Thread by @wmnjoya

Two days ago, I was in an interview in which I surprised the interviewers by saying that Kenyans don't have the same political consciousness as Africans in the other settler ex-colonies of South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Thread.

For instance, South African students campaigned for #feesmustfall and #rhodesmustfall. In SA, students said "our parents fought against apartheid because they wanted us to go to school. So now we want to go to school, whether we have money or not."

Here? Students are ask about skills because that's what employers want. Or ask for leadership. They don't question why they must get into debt to learn. They instead ask for effecient disbursement and merciful repayment terms. Students don't know what is in their own interests.

South Africa had Steve Biko whose writings as a student on black consciousness have a global impact.

Here? A gun-totting ex student leader paralyzes young people with bullets.

SA has Dr Ndlozi of EFF saying it's nonsense to tell youth to create jobs when they have no capital.

Here? PhD holders go on media to discuss how the World Bank policy of self-employment can be implemented. They're not employees of World Bank but somehow, they feel it's their duty to support it, even though World Bank has consistently shown itself to be against our interests.

When lecturers support World Bank, it's even more tragic. If World Bank has its way, the lecturers would not be teaching and universities would be turned into yet more malls.

Matiang'i failed our children, and then insulted them, and we celebrated and called the broken dreams and let down of 600,000 Kenyan teenagers "quality." What madness is that? Why are we so soulless and heartless?

In SA, they talk of decolonization, which is a political project. Here? We talk of "western culture." We cant even name how that culture got here. The closest we get to discussing colonialism is mentioning police torture. But mention the structure behind it? Kenyans go blank.

We are so elitist. We ask the questions that are in the interests of the elites. Not our own interests.

Then when elites don't give us their lifestyle, we go borrow solutions which white supremacist evangelical Christians in America implemented against black Americans.

So we start homeschooling. We blame parents for social problems. We implement Victorian morality which is intellectually and spiritually paralyzing. We increase the number of counsellors to help us cope with this insanity.

This is an extremely elitist society.

And yet only 8,300 people own equal to the rest of us.

We don't ask for what is in our interests. We ask instead for what is in the interests of the elites, with the hope that one day we will be elites ourselves. As if they would still be elites if everybody had what they had.

And as if the world can afford 50 million Kenyan elites.

We have to bring elites down. We must stop fighting for them to raise us up. The planet cannot afford it, and we cannot afford it. Everybody MUST bake the national cake.

We cannot keep talking of sharing the national cake but never talk of who bakes it. And how we bake it. And with what we bake it. Yet it is us who do that work. The elites and civil servants do nothing to contribute. They just give us rules and violence.

Kenya is a monster.

Kenya's actual elites and their maids and butlers (not the rest of us wanna be elites) can never have enough. They are Tekayos who will always demand more.

We have to stop aspiring to be them and aspire instead to be HUMAN.

#Ubuntu
Amandla!