lines more damning than parliamentary debates.

Those in power watched him with uneasy eyes.

But the cartoons disappeared soon after their creator, Kibet, was abducted and later released by unknown assailants.

The Nakuru-born activist and cartoonist seemed to have lost the skill that made him a favourite with Kenyans, but not with the government.

The once fearless cartoonist no longer wielded his pen with defiance. The silhouettes had faded and his aura of ridicule had diminished, even going so far as to say in an interview that he would not draw anything critical of the government.

But he seems to have found another way to express his artistic side.

Instead of his usual art, his X posts are now a series of reposted tweets, criticisms written by others and amplified by him, with a sprinkling of his own, usually accompanied by photos or newspaper clippings.

Going by his X account, where he goes by the name Yoko, he has resorted to using witty and coded tweets to take jabs at the government and call out leaders for bad governance, eschewing cartoons altogether.

A case in point is a tweet from him on January 31, in which he appears to be throwing shade at a senior politician, saying he may have hired helicopters at a hefty cost to build a thatched house in the company of other politicians.

"Birds of a feather. You'll find them hiring a helicopter at a cost of 200,000 an hour. Then you'll find Eric Omondi building a brick house for the needy without government funding. Shuka Baba usitumane," read one tweet, accompanied by a photo of the deputy president alongside other leaders participating in the construction of a mud and grass house.

In another tweet, Kibet writes: "If an MP can say SHA aiwork kwake, what about the ordinary mwananchi mwenye ni voiceless? Even mwenye huwa analipwa kuongea matope say it doesn't work".

In an interview with Mtaa Wangu on January 6, 2025, after his release from captivity, he noted that he would stop drawing silhouettes, but that activism was something he would continue.

The big question now is: has the bull stopped attacking? Has he been tamed, or is he just waiting for the right moment to draw again?