Reality check for our aloof middle class as the poor and rich gang up

The recent Form One selection fiasco exposed the vulnerability of Kenya’s middle class. It bared the government-middle class alliance as unsustainable and based on weak assumptions.

To understand the middle class’ loud whining over the selection, we need to unpack the narrative behind this alliance.       

Over the last 30 years, Kenya’s middle class (people who spend Sh250 to Sh1,000 per capita daily) expanded greatly. But this expansion has been inversely proportional to the government’s failure in service delivery to key sectors.

To keep the middle class happy, the government has, since the 1980s, with little regulation, allowed this class to literally run a parallel private service delivery infrastructure: health, security, shelter, water, education, insurance, power, etc.

The groundings of this unwritten MoU are: government allows private service providers a leeway to extract as much rent as possible from the public; it also liberalises the economy, maintains roads (if funds are available), for the middle class to enjoy adult toys like SUVs and other material comforts.

On its part, the middle class is to shut up and support the status quo in “nation building” and while not doing so, confine itself to merry-making or the pretence of it and moan in the social media or else the material comforts could disappear at short notice.

Why is the government betraying the middle class?

The MoU is bogus. Sooner or later, something had to give; the number of people unable to afford the increasing cost of private services could only rise.

One can see the uncomfortable position. Obviously, the regime has become increasingly nervous with the thousands of young people falling out of the public education system.

We pretend it is not happening but we are already seeing the social-economic consequences of what has become the “school-prison–grave pipeline”. Government badly wants to be seen to be pro-poor.

Yet rather than take concrete and painful measures to uplift primary education, the government knee jerks, takes a desperate but politically correct measure by favouring children from public primary schools in joining well equipped secondary schools. While right on principle, this will merely entrench mediocrity. It will not mitigate the terrible consequences the derelict education system has visited upon this country.
Urgently, the government should resurrect the defunct Kenya School Equipment Scheme, rein in on corruption and motivate teachers through just remuneration and improved working environment. Revamping public schools will make many in the middle class comfortable educating their children in them.

The Form One selection fiasco should rouse the middle class on two things: either develop more private secondary and tertiary education for their kids or put pressure on the government to equip public schools.  

Post-primary education is expensive. It is one thing to build beautiful classrooms, employ a few teachers and intimidate them into drilling pupils for KCPE exams. It is quite another to equip science laboratories and employ more qualified secondary and tertiary teachers. Only the government has the resources to fully equip and subsidise a chain of medical schools, for example. The viable thing then is to pressure the government to revamp public schools.

Undoubtedly, our middle class is a hard-working, creative lot. It heads the “Africa’s rebirth” story.  However, it is astutely aloof, a classic ostrich!  It is all bliss so long as there is some political stability to ensure the smooth flow of slush through the social media.

Yours truly included, under the excuse of “building the country”, we never participate in political party primary mobilisation. The result: Ruffians and cretins lord it over highly trained academics, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc.  

The last five general elections show the bourgeoisie has abdicated its classical civic role at the vanguard of social change to the proletariat, the poor working masses.  The “hustlers” are the new deciders of election outcomes and Neo-Marxists should be clapping. But be very afraid. Regard the rising “sonkoism”, the banal ascent of chaos and lack of decorum in public as an expression of this takeover.    

 Dr Mbataru teaches at Kenyatta University’s School of Agriculture ([email protected])