#LandIsNotProperty Mwalimu Wandia Profile picture
Sep 16, 2020 12 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Kenyans, until we replace our competition mindset with a community one, we won't get what the problem is with our education system. Education is not a race. It's a community activity. It's about ALL OF US. So it doesn't matter if NUKE is the only or the most elite university.
Education and information are the social equivalent of the air that we breathe. It helps us relate to one another and make decisions. It is not supposed to be a gift that you fight over in exams so that you can get a sweet from Mr Tajiri. Education is organic and your birthright.
The problem with the system now is that it makes education scarce, makes others fight through exams for a few spaces, and then gives power to those few who to make decisions on behalf of all of us. This isn't about being intelligent or not. It's about democracy.
Those powerful few then become supremacists who think they are intellectually superior to other Kenyans and have the right to make decisions for us. Professors agree to be part of such discrimination because they are arrogant enough to feel special.
The reason why we must refuse NUKE is because it is going to create a class of dictators. It's not because your kids might not get a place.
The idea of NUKE is the same one Jomo and the colonial government had: that universities are for training an elite to rule on behalf of the Queen and her Ichaweri chief. Jomo was so chauvinistic that he thought UoN was for Kikuyus only.
So if you think that there will be this hot exam that your kid will pass and join that thing, you're delusional. There is already an elite class which married multiple wives and got thousands of children. They will give themselves places in that university and will rule.
Even if your kid is given a token place in that university, they will just be flower girls. Real decision making positions will go to royalty. And if you're reading this, that doesn't include you.

Wake up and smell the coffee.
The era of a poor boy from the village becoming president has ended. NUKE is there to ensure it doesn't come back, so that the elites protect their kids. Stop thinking you can do for your kids what they do for theirs. They have power. You dont. That's why we must not accept NUKE.
University was the last level where ranking was not official like high schools. Tekayo wants to introduce it now, so that NUKE becomes the Alliance people salivate over but very few will ever enter.

We must destroy ALL these inequalities with education, not increase them.
If you still don't care and want your kid to enter a school for the rich, you might as well save for rehab as well. Your kid will need it to fill the void that elite education creates in people's souls. And you will need it to protect you from your kid.
bikozulu.co.ke/purple-drank/
If you think you can make fun of Jayden's chemical habits but that you can take your kid on the same elite path and your kid comes out sober, you're delusional.

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More from @wmnjoya

Mar 10
I think colonialism in Kenya has to be analyzed in unique terms. I've read about settler colonies in the Atlantic and Pacific, in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Algeria, but I don't think any of those countries has produced an indigenous middle class as confused as Kenya's.
I've tried to figure out what was unique about Kenya, and the only thing I can come up with is that we were colonized by British elites. Bruce Berman says that Kenya had the highest number of public school British people in the colonial administration and missions.
Carey Francis, the guru of the whole lot, was educated at Cambridge. He set the tone for academic snobbery and suffocating moralism that stifles the Kenyan mind.

The missionaries set the tone for a major hypocrisy that has infected the Kenyan elite and middle class.
Read 12 tweets
Mar 7
We're being gaslit here.

1. CBC was not a curriculum review. It was a system REPLACEMENT. If it was a curriculum review, all that would have changed is the content (curriculum is a posh term for content) without bringing back pre-8.4.4 system.

But politicians wanted optics.
2. Competency is not a new thing. It has been around for over a century. In fact, it's quite similar to the logic of TVET, that's why Zakayo didn't replace the system. He believes in TVET, where knowledge is only physical or technical. #thesituationroom
3. The idea of "application" as the king of assessing knowledge is completely wrong, @nduokoh. It is a fantasy of employers, and of colonial settlers before them. It is an idea for blocking Africans from thinking, from the days of Booker T till now. #thesituationroom.
Read 24 tweets
Dec 31, 2023
My thoughts on housing levy, which I hope are the last.

The point of thinking is to put events in their context. I have now learned that that is absolutely hated by the Kenya elite and the middle class. But I will do it anyway. 🧵

My context starts here.
dw.com/en/smoking-out…
We were told in 2019 that CBK was replacing the old 1000 notes to get rid of money laundering. But in Kenya, we know that the truth will never be in the newspapers, and so we cannot ignore explanations that are not officially endorsed. Grace Musila talks about this reality.
The rumor was that Muigai was targeting his faux-brother, and eventual nemesis and later president, because the brother had a lot of money. Churches was the most notorious recipient.

But even if that wasn't true, I know that Kenya has a lot of money but no production.
Read 12 tweets
Nov 28, 2023
It's so useless to talk of decolonizing the mind when we don't even know what the mind is. Kenyans' hatred of knowledge and thinking, no matter the source of knowledge, shows that we don't even know what the mind is. So what are we decolonizing?
For example, we seem not to see that there's a difference between knowing an event happened and interpreting what that event MEANS. To interpret what it means requires knowledge of history and consciousness of narratives.
Narratives are stories, or the links between different events and meanings. Narratives are the things that tell us that if A happens, it means B. In Kenya, we have left that function to the government, the media and the church, which encourage us to hate history and thinking.
Read 9 tweets
Nov 15, 2023
This is simple the way to understand these fee hikes.

We're being charged for existing. That's it.

The very act of being alive is being reduced to a cost of the government. It's a colonial, anti-human, philosophy that makes should make us extremely angry. 🧵
Think of it this way.

Can we live without ID cards? Yes. Can we be married without government certificates ? Yes. Will we die without death certificates? Yes. Can we c ross borders without passports? Yes.

In other words, government documents are not a necessity.
If we can do these things without certificates, it means it's not us who who need the certificates, but the government itself. So really, this paperwork is not a "service" to wananchi. The government needs these documents more than we need the government.
Read 16 tweets
Nov 5, 2023
The cruelty of the arts industry leaves me speechless. I've talked about that cruelty many times, but the Euro-centric glam discourse of tabloids makes it very difficult to have a sober conversation about the arts in Kenya. nation.africa/kenya/life-and…
I tell students that they must sit and reflect on the arts, not just perform the arts. You know what? They don't listen because they are getting gigs from corporates at minimum pay. Nini Wacera mentions it when she talks of companies hiring babies with no professional experience.
And then she makes the important point that this lack of respect for arts as a profession makes us have poor quality production.

At the heart of it, is the lack of respect for the arts as WORK.

That's why we must stop talking of the arts as "talent."
Read 10 tweets

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