Reading Kenya: Patriotism and Visionary Leadership
Political science scholars, this is the time to be marketing your books.
In my childhood, there were two interesting things about the 9 o’clock news. First, the opens, in which my brother and I found great delight, making up silly dances to the music inspired by the video clips the TV station used. Second, the fact that every day without fail, the adults were sat for the news, and every day without fail, the watching of the news was accompanied by complaints about corrupt politicians and disappointment in the corrupt government.
Our takeaway, of course, was that nothing good can come of watching the news, and nothing could be done about the things in the news, and yet adults were bound by powers beyond them to watch it religiously. It did not help that when we asked our father what “politics” was — this thing that seemed to be the reason why our country was not like America, this thing that was invoked whenever some MP or other was saying things on TV in ways that we thought were rather embarrassing and unnecessarily loud — our father, wise man that one, said, “Ni siasa.” “Na siasa ni nini?” “Ni politics.” And that was all.
“The Kenyan political system operates at two levels. The first is self-seeking political leadership with an exasperating sense of entitlement and no obligation towards the voters or the common good…The second is the apathetic electorate with little concern about good governance or productive leadership.”
Looking back now, I find that my education seems to have been set up to teach me the good, easy, clean parts of what governance and civic duty and nationhood entail, but to leave out everything that pointed to the messiness of it all. I loved Social Studies in primary school and loved history and literature in high school, but I came away from the whole thing with not much more understanding about how the country is run than the running joke that my father had given to us. Our literature and fasihi texts spoke to these matters directly, but the bottom line was the same one I had taken from the news: The way things are done sucks, the corruption of politicians is draining us dry, and it is a tragedy. The apathy deepened. I did not know — and it genuinely felt like my teachers didn’t either — how to piece together the different bits of our history and governance that I had memorised for my exams into a coherent worldview that allowed my education to show itself in my day to day life.
I have read Patriotism and Visionary Leadership, written by Dr Muriithi Kiyu and published by Mystery Publishers, with the overwhelming sense that had I read it in high school or in my early 20s at least, the puzzle pieces would have come together much faster to form the necessary context that made all those facts I memorised matter. This is my biggest criticism of how our education system handles history: loose facts, incomplete, about a wide assortment of topics are enough to give a general outline and do not form on their own into an ideology that might have a chance at demanding better, and so our education gives us just enough of them and never dares to connect the dots. Without context and a framework within which to trace a thread through every topic, students fill their memories with information that quickly becomes impotent. And then you have a generation of young people who only know that things suck but don’t know how exactly they came to suck, what exactly generations before did to make them suck less, and what exactly their generation can do now. Sure, we can say the personal is political now, but imagine if our education system showed everybody exactly what that means as early as possible.
A young person knows that it is wrong how politicians hold the country hostage but often not the cultural systemic forces that allow this situation to feel so unchangeable. A young person knows that the government is failing in its responsibilities in inexcusable ways but often not why this keeps happening even if the citizens are fed up. Or are they even fed up at all? A young person knows that the governments that came before influenced the government of today, but often have only a vague idea — because they weren’t there to witness it and so don’t have enough context to ground their actions today.
“The Kenyan state was established through coercion, brute force, and violence. Hence, the resultant socio-political order was a product of domination rather than consensus. Since the transition from colonialism to independence was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the citizens could hardly notice the difference in the application of state power. There was no clear break from the “evil state” of the coloniser to the “our state” of the African elite.”
I find that this book does a good job of guiding one through how we got here, starting with the inequalities entrenched by the violence of colonialism. It walks you through how these inequalities seeped into the postcolonial government and each successive government to date. It goes into our political culture: our attitudes towards political parties, the opposition, corruption, ethnic mobilisation, state institutions, the legitimisation of violence, foreign influence, devolution. Most interesting to me was the detail used to illustrate the points being made about each of these things. Reading the book felt like having an elder telling me stories to contextualise why we are the way that we are. For me, who has in the past felt deeply disengaged from our politics, who has struggled to find a useful way forward on how to become engaged in a way that can feel meaningful and realistic, this contextualisation has been a gift.
“The most unsettling characteristic of the political parties in Kenya is the lack of ideology to rally and win members’ loyalty to a course…Party members have nothing concrete that would compel them to defend the party except for personal gain. Hence, party hopping is common, especially during the election period.”
Is it perfect as a physical book? It could have done with a keener editorial eye: there are assertions that are repeated in different chapters (which can feel like listening to a droning lecturer; lengthy academic-leaning nonfiction can be tricky because of the task of keeping track of everything that has already been said), and in some parts the footnote merely repeats an expounding that has already happened in the main text, making the footnote pointless — a minor irritation but an irritation nonetheless. Also, sometimes things go slightly wrong at the printer and a copy can end up looking like the text is sitting crooked on the page. And I truly do think we could have gone more creative with the cover and title. But the font type and size are friendly, the paper is great, and the text block density is excellent for my vision.
I cannot claim that the contents of this book are groundbreaking or confirm that its portrayal of events is 100% accurate or insist that the perspective it takes is the way forward. I figure that judgement belongs to the people whose understanding of these things has been deep and lengthy, whose education in what politics is was more robust than mine. But books like this are not necessarily written for the people who already know; they are most valuable to those who don’t and want to. And even when they say what is generally already known, it still matters that they are written for the preservation of the knowledge.
Especially now, I have to believe that there are many young people who would like to find firmer footing in historical context and political science, to know what factors are actually at play. And many more who, having been politically disengaged before last year’s demonstrations, now need a crash course to bring them up to speed. This book and others like it are necessary for different demographics — somebody needs to get on a children’s book that will offer a more comprehensive lesson than my father could. And the book ecosystem really needs to take advantage of the political moment to prop up the ones inviting us into their knowledge by writing them.