Thread by @wmnjoya

The fundamental difference between coloniality/imperialism/patriarchy on one hand, and humanity on the other, boils to one fundamental thing.

POWER.

We are dealing with two types of power that have two different results.

Coloniality of power is about the ability to extract from others. Extract work, especially, but also emotion, morality, creativity.. and the list goes on. Coloniality of power has no capacity to be human, to be creative or to produce.

Coloniality of power is about using violence to extract from others. So you enslave or employ, so that you don't work but benefit from others' work. Or you lead a life of decadence and then seek reputation laundering from the poor or those who did the work of living a moral life.

Or you lack the capacity to forge social relations out of love, respect and service, so you seek ego caressing and emotional balance from demanding praise, pampering and sex because you are rich, or you are white, or you are a man, or you have a government appointment, etc.

This kind of power requires constant violence through weapons, debt, displacement, bombardment with toxic messages, misogyny and other forms of hate, because one cannot thrive without the dehumanization of others.

The other kind of power defines itself by ones impact on the world through WORK. If I am a parent, I have good power if I raise another human being to feel confident and human. I make deliberate decisions to teach values, to provide sustenance to the child. That's power.

Or of I am a farmer, I have an impact on people's health because the food I produce gives people nutrition.

Or if I am a cleaner, I have influence because I make people feel better about themselves by being in a clean space. That's power.

Coloniality and hate keep degrading us so that we don't have this creative power. So it pays bad salaries or none at all. Or it tells us that we beg for jobs instead of creating them. Or that we are Africans or women or youth and have nothing important to contribute.

Martin Luther King reminded us that we must resist the coloniality/racist/misogynist power and continually announce the power that we have. Or what he called a "blueprint."

We must fight for this positive power to govern Kenya. If we don't resist people who can't write a poem, perform a rap song, dig a shamba, teach the youth, whose only power is being born to the right family, grabbing, and destroying institutions, we will cannibalize each other.

We have to name and praise work that has the positive power of impact. We ate well because so and so farmed. We danced because so and so sang. We gained knowledge because so and so taught.

We have to keep telling those stories, singing those praises, affirming ourselves.

That is the way to uproot this cannibalism that makes politicians steal from the sick, steal the future from our youth, or men break women, or adults break kids. We are sucking blood of the vulnerable because we live in a power logic in which we feel human by dehumanizing others.

We have to fight for our WORK to be valued, not just money wise but culture wise. Our heroes must be people who lifted the load of fighting colonialism, from Talai Clan against displacement, to Mekatilili against forced labor to the Kamba resistance to destocking, to the Mau Mau.

None of these people fought for independence. They fought for dignity of work, against extraction of resources or of their labor, and against alienation from the land. We must continue that fight if we are to be human.

Independence is an empty concept waved at us by vultures.

We must tell our stories. The stories of men at the mjengo and the women who sell them food. The story of a teacher walking 20km. The stories of cleaners who make our homes habitable. The stories of medical workers waking up yet another day to go treat Covid patients.

We must tell and tell the stories of our work, we must praise even the most mundane work. We must stop asking for solutions because solutions is another way of saying that the only people who work are those in top goverment offices with the budgets to implement visible decisions.

Sex and emotional intimacy are also work. They are things we nurture by filling our lives with beauty, by being deliberate about what we read and listen to. This idea that rich men can pay for emotional sustenance and are allowed to kill women they don't get it is vampirism.

That is why we need culture and the arts to remind us that dignity is priceless. It can be shared but it cannot be sold. People whose power and sense of self depends on money and ability to harm others are vampires who want the innocent to compensate for their soullessness.

Even nurturing the soul is work. People need to do the work and stop this sickness of saying that God made certain people to compensate for their emptiness.

That is why at #maishakazini we insist on work as DIGNITY, CREATIVITY and LOVE.

We need to replace extraction and violence with WORK as the source of power.

WORK IS POWER.