The pre-colonial sub-saharan people (doroboic and abantu) had humanity’s most advanced structure of society - traditional African Socialism. This was a democratic, participatory and negotiated decision making guided sharing of resources and the maintenance of social order. Its main feature was absence of hereditary leadership. Leaders were elected on the basis of their talent, ability and experience to sit among peers in a council that ruled over a community comprising of collection of villages. For example a distinguished warrior could be made a community’s military general but this position could only last the duration of external conflict whereupon he would go back to peace-time economic activities such as farm, hunting, fishing and beekeeping. The God of the Africans owned all natural resources and bequeathed part of it to the community for their sustenance in exchange of obeisance. Thus, means of production were communal and individual ownership only regarded capital accumulated by a family. Social prominence from accrued wealth (such as livestock) and outstanding inherited traits could keep a family prominent, but without accruing nobility status.
Europeans in the process of colonization violently introduced to these Africans the vile and primitive social structure called feudalism. It is a very hierarchical and exists primarily to sustain the predominance of self-proclaimed semi-divine monarch whose ownership of realm’s natural resources baits and bullies loyalty and reverence from the populace that exists in varying degrees of privilege. The most privileged of them are nobles who are bequeathed by the monarchy vast amounts of land. In exchange, they give the monarchy loyalty, tribute (obtained from taxing lesser mortals) and protection (conscripting and leading lesser mortals into battle for the monarch). Now these nobles are of varying levels of prestige and privilege, based on their favour and kinship with the monarchy.
Remember that Kenya was not colonized directly by Britain, but by a European mafia based in India’s city of kolkuta, organized as the Imperial British East Africa Company – an offshoot of the British India Steam Navigation Company. Such companies that had been in existence since the rise of European naval power in the 1600s were not companies in the way we know them now. They owned by aristocratic adventurers who ran them as self-contained semi-statal organization with own armies, bureaucrats and vast material resources. Their main reason of existence was to procure wealth on behalf of European monarchs and on their own behalf, and kill anything that stood in their way. They were just bandits or pirates but with a royal charter. Kenya started as a colony of Indian-based European bandits. These used every trick in the book to obtain on behalf of the British monarch fraudulent treaties with natives to claim ruler-ship over Africans. The reason the company invaded what was become Kenya/Uganda was not farming. It was a military strategic objective to control of the source of River Nile. This river had for millennia been the life-blood of Egypt. The British were at the time ruling Egypt, and had constructed the very strategic Suez Canal that shortened maritime travel between Europe and Asia. The company built a railway line from Mombasa to Port Florence (Kisumu) whose main purpose was to move troops shipped from India quickly to Uganda, if there was need to protect the Nile. The railway was later repurposed to transport farm produce and tourists only after non-military administrators who came in later were told to make the railway profitable. The rest is history.
Knowing they were too few to govern a large territory, these Europeans military overlords introduced the feudal system to delegate their illegitimate leadership over the conquered/conned people. The nobility was first stratified according to race. Europeans were of course the top. But even among them were bona fide blue-blooded settlers who came much later having been enticement with grants of large swathes of land and loans to develop the lands. Most of those who came were wakora nobles (drunkards, womanizers, homosexuals, murderers, etc) who found it hard to fit in the strict Victorian era society. Others were sickly or having mental problems. Whatever their shortcomings at home, these earls, barons and viscounts had extreme bravado that helped build the colony. Apart from wakora, there also came those of the opposite reputation, missionaries who wanted to civilize and educate negros. It is these who played a key role in shaping For example, Kenya’s future leadership. Kenya’s first and second presidents were adopted while small boys by these missionaries and given a life-changing education and mentorship. Asians ranked second and where granted land, some for farming but mostly for industrio-commercial enterprises in which they greatly excelled. There was a time, in the 1910s when Indians threatened to take over the colony from whites. This threat was overcome when a mass importation of European settlers changed the equation.
African natives were too many to control and the pirates chanced upon an idea of creating an African nobility. In line with their Indian administration background, the social structure they borrowed heavily from was the ancient Hindu caste system which was used to designate a person to a social status. The caste system has clergy and learned people (Brahmin) at the top, below which are kings and warriors (Kshatriya), followed by merchants/professionals or the Vaishyas (here’s your midro crass), who are above the working class of skilled labourers (Sudra). At the bottom of the pyramidal social structure are the ma-sufferer, the untouchables (pariah) who are really peasants and anyone living below the poverty line. The colonial rulers made it clear that there were vacancies for the plum social positions. But lacking interest from the prominent members of stable socialist African society, they decided it was much easier recruiting the lowest of the low, African children who were pariahs of African society. These they took in and used European-style education to elevate them to the Brahmin class.
Creation of a Kshatriya African case involved the appointment of nondescript scoundrels into ‘chiefs’ and ensuring that they could earn a living off their position. This was a step back in the evolution of African society and the Europeans went a step further to make chiefdoms a hereditary entitlement by providing preferential education for their collaborators’ offspring. As such provision of colonial secondary education and access to limited higher education chances were mostly limited to nascent local royalty. Even after independence, the colonial chiefs’ offspring have continued through an education system that deviated little from the colonial agenda to maintain the status quo.
By the 1940s the new structure was in place and this brought resentment among the former African traditionalists that had been marginalized by taxation and oppressive English laws and transformed into the undesirable Sudra/pariah social status. Their resentment especially in Central Kenya gave rise to the Mau Mau which was a movement that wanted life to return back to its African roots, devoid of all European influence. They had no manifesto apart from effecting through violence (a universal language of change that Europeans understood well) the removal of all foreign influence in their land. Their key strategy was attacking government institutions, government security installations, settler farms and anything in them, and Christian institutions and people, Europeans in general and anyone that did not support this ideal. We are wrong to assume that their perception of independence is the same as that of independence as we know it. The independence we attained had no place for the mau mau because that’s not the independence they were fighting for. This is why they remained sudra/pariah in post independent Kenya because the social structure initiated by Europeans remained, by design, intact. If there ever was a former Mau Mau operative who fitted well in the new government, it was most likely because of having being captured, renounced the mau mau oath under torture and persuasion, undergone rehabilitative education before release back to society. You have to understand that men like J.M. Kariuki, despite their freedom struggle credentials and detention, hid the fact that they had been compromised and therefore demonstrated the same opulence in post-independence Kenya as those of colonial chiefs.
What was the place of the Somali in all this? Know this about the Cushitic and predominantly Islamic Somali, for most of colonial rule, their main problem with Europeans was being designated as Africans. They therefore had their own unique ‘freedom struggle’ to be recognized as Asians(!). They succeeded just before independence but had time to enjoy Asian privileges, which included being allowed residency in Asian areas such as Eastleigh in Nairobi.
Hereditary African royalty remains strong even in the present Kenya. They are fluent in English – some having ability to quote Shakespeare, have strong diplomatic skills, an odd ability to charmingly disarm and command a sudra/pariah, striking physical traits, sometimes naughty but also easily brush off scandals and sins that can obliterate a commoner’s reputation. One obvious way to identify a local noble is checking if they ave attended the older usually mission-based schools while they still had white teachers. Their children now probably prefer top private schools (those with white teachers) and/or senior British or American universities. Another is the ability to move from one high station in life to another, playing a game of musical chairs in top society. Nobility traits are universal and transcend religion, race and nationality. They are able to recognize one another. If you have ever conversed with any, the opening banter will be like an interview, eyes roving over you trying to note commonalities. If they that is established, they will quickly pull you into their social circle that provide access to unimaginable opportunities. Otherwise you get ignored or get sent on a fool’s errand. Hardly needing lessons in etiquette and protocols, governments heavily use nobles in the diplomatic services. George Muhoho, a Brahmin in his own right and a son of a Kshatriya colonial chief was Kenya’s first ambassador to the Vatican. Currently, he is a captain of the fabled central Kenya billionaire mafia that was instrumental in ushering in both the Kibaki and Uhuru presidencies (Nobles personify the deep state). Governor Ngilu (mama rainbow) whose father was a colonial-era clergy is a noble of the Brahmin order. The Alliance girls alumni started her political career as a fearless critic of the KANU and mounted a strong presidential campaign in 1997. Governor Nyong’o’s nobility is at another level. An alliance high school alumni, an American ivy league university Phd and a member of the power musical chairs game. Ninja is a prostate cancer survivor, thanks to American doctors, and the father of an Oscar winner. There are nobles even among journalists. Keff Joinange is a deep state operative who can bully anyone on live TV. Lilian Muli is also Kshatriya and whatever scandal is mentioned about her has little effect on her career. Now about self-proclaimed hustler, Dr William Ruto (and Mrs Sara Ruto) are nobles of the Brahmin order. Conclusion is that DP Ruto is no hustler in the Kenyan sense of the term. Despite his oily promises, electric sloganneering, lavish spending and hypnotic presidential campaign rallies among holoi polio, he cannot and is unable to change the social status of his sudra/pariah followers. This is because that is not the order of things. He is also a deep state operative and cannot claim to be its victim. It is just a political sympathy ruse. Whether he wins or loses the 2022 presidential race, he will remain politically relevant and with unlimited ambitions. This our democracy is not about social change, it is for maintaining the status quo that was designed at the dawn of the 20th century.
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post note
An earlier version of article was posted earlier this week, but failed village expectations. I think part of the reason for this was timing and theme. It was posted at night, possible prime nesting time as it was in the midst of “kienyeji” “nipe coordinates” “osha mesho” type of posts that resonate with the site’s majority hormonal levels. There possibly was a ‘ua nyoka’ mood. The topic’s angle was wee amorphous and half-baked, lacking linkage to the ongoing fickle political discourse. dorobo’s vibe-killing article died on arrival, receiving only three likes and zero reactions. To mitigate this intellectual embarrassment and acknowledging the site’s delicate cranial appetite, a humbled sv dorobo refurbished, elaborated and re-posted.