​Many with a decent knowledge of neo-colonialism and global racism may have been shocked at the amount of Western decadence, from Anglo-American political stars and billionaires, that has flowed into Kenya in the first few months of President Ruto’s tenure.

​Without a public discussion, the ban on GMOs was lifted by decree, with a fairly racist caveat that since we Kenyans are dying of famine anyway, we need GMO foods to fill the gap. Weeks later, this dystopian logic would be openly articulated by the Trade CS who, in a poor attempt at sarcasm, said in the midst of the morbid laughs of his elite audience: “By just being in this country, you are a candidate for death. And because there are so many things competing to kill you, there is nothing wrong with adding GMOs to that list."

​The last few months, and even the last five years, have been a journey of abuse from the political class. Uhuru Kenyatta, especially, kicked tantrums when he did not get his way, undermined the constitution using the armed forces, unleashed toxicity into the public conversation through public relations and the media, and sealed this manipulation with an intellectually stunting new education system. It has been a five-year war on the Kenyan soul.
​
But Kenyans have courageously fought back. The vibrant public sphere and citizen mobilization have stopped insidious policies like Huduma Namba and BBI. Landmarks in jurisprudence have been achieved. Amidst these victories, both Uhuru and the civil service bureaucrats have struggled to hide their irritation that Kenyans have used the constitution to demand proper governance. 

As I watched a few clips of the Sonko Leaks, until I could no longer stand the toxicity, I wondered to myself: why on earth do people who are already rich and well educated demand bribes, when they definitely do not need the money?

​The answer I came up with was this: they do it to humiliate. There is something about them that is so hollow, that they can only feel themselves by degrading others. The point of bribes is not to earn money, but to assert power by shrinking the human dignity of others.

I grew up knowing that in Kenya, it was a crime to ask questions. I was bullied in primary school for my “big mouth.” In high school I was blasted for being like my father. At church I was reprimanded repeatedly for literal blasphemy, and I still am, any time I cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But even as I endured this humiliation, I always knew that the one place to ask questions in Kenya was the university. Yes, I knew that Micere Mugo, ES Atieno Odhiambo, Willy Mutunga, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and many others had suffered for exercising intellectual freedom. I knew that university students had been jailed and killed for demanding democracy and authentic education. I knew that police hated students and would beat us at any chance. 

Very rarely do I speak publicly about my family and my relationship with my father, because I am an intensely jealous daughter. I refuse to share my relationship with my father with the public, because our lives were public already, both due to my father’s career as a church minister but also due to the political positions he took.
 
When I was young, I often used to be asked what it felt like to be a pastor’s child. I would reply that I don’t know, because I only know him as “Dad.” I learned to do that from my mother who constantly refused the label “pastor’s wife.” She argued that that label was used to the disregard the clergy as workers who needed to be treated decently because they too had families. Unlike the posperity gospel churches, the PCEA sometimes treats clergy like TSC treats teachers, posting them at the drop of a hat with little consideration about what the relocation means for their families. So I learned from my mother to protect my relationship with my father.

With the colonial ideology of order, and without a tribal elite to implement it, like the elite handed over to Kenyatta by the colonial government, Moi maintained the colonial and exploitative state by crushing alternative spaces of imagination in the same way his predecessors had done, but with more cruelty. As the saying goes, every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.

​(Long read)

I have always had a tortured relationship with Daniel arap Moi, the second president of Kenya. I was in primary school when I first became conscious of him, because of the school milk that we drank. As I became a teenager, I was aware of the world my parents lived in, trying to forge a better Kenya, and Moi using the leadership of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), to persecute them. 
​
But there was still a sense in which I was distanced from the cause of my parents’ struggles. When I was in form 2 or form 3 (I can’t remember), Moi visited our school and I asked him for an autograph, and he was gracious and wrote that he wished me a bright future. The next Monday, our headmistress blasted the entire school about lack of respect for an elderly statesman. But who cared? Not me. 

Boris Johnson’s new mandate in the UK feels increasingly familiar. There is a pattern between governments in Kenya, US and the UK. It’s the politics of the single issue.

From ICC, to MAGA (Make America Great Again) to CBC, to Brexit to huduma namba, and to BBI, all instances unite in politicians are hoodwinking citizens on single issues that camouflage multiple reforms that will destroy social services and suppress citizens’ rights. And these reforms are all linked to the interests of mostly Anglo-Saxon billionaires.

ICC was made the pet issue by Kenya’s current president during his 2013 campaign, and it was on the advice of a British PR company. Muigai’s supporters, especially from the Kikuyu community, were hoodwinked into believing that voting for ICC suspects was voting against imperialism. The irony was that the strategy came from imperialists.

Brexit is the same as MAGA. It is about gutting down environmental protections, protecting zero contract hours for workers, austerity and tax breaks for the 0.1%. The British were told lies that the EU caused all that, and the Remain campaign was too weak in countering those lies. That has meant that the conversation has been so dominated by Brexit, that by the time Labour tried to talk about the real issues, it was too late.