Thread by @wmnjoya

The role of the government, this Anglo-American contraption which gives us grief, is to contain us so that a few royals who don't work survive on our work. Unless we get this basic reality, we'll continue to tell stories like #DegreeOfDoubt
Thread #maishakazini

Some history. First the missionary came to prepare our hearts for capitalism. For them, conversion to Christianity wasn't abandoning African culture. It was entering the capitalist economy as a worker. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

Missionaries attacked mostly cultural practices which interfered with Africans working for wazungu. They talked about human rights and whatever, but their evidence of conversion was if you got employment at a mzungu farm and used the money to buy mzungu trinkets. #degreeofdout

Then after that came the REAL interests of colonialism. BUSINESS. Kenya was set up as a business of the Imperial British East Africa company in the 1880s, and only became a colony in 1920. It took a whole 40 years for the British state to show up. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

Why the gap? Because the role of the state is simple: to provide the violence with which to ensure that we do what the imperial business interests want. Africans were already revolting in the 1900s. How else could they force us to work?

Law and guns.
#maishakazini #degreeofdoubt

The principle is simple. The business interests can't openly tell you "I'm here to make sure that your resources are mine and that it's your work that hands them over to me." People will riot. And they did. #maishakazini #degreeofdoubt

So the business interests came up with A GOVERNMENT to be a buffer between you, the exploited, and the exploiters. The government provides "law and order" and policy based on so-called neutral principles #maishakazini #degreeofdoubt

The government tells you that it exists to take care of your education and other social services, because that's the story you'll accept for them to stay. But their real job is to protect wazungu interests. They tell us that all the time. #degreeofdoubt theelephant.info/features/2018/…

All this to say that the government of Kenya has NEVER wanted Africans to get university education. Ever. It's not in their business interests. Their job is to extract our resources and our labor. University education makes people say No. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

During colonial times, the settlers successfully campaigned against Kenyans getting education, to the extent that of the 3 EA countries, Kenya provided the least resources and sent the least number of students to Makerere. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

The Mau Mau revolt made the British government finally accept that a white face at State House was bad for business. Governement run on "neutral" policies wasn't enough to pacify us. The business interests needed black faces in governement. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

It was only then that the British government from London accepted to create a university college in Nairobi. University was for creating an elite who would serve in the state, and steal from us and then send the resources to London and New York. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

That colonial philosophy was also Jomo's philosophy. He never increased the number of universities in Kenya because he had the elites he needed. Too many elites being produced in universities was politically dangerous. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

Do you honestly think that KEPSA, GOK and @EduMinKenya are going to tell you this? Of course not. So they come up with a story.

Sorry, they don't come up with a story. They repeat the colonial settler one. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini

#degreeofdoubt says the same thing the colonial settlers said: higher education interferes with the workplace. The only difference is that while settlers said African minds cannot handle knowledge, @ntvkenya is saying that there are no jobs except menial ones. #maishakazini

But the basic argument is the same. Africans do not deserve to make decisions about their destiny and the economy. Their job is to work where they are told. #degreeofdoubt GoK wants to defund university education, because it is afraid of informed and educated Africans. Period.

And the only way you will accept GoK doing what it did in colonial times, which is denying Africans higher education, is by accepting that degrees are useless in the economy. Of course university education is useless in a plantation economy. Duh! #degreeofdoubt

If Kenya really cared about a good and decent economy, it would let graduates be creative and work. But do you think a family made up of Ichaweri settlers, who have no ideas except to grab, would want such an economy? Priss, Kenyans. Ati #degreeofdoubt. Mschew.

This is what happens when Kenyan graduates imagine doing work other than plumbing. The wazungu come steal their ideas in the name of investment. The settler-grabber elites don't mind, because that's one less Kenyan using their mind. #degreeofdoubt

So Kenyans, we need to grow up and ask mature questions about education. AND THE ECONOMY!!!! This "no jobs" story is the story of colonial settlers, not ours. The media are on the side of the settlers, not on our side. #DegreeOfDoubt #maishakazini