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"The problem with Kenya is its low-quality oppression." ~ @danaceda
Thread (from a 54 minute phone conversation, the world needs to hear this lol)
Thread (from a 54 minute phone conversation, the world needs to hear this lol)
(These are just highlights, I wish I would have recorded and transcribed that phone call!)
How many of us have been stuck in an important process because 'mkubwa hayuko'? Like this is given as an explanation why your things can't move.
Let's analyse that explanation for a second. The entire system is structured on one person's, a mkubwa's, physical presence.
The mkubwa may not have anything against you personally. But somehow, without them, the whole thing grinds to a halt. There might even be people whose sole job is to tell you 'pole, mkubwa hayuko'. There's nothing else they do in their job really
Now, how can you think around this problem? You can't. The most you can do is write a screed, maybe on Twitter, about how people should be at their desks. But when your done, its deflating, because it is stating the obvious.
There is no ideological meat here. There is nothing to wrestle with. It is petty, and ridiculous, but mostly petty.
It is like the way you feel wasted after arguing with a Kenyan teacher about something silly like the length of your son's hair, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything that matters in life. You may win the argument, but you wasted your goddam time and you know it
So in a 'mkubwa hayuko' scenario, there is little you can say substantively after sputtering about it. What do you say? There is no nefarious genius here. There is no KKK, no Mein Kampf. There is no systematised thinking to grapple with.
One of the effects of this 'low quality oppression' is the way it clouds your mind and robs you of language and analytical power.
In the words of @johngithongo, Kenyans are walking around in shambles and are unable to even describe the state of their own dishevelment, let alone begin to attempt to change it.
One of the things I appreciated most about being around radical and/or black folk in the US is that I became aware of the vagueness of my language.
My political vernaculars, to use @keguro_ 's term, were thoroughly tamed into terms like 'corruption', 'development' 'demographic dividend'... things we just say without ever thinking hard what they mean, and most importantly, what they look like in practice
Whose freedom they impinge, whose paying the cost for them, where the shoe pinches and what exactly it feels like.
There is something about being in the belly of the beast, right up against white supremacy up close, that brings light to the eyes and sharpens your words.
That's why Auntie Toni could say what she said with such clarity and precision, like "slitting your throat without disturbing your pearls," as @Iam_Wanjiru put it memorably
Exhibit 2
That's why James Baldwin's writings could be as crisp and searing as they were. Yes, he was a talented writer. But he was also coming out of a particular context, that gave definition to his thinking, or at least gave him the room to attempt to do so.
Meanwhile here our petty tyrants push us out of the road with arms flailing out of four windows and mean looks, sirens blazing. That mkubwa hired someone's father to do that. That's the terrain we are dealing with.
As @NativeLandgrab said here, we are hostages of this venal, idiotic class that harps on about sovereignty and independence because of the opportunity to enclose us in these colonial borders. They have nothing left to offer. theelephant.info/features/2018/…
There is no originality. I keep quoting the Prophet Fanon who warned us about these people. "It must not be said that the national bourgeoisie retards the country’s evolution, that it makes it lose time or that it threatens to lead the nation up blind alleys."
" In fact, the bourgeois phase in the history of underdeveloped countries is a completely useless phase."
"When this caste has vanished, devoured by its own contradictions, it will be seen that nothing new has happened since independence was proclaimed, and that everything must be started again from scratch."
Y'all know that's where we are. Your uncles keep trying to bring back KANU.
It makes one feel like you are overthinking in trying to fight them. You come up with all these solid arguments and legal positions to show why its wrong, like @RoGGKenya does for example. Then you realise you are dealing with the descendants of homeguards and slave traders.
Who literally don't give AF. Not one.
Let me stop here. Prophet Bob Marley said it by the way -- emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Yourself.
Na @danaceda ni mhenga btw.
-Fin
Na @danaceda ni mhenga btw.
-Fin
