Revolutions are not trajectory movements of radical change as they are deemed to be, they are a reminder to the working and the worked for class that Wanjiku exists.
When I was reading comments on #occupyKenya skeptics who claimed that Kenyans are completely incapable of taking to the streets and all we could do is complain behind our laptops, smart-phones and androids, I saw the naivety of Kenyan middle class.
One even said that we could only go on #occupykenya if the price of petrol hits 300 Ksh.
Well if its news for you people walk to work in Kenya and it is not given the hullabaloo Besigye has attracted in Uganda. Whether price of fuel is 3oo Ksh. Or not there are people who just don’t care because it makes little significance for them until…
It gets to their food.
Therein lies my theses that the middle class who actually tweet or blog or know about Nigeria, Egypt and Tunisia more than locals of these country are removed from their own realities and the risks that this poses to their safe heaven.
Kenyans who still think about the Kadogo economy when the poor buy sugar in spoonfuls, about the price of a liter of petrol when Kenyans are walking to work in kazi za sulubu kama industrial area na mjengo (strenuous work in industrial area and masonry), about unga revolution when bizarre amounts are sold by retailers who are too quick to increase prices and forget to reduce them even as the shilling stabilizes!
The middle class is deceiving itself when it thinks it belongs to the upper class as petty bourgeoisie.
And that’s what revolutions are about.
Reminding the advantaged that there are Wanjiku’s out there who starve while I write this article. Who do not care about #occupykenya but are patiently waiting for the slightest opportunity for unrest to get back at the advantaged.
Whose tribe is poverty and honor is looting to get out of their quagmire!
Who the middle class should be afraid of because the rich (not wealthy) have turned them to their buffer zone against the poor man’s rage.
It is you they will rob when they #occupykenya, on highways, it is you they will disposes so choose wisely when the time for wealth redistribution beckons because it is you who is in social medi and it is them who will be on the street, them who will want your house if you think they are as spineless as you when they got nothing to loose!
I leave with an excerpt from Fantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth in saying that the capital system we embraced too soon as elitist inheritors will undo not our master but us! Us who chose which side of #Occupykenya to belong.
The settlers' town is a strongly built town, all made of stone and steel. It is a brightly lit town; the streets are covered with asphalt, and the garbage cans swallow all the leavings, unseen, unknown and hardly thought about. The settler's feet are never visible, except perhaps in the sea; but there you're never close enough to see them. His feet are protected by strong shoes although the streets of his town are clean and even, with no holes or stones. The settler's town is a well-fed town, an easygoing town; its belly is always full of good things. The settlers' town is a town of white people, of foreigners. (of surburbs and plush Muthaigas, Karens, Milimani’s…)
The town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the reservation (The Mukuru’s the Mathares, the Kibera’s Ksouth …), is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute. They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, a town wallowing in the mire. It is a town of niggers and dirty Arabs. The look that the native turns on the settler's town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his dreams of possession—ALL MANNER OF POSSESSION: TO SIT AT THE SETTLER'S TABLE, TO SLEEP IN THE SETTLER'S BED, WITH HIS WIFE IF POSSIBLE.
No comments:
Post a Comment