The war of the Kenyan state and capitalist godfathers against pastoralism is more than a fight to grab land. It's a philosophical fight about demobilizing Africans. Capitalism can't exploit people who are moving. It needs people who are still and in one place.
Demobilized people are are easy to control because politicians can keep forcing people to vote how politicians want, under the threat of being uprooted and displaced people, and they can force people to seek employment at low wages.
With pastoralism, it's difficult to exploit people when they are moving. They are not where you are the last time you saw them, and if you try to fix them to a program, they'll tell you "we'll think about it and whether it fits on our schedule."
Remember that one of things that made Africans extemely bitter with colonialism was that they couldn't move without a pass (kipande) from the colonial government. Also, Nairobi was built in a way to prevent men from moving into Nairobi with their families.
The colonial destocking initiatives were also intended to demobilize people. For example, the British destocking in Ukambani came out of frustration that the Kamba were using cattle as currency and not being enticed to work for poor wages for the British.
Even the Kikuyu were demobilized during the emergency with land consolidation. Before, people used to walk to the shambas where they farmed. That meant community: you walked with others in the morning, sometimes you even worked in groups on each others' shambas.
With land consolidation, people were tied down to only work next to their homes. It's the enclosure logic of British feudalism, were you close off land and say nobody else can use it. That's how the British elite stole land from their own people.
theguardian.com/books/2019/apr…
theguardian.com/books/2019/apr…
Even Nairobi is continuing to be built in a way that makes people only workers. Nairobi Metropolitan will not be democratically governed, according to the #BBIReport. It will be managed like a company and Kenyans in Nairobi will not be citizens but workers for Tekayo and the mum.
So the fight to protect pastoralism has to be the fight by all of us. Pastoralism is an African idea of space and movement, which farmers have been denied by the English feudal model of living on your own farm. Pastoralism is about the soul of all of us.
As @m_ogada says, "If you think carefully about it, pastoralism is the one of the last areas of economic freedom, and that is why it detested by neoliberal thinking."
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