downas

A popular mobilization against a government finance bill has escalated into open combat in Kenya's capital & largest city. Crowds drawn into the streets under the #RejectFinanceBill2024 banner built barricades & lit the governor's office, along with a section of the national parliament building, on fire; police & military forces continued to attack the revolt, disappearing influential figures supporting the movement & killing at least 5 people in a day (according to news reports from the last few hours). Predictably, the government is also throttling the internet to suppress the uprising.

Ever since “independence”, Kenya has been a neocolonial dictatorship, demonstrating subservience to the anglo colonial powers & lethal brutality to resistance movements across the political spectrum. Here we list a few resources to help others develop a deeper understanding.

• The Elephant is a website covering Kenyan & East African politics from a critical & Pan-Africanist (but not necessarily anti-capitalist) perspective in english, with several recent pieces discussing “The Political Awakening of Kenya’s Gen Z”.
• Wunyabari O. Maloba's book The Anatomy of Neo-Colonialism in Kenya: British Imperialism and Kenyatta, 1963–1978 gives a detailed account of how the Kenyan state was constructed to serve european interests with the close collaboration of native elites.
• The “Mau Mau” uprising, an anti-colonial revolt against the british empire led by the Kenya Land & Freedom Army (KLFA) & suppressed by systematic torture, execution, & the placement of well over a mililon people in concentration camps, has historically played a large role in the political imaginary of Kenyan anticapitalists. (It has also been important to Black liberationists worldwide; el Hajj Malik el Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, famously called for a “Mau Mau” in the u.s.) There's now a broad range of easily accessible literature on the movement in english, but primary materials – like KLFA documents, songs, & interviews with veterans of the struggle who continued to be marginalized after britian handed over power – were first collected & shared under highly repressive conditions by researchers like Maina wa Kĩnyattĩ.
• Along with regular “security cooperation”, yankees & brits have maintained military bases in Kenya for decades, while both the NATO & BRICS blocs try to increase their capitalist dominance on the African continent through connections in Nairobi & Mombasa.
• Forcibly imposed by british colonialism & upheld by pro-british & pro-yankee interests ever since, english is one of the official languages of government & widely spoken among urban Kenyan elites. (Kiswahili plays a similar role in the region & also has official status in Kenya & Tanzania.) The urban youth languages Sheng & Engsh are newer creoles native to Nairobi, understood across class lines. A broad range of indigenous languages predating european colonialism are frequently used informally but marginalized institutionally; prominent examples include Gĩgĩkũyũ, Dholuo, & Kikamba. It helps to keep linguistic politics in mind when considering the intended audience of any writer or speaker, as Kenya's most famous writer & ex-political prisoner Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is well known for.