African. Woman. Wife. Teacher. In the 99%. Love + Revolution.
Elimu ya ngumbaru on the Kenyan socio-political context for the price of bundles - Betty Guchu
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Jun 24 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Where Gen Z's are today was where my generation was 30 years ago. In our 20s, stuck in IMF SAPs, an AIDS pandemic, and a clueless political class gatekeeping a new generation out of adulthood.
We need a discussion about reconstructing Kenya to avoid these 30 year cycles.
The first thing we need to understand, which my generation didn't, was the role of the West. The @IMFNews and @WorldBank are main actors in these 30 year cycles. They are scared of a new generation of Africans rising and are manipulating our economies to block them from doing it.
Jun 15 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
Grade 9 parents have been given this whatever called RIASEC which they are supposed to use in choosing career pathways and schools for their children.
I know we want to concentrate on our kids, but we're Africans. Nothing we are told to do is innocent.
So we have to understand where it's coming from, and why GoK bureaucrats, in their wisdom, decided that Kenyan parents should be subjected to it.
RIASEC is what people call psychometrics, where tests are used to measure people's intelligence or personalities.
Jun 14 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I cannot warn enough that the damage CBE/CBC will do to our children's psyche is going to be phenomenal. Parents, you have to wake up and listen. You have to stop looking at the what (content) of education, and think of the how your kids are developing. This isn't a joke.
The relationship between children and parents should be sacred. No teacher should be telling you what to do on weekends, less still, they shouldn't be telling you to take PHOTOGRAPHS of that activity. In this day and age? THINK! Do you want photos of your children in a data base?
Apr 24 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The only thing keeping the GoK in power is ignorance of Kenyans. And I don't mean the ignorance Jomo was talking about. Jomo was using the racist idea that Africans are ignorant because they don't know Western civilization.
I'm talking about ignorance as a war on consciousness.
Even the most vocal of voices, who were supposedly Gen Z, do not have political consciousness. They think that the right bureaucrats in the government will make Kenya work. Almost all the doctors who led #lipakamatender less than 10 years ago are now trying to make SHA work.
Apr 13 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
We have no opposition because Kenya's democracy is elitist. Kenya's "democracy" is code for elites controlling the masses. Elections are for recalibrating the elite. They block us from fighting on issues. They fight each other and force us to watch and take (ethnic) sides.
The recalibration of the elite through elections is for giving ordinary Kenyans that they have the power to choose their leaders. But once the vote is cast, the recalibration begins. Lawyers in European wigs make fancy arguments in court, media looks active reporting numbers,
Apr 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I'm convinced that Kenya is sustained by Western money. We can't have an extremely insipid, corrupt elite, an anti-intellectual academy, a non productive economy, and the economy hasn't crashed. There is an outside factor sustaining this Kenyan economy, but not on our behalf.
Our lives are becoming more incoherent and more chaotic, but the institutions are still standing instead of collapsing. Then the Kenyan journalists and international media sustain the image of a coherent intelligentsia who can explain Kenya with the right theories and data.
Jan 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
By the way, we haven't talked about how CBC is giving your government data on your children. For years. I tried to flag those "assessments" as a form of spying, but you people said you preferred that to exams.
It makes me angry to explain because it's so obvious but our ears were blocked.
Let me tell you what continuous assessment and parental involvement are.
You take photos of your kids and send to the teacher. The teacher uploads those assignments EVERY TERM to the MoE server.
Jan 1 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
I know we hated literature in school (it's badly taught and very badly examined, anyway) but to understand the psyops happening here, we need to understand the difference between the symbolic and the literal, and why they matter. 🧵
Symbolic language is language that is able to capture what is said beyond the literal words. So, for example, if we say Zakayo must go, that's a shortened form of talking about our political problems and bad leadership.
Aug 21, 2024 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
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
Aug 10, 2024 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Jul 29, 2024 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Why we should go back to 8.4.4. 🧵
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.
Jul 18, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
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.
Jul 15, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Jun 26, 2024 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
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
Mar 10, 2024 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
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.
Mar 7, 2024 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
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.
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
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.
Nov 28, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Nov 15, 2023 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
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. 🧵
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.
Nov 5, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
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.
Oct 21, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
You all said you don't want your kids to have knowledge. Only skills. That's what quacks are: people who think things can be done without knowing anything. Your kids will be the next ones.
We need to grow up.
We even pointed out the serious psychological issues that will arise from that kind of thinking. Remember what you said? What we have is what people get in Norway.
You think only you can ridicule what I say. Goes both ways.
