Thread by @wmnjoya

Kenyans need to strategize on ballot and economic boycotts. The principle is simple: make the political class irrelevant.

We have historical precedent. That's how our ancestors resisted colonialism and made the British perform legal tricks to force us into the state economy.

The purpose of colonialism was to get labor for colonial settlers, force Africans into the cash economy so that Africans can buy Western "manufactured" trinkets.

But Africans disnt budge. They had food, and they used cows as a medium of exchange within and across communities.

The other thing I hadn't seen is that colonialism operated through creating insecurity. As Chheikh Anta Diop said, European empire, and it's vices like usury, individualism and theft, come from a deep seated social anxiety in Western culture, and uncertainty about tomorrow.

We Africans didn't have that anxiety, for two reasons.

1. The obvious is extended family and inter-community relations. People would seek food from neighboring communities. We had ceremonies to integrate people from other communities into ours. So we knew we could ask for help.

2. We had ceremonies and rituals to deal with angst about the future that occurs at a normal human level. We respected and listened to our prophets and seers. That is why many communities have some form of prophecy about the white man's arrival.

But colonialists called our prophets and seers witches, and replaced them with GoK bureaucrats who tell us that what happens in the West is inevitably coming here. Like that 4th industrial revolution nanzenz.

All that to explain that our ancestors were not simply resisting foriegners: they were resisting entering a system built on extreme anxiety that forces people into a state and economic system of hoarding, selfishness and insecurity and forces us to do what wazungu want.

And you can see from colonial records how uncooperative our ancestors were.

In 1911, this is what the colonialists complained about the Kamba:

In 1906, Allidina Visram wrote that the people of Kisumu "were easily satisfied, for, with little labor, they can make enough money for their little wants."

In Kiambu, the colonialists were frustrated that even though there was a lot of cash in the economy, people were still investing in livestock, rather than in consumer goods. In 1907, the Provincial commisioner wrote:

Among the Giriama, the British tried to recruit men into their army. When the recruiters would come, the men would hide.

The British also tried imposing taxes to force them to work on plantations for cash. Instead, the Giriama traded in Mombasa and used that money to pay taxes.

So if we get the principle that our ancestors clearly understood, we can find a way to remove ourselves from the state economy of cash and elections.

I don't know details how. We have to create several different strategies like the current boycott of a certain milk brand.

I don't know about you, but I never stopped the milk boycott.

But we need other strategies and boycotts. For example, the betting industry is one way in which our youth are exploited by the same elites who make them despair from joblessness and lack of social growth.

We need artists to help us make that connection in the minds of our youth. Why should our youth give their coins and go into debt and be slaves to the same people who make it impossible to earn a living from one's actual work?

I've also suggested chamas for barter exchange. We exchange actual goods and services for.each other without using money. That will reduce the money we give to Mshwari and Safaricom.

Another thing we need to do is stop giving politicians audience. When they enter a place. Whether at church or Harambee or funeral or whatever, we let event organizers know that if a politician stands to speak, we step out. Or we sing.

But all this requires solidarity. We have to cultivate trust among ourselves. And we must be aware that we will be infiltrated by people who hope to use our solidarity for their personal political mileage. But we have to find a way of making politicians invisible.

I don't follow politicians' twitter handles. I don't reply to their posts, I don't retweet them. If we can start from small gestures like this, that's a first step to making the state irrelevant.

Boycotts implement the thing the state and politicians fear most.

Irrelevance.