The current laws are set to accrue wealth to the wealthy. Even when we carry Swahili names we are most unpatriotic of Africans. When motives are self-centered, they miss the bigger picture. Selfishness destroy 90% to tunnel 10% of the wealth to the self. It’s analogous to a thief breaking a 50K door and destroy 100K worth of household stuff in a ransack to get 5K in cash and 15k in Jewelry. The thief doesn’t care about my total loss which is now 170k. For us to appeal to the thief and thieves to make laws that will work for all Africans not just the rich is equivalent to appealing to the gangs to consider the total cost of their damages and stop stealing from us. We will die with hoarse voices. People who make money off of selling ducks shoes to walk on will never inspire ducks to fly. We should seek to focus our efforts where the ground will yield.

What do we do then. All law making power aka political power is economical power. I will venture to use a real example but I stand to be corrected. Matiang’is power is not his but delegated…he does not have an economic base to make the power inherent. That’s the reality of political economics.

That power to make laws that will work for all should be our goal. The goal is not to find ways to necessarily enrich ourselves but to enrich our neighborhood, our communities. When a critical mass is achieved over time then the power shifts and laws making moves to hands that are patriotic and want to every to thrive in Africa.

As I say in a poem coming up. The current powerholders in Africa are…

Doing everything to keeps us in slums and bedsitters
Afraid of us if we became manufacturers and mansions owners
Transient command of the poor with fear, prisons and hand-outs

It’s easier to govern the poor than to command the respect of a rich nation…this is their moribund philosophy.

We can change it. We must changed. We have to own the pain, the inefficiencies to move the needle in Kenya. There has to be a level of consciousness that we must rise to to be change agents. I feel like bystanders effect is become operational in our generation. The idea that it will be fixed by someone else. Forgetting that if it has to be it’s up to me. We must be the change that we need. We must weed the garden or we will be overwhelmed by weeds. A little folding of the hand and poverty will come in like a bandit. The chilling advice of the wisest man that ever lived should jolt us to that consciousness.

I once asked my uncle (now rested with our fathers) why they allowed a person to come and take them over as if they were sitting ducks. His response was shocking and thoroughly informative.

In brevity he said, to Africans who didn’t know the written word, they ascribed magical powers to one who seemed to decipher inaudible messages exchanged on paper between colonial thieves. Secondly, Africans upgraded the magical powers to that of gods when the Colonizers pointed a certain stick in your direction and you would drop dead a kilometer away. They did not know that the stick was just a gun. That’s how we became slaves to a stranger. By ascribing them powers of gods we opened our door for exploitation and eventual enslavement. When we make people more powerful that they really are regardless of their technology or wealth, we became their slaves even when they didn’t set out to enslave us. Our foolish submission is the cue for enslavement.

Today we face the same prospect of enslavement by internal and external forces. Actually, the elites in Africa collaborating with those who come in the name of democracy, debt and aid. The irony of the so called freedom.

If our lowly grand parents defeated the Colonizer with wit and tact, we have no excuses. For a man or woman to be MauMau, courage is not the qualification but common sense. You go to the forest knowing that you will never come back. You know if you don’t you are a truly living-dead. That common sense drives you to attempt to change the prospects for your children. That they may not live in death or slavery but in freedom bought with painful blood.

We can no longer be bystanders. We must give voice to the voiceless. We must open our eyes when there’s time to do something. To our White brethren we said, to be silent is to be complacent when Mr. Floyd was killed. For us to be silent, to preserve our personal comforts is to be complacent to a system that’s on high gear in enslavement of Wanjiku. We must stop it. As the story goes…When they came for the Jew I did not say anything because I was not a Jew, ….when they came for the trade unionist I didn’t say anything coz I wasn’t a trade unionist. When they came for me no one was left to defend me. That’s what must sink in for us. When some amongst us are slaves we are all slaves.