walking distances of their homes were still
in another country at independence and
that they required government permission
for them to resume normal interactions.
To question the reality on the ground,
what did the people in the boundary
called Kenya have in common except a
bitter history of being put in an inferior
position in one’s own country? Why
would they want to remain in an unhappy
relationship?
That unfortunate lack of a common focus
as a country is what has come back to haunt
us after so many years in that we passed
a constitution that defines a deep seated
need for Kenyans to have an identity and
when we did not find it in the country we
created forty seven.
What we have done as an entity is to
create forty seven countries that now have
a political expression, but remember the
caveat was that economic independence is
a precursor to political independence and
we already know that the majority of the
54 MAL30/19 ISSUE
A faulty education
system produces
paper
qualifica-
tions and not skills
and until we fix the
education system
to align it with what
the country actual-
ly needs to develop
economically we
are doomed to ex-
ist on the sidelines
of the world.
counties are economically unviable.
The Empire model of business worked
on the premise that labor would be
conscripted in the occupied territories
and the ruling class laid down the law.
There was a master servant relationship
and it was enforced by law. It was just
modified slavery.
The colonial masters made sure to maintain
the myth of superiority by ensuring the
natives were kept at subhuman conditions
and there was a clear separation of
identities. In extreme apartheid was
created but was not much different from
the separate social classifications found in
Kenya.
At independence, since the administrative
structure was based on unequal classes
and that is what we inherited, by default,
the prejudices that were based on color
were transferred to prejudices that were
based on ability to read and write.
The first locals to read and write were
products of either missionary activity
where they were trying to ‘civilize’ the
natives or the imperial plan of trying to
create semi-skilled manpower that they