#LandIsNotProperty Mwalimu Wandia Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
So I'm recalling a conversation in this streets about the demand for theory in the petition by @DavidNdii et al. over the past few days and wondering what it is that the Kenyan school system teaches about theory.
In post-graduate work, there is a demand for theory that sounds more bureaucratic than anything else. It is like we are explicitly required to say "I'm using this theory..." before any of our thinking is worth consideration. And that theory is invariably western.
For undergraduates, theory is something to apply. So they can't see any theory unless it demonstrates applicability. But applicability, again, is limited. To the market. It's not about our lives and values, but about what can make us money.
So it is excruciating to watch students unable to hear fellow Africans, respond to what they say, or even more, reflect on our experiences. They're so busy applying things and giving moral lessons that they find the question "what do you think" traumatizing and disruptive.
Theory is simply interpretation. It's not formulas for application. Every time we articulate human experience, or act, we are theorizing because we are showing our interpretation. So we do not need to demand a theory or an application for knowledge to be legitimate.
So the demand for a theory is an assertion of power. And that power is normally racialized, because the dominant theories are western. As @lewgord says, people whose humanity is questioned are expected to provide experience which the West gives itself the role of interpreting.
That is why Kenyans demand "theory," or "facts," which are produced or confirmed by western authorities before they consider your knowledge legitimate. Ndii mentioned this some time back.
If Kenyans could understand the emotional, psychic and intellectual scars inflicted by our education system, our political life would change so drastically. That's why theory has become a kiboko with which education institutions beat Kenyans into silence.
Within educational instituions, we're beaten down for not explicitly naming a theory.

Once we graduate, we beaten down for being too theoretical. Either way, we're always wrong.

That's the national law of average I talked about some time back.

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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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