Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #UpperdeckpeopleKE
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This conversation of #thetackle with @DavidNdii was just brilliant. I didn't realize that I have never listened to him for an extended length of time without a specific agenda. @geraldbitok you have done well.
fb.watch/3y3vtVa2dk/
fb.watch/3y3vtVa2dk/
There were a number of aha! moments for me. One was the distinction Ndii made between the class that wants wealth by entitlement, and the other by enterprise.
I love that. Because it also destroys the narrative of #upperdeckpeopleKE of "merit."
I love that. Because it also destroys the narrative of #upperdeckpeopleKE of "merit."
"Merit," which is what our education is about, is a pipeline through which the people who rule on the basis of entitlement throw crumbs at 3% of us to join them.
That's why #upperdeckpeopleKE don't support public education. They think their kids have a chance at #tyrannyof3pc
That's why #upperdeckpeopleKE don't support public education. They think their kids have a chance at #tyrannyof3pc
Kenyans, it's time to talk about the role of the #upperdeckpeopleKE in Kenya's stagnation: the academics, professionals and civil servants.
They are cynically misusing public participation to call a flawed process of #BBIreport the people's agenda.
They've done this before.
They are cynically misusing public participation to call a flawed process of #BBIreport the people's agenda.
They've done this before.
The politicians know that politically, #BBIReport has no case. None at all. Everybody can see through what the dynasties are doing.
So they are getting lawyers, professors and journalists to argue about technical details and refuse to allow questions of context and legitimacy.
So they are getting lawyers, professors and journalists to argue about technical details and refuse to allow questions of context and legitimacy.
The other day the #newsgang on @citizentvkenya even hosted a top GoK bureaucrat to discuss the proposals in BBI and completely evade the socio-political elephants in the room.
What is education for if we're going to train people to talk in the clouds rather than vitu kwa ground?
What is education for if we're going to train people to talk in the clouds rather than vitu kwa ground?
Uthamakism is rooted in white pathology and works like fascism. It's European in thinking, no matter how many proverbs, spears, gourds and mutura GEMA elites throw into the picture. Kenyans who can't deconstruct white pathology will find it hard to understand uthamaki fascism.
The first thing to understand about #uthamakifascism is that it is European, not indigenous to Kikuyu or Africa. Second, uthamaki comes from white pathology which crushes diversity and forces people to swear allegiance to one identity. European kingdoms did it in Europe as well.
#uthamakifascism has crushed the complex histories of the former Central province and melted them into one history that makes Kikuyus have a European style king. The ideology is then repeated until it appears like truth. @MutemiWaKiama broke it down here theelephant.info/radio/2017/08/…
The Kikuyus who want to die for the Tekayos should just register with State House and we finish with that story. Some of us are tired of living under a seige mentality. What this cannibal is doing is preparing an altar for blood sacrifice.
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THREAD
Tekayo is blackmailing home guards of other ethnic groups with a slice of the unnecessary and overrated Kikuyu vote.
For me, I will probably not vote.
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For me, I will probably not vote.
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I refuse to keep going to polling booths terrorized by strange fruit, swinging on the trees, blood on the leaves, blood at the roots. They killed Msando, mocked him, then we voted like nothing happened.
movies2.nytimes.com/books/first/m/…
movies2.nytimes.com/books/first/m/…
Something that struck me in this thread is the role of traditional African spirituality, and the obsession of the colonialists with it.
It struck me because even for Mau Mau, it wasn't the weapons or the politics that the British were obsessed with. It was the oathing.
It struck me because even for Mau Mau, it wasn't the weapons or the politics that the British were obsessed with. It was the oathing.
Yani the British destroyed and tortured whole communities to destroy their core spirituality. What the British did to the #Talai clan was literal genocide. They cut people from the land, took them to where disease would kill them, and then put a stigma to socially kill them.
By its definition, genocide is not only about killing people but killing the memory of their existence.
The story of the people must be retold, otherwise we become complicit in the British project.
The story of the people must be retold, otherwise we become complicit in the British project.
Mindukras or #upperdeckpeopleKE, the people who ridiculed the arts and social sciences as irrelevant to the market, are now surprised that Kenyans are stigmatizing people who have been affected by covid.
Let me school you about why Kenyans are stigmatizing and mocking them.
Let me school you about why Kenyans are stigmatizing and mocking them.
1. We're helpless. Kenya is run by a corrupt president whose current preoccupation is not our health, but fixing any alternative voices and getting his bureaucrats international jobs. He gives a rat's ass about us. The healthcare system is privatized and we don't trust it anyway.
We're getting lectures on what to do, what we're not doing, but at the back of our minds, except for the governors who have private ICU beds, we're basically not sure we'll get tested or treated.
If you had done the arts, you would know that satire is the laughter of despair.
If you had done the arts, you would know that satire is the laughter of despair.
I am not that invested in young people getting degrees. GoK has turned degrees into a soul crunching accounting balance sheet through its neoliberal surveillance baptised "quality assurance." Kenyans cynically go through to get a paper, rather than to gain knowledge.
But if degrees may be useless, universities are not. Universities are the expression of the human instinct for conversation with people from all over the world. Africa has had them for millenia There was Sankore in Timbuktu, and al-Qarawiyyin started by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri.
Griots (the artists-historians of West African oral tradition) would consult such scholars and libraries in the composing of epics about their people over thousands of years. So there was a fluid relationship between oral and written word, and between society and scholars.
Yani, Wakenya. Hear me well.
When you hear the rich talking about useless subjects and "practical skills," they are expressing madharao for YOU. Do you think Margaret of Beyond Zero is taking her kids to a TVET? You think that stupidity is for others and not you? #WajingaNyinyi
When you hear the rich talking about useless subjects and "practical skills," they are expressing madharao for YOU. Do you think Margaret of Beyond Zero is taking her kids to a TVET? You think that stupidity is for others and not you? #WajingaNyinyi
When KEPSA complains about practical skills, don't take them literally and believe it's a work problem. It's a CLASS problem. They are trying to secure their space as #UpperDeckPeopleKE. They want gava to make rising social levels as difficult as possible. #WajingaNyinyi
The British never intended to teach humanities and the classics (hizo Latin na Greek ambayo mnadharao) to Africans. Or even to the British working class itself! Because those were the subjects for empire, for training the civil servants who would colonize you.
Reading about Victorian England has clarified for me what the middle class is in Kenya.
The middle class is not defined by your wealth and whether you can afford private schools during the week and pizza at the mall during the weekend. The middle class is defined by two things.
The middle class is not defined by your wealth and whether you can afford private schools during the week and pizza at the mall during the weekend. The middle class is defined by two things.
1. The goal of the ruling elite
2. How you have to sell your dignity to stay in the middle class.
1. The goal of the ruling elite in allowing/creating the middle class is to have a layer of people between the ruling elites and the people they really exploit at the bottom.
2. How you have to sell your dignity to stay in the middle class.
1. The goal of the ruling elite in allowing/creating the middle class is to have a layer of people between the ruling elites and the people they really exploit at the bottom.
So our job is to ensure that the rich never answer for anything, we do the dirty work of the rich. We are the ones who give the receipts to steal money from the poor on behalf of the rich and we then balance their accounts, we tell the poor that God wants them to be poor...
Weh...we were fed on demons which we had not understood....
So this was the internal contradiction of English education in the 1800s.
The elite education we have come to admire (the Oxfords, Cambridges, Etons and Alliances) was originally education for the aristocracy.
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So this was the internal contradiction of English education in the 1800s.
The elite education we have come to admire (the Oxfords, Cambridges, Etons and Alliances) was originally education for the aristocracy.
THREAD
However, the aristocracy had to coopt some middle and lower class kids into the system, so that these kids would defend the system when they were adults. The logic was that if these schools had only aristocrat kids, the people would burn down the schools.
But if the schools had a few token poor kids, then the kids would sound genuine in defending the aristocratic schools. Graduates from poor backgrounds were salesmen of the system. The aristocrats were the priests. Salesmen are more convincing than priests.
This weekend seems like just the opportune time to introduce you to one of Kenya's most prominent families.
Wealthy, connected, high-rolling, a family that the Kenyan media would likely describe as successful prominent businessmen.
Here's introducing the Kamanis.
A thread
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Wealthy, connected, high-rolling, a family that the Kenyan media would likely describe as successful prominent businessmen.
Here's introducing the Kamanis.
A thread
1/
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Family scion Chamanlal Kamani arrived from Goa, India in 1950 following an invitation by a cousin who was working as an accountant for the colonial police. He arrived with only Sh16 on him and had to marry a local to live in Kenya.
Family scion Chamanlal Kamani arrived from Goa, India in 1950 following an invitation by a cousin who was working as an accountant for the colonial police. He arrived with only Sh16 on him and had to marry a local to live in Kenya.
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Chamanlal had two sons, Rashmi - who runs the families Zuri Hotels in Dubai, and Deepak, the more (in)famous and "interesting" of the lot.
Chamanlal had two sons, Rashmi - who runs the families Zuri Hotels in Dubai, and Deepak, the more (in)famous and "interesting" of the lot.
