Whose Traditions Do I Hand Down?

It is now exactly five years since I enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham in England. It seems like yesterday. The journey has not been easy, though. Anyhow, Last month as I walked into the Aston Webb Building C to submit my dissertation, I remembered my first day at the campus. It was a cool, breezy September 24, 2004. I had already missed out with the orientation. So, armed with the campus map I promised myself to get the most out of my self-guided tour around the campus. The first thing that caught my attention was the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial tower standing majestically right opposite Aston Webb building. I was later to learn that this tower was designed after the tower of Siena Town hall in Italy, the tallest free standing clock tower in the world. The tower stands some 325 feet and was designed to be seen for miles around as an emblem of the University’s prestige.

As I entered the administration block, I could also not help noticing the statues of Beethoven, Virgil, Michelangelo, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Watt, Faraday, and Darwin engraved into the façade of Aston Webb building all looking down as though inviting me into the halls of learning where the future of education lies; but only after the academic traditions of the past (most importantly continuing under the great cultural heritage of European education). With all those figures from the past, one feels a dwarf, especially one who is from Africa. For a moment, I thought the stationary figures from the past casting their knowing looks on me were in fact mocking me.

Once inside the building, as I took in the architectural beauty of Aston Webb Rotunda and its architectural design, I wondered how long it may have taken the builders to bring the long magnificent Aston Webb building into being. Standing in the corridor of C block is the towering white marble statue of King Edward VII with words of his inaugural speech on July 1909 inscribed under the statue’s plinth inviting the young students to “initiate and hand down worthy traditions” to their successors. So as I wandered around I wondered which traditions I was handing down.

It also occurred to me that on 7th July 1909 when the King was officially opening the University, his representative governor was busy curving out the Kenya colony declaring it a White-man’s country. As the natives were coming out of the traditional world of war, magic and indigenous knowledge, the university was opening up avenues for young men and women who would walk the land of my ancestors declaring it the property of his majesty. It would take me five years to try and understand a past that none of my ancestors were kind enough to leave behind or was that memory emasculated? To a great measure, most of that past was obviously decapitated by the King’s young men and women, some of whom may have walked the same hallway I was now walking.

As I await my examiners’ decision whether to bestow to me the power to read (having spent years in the cold archives of Edinburgh, Cambridge, SAOS, London, Birmingham among others) I feel very proud of my accomplishment. I am excited with the research that I have undertaken. On the other hand, however, I feel sad about the very accomplishment. For whom and for what have I so much labored? Though it is difficult to answer this, I dedicate my research to the men and women whom colonialism hoped to perpetually enslave yet their resilience and ability to subvert the colonial order made them the enemy of the very King who graces the hall of the academy where, I will be (hopefully) honored to be called a Doctor of Philosophy.

Obama's visit

While I empathize with Mutuma Muthiu’s frustrations (see http://www.nation.co.ke/blogs/-/446718/622710/-/view/asBlogPost/-/12hisdm/-/index.html), I think we should not lose sight of the fact that Obama is the first sitting USA president to bring Africa to the wider conversation immediately after the G8. His visit to Ghana is a good gesture of a man who genuinely wants to engage but misinformed. It will take equally genuine Africans like Muthiu and me to inform Obama.

Is Kenya a Failed State?

Many Kenyans have been debating this question for some time now (see http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/621292/-/4luy4j/-/index.html). This is my initial take on the question. It should not worry us now that the US has declared our beloved republic a failed state. What should concern us is the leadership quagmire we are in at this point in history. It is a fact that our leaders are visionless. Secondly, no state can boast of its achievements if its citizens live under the shadow of Mungiki, ethnic cleansing, car jackers and night gangs. A state that cannot protect its own is to me a failed one.

Tribe: Any solution in sight?

Kenyan anthropologists need to wake up and think of an alternative term from the pejorative term “tribe”. Must we continue with colonial stereotype even in the postcolonial/postmodern world? When shall we grow up?

The Folly of Kibaki’s policy of a “Working Nation”: A wake up call to the revolutionaries

President Kibaki has perfected his discordant refrain of a “working nation”. His proposal of a working nation assumes that “work” is simply the working of people’s muscles. In this case workers respond as automatons once an executive directive is received. What this assumption fails to acknowledge is that “work” presupposes liberty, responsibility, and consciousness. It means that people use their brains and their hearts before putting their muscles into action in the effort to generate wealth. Equally important is the fact that people must first be brought to the full understanding of what belongs to them: that they are the real owners of the nation’s resources and wealth. This very simple fact of a “working nation” seems to elude politicians and the middle class elite. It does not surprise that even as Mzee continues to recite his refrain and as the government continues to paraded data in front of the local and international press about the growing economy, Kenyans are stilling waiting for the magic touch that will turn their toil into gold. Peasants in rural Kenya and urban workless community continue to toil from the rising of the sun to sundown, working themselves to death. However, this toiling never move them an inch, economically speaking. Can somebody explain to me how on earth the real owners of the country's wealth resort to begging food that they have produced? Or why would people scramble for a jerry can of petrol at the risk of their very life?

A number of Kenyans, mostly in the bourgeoisies and middle classes tend to gravitate towards Kibaki’s notion of a “working nation”. In most cases those who have embraced this exhortation, argue that since Kibaki served in the Finance docket during the heydays of Kenya’s financial glories, he must know what he is talking about when he calls the nation to roll up its sleeves and work. However, what this myth obscures is the fact that while the economy was blossoming in the 70s’, Kibaki was mortgaging the country’s future by signing for colossal debts borrowed from and encouraged by former colonial powers. The 70s were also the days of “black gold” and the thriving “black market”. Those were the days when “mũkwanjo” (Gĩkũyũ sjambok) ruled the cabinet. It is also during those days that Kenyatta encouraged his cahoots to eat to their fill exhorting them to be sly and slippery for if caught in the act of thieving, he would not defend them. This was long before Moi inherited the eating culture which he happily embraced and perfected. In other words, Kibaki cannot escape the blame, for he took part in perfecting and solidifying the eating culture which birthed the modern ruling elite. It had to take one of their own J.M. Kariuki, at the risk of his own life, to call to attention the emerging republic of ten millionaires and ten million beggars. Reality has surpassed Kariũki’s prediction.

Sadly, the unpreparedness of the ruling elite, their intellectual laziness, and will to imitation bother every right thinking Kenyan. As willing tools of capitalism and corruption this class has completely lost touch with the struggling mwanchi. In their understanding, wealth, as Frantz Fanon articulated long ago, is not the fruit of labour of one’s hands but the result of organised and protected robbery. Instead of investing and making themselves willing servants of the people, they offer themselves and the country to the highest bidder. They will, unsolicited, sell their birth right at the bourgeois table, making their own fortunes if that will serve their desire to up a national system of robbery. Their preoccupation is to fill their pocket as quickly as possible. In the mean time they hide country’s economic stagnation and regression, in commission and board reports. Growth is computed in terms of new building springing in the unplanned city, or roads rehabilitated and shameless spending on prestigious expenses such as the ones we have recently witnessed in the country. In the meantime Kibaki’s lieutenants continue vomiting and belching unashamedly in front of a hungry nation.

The ruling class has equally made parliament a useless institution. As a class parliamentarians have proved incapable of building viable, coherent and lasting social relations. Instead, standing on its principle of domination as a class, it fails to reassure its citizenry but multiply individual anxiety through vulgar tribalism built on fear and mudsling which have become the order of debate. In the mean time the national economy continues to depend on unsustainable intermediary services and overburdened farming economy. What we are witnessing forty six years after colonisation is lack of invention of new social relations. Instead unfair advantages that have their foundation in colonialism continue to mark out the state of affairs in our country. Foreign companies continue to control the nation’s economy while the bourgeoisies seek to have contracts pass through their hands: A very lucrative role with kick backs and bonuses. That is why, without the blinking of an eye, the ruling elite gobble a whole reserve of the nation food bank in front of Kibaki’s very eyes whose refrain of a “working nation” (by now) has picked a frenzy tempo.

I challenge Prof. Anyang’ Nyongo, James Orengo, Martha Karua, Mutava Musyimi and other comrades to wake up from their intellectual slumber and ethnic alliances and lead the masses from the front. It is about that time when the selfless spirit of Koitale, Gakaara, Kaggia, Elijah Masinde, inspire these patriots. They should not allow the capitalist system to suck them thin. Time is now when they should redeem their image before it is too late. I hear the rumbling; the storm is gathering; spears are being sharpened and knifes are being brandished. Hear me Oh yeah revolutionaries of yester years. Nobody should underrate the intelligence of Kenyans. The poor may be without economic muscles that you parade every day while holding Kenyans hostage. Know that the last laugh is with the ignored masses. Soon the peace-loving Kenyans will arise from their dreamy state and for once roar like a might lion demanding its rightful place in the affairs of building the nation. When that time comes, decisions will no longer be made in the comforts of parliament cosy offices but in dilapidated hovels of the rural people where the true spirit of Uhuru languishes. The true owners of the country will soon be knocking at your doors. When they come knocking, there will be no time for you to barricade. The will of the Kenyan people will bring all those doors of greed, aloofness and apathy down. At that time Jaramogi’s dream of true Uhuru will be transformed to reality. Make no mistake about it.