The year is 1926. Kenya is under colonial rule. Natives in the region around Mt Kenya are, just like those elsewhere, aggrieved by the loss of their land to the colonialists, who have formed a “Lands Board” which will hold all native land in trust “for each tribal group”.
This particular tribe, the Agĩkũyũ, have formed their own political party. With Harry Thuku in jail and the Young Kikuyu Association disbanded, James Beauttah and Joseph Kang’ethe take over the reins and become the leaders of their newly formed party, the Kikuyu Central Association. Soon, however, James Beauttah heads over to Uganda to start a new life as a worker in the civil service. But before he leaves, he recommends a young man who works as a water meter reader in the Municipal Council to take the leadership of the party as the Secretary General.
The young man goes by the name Johnstone Kamau wa Ngengi (a name he will later change to Jomo Kenyatta in 1938). He is such an eloquent orator that the members of the party appoint him to speak on their behalf. In 1928, he publishes the magazine Mũigwithania (The Reconciler).
Kamau wa Ngengi is chosen to travel to London the following year to present the KCA’s grievances to the Colonial Office. But he doesn’t have enough funds so members of the community come together to fundraise and send him off. The first formally recognised fundraiser/mchango in Kenya takes place in December 1928. Harambee!!!
Harambee tena?
It’s now exactly 96 years since that event took place and Harambee remains a significant cornerstone of modern Kenyan society. Back in 1928, the country had no functional systems for the natives. If you wanted to go to school, you had to pay your own fees, for there were no government subsidies, nor were there any loans or scholarships.
Now, we have a system. Let’s call it a government. In it is the Ministry of Education. Funded by our taxes. We also have institutions that have been created to support us. We have the Higher Education Loans Board, the Universities Fund, the unconstitutional NG-CDF, etc. All funded with our hard-earned taxes.
These systems have seemingly been created to help us but they are so dysfunctional that they help no one but themselves. One wonders what role they serve, then, if they serve no one. Is it a case of paka kuwekewa kitoweo kulinda? Are the systems mere placeholders to feign pretence that we have a government? Wait, do we have an actual government in the first place? Or do we have mere busybodies and bootlickers seated in the offices? Are they ever in their offices, or do they just trot around the country launching tombstones for PR?
Floods?
On the 29th of April 2024, a blockage in a culvert beneath a railway tunnel in Kijabe led to a very catastrophic flash flood and landslide that saw more than 60 people die and 110 others injured as floodwaters swept houses and cars all the way to Mai Mahiu.
Following the rescue operations, the survivors were relocated to temporary camps set up by the government where they received essential aid and support. During a memorial service for the flood victims, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said that the government had allocated KSh300 million to build houses for the victims.
Two weeks later, however, the victims were kicked out of the camp and only offered KSh5,000 as rental assistance. Knowing the Kenyan government, how KSh300 million suddenly dropped to KSh200,000 is not a hard nut to crack.
May it be known that, to date, none of the flood victims has been resettled.
In Mathare, the floods caused the destruction of more than a hundred houses. But instead of coming in to help the victims, the government sent in bulldozers to demolish the remaining houses and ended up killing two children in the process.
With no one left to support the people, organisations such as Shining Hope for Communities, Twaweza CBO and Mathare Vocational Training Center, among others, stepped in, holding fundraisers to distribute foodstuffs, clothes and bedding to the victims, and helping to relocate those affected to safer areas.
Harambee!!!
Maandamano
During the recent anti-government/pro-people protests, thousands of people came out into the streets, and in the melee, many were injured or killed by the police (by no one else but the police). Hanifa Adan decided to set up an M-Changa account through which to raise funds to settle the medical bills and funeral expenses of the victims of police brutality.
The fundraiser brought in KSh2 million within 8 hours and KSh20 million in 20 hours. In total, KSh30 million was raised in just a few days. The money was used to cover the funeral expenses of Rex and Evans, whose families received a million shillings each. The rest was used to pay the hospital bills of all those injured in the protests across the country. Hanifa went further to provide audited accounts so that Kenyans could follow the money trail. Accountability – a foreign term for the government. Given the extent of the theft witnessed at the NHIF, it came as a surprise to many Kenyans how much such an amount of money could do. Wasn’t it just the other day that the NHIF reported a “typing error” that cost them KSh368 million?
Well, I’m not a forensics expert to figure out what kind of typing error could cost that much (who remembers the typing error that Uhuru Kenyatta made which added an extra KSh9.2 billion in the supplementary budget back in 2009?) But imagine the impact that the KSh368 million would have had had it been put to good use. Imagine how many people it would’ve helped. This one instance really made us question why we remit part of our salary to the NHIF (now SHIF) if they really don’t do anything. I mean, we could do better with a more functional structure. Or on our own.
Harambee!!!
New university ‘defunding’ model
Under the colonialists, it was the accepted view that Africans should not be allowed an education beyond the basic level since they would not benefit from it. The rationale was that Africans were only useful as a source of cheap labour.
However, Dr John W Arthur, a Scottish medical missionary who had been appointed to the Legislative Council to represent the interests of the Africans, strongly opposed that view and led a group of missionaries and other like-minded people in trying to convince the British government to open up education, not just for Kenyans, but for all Africans in all the colonies.
Without the government’s backing, Arthur set out to establish a high school for Africans in Kikuyu. The school was finally opened on the 1st of March 1926 under the auspices of the Alliance of Protestant Missions. This is the Alliance High School that we all know.
The first student to enrol there was James Muigai, Jomo Kenyatta’s brother (I’m not saying he got there through his connections, but he actually did). The annual school fees at the time were a nominal 42 shillings and the burden to pay fell on Jomo Kenyatta. Already having a wife and a son, Jomo Kenyatta struggled to pay Muigai’s fees with his salary, and so, two years after enrolling, and with one year left to finish, James Muigai dropped out of school on the 27th of January 1928, the first ever high school dropout in Kenya.
Harambee!!!
Education then seemed to be a preserve of the well-to-do and those lucky enough to be sponsored. Now, with the new funding model, there is no difference. It’s sad that, with all the progress we have (purportedly) made as a nation, we cannot really guarantee the education of our children. With all the capitation set aside, all the budgetary allocations, all the loans and bursaries offered, we still cannot offer our children an education. Not with a funding model that places students in different tiers based, apparently, on how much their parents earn (I say “apparently” because we’ve seen kids from lower-income backgrounds, and even orphans, being placed in Band 5 – the most expensive). So far, more than 26,000 appeals have been lodged by kids who have been placed in the wrong band. I don’t need to have taken a degree in statistics to know that an error involving 26,000 out of 134,000 students is a very huge one, a mistake huge enough to cause the education sector to discard their means testing instrument. But the government is too dumb, blind and deaf to realise any of this.
If the “defunding” model stays, then we should be prepared for more fundraisers to send our kids to school even as MPs continue to gobble up NG-CDF funds and the HELB loans disappear to lord knows where. I mean, why rely on the government when your family and friends can always come through for you?
All in all, we have no government here. We have to depend on ourselves for education, health, agriculture, and everything else. As Professor Katama Mkangi says in his book Walenisi, “Ni sisi kwa sisi tu”.
Harambeee!!! Harambeee tena!!!
