My previous article here was originally titled "are you listening to US ?" and the
question was addressed to our two protagonists, Mr. Kibaki and Mr.
Odinga, and the play-off between their "I won" versus "no really, I
won".
The question was posed by Wanjiku, who stands in the bottom right
corner of Gado's cartoons saying "either way, I am losing"! But how
does she get to make herself heard?
Currently, in these times of great duress, we have two options of making ourselves
heard in Kenya: a) business as usual, scurrying around with our heads
low to piece together whatever pieces we might still have at hand (and
this does not really count as ‘being heard'), and b) mass action,
rallies in the streets chanting some(one's) political slogan. But whose
voice is being heard? and how is the message interpreted?
The first option, business as usual. In this case whether it is the
poor man who cannot give up his daily below-minimum-wage, or the
business owner who cannot contemplate not maximizing each day's
earnings, we are essentially making do with the hand that has been
dealt us, acting the role of the grass that is suffering when the
elephants fight. This is what we have been doing for 40 years, and it
has been resoundingly interpreted by the powers that be as a vote for
the status quo
- "look, they let us get away with that! Wow, now how about this! They
will surely keep scraping for the pickings!" And sure enough, after
‘the mother of all elections' (who wrong we were!) - we got a new
government whose first orders of business were Wanjiku's constitution
and fighting grand corruption, and next thing you know we have a
stronger Executive and Anglo Leasing. While we have convincingly shown
them that we don't like this, we do not have the confidence to not
still just scurry around and pick at the scrapings.
The second option, mass action and street demonstations. We need no
reminder of the consequences - surely Kenya's worst post-independence
moments have come from the chaos of masses of people herded together
and goaded on one side by political sloganeering and on the other by
tear gas, batons, and now live bullets - BULLETS! shot, on television,
by grinning policemen, at innocent civilians running away! The voices
heard, because the only two voices that can make it through the mayhem
are those of the government, which accuses everyone of all sorts of the
worst mischief, and the political slogans - the people shouting and
chanting are faceless, voiceless, and those running for their lives
have more important things on their mind.
Which brings me to the third option, not endorsing the status quo,
and not accepting co-option of one's voice to someone else's ends.
Perhaps it is, as I have been firmly told, naïve to think that
businesses and workers will give up a day's income to protest quietly.
But I think that is because of a false comparison by which one measures
the cost of protest - of having or not having that day's income. But
that is a false comparison, because each choice has its costs.
First, tally the costs of mass protests, which various groups are doing
of the last weeks. The numbers climb, from 200 to 400 to 486 dead, some
say over 600; over 300,000 internal refugees, and from 60 billion to
over 100 billion shillings. We are great at counting things after they
happen, but we are hopeless at anticipating. How many of us truly
appreciate the cost of not buying new tyres, until the car crashes; or
not fixing the leak in the roof, until El Niño rains flood the whole
house; or building dykes on the Nyando River; or set-back distances
from the coastline and rivers; or safe-zones below mudslide-prone
hills; or inoculations before a Rift Valley Fever outbreak?
Compared to this, what would have been the cost of protest if we had
been a more mature and engaged society, with a peoples' voice, and
after the ignominy of December 30 put down our tools, in all
non-essential sectors, stayed home, said ‘NO'. Well, some 486 people
would still be alive, many others un-injured, more than 300,000 would
not be refugees. We would not have a destroyed Kisumu town center,
vandalism of buildings and businesses there, in Eldoret and countless
other towns. We (and by we I mean workers) would still be enjoying the
best tourism season in a decade. All this has apparently cost us 10
billion shillings; I'm not so good with numbers but isn't this about
the size of Goldenberg? How can a businessman not look at these costs
and conclude that it's better to put down tools for 3 days? Mr. Dahya
lost 30 years of work and 60 million shillings in Kisumu - what is the
cost of 3 days sit-in compared to this? How much is one day's economic
loss in a national peaceful sit-in - somebody please count it up for
us. The examples in Kenya of our inability to project into the future
and invest proactively are endless, and this is just one of those cases.
And how about the costs of business as usual - putting up and going to
work? Well, we have only to think of the debate we've had in the last 2
years about our ‘Vision 2030' and the galling realization that in the
1970s Kenya used to be at income parity with many southeast Asian
countries. Now, we realize, they have average earnings 5 times higher
than ours and sophisticated manufacturing and computer industries. We
can't even build roads. And this is not just a matter for the ‘elite'
or ‘middle class' - having an average annual income in the region of
$1000 is a very real difference for the family that in Kenya is on the
average income of $400-$500 a year, or less. This is the true human
cost of accepting the scrapings from the high table rather than
demanding the high table be a bit lower, and the feasters not take from
other plates as they pass by. Half of Kenya's population is famously
under 15 years old - we are talking about 2 rounds of Kenyan children
growing up with less than one half of what they could have had, if we
had inherited a more just society in the mid-70s. That is the true cost
of voting for the status quo,
and the voice of the first of these generations, now in their ‘youth'
and rioting with abandon, is coming through loud and clear - fail to
listen at our peril. Why do we not see into the future?
The per-day costs of a peaceful sit-in are nothing compared to the
alternatives. And I'll bet we can afford one each week until our
message is truly heard - surely more so than the alternatives. There
are of course other ways to apply pressure than a literal go-slow, and
in either case we need the leaders who can shepherd us there. To be
unmovable in the face of injustice - peacefully and without room for
provocation or co-option - this is really Ghandi's message, and one
that perhaps we have never been more capable of expressing than at this
point in Kenya's history.
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I really do not mean to come down hard on anyone, but the government is actually doing a lot to help the poor, especially the rural poor.
a) the health sector has really improved, vastly
b) a polytechnic in every constituency
c) easy access to credit be your own boss
d) take a grant from the Youth Fund, or the Women's fund and start a business
e) rural electrification
f) take advantage of the quite remarkable prices of farm produce
This is the real transformation of the status quo. I am not sure what else we are expecting, unless of course we can only appreciate change if brought down by someone from our cultural unit.
The resurgence of our economy will come on the back of the greatest diligence and creativity from private enterprise. The difference between rich people and poor people comes down to just this point, this is why Kisiis, Merus and Kikuyus are being chased around. They seem to have realised what was up, and have stopped complaining.