Thread by @wmnjoya

Interesting arguments in Henry Bienen's, "Kenya: The Politics of Participation and Control."

1. scholarly interest in Kenya is dominated by colonial era more than for other African countries, where people are interested in party politics and personalities.

For me, that explains whey few people outside Kenya know Kenyan political figures. We may talk about them so much here, but Kenyan politicians are uninspiring and relatively unknown outside Kenya.

Besides Jomo, who was a fraudulently propped up as a hero by the British, few Kenyan leaders are known the way we Lumumba, Nyerere, Senghor, Nkrumah or Sankara.

2. Kenya became independent with a strong and entrenched civil service that was initially designed for the white colonial settlers.

For me, it explains why our civil servants still work for London. In their eyes, we Africans dont exist.

https://twitter.com/wmnjoya/status/1065159827377266688?s=20

3. Not only was/is the colonial civil service for the wazungu, it was populated by Africans who helped the British crush African protest. At independence, those homeguards and KAR simply got promoted, not replaced.

For me, that explains why GoK officers so abusive and brutal.

That explains how @KTNKenya could report on John Michuki's colonial past without a hint of irony, calling his father's privilege "social capital" and his colonial job a sign of his "leadership."

@KtnKenya 4. Because most of the Africans who joined the colonial government were young at independence, they had a long, long time ahead in the civil service.

It explains why we still have colonial era people in government and why they just won't let go and retire.

@KtnKenya 5. The need to replace whites in the civil service made the Government the largest employer in the first decade after independence. Almost everyone who went to school wanted to become a civil servant.

@KtnKenya It explains why my fellow Kenyan academics are so obsessed with becoming ministers, politicians and technocrats. We are not happy to be professors, to mentor, publish and influence society. We want to use our degrees to get into government and order people around.

@KtnKenya 6. (The saddest one) It is because of our bureaucratic autocracy that Kenya has a poor political culture. Political parties don't survive long, we have no political parties with ideology, because the civil service keeps interfering with and crushing public political action.

@KtnKenya 7. Kenya goes through cycles of decentralization through public demand and then centralization through the state. So in 1963 we started with Majimbo, in 1964 Majimbo was rolled back, KADU crossed the floor and power was centralized in the president.

@KtnKenya Similarly, in 2014 we returned to devolved government but now #BBIReport wants to re-centralize government.

Akoko Aketch draws parallels between BBI at Bomas and the KANU-KADU divide in the 60s.

And, I should add, BBI was written by technocrats and facilitated by civil service.

@KtnKenya "The evils that Ngala and Muliro warned us against have metastasised...But at least KADU got the diagnosis right: ethnic dominance in commanding heights of state bureaucracy by one or two ethnic groups is injurious to the interests of those they exclude."
theelephant.info/features/2019/…

@KtnKenya The NASA manifesto had nailed this problem when it promised to retrain Kenya's civil service because it is driven by madharau for us Africans. But as is typical, the political coalition didn't last. The civil service won. Again. Now we're back to KANU days with #BBIReport

@KtnKenya Clearly, Kenya's problem is our colonial civil service. Whoever is president behaves like Governor Kenyatta of 1963 and 1964. Our intellectual, cultural, social and ordinary life is so controlled by GoK, that we can't even sing a damn song without Ezekiel Mutua going ballistic.

@KtnKenya The role of the church and the media are to launder colonialism so that homeguards appear "natural leaders" and wealth by theft, corruption and misuse of public office is called "strong family values."

nation.co.ke/news/Rise-of-K…

@KtnKenya The problem of Kenya is the civil service. The civil service is still colonial, dictatorial, servant of London and stiffles any political organization with visas, red alerts, prisons, police, body bags, school education from British Council and elections run from the US embassy.

@KtnKenya Whoever is president uses the civil services to destroy social and political life, like through destroying Miguna's passport, sending cops to Mumias stadium to prevent a meeting, or denying @communistske registration.

@KtnKenya @CommunistsKe And, as I discovered with CBC, Kenyans trust civil servants more than God. We believe in the ideology of "law and order," partly because academics aspire to join government, so they sing, breathe, eat and write GoK. We teach to enforce compliance and kill individuality and ideas.

@KtnKenya @CommunistsKe We need to stop having so much faith in bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is NOT neutral. And it is brutal. We have victims of extra-judicial killings and massacres as proof.

And this is why even another law on IEBC will not fix elections. The problem is in the civil service itself.

@KtnKenya @CommunistsKe And there's nothing in #BBIReport on reforming the civil service. No surprise there. Just like there's nothing on education, inequality or land reform.

#BBI is colonialism and 1964 KANU all over again. The colonial civil service remains sovereign.

So God bless the Queen.

END.