PREMIUM Nelson Amenya: Is Kenya entering the most dangerous stage of the cycle? Our Columnists Just now

That stage has a recognisable look, and it is one we’ve been living through for two years now: protests that come round more often and end worse; courts and police turned into instruments of politics; goons hired for the day and deployed alongside uniformed officers; and the loss of any shared account of events, so that within an hour of a death, three versions circulate with no way to distinguish the truth.

If that conflict can no longer be contained, the country enters Stage Six, marked by civil war or revolution.

Stage One begins after a civil war or revolution, when a new order emerges and its leaders consolidate power.