During the week, Nairobi traffic, already bad enough, got suddenly worse.

The reason was one that would be very familiar in Kampala, Kigali, or Dar es Salaam – the kids were going back to school.

When you go shopping at the malls, there is no parking. The parents will have brought their kids to clean out the supermarkets.

There will be a shortage of trolleys, and the ones queuing up at the checkout counters will be stacked high with goodies.

The queues outside uniform shops are as long as those we see on election days.

The days before the kids go back to school, you can’t get a parent’s attention. They will tell you they are busy preparing for the return of the children to school.

If you borrowed money from a parent, that is when he or she will sell your house to get it back if you hesitate to pay them back.

The purchase of things like newspapers, even beer, and other things that are not have-or-die products (the exception being airtime), dips around this time.

In homes where the men are the main providers, some delinquent ones have the bad habit of “eating” the school fees. Mothers faced with this situation have been known to go into deep depression, and some even contemplate the rope to cut short their agony.

Alpha pension plan

Going back to school in our part of the world has become even a bigger deal than preparing for war. It is a good thing. It is a sign that education is still taken seriously.

A rich, strikingly unsentimental, man in Kampala who took his kids to the best schools money could buy in the world, told me once that the children were his “alpha pension plan.”

A friend told me when his (famous) father was on his death bed, he gathered his friends and family together to make his last speech.

No one should go looking for his “unknown” wealth out there, and relatives should not bother his wife to share his riches. He had no fortunes out there, he said, all of it was in his children’s heads, he said, pointing to them. He had invested it all in their elite education.

But matters have become difficult for parents, because education in state schools is mostly crappy, and most of them now believe that if their children are to have a chance in life, a good private school is where they will get a good start.

Social and political shifts

The emotional toll that the return to school week takes is thus reflective of important social and political shifts.

For one, it is part of a massive secession by the middle class from state-provided health, education, and other services.

But it has also impacted the region’s politics. There are few parents left, who after battling three times every year for five years in the school war, have any juice left to agitate for democracy or push back against a rigged election.

Today, a clever strong man does not need a police state to keep power and become president for life if his heart so desires. All he has to do is conspire to make education an existential struggle for parents.

They won’t have any energy left to lift a finger against him.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3