A nation in tatters needs a dressing down, in all forms

The Shabaab attack on Garissa University College at the beginning of this month has left many Kenyans angry. Hundreds of families have lost their children.

Northern Kenya may never be the same again. Many Kenyan professionals will take some convincing to go work there. And that probably means stagnation for a region that has incredible potential for economic take-off.

Debates on Al-Shabaab menace have largely ignored the context that has spawned this monster. We seem to conveniently ignore that Al-Shabaab is but one of several criminal gangs that hold millions of Kenyans hostage daily.

Al-Shabaab terrorises us because we refuse to acknowledge that it is part of a larger story. It is the child of a gradual collapse of our collective identity.

Clever analysts will say there is no such thing as a single national identity.

But to the extent that one calls himself a Kenyan, one carries a national identity card, one wishes the government to provide him with schools, hospitals, colleges, support him or her in getting employment, and eventually pays and pays taxes, one is a Kenyan.

The postmodernist chicanery that makes people talk about how fractured we are, is simply that: deception. So, yes, we may have tens of problems enveloping us but we surely are different from Ugandans, Tanzanians or Somalis.

Our problems are not just challenges as many so-called experts will tell you. They are daunting. Even the government’s own research show that more Kenyans are becoming poorer today than they were three years ago.

Unemployment is on the rise. Crime statistics would scare even the toughest of the so-called foreign investors. Parliament is really not just a house of shame and a den of thieves, it is a cannibals’ den.

Yes, our leaders are “eating” the future of the rest of Kenyans, thus sucking our blood.

This is a country where apparently over Sh2 billion can be carted off from State coffers and no one accounts for it!

This is a seriously fractured country in which the head of a State body with the responsibility to guarantee cohesion and integration — why is such an idea important 50 years after we became a republic? — can confess that tribalism and marginalisation of Kenyans is a time bomb.

So, how do we re-member Kenya? How do we put it all together? What can be done to socially re-engineer Kenya? Or what should we do just to remember that we are all Kenyans, as proclaimed by the Constitution and other institutions of a modern state?

This subject, which has been with us since the tragedy of the 2007/2008 post-election crisis has been revisited in a new book: (Re)membering Kenya: Governance, Citizenship and Economics edited by Mbugua wa Mungai and George Gona (Twaweza Communications, 2014).

This is the third in a series of books on how to put together and memorialise Kenya, which began with volume one: identity, culture and freedom (2010) and volume two: interrogating marginalisation and governance (2013).

HOW WE CAN REMAKE KENYA

This book is about how we can remake Kenya. The essays presented try to ask questions about what has gone wrong in the past 20 years but also suggest possible solutions to the perennial national problems of poor governance; poverty; alienation; unequal development; falling education standards; HIV/Aids; diseases, etc.

For instance, William Migwi writes about “the ethics and politics of privatisation in Kenya”, a topic that is rarely discussed even in mainstream media.

Yet it is through privatisation of public institutions that some grand theft — Kenyans don’t even think this is corruption — of national resources has happened, as political influence and abuse enabled politically connected individuals to buy public firms cheaply.

Mikalitsa Mukhovi reminds us of how allocating foreigners local natural resources, in this case land, is likely to create “agri-colonialism”.

New land leases by both the national and county governments to foreigners are likely to create another generation of landless Kenyans in a country that apparently rejected British colonialism because of land alienation.

Although this is not a situation specific to Kenya, how will Kenyans, for instance, benefit from projects that target bio-fuel production in a country that is food deficient?

The “prescript” in the book: A Hustler’s Diary, is a fascinating chat between Mbugua wa Mungai and one Paul Kamau Karathe, a youth whose life is the epitome of struggles to beat the odds.

There are 10 more essays in (Re)membering Kenya which remind the reader of a wide range of problems encountered daily.

At a time like this, when violence and death stalk the land, we should pull together, disavow ethno-nationalism, seek justice, revive the spirit of nationalism and put together — but with firmer thread — the country we call Kenya.

The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi.