#LandIsNotProperty Mwalimu Wandia Profile picture
Sep 15, 2020 20 tweets 12 min read Read on X
The role of the government, this Anglo-American contraption which gives us grief, is to contain us so that a few royals who don't work survive on our work. Unless we get this basic reality, we'll continue to tell stories like #DegreeOfDoubt
Thread #maishakazini
Some history. First the missionary came to prepare our hearts for capitalism. For them, conversion to Christianity wasn't abandoning African culture. It was entering the capitalist economy as a worker. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
Missionaries attacked mostly cultural practices which interfered with Africans working for wazungu. They talked about human rights and whatever, but their evidence of conversion was if you got employment at a mzungu farm and used the money to buy mzungu trinkets. #degreeofdout
Then after that came the REAL interests of colonialism. BUSINESS. Kenya was set up as a business of the Imperial British East Africa company in the 1880s, and only became a colony in 1920. It took a whole 40 years for the British state to show up. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
Why the gap? Because the role of the state is simple: to provide the violence with which to ensure that we do what the imperial business interests want. Africans were already revolting in the 1900s. How else could they force us to work?

Law and guns.
#maishakazini #degreeofdoubt
The principle is simple. The business interests can't openly tell you "I'm here to make sure that your resources are mine and that it's your work that hands them over to me." People will riot. And they did. #maishakazini #degreeofdoubt
So the business interests came up with A GOVERNMENT to be a buffer between you, the exploited, and the exploiters. The government provides "law and order" and policy based on so-called neutral principles #maishakazini #degreeofdoubt
The government tells you that it exists to take care of your education and other social services, because that's the story you'll accept for them to stay. But their real job is to protect wazungu interests. They tell us that all the time. #degreeofdoubt theelephant.info/features/2018/…
All this to say that the government of Kenya has NEVER wanted Africans to get university education. Ever. It's not in their business interests. Their job is to extract our resources and our labor. University education makes people say No. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
During colonial times, the settlers successfully campaigned against Kenyans getting education, to the extent that of the 3 EA countries, Kenya provided the least resources and sent the least number of students to Makerere. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
The Mau Mau revolt made the British government finally accept that a white face at State House was bad for business. Governement run on "neutral" policies wasn't enough to pacify us. The business interests needed black faces in governement. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
It was only then that the British government from London accepted to create a university college in Nairobi. University was for creating an elite who would serve in the state, and steal from us and then send the resources to London and New York. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
That colonial philosophy was also Jomo's philosophy. He never increased the number of universities in Kenya because he had the elites he needed. Too many elites being produced in universities was politically dangerous. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
Do you honestly think that KEPSA, GOK and @EduMinKenya are going to tell you this? Of course not. So they come up with a story.

Sorry, they don't come up with a story. They repeat the colonial settler one. #degreeofdoubt #maishakazini
#degreeofdoubt says the same thing the colonial settlers said: higher education interferes with the workplace. The only difference is that while settlers said African minds cannot handle knowledge, @ntvkenya is saying that there are no jobs except menial ones. #maishakazini
But the basic argument is the same. Africans do not deserve to make decisions about their destiny and the economy. Their job is to work where they are told. #degreeofdoubt GoK wants to defund university education, because it is afraid of informed and educated Africans. Period.
And the only way you will accept GoK doing what it did in colonial times, which is denying Africans higher education, is by accepting that degrees are useless in the economy. Of course university education is useless in a plantation economy. Duh! #degreeofdoubt
If Kenya really cared about a good and decent economy, it would let graduates be creative and work. But do you think a family made up of Ichaweri settlers, who have no ideas except to grab, would want such an economy? Priss, Kenyans. Ati #degreeofdoubt. Mschew.
This is what happens when Kenyan graduates imagine doing work other than plumbing. The wazungu come steal their ideas in the name of investment. The settler-grabber elites don't mind, because that's one less Kenyan using their mind. #degreeofdoubt
So Kenyans, we need to grow up and ask mature questions about education. AND THE ECONOMY!!!! This "no jobs" story is the story of colonial settlers, not ours. The media are on the side of the settlers, not on our side. #DegreeOfDoubt #maishakazini

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More from @wmnjoya

Aug 21
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."
Read 14 tweets
Aug 10
It's important to talk about corruption and the extent of looting in Kenya. But for me, my interest is also this: what does the looting reveal about the mind, character and soul of Kenyans? What does it say about the moral, intellectual and spiritual infrastructure of Kenya? 🧵
Sadly, the answer is limited to morality. It's that we have leaders who don't care and are greedy. We take it as a natural flaw of human beings, if not Africans. And that's where I disagree with Kenyans.
Yes, individual human beings can be greedy. And we know from our folk tales that greed was something that was loathed by our cultures. What we have now isn't individual greed. It's a system of institutions and values that instil, promote, and protect greed.
Read 12 tweets
Jul 29
Why we should go back to 8.4.4. 🧵

To understand my argument you have to understand this premise which I argued from 2017, even before CBC was implemented.

EXAM OBSESSION IS AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM, NOT A CURRICULUM ONE.

If you don't (want to) get that, don't follow the thread.
I made this argument so many times, in so many stations, and on #MaishaKazini. The refusal to accept this point made me despair that Kenyans would demand change. 7 years later, the Gen Zprotest has finally proved me right. The problem is our political economy, not the curriculum.
For more on this, check my interviews with Spice FM and the Lynn Ngugi show.

Now, one of the stupidities
CBC brought was an extra layer of schools called JSS. Instead of primary, high and uni, now we had primary, JSS, high school and uni.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 18
We Africans have to replace is our metaphor for oppression. We see empire and the African elites as predators because they monopolize violence. But they are not predators. They're parasites. Parasites are almost worse than predators, even though the end result is the same.
Predators are more noble because they have their own system and simply use the prey for food. When they're not hungry, they leave the potential prey alone. Parasites are different. Parasites create nothing, and have no system independent of the host.
Worse, parasites need to make themselves invisible, and if they can't, they appear friendly.

The Kenyan state monopolizes the mainstream media. Kenyans created for themselves an alternative media to speak. Now the state is invading those alternatives.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 15
There are two ideologies struggling for supremacy in the Kenyan space. Both are saying #RutoMustGo. But they differ on what is needed.

The first thinks that the Kenya colonial state can be managed better if we hire the right people on merit, and if we follow "the rule of law."
This ideology is largely supported by people in institutions: politicians, journalists and the church, although they differ on the moral angle about whether to engage with the establishment or not.

This ideology never discussed inequality, education or ideas. Just governance.
The 2nd group, to which I hope I belong, sees the colonial state as incapable of reform, and putting in nice people and following the constitution will take us back to the circumstances we are now in. We need an overhaul not just in morality, but also in our mindset. #RutoMustGo
Read 7 tweets
Jun 26
When Samora Machel was assassinated, Thomas Sankara said: who killed Machel? To know who killed Machel, you have to look at those whose interests are served by his death.

That's how I see the raid on Bunge. Whose interests were served most by that raid? #rejectfinancebill2024
I get my answer from 3 things:
1. Zakayo's tasteless speech that said nothing about #rejectfinancebill2024, and justified the use of the military
2. The subsequent massacres in Githurai
3. The similarity with what happened in Sri Lanka in 2022, and a reference to it
by a member of a top member of Zakayo's government, who told me in July 2022 that nothing else matters except preventing a Sri Lanka

What are the chances that that would happen 2 years later? And then we'd be told about security and defence of Katiba?
#rejectfinancebill2022

#
Read 17 tweets

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