I have been reading a plethora of comments on Kenyan fora about a mysterious group called the Kenyan left. Invariably it is composed of individuals allied to ODM-Raila.
I am writing here in the vain hope that I can rouse them from their slumber with regard to their duties as members of the political left, or provoke them into coming out in the open, because I cannot see them. It would be a good thing if they came out, maybe they can even
start to shed their disguises and show themselves unashamedly, for it seems to me that Kenya has not needed a left as badly as it does now for a long, long time.
Kenya
is badly crying out for leftist thought and for leftist ideas, even if this was
merely outside parliament. Injustice, inequality and an increasingly illiberal streak in the state leave the masses as citizens of a dystopic nation with little for its weakest to hope for.
The people's minds however are totally caught up in the
cultural hegemony of the religious priests and their tribal lords who are
without exception corrupt billionaires. Many of them, shamelessly clothed themselves in
Marxist garb, mouth platitudes about the need for reform, all the time directing
our gaze away from the fact that they are complicit in the rape of our nation. Few of them were there to put up the scaffolding of the corrupt and stifling state, but they are very busy today supplying the steel and concrete for the Black Iron Prison, standing idly by but just as often abetting and participating in the disenfranchisement and empoverishment of the working masses.
It is interesting to hear these people call Presidents Kibaki and
Moi fascists, very interesting to hear them talk about the need to give power
to the people. It is interesting to hear men in Maoist suits writing newspaper
articles praising Bismarck, and to
hear pseudo-leftists proudly quoting Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. They are something special, they even boast about their affiliation with the Democratic Party of America, and attendance of some of its meetings.
It is most impressive to hear these chameleons praising nationalism, talking about the Majestic People of Kenya, and
patriotism. It is indeed most riveting to see that there are no ideas left in this left of
ours, nothing remotely resembling an intellectual framework. Scour the pages of
the newspapers, these socialists do not even write, and when they do they do
not write anything remotely inspired by the ideas of socialism or justice. They
have bequeathed to our political culture nothing but an endless stream of
unoriginal ideas as we suffer from those who support the government and the status quo. As Gramsci
wrote so long ago, we are dominated and our life choices managed by an
overarching consensual hegemony, one in which our pseudo-leftists even here are
an integral part of, married as they are to the system.
It is interesting to note that even in the regions of the
country where the Moi and Kibaki governments have had close to zero
representation in the years since 1992, there has been no movement towards
anything remotely resembling socialism. There is nothing resembling socialism
in Kisumu or in Bondo, even though the education system there is controlled by
the pretend left. There have been no bills proposed in parliament by our
socialists to put an end to the increasing gulf between the rich and the poor,
far from it. In fact, that Bishop of the left in Anyang' Nyong'o was not too
long ago insulting us with pronouncements about an invisible 500,000 jobs and
an improvement in the quality of life enjoyed by the mwananchi. Listen in awe to their silence as the Kibaki government sprints towards an all out grab for the public purse.
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All that's left
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The red flag is waved merely to enrage the bull, make it
charge mindlessly, battering down all the obstacles in its way. Maybe now would
be a good time to remember that organization called the National Socialists.
They also had big crowds, they heckled at their opponents, and they promised
the freedom of the mwananchi from poverty, they were big on symbols of power
and names, names that pledged doom to anyone who dared oppose them. They served
one master; they chanted his name, wrote endlessly in his defense and
ultimately showed that they were not interested in the welfare of the people,
but in raw power and in smashing away all opposition.
You vote for them if you like, it will all go very Animal Farm then, and no one will be able to say they did not see it coming. Not even the foolish hordes that blemish the emperors golden chariot with their filthy fingers.
P.S. The writer is offering one million Kenyan dollars for every leftist parliamentarian or mainstream politician that can be revealed to him.
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It is difficult to have a true left in a non-civilised country. The politics of the left are almost completely based on higher values that are learned and cultivated, much unlike the atavistic nature of the selfish traits of global capitalism.