Thread by @wmnjoya

I started #MaishaKazini because of the lies about education and work that we were being told in defence of CBC. I thought the media and NGO people had flawed ideas and that we were having a debate. Because I was not being heard, I started a channel.
youtube.com/c/MaishaKazini

I tackled these lies:

1. We don't need theory, only skills
2. Unemployment comes from bad education
3. Exam obsession is caused by the curriculum
4. Our education is too theoretical

All these lies are racist and designed to keep Africans from thinking
#EducationCaptureKE

With @m_ogada we showed again and again how Western capital and Kenyan elites are determined to separate our work from the dignity and material benefits that we should get from our work.
#EducationCaptureKE

Especially after the revelation about Cambridge Analytica, I realized that conversation is also polluted. So I also did a playlist on Kenyan narratives to show the fallacies and emotional manipulation used to ensure we don't hear the truth about education.
#EducationCaptureKE

I covered all the bases: psychology, philosophy, economics, literature etc, all to expose that the justifications for CBC were lies, fallacies and emotional manipulation.

I had not understood that we are dealing with an infrastructure of misinformation.
#EducationCaptureKE

The light bulb went on just two days ago, with this piece by a guy called Mr King. I looked him up, and found he was working for a global education non-profit, which are the monsters behind education privatization around the world. #EducationCaptureKE
nation.africa/kenya/blogs-op…

As early as 2019, @samo2beta had alerted me when I asked why the launch of CBC was organized and dominated by people who were connected to Uwezo where Sara Ruto worked before joining KICD.

At that time, I didn't get it.
#EducationCaptureKE

https://twitter.com/samo2beta/status/1162324452199342080?t=MbT0s1rfoYvId57aEIYoSQ&s=19

So now the pieces fell together. Ruto. Manyasa. Janet Ouko who is so often interviewed by Trevor Ombija. There was even a time when @StandardKenya plagiarised my article about a Mr Jones of British Council who was thanked by KICD in the CBC framework.
#EducationCaptureKE

British Council wrote to me denying their involvement in CBC. When I presented the evidence from the KICD document, I didn't get a reply.

The response to my plagiarism tweet was more more interesting.

#EducationCaptureKE

I received an email from @StandardKenya supposedly asking the writer who plaigiarised to explain. The writer, cynically told me that the stuff I wrote about Mr. Jones was public information so I should be surprised that his article was similar to mine.
#EducationCaptureKE

Media editors never write back to me. This time they did. Now I think the concern was more than fear of a law suit. I think they were deflating the steam from my blog post so that they could divert attention from me and keep control of the CBC narrative
#EducationCaptureKE

It took me 5 years to understand that the CBC was control and capture by the media and NGOs. Right under the nose of government. KICD officials who stood in the way were frustrated into quitting, then replaced by people who had drunk the GERM Kool aid
#EducationCaptureKE

Now when I look back, there were several other people in different NGO spaces who blocked me from pursuing a more public action against CBC. I got bad advice, I was sent in directions that would definitely end nowhere, and all these sounded very logical.

#EducationCaptureKE

My CBC story is like that movie called Truman Show. Everything around me was coordinated to divert my questions. My only redemption is that I didn't listen to them when they told me to stop writing on public media and instead join advocacy, lobby or sue.

#EducationCaptureKE

This is the reason why I didn't listen:

Education is a public endeavor. It is more important for the Kenyan public to understand the threat of CBC because the government listens only to the public. Advocacy simply makes one a hero, but nothing changes.
#EducationCaptureKE

A large number of the people promoting CBC were also against the Ruto presidency. So the fact that he has sided with his opponents on education is quite strange. It means one or a combination of several things.

1. They don't get the political issue at stake
#EducationCaptureKE

2. Investment in Kenya was tied to letting CBC go on. After all, the same vulture corporations behind IMF and World Bank are the same ones who fund the GERM NGOs which promote CBC.
#EducationCaptureKE

3. The Hustler narrative is a cynical manipulation of the 97%. UDA is willing to improve the lives of ordinary Kenyans economically because the 3% will benefit as well, but not culturally and politically. That's why their manifesto puts culture under trade.
#EducationCaptureKE

The thing is, the hustlers who now don't have to be in debt peonage will want a better life for their kids. They will seek it from education and discover education is rigged against hustler kids
But that's in another 10+ years. Ruto has bought himself time.
#EducationCaptureKE

But even I have laid the groundwork for the conversation to come back in those 10 years. Maisha Kazini channel, my publications etc. The kids going through CBC will want to know what happened. They will find my work which their parents ignored.

#EducationCaptureKE

Fanon said that while politicians fight on the military battle field, intellectuals fight on the historical one. So I know that history is on my side. Ideas may be suppressed for a time, but they come back when a new generation wants to understand.
#EducationCaptureKE