Just because #hudumanamba is digital, don't imagine that this is the first time when Western racist capitalism is putting a number to black bodies. They did it when they enslaved Africans in the Americas. They are just changing the mode of data collection.
What makes data necessary is the huge parasitic class that needs to make money from the work of others without working. How do you extract labor from people? By making sure there there is an infrastructure that counts and quantifies everything they do. #hudumanamba
What #hudumanamba aims at is to strangle us to do what the government wants. Refusing means that you can't get services and you will most likely go to jail to give prison labor by force. That is the definition of enslavement.
Africans have always fought against these kinds of numbers. One of the contentious issues that Kenyans fought against during the colonial times was the kipande system, which is now the ID and the precursor to #hudumanamba.
The kipande made people prisoners in their own country. With a kipande you could not quit your job without your mzungu boss signing off on it, or you would be arrested. That made wazungu able to exploit Kenyans without paying them a salary. #hudumanamba
Those days, people could escape from the radar of the colonial govenrment. #hudumanamba seeks to make escape not an option because the government intends to jail us for not having a huduma namba or jail mothers for not marking their babies with the sign of the beast.
By its own admission, the government said during the fake public participation meeting on #hudumanamba that data is the big oil. So this is about commercializing the sale of Kenyans, which is a deal GoK has already entered with Master Card newsroom.mastercard.com/mea/press-rele…
#hudumanamba is also directly related to the private interests of the Tekayo family and his bank. This is their way of making sure that any money earned by Kenyans through small scale enterprises goes through his bank. theelephant.info/op-eds/2019/04…
#hudumanamba is about enslavement of Africans for business. It's not about democracy. Instead of the whiplash of the slave master, the rich are using techology. But it won't make the system any less brutal.
#Hudumanamba is the 666.
First beast: Anglo_American corporations
Second Beast: The Kenyatta empire
Causing fire to come from heaven: American fire power to rescue Tekayo in case he needs it
The number of the beast: #Hudumanamba
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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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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