What is our ‘talented tenth’ in reconstructing Kenyan nationhood?

Kenya's flag bearer Jason Dunford holds the national flag as he leads the Kenyan contingent in the athletes parade during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012. PHOTO | MIKE BLAKE |

What you need to know:

  • Du Bois saw educating of the best of the race as a way of enabling knowledge to permeate through to the masses of the people.
  • This, he thought would uplift the race from its squalor of thought.

It was W.E.B. Du Bois who, at the dawn of the 20th Century, argued that the African American nation needed to be saved from itself by its “talented tenth”. He said this in his famous essay published 1903. To Du Bois, the African American nation needed to deal with its talented tenth by developing the best of its race that would then guide the mass away from contamination, death and rot within the nation. Du Bois saw educating of the best of the race as a way of enabling knowledge to permeate through to the masses of the people. This, he thought would uplift the race from its squalor of thought.

The idea of the talented tenth has become a recurring motif to me as I consume the Kenyan mainstream and social media. I have found myself asking if Kenya has ever developed its talented tenth that can save the nation from itself. I look at the posts on a variety of media platforms from both the “educated” and “uneducated” and do not see any difference between the posts and I wonder why very few of them have bought into the idea of the nation building project.

While Kenya may have, initially, been merely geographical expression created by colonial powers, some of us thought that the dawn of uhuru in 1963 provided an opportunity for real nation building. Just what happened to the nation building project? Why do we hate one another so much more than the poverty that afflicts most of our people? We dream big of transforming the nation on the economic pillar, the political pillar and the social pillar as outlined in our Vision 2030 and forget the little things that matter: the cultural paradigm.

It appears that our problems have a lot to do with lack of a strong cultural pillar. A cultural pillar is the most important foundation for any prosperous nation. It is the pillar that could be used to produce the talented tenth to reconstruct this nation. To aim at a GDP growth of 10 percent per annum and raise the national savings from 17 percent to about 30 percent are good dreams. To prioritise education, health , environment, equity and poverty eradication, among others, are good aspirations.

But, wait a minute. We cannot ignore the fortitude that comes with a sense of belonging. If culture is, as Ngugi wa Thiong’o tells us in Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms, a product of peoples history and a reflection of that history that embodies a whole set of values by which a people view themselves and their place in time and space; then all pillars of development must be anchored on the cultural pillar.

Let us face it. Culture is a fundamental component of development. A vision that does not lay the basis for building the mental and spiritual infrastructure of a people to value the tangible and intangible heritage and to build a sense of responsibility for one another is as good as useless.

All successful visions I know of, world over, were anchored on the cultural pillar. The Arusha Declaration of 1967, which has guided the modern day Tanzania, was anchored on the cultural pillar represented by one Kiswahili word: Utu. This pillar is highly visible in the way our neighbours dialogue with one another. Some Africans have opted to refer to this philosophical cultural pillar as Ubuntu. It basically captures the essence of knowing that we exist as human beings because of others. It is that sense of belonging and the spirit that sublimates the self for the good of the country.

We need to craft the cultural pillar around this philosophy. Without this pillar, our hearts remain bare and that is why we are unable to see our real problem. That is why we are driven to ethnic Armageddon like sheep to a slaughter house by the political class.

A cultural pillar should aim at expanding our sense of time, history and social imagination. It should help Kenyans grasp complexities that they hardly comprehend and be able to construct new social realities of inclusivity. In essence, the cultural pillar should help create a civic tradition that defines how we share common spaces, resources and opportunities. It should lay the foundation of dealing with our conflicts and diversity and give direction to the National Cohesion and Integrated Commission (NCIC).

Building a prosperous nation is not all about economics and physical infrastructure alone. We have to first recognise the existence of various nations that form modern Kenya and build a cultural architecture that would pull all these nations towards a goal. The cultural pillar should help Kenyans look at ethnic particularism as backward. The ongoing vigorous revival of negative ethnic mobilisation should be seen for what it is: primitivity.

Building one nation out of many nations isn’t easy, especially when the nation has a fair share of headless political and academic bandits.

What the cultural pillar should do is to build a new consciousness through progressive ideologies. The pillar should prioritise what Louis Althusser calls Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA’s). These are institutions, which generate ideologies, which, we as individuals internalise and act in accordance with.

The cultural pillar should act as a reconstructive force that should initiate intercultural dialogue to restore trust in one another.

To dialogue our nationhood meaningfully, our universities have to take their rightful role as spaces for generation of ideas and production of the nation’s talented tenth and not gloried polytechnics. At Turkana University College, we have started this dialogue in a series of lectures dubbed “Moving the Centre”.

 

Prof. Kabaji is the Founding Principal of Turkana University College (TUC) [email protected].