I will be making arguments about what I think is wrong with Kenya and how I think it can be fixed, the posts will be multi-part. I don't believe that Kenya's problems are any specific person, but rather a systemic failure on all levels for which I blame the enlightened among the citizenry the most. It should be noted that I deliberately said enlightened and not learned, and I consider myself to be on the list of those culpable; here I try to play my part.
A common comparison
With that said, I will start off with what I believe to be the main problem with Kenya and try and explain our current predicament. People love comparing Kenya and Korea as equals in terms of per-capita GDP during Kenya's independence, and pointing out how we have failed given that Korea is currently a first-world country while Kenya is a third-world country. I would say that this is an unfair comparison; a fair comparison would take into account the social, political and cultural aspects of the two countries. An interesting difference is in the politics; on April 19 of 1960 Korea had undergone a revolution comparable to the Egyptian revolution of 2011 that saw Mubarak leave power. A striking difference between the two is the fact that in Korea it was meant to remove a president who had just rigged his way into power. In Kenya on the other hand, as recently as 1987, our MPs were still changing the constitution for the sake of individuals; most of the amendments were meant to give more power to the president. We had a highly esteemed founding president who died after holding on to power for 14 years as President and 1 as Prime Minister. For reasons that I don't understand, he is still an infallible hero, a feat even Mao Zedong could never pull off, he was "seven parts good, three parts bad".
I resist my propensity to explain the success of South Korea as the result of democracy and the population's view on justice as demonstrated by the April 1960 revolution. But I believe that for the same reason they succeeded economically, they had the revolution and a stable democracy but I will not make any attempt to identify that reason, that I leave that to Korea experts. Nonetheless, there are a few things I know about Kenya that hold us back.
In my humble opinion, Kenyans' view on justice and democracy should be the first thing to change if we are to go anywhere. This coupled with realism could salvage our country. To illustrate, we all believe that extra-judicial killing is wrong and evil in principle, but most Kenyans, including the groups most at risk of this crime, are willing to look the other side if it gives them more "security". On the other hand, we have human rights activists who would like to see the officers involved in such acts as the devil personified. In my view, a more realistic approach, that would actually lead to positive results would be one that appreciates the fact that we have an ill-equipped, ill-trained, understaffed and underpaid police force. The first step towards a real solution would be giving the police force more money; for rubber bullets, forensic labs and experts, equipment, better pay and better terms of employment.
For the sake of emphasis, I give an anecdote. I recently met a police officer shortly after his colleague was shot to death by thugs and seemingly, he needed to talk. I lent him an ear, although I was eager to leave. The murdered officer had children and a wife, yet there is no insurance that I'm aware of for the next of kin of officers killed in the line of duty. It should also be noted that in Kenya, police officers are not unionisable and thus have no means of airing their any grievances they may have with their terms of service or deplorable working conditions, yet we expect nothing short of good and selfless service from the same force. I wonder where the realism in that is. One may claim that Kenya doesn't have the funds to finance a good police force, assuming that we don't lose tens of billions through corruption, this would be a sad state of affairs given that security is a very important need. In the end, there is a lot of unanswered injustice against the police force resulting from bad governance. At this, it would be nice to see COTU and KNHCR fight for the rights of our police force given that the force is not unionisable.
There are, really, no shortcuts. It would depress you to see how our policemen live in Unihuts - 2 families at a time- in deplorable conditions, work in crowded, stinking, dark and damp police stations, are paid horribly and yet, as you point out, are expected to serve selflessly. There are no shortcuts, government must improve conditions for its own.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is it seems like we don't realise this... playing politics, as if that will would change our country for the better.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's just the police...
True, empowering the police will be great. I think everyone will agree with you here.
ReplyDeleteBut The fundamental question here is... how can changes like this be made.
Can the current lawmakers pass laws to change the current police system - what can be done to make them pass those bills/amendments?
If not... what can be done to remove them?
I think the first question should be who elects leaders and why do they elect the leaders we have or why do the rigged unelected leaders come to power. how can people be influenced to make less tribal more rational decisions on who to vote for.
Yes, we can try to pick ideas from other countries and for more many reasons like you have said Korea is not a good backdrop to use in drawing up the Kenyan ascent to wealth. Most importantly because of Park Chung Hee and the 3rd Republic of Korea, USA influence etc it was not as a result of democratic movement.
The curse of democracy even at its best is that if you have people electing the wrong people willing and readily. Democracy means that you have no choice but to be ruled by them and suffer under them. That is democracy.
Let me see if I can paint a picture here. In Kenya, we have a bigmanism problem. For every village, every clan and every tribe there is a bigman and every slightly above average person wants to be this big man, by any means necessary, and for the would lick bigman's boots any day. Given that being a bigman comes with wealth, you end up with a populace that admires wealth, and gives little consideration of the means to wealth.
ReplyDeleteThen comes the fucked up subtle effect of admiration, we don't criticise. After all, who would criticise their "dream-self"? The result, we are unscrupulous; maybe a majority of humanity is, and it's just that our price is rather low.
The solution here is making Kenyans "wake up from the dream", which would be best achieved by taking pointing out how naked the bigman is. In effect, show the rot withing the system, and how easy it would be to fix some of those issues. E.g. There's an 8B corruption scandal, and at the same time doctors are underpaid. In essence, we have to convince the slightly above average, so that the can convince the rest.
I don't understand your argument, we shouldn't compare Kenya with Korea?
ReplyDeleteAlso in your argument on why Korea progressed and we were left behind, you must include the role the west played.
It was in their best interest to have Korea stable and developed so there was technology transfer while all we got was support of despots since the progressive leaders where leaning towards communism.
I think its public knowledge why we stagnated, what we need to know is how to pull ourselves out of this rut.
@lloyd-watch
ReplyDeleteFirstly, this points out what I believe to be either the cause of the differentiation or the result of the cause. But whatever it was, it meant that the South Koreans were socially aware in 1960, something that I can barely say for Kenya in 2011.
On the role of the west, I would like to point you to other countries in which the west had and has influence. Nigeria, Panama, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, DRC, Iraq, Kenya among many others. There is overwhelming evidence in history that the west supports despots, in fact, rarely do they support democracy. But something made democracy the only viable option in the case of South Korea.
Also, it is rather mean to demean the efforts of a nation. Look at all the Korean multinationals and you will find that they have Korean founders, some going as far back as the 19th century as is the case with Samsung.
On the issue of common knowledge, how common is this "common knowledge" you speak of? To whom is it common? To the people who we murdering fellow Kenyans? To the countless Kenyans who support rigging of election results for as long as the person they voted for wins? To the people who support corrupt politicians? To the people who strongly believe that the ICC cases are for the most part political? To whom exactly!!?
And even if it was common knowledge, how many such matters do we discuss, let alone when they are of grave importance?
I would like to state that I have no magic bullet, what I desire is a dialogue, because if we are to act in unison, we must first converse and agree.
And thank you for your comment :)