Learning our lessons: What do Kenya’s politicians read?

An anecdote used to be told in this country about a Kanu politician who wanted Karl Marx to be arrested and jailed because too many people opposed to the then ruling party were wont to cite him. A bad joke is also told that if you want to hide something from an African, put it in a book. There is no doubt that these two anecdotes refer to ignorance and its consequences.

The Kanu politician in the first joke had never heard of or read about Karl Marx. He had only been told stories of opposition politicians and activist talking about Karl Marx, Marxism and Communism. That second pejorative about Africans and reading is just one of the many racist claims that presuppose that people from this continent do not read. Well, we can argue the whole day just to show that literacy has been around Africa for hundreds of years. But this is not necessary. However, one often gets the feeling that too many Africans in positions of authority do not actually read.

What do Kenyan politicians read? When do they read, if at all they do? How does what they read affect their thinking, conversations, behaviour, policymaking and policy implementation? Oftentimes when some Kenyan politicians speak in public, one wonders if at all they even speak to people other than their close friends, family and supporters. For instance, why do these politicians continue to claim that this country is a regional political or economic giant? What do they mean when they say that the country has 42 tribes? Where do they get this idea that there is a region in Kenya called Mt Kenya or Luo Nyanza or the Coast, only at election time?

Do our politicians actually know about the founding ideas for this country, when Kenyans imagined themselves as Kenyans irrespective of tribe, race, region, religion, socio-economic class etc. Maybe the dream wasn’t that idealistic, but the freedom must have freed even the colonialists themselves and European settlers from worrying about their lives in the country. One suspects that the ideals of that short postcolonial moment, captured in a book such as Freedom and After or The Challenge of Nationhood by Tom Mboya are alien to most of our leaders today. Well, Mboya paid with his life for aspiring to something bigger and sophisticated than a chiefdom or kingdom as some of his contemporaries imagined.

Even when Oginga Odinga wrote Not Yet Uhuru shouldn’t our politicians have woken up to the fact that there must have been some problems worth attending to in the 1960s. A few years later Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood. There is no doubt the symbolism of Ngugi’s narratives might have escaped the attention of the then leading politicians. But these books were even translated into Kikuyu and Kiswahili. Well, there were bureaucrats who should have read these books and whispered into the ears of the politicians that there were stories circulating around that raised deep national questions. These books were not necessarily revolutionary, as Ngugi would be accused of stoking a revolution. They were just tales of how badly the national project was doing.

But if you ignore Ngugi and his ilk, someone did write a not so long book on progress, Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo-colonialism 1964-1971, which every mandarin should have read. Even the politicians should probably have bought a copy. But maybe because the author was a mzungu, who we had just removed from power, why should they have been preaching to us about economic realities of the 1970s. That second part of the title, especially that word ‘neo-colonialism’, must have irritated some big men and women in Kenya. I suspect that this book doesn’t appear on many reading lists even in our universities.

Development

Actually Colin Leys, the author, later wrote another book, which Kenyan leaders should have read as well, The Rise & Fall of Development Theory. This one raised serious doubts that ‘development’ – Maendeleo – could actually be delivered as it had been believed in the 1960s. Yet, maendeleo is the opium of the poor in Kenya, and Africa. Every politician promised development to his poor constituents. Even the global loan sharks talk of delivering roads, schools, hospitals, power generating plants etc to poor African countries. Not much is heard of money being loaned to Africans to industrialise or add value locally to their raw products before exporting to the rest of the world.

But these are books, right? What about just the Constitution? That little book that spells out how leaders and the led should relate, how to share power, how to dispense resources, how to resolve conflicts, when to elect leaders, what kind of leaders to elect, where to take children to school, why educate young people etc. Do our leaders even own this booklet? Do they ever refer to it when they prepare their speeches? If they did, would they speak of power and resources belonging more to some region and people and less to others? If they read the Constitution, would we be talking about the gender rule in appointment to public office? If our politicians read the annual National Economic Survey, would they be deaf to public concerns about a poor economic outlook for the majority of Kenyans?

The protests by Gen Z demonstrated the value of reading. On many occasions Kenyan leaders were caught flatfooted when questioned about the Financial Bill 2024. Even those who were supposed to be best placed to defend the government position on the bill could only fumble. But young Kenyans read the bill and even translated sections of it into other Kenyan languages. The translations enabled conversations on local radio stations and public debates in other gatherings. In fact, government policy makers and propagandists should rethink their approaches to what is commonly known as ‘public participation’ in policymaking. Let people read what you are suggesting, borrow their ideas, rework them and create a better document or policy.

If only our politicians read some literature instead of being shocked that their children read books such as Parliament of Owls (the collection of poetry and play), Mstahiki Meya, Kitumbua Kimeingia Mchanga or Betrayal in the City. The school literature and history syllabus had always asked Kenyans to read books that questioned their socio-economic reality. One did not need to read a treatise on government ineptitude when The Government Inspector was available. If one wanted a local version of the tragedy of modern Kenya, then Betrayal in the City or Man of Kafira were adequate. The rottenness of the city and the misfortune of the poor is so well dramatized in Going Down River Road. Kill Me Quick is a most sharp portrayal of an aborted dream of the Kenyan youth. In fact, this is the text that describes best the fate of Gen X and Millennials – a good education, aspiration, personal drive but no (satisfying) employment, underemployment, underprivileged, perpetual dependency; more or less a lost generation.

So, could our leaders learn to read – and it does not necessarily have to be literal reading. It could be reading the signs of the times – huge crowds on a working day means those people have no jobs; closed shop doors mean there is no business; too many people appearing to dare the government means they really have very little to nothing to lose; wars in the neighboring countries means Kenya cannot take peace for granted. These things are reported in the news every day. Our leaders should learn to read the newspapers – and, no, newspapers are not just for wrapping meat as some leader once said. Or, copy one Barack Obama and have some reading list for the year. This year, Obama has 14 books on his Summer Reading list. I recommend Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves to our leaders, especially for the men.

The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi