Do Kenyans really want to continue staying or move out of the desert of poverty? We must ponder this deeply and avoid lazy thinkers like leprosy.
When a Kenyan patriot goes to the US, Japan, Europe, New Zealand or China and witnesses heaven-like development only to come back to our great poverty that kills and destroys 70 per cent of our people, one must ask: are we cursed or bewitched?
Why can’t we escape the mire of poverty? Why is our poverty increasing instead of decreasing? What is the trouble with Kenya? When Chinua Achebe asked, what was the trouble with Nigeria, his answer was, “it is simply and squarely failed leadership.”
Although human problems are similar, in any one nation they will vary from time to time and from one country to another. Every era has its own holy book. Before independence, colonialism was the mother problem for Kenya.
When we got independence, government declared our main problems as poverty, diseases and ignorance. Later the list grew to include capitalism, greed, pillaging, corruption, negative ethnicity and dictatorship.
To compound our problems, Kenyans committed three main errors. First, Kenyans substituted colonial dictatorship with black dictatorship but failed leadership did not vanish. It got worse.
Second, Kenyans substituted colonial capitalism with African capitalism but poverty grew more. Third, Kenyans substituted European exploitation with African exploitation but theft and corruption did not decrease, they got worse.
It is neither a wonder nor an accident therefore that among the world’s most corrupt countries, Kenya is number four and number one in corporate corruption.
After embracing capitalism and the ideology of greed, President Jomo Kenyatta got Duncan Ndegwa to compile a report that sanctioned business and corruption among civil servants.
There before, Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga had fallen apart and sold negative ethnicity as a panacea for ethno-political problems.
In their unfolding war, Kenyatta and Jaramogi also convinced Kenyans that if they substituted others’ ethnic dictatorship with their own, bad leadership would disappear but it did not.
Second, they convinced Kenyans that if their ethnic capitalism reigned, their poverty would disappear but it never did. Third, they convinced Kenyans that if exploitation by other ethnic elite was substituted with one by their own elite, thievery and corruption of their own ethnic ogres would not finish them but it has.
After independence, due to negative ethnicity, ethnic dictatorship became the mother problem for Kenya. In hunting for wealth, instead of capitalist dictators solving people’s problems, they became their creators.
But if bad leaders could not solve problems, the country needed good leaders to eradicate problems. But who would persuade bad leaders to vacate and let good leaders to take over?
If bad leaders will not commit suicide or vacate power willingly, who will put good leaders into power? Because armed revolutions are not an option for chasing away bad leaders, only voters may install good leaders by electing them.
But if voters have votes to put good leaders into power and save the country, the million dollar question is: why don’t they? First, many voters are too intellectually poor to fathom their own interests.
Second, poor people prioritise access to food more than they do to wholesome survival. Third, many poor people don’t understand that capitalist leaders are their worst enemies.
They flirt with the same people that eat them up. Further, it saddens that poor voters are mental slaves whom leaders hypnotise into their slaughter houses.
Ordinary Kenyans are also held captive by negative ethnicity that instigates them to elect leaders from their own community even if they are useless and reject leaders from other communities even when they are better.
All said and done, people are creators of their own conditions. If people’s minds said no to problems, they would vanish. As it is, many are poor because they have not rejected poverty intellectually.
Many nations are also poor because they have not rejected poverty intellectually. If the mind of every person rejected poverty, it would vanish. Equally if the mind of every nation said no to poverty, it would also vanish.
If voters will not reject bad leaders in their minds, they will never put good leaders into power. Today the trouble with Kenya is poverty and enslavement of the mind of the Kenyan voter.
They have emasculated his mind and disabled him from electing a good leader. Ultimately salvation of Kenya will emanate from discernment of voters’ interests, desire to end poor man’s mental servitude, dangers of negative ethnicity and necessity of good leaders for the country.
Before industrial revolution, between 14th and 16th century, Europeans had an era of new scientific ideas, reason and free expression without fear of inquisition and death from kings that was called Renaissance.
For Kenyans to cross the sea of intellectual poverty that today retards and kills us early, we must think new ideas without fear of anything or anybody, we must have our own Renaissance that will allow us to interrogate everything that might hold us back – religious bigotry, sexism, dictatorship, impunity, genocide, faiths, traditions, landlessness, mis-education, illiteracy, authority, capitalism, class apartheid in education and healthcare, moral values, taboos, humanity and everything.
If Kenya shall be free, voters must self-liberate from poverty and enslavement of the mind. Replace bad with good leaders and end oppressive governance and capitalism that today generate poverty, corruption and negative ethnicity for us.
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