Kenya is so toxic because we tell Eurocentric stories about ourselves. In tourism, in education, everyone from civil servants to parents to lovers repeats degrading stories about ourselves. And we even fact check and provide data to support our abuse.
For example, we repeat the story of job market yet it was a colonial settler one. We assume that teaching home science in schools is about skill and yet it's about teaching the European home lifestyle. We talk about "quality" when it was a neoliberal destruction of our education.
We accept manufacturing and industrial revolution as the gospel truth, not realizing that AFRICAN raw materials, produced through our oppression, were used in British industry. So if you want an Industrial revolution, exactly whom do you want to be exploited, if it's not you?
The stories we tell about gender and ethnicity are the worst. We portray Roman cannibalism as "African patriarchy," we call the stories missionaries told about rescuing African women "feminism," and we talk about our ethnic groups the way the Romans talked about barbarians.
That's why few of us noticed that Caroline Mutoko's bashing of men was supported by Robert Alai. Toxic feminism and #boychild belong to the same whatsapp group, but we Kenyans go skinny dipping in that toxic conversation.
Elitist women say "you men are trash," and the #boychild guys basically agree, except that they explain "it's your fault; you neglected the boy child." Then the women reply, "yes, but your privilege..." Then #boychild activists reply, yet again, "well, it's your fault because..."
What kind of elitist, cross gender poison is this?
Both stories are rooted in Western ones. #Boychild is an uthamakistan story yet iuthamakistan doesn't give a hoot about its biggest advocates.
So those of you Kenyans who want to take sides on this poison, do it at your own risk. As for me and my house, we will affirm both men and women, and explain the roots of the oppression that humiliates both and turns us against each other, the same way tribe is used.
And yes, you can quote this thread in an academic journal article about how I am an unapologetic patriarchal princess, or in a blog post about Kenyan toxic feminists. Take your best shot. I survived Cambridge Analytica.
Those of us who are for love and freedom, let's go for it.
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The only thing keeping the GoK in power is ignorance of Kenyans. And I don't mean the ignorance Jomo was talking about. Jomo was using the racist idea that Africans are ignorant because they don't know Western civilization.
I'm talking about ignorance as a war on consciousness.
Even the most vocal of voices, who were supposedly Gen Z, do not have political consciousness. They think that the right bureaucrats in the government will make Kenya work. Almost all the doctors who led #lipakamatender less than 10 years ago are now trying to make SHA work.
It's a complete failure of political philosophy that makes Kenyans think that GoK's problem is merit of the personnel. The majority of educated Kenyans think that way. And after school, they stop reading, so they sincerely think they are the messiahs whose skills will save Kenya.
We have no opposition because Kenya's democracy is elitist. Kenya's "democracy" is code for elites controlling the masses. Elections are for recalibrating the elite. They block us from fighting on issues. They fight each other and force us to watch and take (ethnic) sides.
The recalibration of the elite through elections is for giving ordinary Kenyans that they have the power to choose their leaders. But once the vote is cast, the recalibration begins. Lawyers in European wigs make fancy arguments in court, media looks active reporting numbers,
pastors pray for peace, private sector lectures us on going back to work, embassies endorse the vote, and Kenyans start following the appointments and sending congratulations. For the next 4 1/2 years, the elite keep circulating positions, making more appointments.
I'm convinced that Kenya is sustained by Western money. We can't have an extremely insipid, corrupt elite, an anti-intellectual academy, a non productive economy, and the economy hasn't crashed. There is an outside factor sustaining this Kenyan economy, but not on our behalf.
Our lives are becoming more incoherent and more chaotic, but the institutions are still standing instead of collapsing. Then the Kenyan journalists and international media sustain the image of a coherent intelligentsia who can explain Kenya with the right theories and data.
Kenya's chaos must be being contained with foreign money. That's why no matter what we shout about the mess, GoK ignores us.
Kenya is one big collective cognitive dissonance. The world can see it, but we, who suffer it, can't.
By the way, we haven't talked about how CBC is giving your government data on your children. For years. I tried to flag those "assessments" as a form of spying, but you people said you preferred that to exams.
I know we hated literature in school (it's badly taught and very badly examined, anyway) but to understand the psyops happening here, we need to understand the difference between the symbolic and the literal, and why they matter. 🧵
Symbolic language is language that is able to capture what is said beyond the literal words. So, for example, if we say Zakayo must go, that's a shortened form of talking about our political problems and bad leadership.
Without that short form, every time you speak, you would start from scratch...Governance, elections, corruption etc before arrivimg at Must Go.
2nd benefit of the symbolic form is solidarity. Whether I'm talking about education, you about abductions, we land at the same point.
Like I said yesterday, I have outgrown caring what government does and what bills it writes. GoK is a parasite. Nothing it does is meant to help Kenyans. Everything is for containing Kenyans. The Creative Economy support bill is no different.
First thing to understand: GoK operates on "doctrine of discovery." You know the way wazungu told us they were the first to see Lake Victoria? That's how GoK operates, even with the arts. It fights the arts, then Kenyans struggle with the arts anyway, then GoK declares
it's establishing an infrastructure for the industry. But the industry was already there, despite being fought by GoK.
It's the same thing they did with Jua Kali. They told people "rudi mashambani," then ILO came and told them "look at fundis doing something new. How cute."