Strange revearsal in Kogelo

It occurred to me that few among Barack Obama’s older relatives had ever expected Kogelo to be on the national grid in their lifetimes.

But now, the rules of engagement between state and citizen had been reversed, a rare restitution achieved: The people, without agitating or grovelling, without resorting to the games of ethnic patronage, were getting what they deserved. Maybe the world was changing, finally.

On March 7, 1963, Tom Mboya, coming to the end of his book Freedom and After wrote:

“We in Africa are confident that, despite momentary falterings… we are heading in the right direction along our new trail. Our road is a classless socialism, based on Ujamaa, the extended family. Our goal is to share the blessings of a richly endowed continent among all its inhabitants; to make a reality of the United States of Africa… What could be more satisfying for me personally, and for Kenya than the knowledge that at last we too shall celebrate next Christmas as FREE MEN? ... It is a good ending to the story of our national struggle, and a most hopeful beginning for our future as an independent state.”

The next day, his party Kanu would go into its second election, sweep the polls, form the government and rule uninterrupted for the next 39 years.

There is an incredible feeling of haste in those last chapters of Freedom and After.

Mboya, arguably the main architect of the post-colonial Kenyan state, was in a hurry. He was one of the new men.

Decolonisation was less a political process than it was an act of the will, a state of mind.

And Kenya, with all its competing ethnic and historical agendas, was a project, a reality that required constant invention and reinvention. He was painfully aware that in freeing himself from the past, his journey was only just beginning.

His nationalist vision of a liberated Kenya rushing to modernity would be cut short by an assassin’s bullet, six years after he finished the book.

In place of his grand plans for the country, Kenya would turn inwards, reverse the process of nationalism in favour of ethnic sub-nationalism.

A friend who once met Mahathir Mohammed said that the former Malaysian prime minister had looked at him, shaken his head and said: “When you killed Tom, you lost 30 years.”

It is a strange coincidence that in this, the 40th anniversary of his death, another man with a vision to create a new reality from his past, has risen.