Africa Spirituality|Critical thinking|Courage|Humanity|Anti-Imperialist|Nature Lover
Kenya
Joined November 2010
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Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
They will tell you Mao’s China was isolated and paranoid and turned inward in ways that impoverished its people.
They will not tell you that the isolation was substantially enforced from outside.
American-led embargo. Exclusion from the United Nations until 1971. Diplomatic non-recognition. The systematic attempt to strangle an economy of 600 million people because their government had been chosen without American approval.
When the isolation produced poverty, the poverty was cited as evidence of communism’s failure.
The embargo that enforced the isolation was not cited at all.
This is the same logic applied to Cuba, to Vietnam, to Iran, to the DPRK.
Impose the conditions that make development difficult.
Point to the difficulty as proof that the political system doesn’t work.
Use that proof to justify maintaining the conditions.
It is a clean loop.
It requires only that the people inside it never look at what’s producing what.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Africa’s debt to Western financial institutions is, in many cases, smaller than what was taken from Africa.
This is not a rhetorical point.
It is an accounting one.
The scholars who have attempted to calculate the value extracted from the African continent during the colonial period, in labour, in resources, in the compounded interest of what those resources would have produced had they remained, consistently arrive at figures that dwarf the current debt burden by orders of magnitude.
The debtor and the creditor, in other words, are not who the system says they are.
The debt is real. The leverage it creates is real. The suffering it produces through structural adjustment and austerity is real.
But the moral architecture of the relationship, the idea that Africa owes rather than is owed, is a fiction maintained by the people for whom the fiction is financially convenient.
Africa is not a continent of debtors.
It is a continent that has not yet collected.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o understood it with absolute clarity.
You do not need chains if you have classrooms.
You do not need to physically prevent a people from imagining their own freedom if you have already shaped the language in which they think.
If the colonized child learns to read in the colonizer’s language.
If the colonized child learns that the "great books" were written in the colonizer’s language.
If the colonized child learns that the history worth knowing begins with the colonizer’s arrival.
If the colonised child learns that success, sophistication, education itself, is measured by proximity to the coloniser’s standards:
That child does not need to be imprisoned.
That child will imprison themselves.
Will measure themselves against a standard designed to find them lacking.
Will work their entire life to approximate an ideal that was never constructed to include them.
Will call this effort "self-improvement."
The classroom was the most elegant instrument the colonial project ever designed.
More durable than any fort.
More effective than any army.
Because armies are visible. Forts can be stormed.
But a belief installed in childhood, in the voice of a teacher, in the language of learning itself, that is nearly invisible.
And what you cannot see, you cannot dismantle.
ALT Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938–2025), Kenyan novelist, intellectual and author of "Decolonising the Mind" (1986). He exposed how colonial education could teach generations to regard their own languages, histories and cultures as inferior, while measuring their worth against the coloniser’s standards. For Ngũgĩ, colonial domination was not merely about occupying a people’s land. It was also about colonising their minds. Political independence could remove the coloniser. Decolonising the mind was another struggle entirely.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Africa does not need intellectuals who simply translate Western thinking into African languages.
We need scholars who begin with African experiences, challenge inherited assumptions, and produce ideas capable of changing the material conditions of our people.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
The lie about Africa was not a small lie carelessly told.
It was a structural lie, deliberately constructed, institutionally maintained, academically defended.
It required the renaming of things. Egypt became, in the Western imagination, not quite African. The pyramids became a "mystery," because the alternative was crediting Africans with their construction, which the framework could not accept.
It required the discrediting of Arab and African scholarship about African history.
It required the dismissal of oral traditions as legend rather than history.
It required deciding that writing on paper counted as "civilization" and other forms of knowledge transmission did not.
It required, essentially, redesigning the criteria for what counted as "civilization" so that the places being colonized would fail the test.
The test was not neutral.
The test was written to produce a specific result.
And that result was: "Africa has no history worth the name."
Therefore what colonialism destroyed was not civilization. Therefore what colonialism did was not destruction.
This is not an accusation of individual ignorance.
This is a description of institutional architecture, built over centuries, maintained by people who understood exactly what it was for.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Hegel, the philosopher, the foundational figure of Western intellectual tradition, the man whose ideas shaped how generations understood history and progress and civilisation, said Africa had no history.
Literally.
In "The Philosophy of History," published posthumously in 1837, he described Africa as "the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night."
No history. No development. No participation in the movement of human civilization.
This was not a fringe opinion.
These were the intellectual assumptions that would help legitimize European colonial domination and, decades later, the partition of an entire continent.
Now.
While Hegel was writing this, the Oyo Empire in West Africa governed millions of people through a sophisticated constitutional system with checks on royal power.
While Hegel was writing this, the Kingdom of Dahomey had a standing army, a complex taxation system, and active diplomatic relationships with the European powers who were simultaneously, in their salons and academies, insisting the continent they were negotiating with had no civilization worth the name.
While Hegel was writing this, the Asante Empire operated under legal codes that European jurists would have recognized as sophisticated if they had been written in a language those jurists were willing to read.
While Hegel was writing this, the manuscripts of Timbuktu, hundreds of thousands of texts on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, theology, history, were being preserved by African scholars in the city his tradition insisted had produced no thought worth preserving.
And while Hegel was writing that Africa had no history, Ethiopia already had one that stretched back more than four thousand years.
Egyptian pharaohs, themselves African rulers, had been sending fleets to trade with the Land of Punt, in the Horn of Africa, as early as 2500 BCE.
Gold, frankincense, myrrh, ebony, ivory.
By the third century CE, the Kingdom of Aksum was minting its own coinage, trading across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and commanding such international recognition that the religious teacher Mani counted it alongside Rome, Persia and China as one of the great kingdoms of the world.
Its written literary tradition in Ge’ez carried scripture, philosophy, law, and royal chronicles that predated most of the nations doing the accusing by centuries.
The darkness was not in Africa.
It was in the theory that needed Africa to be dark.
ALT Gold coin bearing the bust of King Kaleb of Aksum, ancient Ethiopia, sixth century CE. Royal portraits. Greek inscriptions. Sovereign currency. International trade. Aksum had been minting its own gold coins since the late third century, more than 1,500 years before Hegel's lectures. An African civilization was literally striking its history in gold centuries before European philosophers presumed to deny it.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
It's TOTAL Shutdown.
Mark the Date. Na Raundi hii sio mchezo. Ni kufinish kumalo. Ruto must fall. #RutoMustGo
#RejectElectionBill2024
#RejectFuelPrices
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
The PEV in 2008 was basically a land war masked as an electoral dispute. But the electoral dispute itself was a product of "not knowing" what was going on. The more Samuel Kivuitu sat at KICC and declared that "we can't reach some of our presiding officers", the more it inflamed the country.
You see, because Kenya is a peaceful country, full of impunity, bad governance and corruption, the citizens generally choose to wait five years to try and remedy these national ills via the ballot. Even when an election is stolen, there is general belief that the next one will be better (even though the political class has effortlessly managed to wipe off this latter belief too).
Because elections are the only peaceful method of change available to raia, electoral justice has become a matter of life and death in this country. Which is why when the NADCO was formed post-2022, one of its remedial bills was the Election Laws Amendment Bill 2024. It had a Clause 39(1G) which dealt with the big matter of live streaming of elections.
Yesterday, MPs in the National Assembly deleted this clause, despite ominou warnings from MPs like Caroli Omondi that the country was playing with fire when it came to the opaque nature of elections. Remember 2008 happened because "we didn't know" and in our not knowing, someone altered results. The generation that folded its arms and let election theft pass is gone, so the 2027 variety of elections will have no second choice when it comes to credibility.
If MPs don't know this, then trouble is on the way.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
In 1324, Mansa Musa of Mali made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
He traveled with 60,000 people and 100 camel-loads of gold.
He gave away so much gold in Cairo that he collapsed the regional gold market for a decade.
A decade. From generosity on a journey.
His empire covered more territory than Western Europe. His capital, Niani, was a center of scholarship, trade, and governance sophisticated enough that visiting Arab historians wrote about it with undisguised admiration.
This was not a primitive society waiting for civilization to arrive.
This was a civilization.
One of the great ones. By any measure that wasn’t specifically designed to exclude it.
The colonizers who arrived in West Africa centuries later did not bring civilization to a void.
They dismantled something that was already there.
The textbooks that don’t mention Mansa Musa at all, not once, not a paragraph, are not gaps in education.
They are a decision. Made deliberately. Maintained consistently.
Because his existence changes the sentence.
ALT Mansa Musa, Emperor of Mali (c. 1312–1337), depicted in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, attributed to the Majorcan cartographer Abraham Cresques. Seated on his throne, holding a golden orb and sceptre, Mansa Musa is described in the original medieval Catalan inscription as "the richest and noblest ruler of this whole region because of the abundance of gold that is found in his lands." Medieval Europe knew of Africa’s wealth and powerful civilizations centuries before European colonial conquest. Source: Catalan Atlas, c. 1375. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, MS Espagnol 30.
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Won't allow our ancestors name to be discredited!
A postage stamp tribute to Mau Mau Freedom fighters ✊🏾🇰🇪
We are free today because of their fight in the Forests of Aberdare which is being cut down today by this bloody regime! 💔
We shall remember not to forget. To those making mockery/belittling his death your day of reckoning is coming. #wantam #SisiNdioSifuna
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Usawa ni sawa aje when youth unemployment has soared to worrying levels?
Usawa ni sawa aje when public universities are on strike because of unresolved salary agreements and funding issues?
Usawa ni sawa aje when fuel prices are going up and the cost of living has become unbearable?
Usawa ni sawa aje when our young people have no jobs, parents are struggling to pay school fees, and ordinary Kenyans can barely afford basic needs?
Wananchi wanateseka! Si sawa hata kidogo!
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
#OccupyParliament
#RejectElectionBill2024
#OccupyParliament
#RejectElectionBill2024
#OccupyParliament
#RejectElectionBill2024
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
MAANDAMANO MONDAY
We REJECT the Election Bill 2024.
MPs want to hide results. We want to protect our Constitution.
NO TRANSPARENCY, NO ELECTIONS.
OCCUPY NAIROBI CBD & OTHER COUNTIES
#RejectElectionBill2024 #MaandamanoMonday #RejectIEBCBill #ProtectOurConstitution
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
"IEBC wamechukua Returning Officers Wakalenjin wakapeleka kuregister wapiga kura kwa strongholds za Ruto!"~Ndindi Nyoro
Kabirú wa Wanjogu retweeted
Seventy years ago today the British captured the leader of the “Mau Mau” revolt. Canada contributed to the horrific colonial violence in Kenya.
On October 21, 1956, the British captured Dedan Kimathi, putting an end to the most active phase of resistance. They would later execute the Field Marshal of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, which launched the anti-colonial struggle four years earlier.
Over eight years the British brutally suppressed the revolt by the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group. The British detained most of the 1.5 million Kikuyu in camps and fortified villages. Thousands of prisoners were tortured to death or died from malnutrition and disease and in some camps most children perished. Tens of thousands of Kenyans were killed by British forces.
Compared to the vast African loss of life, only 32 European civilians among the 30,000 white settlers were killed by the Mau Mau. More settlers died in car accidents during this period. The British and Canadian press, however, focused their coverage on lurid stories detailing purported Mau Mau violence. On several occasions, the uprising in Kenya was brought up in the Canadian House of Commons, but External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson said little.
As they unleashed terrible violence in Kenya, Ottawa strengthened the British military, which had been weakened during the Second World War. In 1953, Canada gave the Royal Air Force 370 “top-of-the-line” F-86 Sabre fighter Jets built at Canadair’s plant in Montreal. The planes cost $71 million ($600 million today) with the US footing 30 per cent of the bill.
Several squadrons of Royal Air Force bombers dropped 50,000 pounds of bombs on Mau Mau forest hideouts. It’s almost certain that some of the British pilots were trained in Canada as part of the Second World War British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the post-1949 NATO Air Training Plan, which saw the Royal Canadian Air Force train 5,500 pilots and navigators largely from Britain and France.
Some 55,000 British troops fought in Kenya, along with many battalions of the King’s African Rifles from other parts of East Africa. They employed a great deal of weaponry, some of which originated in Canada. In the last decade of European colonialism in Africa, Canada delivered a huge amount of weaponry to the colonial powers through NATO’s Mutual Aid Program. Between 1950 and 1958, Ottawa donated $1.53 billion ($8 billion today) in “aid” to NATO countries. The deliveries included anti-aircraft guns, military transport vehicles, ammunition, minesweepers, communications and electronic equipment, armaments, engines and fighter jets.
Canada also had men on the ground involved in the colonial violence in Kenya. Former RCMP officer John Timmerman served as assistant commissioner of police in Kenya during the Mau Mau insurgency. Between 1951 and 1955, Timmerman helped reorganize the police force and oversaw Nairobi’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID). In October 1952, Timmerman oversaw the arrest of Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become Kenya’s independence leader.
A July 1954 Ottawa Citizen article headlined “Terror Shadows Kenya Beat” reported “a Canadian just back from three years’ police work among the Mau Mau of Kenya says the terrorists are the most savage and bestial killers in the world.” Timmerman’s claim may represent what a Freudian psychologist would call a “projection.” Kenyan historian Bethwell Allan Ogot puts forth a different — and considering what’s been abundantly documented — more plausible account of the RCMP officer’s actions. “Beating of suspects to obtain evidence was rampant especially in Nairobi where Mr. John Timmerman, the notorious C.I.D. Chief (the Himmler of Kenya as he was called) and his henchman G. Heine presided over the torture chambers.”
In Imperial Reckoning Caroline Elkins also compares the CID to the secret police in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. “The Criminal Investigation Department… were effectively the colony’s Gestapo, according to one member of the force.” At CID-operated centres, a favoured interrogation method was to hold a man upside down with his head in a bucket of water and ram sand into his rectum. In a bid to spread fear, men were raped with knives, snakes and scorpions while women were gang-raped or had their breasts mutilated with pliers.
A former white settler who was a member of the Kenya Regiment explained: “We would go and pick up a few of the filthy pigs and bring them to one of the interrogation centers set up by the CID. These were the hard-core scum, the ones who wouldn’t listen to anyone and [were] causing trouble. So we would give them a good thrashing. It would be a bloody awful mess by the time we were done. … never knew that a Kuke [Kikuyu] had so many brains until we cracked open a few heads.”
While Timmerman carried out British policies, his post-Kenya rise through the ranks suggests his actions found support in Ottawa. A Canadian Intelligence Corps officer in Europe prior to Kenya, afterwards Timmerman led the security and intelligence liaison at External Affairs, which included the politically sensitive task of making sure External Affairs officials were not spying or acting on behalf of foreign states. Then Timmerman became the first RCMP officer ever appointed head of a Canadian mission, serving as consul general in Chicago in the 1970s.
Should Canada apologize for its role in these atrocities?
