Thread by @wmnjoya

Now let's take an intellectual look at this piece Nyong'o wrote in defence of los medicos de Kenia the-star.co.ke/news/2018/06/0… via @TheStarKenya

Nyong'o starts: "every government is formed after citizens vote into power a political party whose policies they support as good for their lives," and then asks us to put aside the controversies of last year's elections and Raila's swearing in.
Ama ni matunda ya handshake? 🤔

And then, before we rush to call Nyong'o a pro-Jubilee sell out, he mentions victims of government assassinations which have been buzz names used by Kenyans to talk about the colonial state "Pio da Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki and Robert Ouko."

So essentially, Nyong'o sets himself up as a revolutionary who sees the importance of the handshake as a statement of "an agenda for the renaissance of a new democratic and inclusive political culture to help build Kenya as a national, democratic and developmental polity. "

What Nyong'o is doing is attributing a social consciousness to what is a handshake of personal political interests of the ruling class. He's good.

Almost as good as PLO who has got the continent believing that he is a pan-Africanist because he quotes all the right people.

But I digress.
After attributing a non-existent social agenda to the handshake, he asks doctors (oh my God) to abandon unionism and embrace the handshake as "a better way of achieving their desired goals for an improved and rewarding working conditions."
Now I'm impressed.

But again, just before his comments on unionism makes us raise eyebrows 🤨, Nyong'o tells us about his own union credentials. I have to screenshoot this one because it's just genius. Well played, Bwana Governor 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

But just before you think Nyong'o is a comrade, he clarifies that he is not. He doesn't believe in strikes because they punish others. And reminds us that he's speaking as someone who suffered.

Another screenshot here because it's just awesome!

But again, before you say he's against workers, he follows this anti-union statement with a reference to the gap in income.

But before you celebrate, he throws a missile at doctors: you're more privileged than most Kenyans, and your strikes punish wananchi.

Wow. Just wow.

And then he asks doctors to join Raila and Muigai in building the country through the Big Four agenda, and says doctors are key players.

Of course doctors are key players in the privatization of healthcare. Rotich told us that's why they don't want to pay public doctors well.

Then Nyong'o finishes by telling doctors that los medicos are paid as expats everywhere in the world 🤨, and that it's easier for doctors "to build a bridge and travel to State House rather than engage on a rather ugly litigation process when our visitors have arrived."

In other words, Nyong'o is asking Kenyans to compromise on demands for a public and universal healthcare and shake hands with the president. But shaking hands has been done since the 90s when people went to eat ugali at State House. It has never given us social justice.

But what is more amazing is how Nyong'o swings between painting himself as a progressive but supporting a neoliberal agenda. And some of us never noticed because I always imagined he had been anti-establishment and he was a professor. And he's the one who gives us that impression

Nyong'o has mastered the language of social consciousness to drive a narrow political and neoliberal agenda that supports the privatization of healthcare.

Once again, we see the crisis of language: neoliberalism has adopted the language of we who fight it.

And after all that dizzying swinging back and forth, Nyong'o ends his piece with calling the doctors comrades.

Ok.