The problems Chimamanda talks about are not limited to social media. And they don't come from a character flaw. They are the fruit of the neoliberal hijack of social change which she also benefited from. So those who attack her, as she unwittingly admits, are her disciples.
As an arts teacher who has challenged Kenya's colonial education system, I can tell you that under this neoliberal era, we have given nothing to our young people to help them read life in its complexity. To expect otherwise is to seek to reap where we have not sown.
Every time Kenyans repeat that nonsense about arts having no "relevance," and of reducing education to job market and economic success, they are planting the seeds of the fruit Chimamanda now criticizes: entitlement, puritanical vision of life, little emotional intelligence etc.
I have had to teach my students what colonialism is. Yes. They don't know. We don't teach them because KEPSA says it doesn't produce workers to export to Uganda. Neoliberalism defunded education. So it made us diseducate our youth and produce the people Chimamanda now describes.
Chimamanda might not know this because her generation escaped the neoliberal war on education. So she went through the accolades, spoke at think tanks, and thought she could teach the younger generation the same path. She didn't realize they grew up in a different world order.
In our days, liberation heroes did not get awards, invitations to give talks. To fight even for women's issues attracted abuse. But these days, you get prizes, awards, TED talks, invitations to think tanks, etc. So younger people see material rewards for raising social issues.
That's how neoliberalism has corrupted social commentary and intellectual production. People who want to continue in that path need to be conscious of that, and to be very cautious about the kinds of invitations, prizes, awards and fellowships they accept.
And if you choose the path of accompanying your literary prowess with such material awards, prepare to go through what Chimamanda has gone through. I do sympathize with her, truly, but this is the nature of the neoliberal beast.
I invite her to fight against the commercialization of education and the war against the arts. The US has spread that disease to Africa in the name of "education reform." Her voice would be more useful in education, than in the neoliberal path of workshops and mentoring.
An education system in which the arts form an integral part, and a society which values humanity over achieving targets, where ideas are grappled with, rather than celebrated, is what will raise a generation that values being good to people over the appearance of goodness.

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More from @wmnjoya

17 Jun
There seems to be a clot in the Kenyan brain that blocks people from seperating economic problems from education. The #Somenivijana story of going to school for employment was for an exclusive to the colonial civil service and foreign companies. It was not the general economy.
The British caved in to higher education for Africans because it wanted to train a Kenyan civil service that would serve British interests after 1963. That is why uni education got attached to employment. The civil service is a parasitic enterprise. It doesn't grow the economy.
Because the civil service doesn't grow the economy, it soon ran out of employment positions. That was when they 1) said civil servants were allowed to do business and 2) started this evil propaganda of telling Kenyans "rudi mashambani" and stop seeking employment #somenivijana
Read 7 tweets
15 Jun
One big cause of mental unwellness is the clash between our human instinct to care and heal, and the workplace on the other. It's called emotional labor.

Emotional labor causes so much internal pain because there is a government and PR machinery to deny that it exists.
Imagine feeling emotional and mental anguish from gaslighting at work, and then when you talk about it, the PR guy at @MOH_Kenya, who is directly responsible for the pain, denies reality and says that the problem is with you. That's mental anguish x2.
The assault of such neoliberal policies at the workplace has been called by researchers a form of "terror on the soul." It has been widely documented by researchers, but Oprah types want to tell us mental torture at work is unrelated to mental unwellness.
Read 7 tweets
15 Jun
I didn't know Wahura Kanyoro. But upon reading what she wrote, I am angry, not sad. And when I read people talking about beefing up mental health treatment and discussing depression, I'm even angrier.

This is what she wrote in December 2020. ImageImageImage
There was a very clear catalyst for Wahura's sorrow. It was a country whose government has so much contempt for medical workers who get trained and work hard to help us maintain our health.

How are they treated? Wahura was very clear.
She said working in public healthcare "was slowly killing me to work as a precursor to the morgue instead of as a doctor." Put yourself in Wahura's shoes. You're trained to protect life, but you are reduced by a cruel @MOH_Kenya to be an escort for the end of life.
Read 17 tweets
18 Apr
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.
Read 20 tweets
17 Apr
There is an epidemic in Kiambu County of intimate murders, mostly femicides, but @StandardKenya's fascination is with the murderer's car getting stuck in the mud.

There is a spiritual problem in that county. It signed a pact with the devil.
standardmedia.co.ke/central/articl…
I suspect that more of this will happen till you know who leaves office. In 2014, I said that once we allowed crimes of humanity suspects in the highest office, Kenya thirsted for more blood.

Femicide. Whole towns of male suicide. Family murders. Rape of women and children.
Kenyans eating funds for treating Kenyans with covid. It's as if Kenya has turned into a country of vampires who find cruder and cruder ways of consuming human blood.

It starts at the very top. Kenyans have given up on being human and are not even aware.
theelephant.info/reflections/20…
Read 5 tweets
15 Apr
It says a lot that @LinusKaikai is unable to engage the economic/social questions raised by the DP. There are holes in what Ruto is saying, but Linus is always taking the conversation back to the bromance with Muigai.

The media need to do their homework.
#RutoOnCitizenTV
But Linus's fear of the poor also points to the contempt of the middle class for the poor. The middle class is more afraid of the poor uprising than they are of the economy collapsing. #RutoOnCitizenTV Image
Ruto is talking of expanding the tax base and statutory contributions but jobs are no longer permanent with benefits. There are no jobs with pension contributions. This is the uber economy.

If @LinusKaikai wasn't so anti-hustler, he would have picked that. #RutoOnCitizenTV
Read 6 tweets

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