15:20 p.m. in the age of the neocolonial state I sit down to write these reflections in a middle class neighbourhood in Nairobi. The elections are over amidst uncertainty, joy, fear, strain and heartbreak. This string of words is ever the pathos that informs elections on the African continent. I arrived in this beautiful African land at the tail end of June amidst a blistering cold season. It felt nice on the skin of a person coming from the unbearable heat of the African Sahel.
As soon as I alighted from the plane I was already rehearsing my broken Swahili. Once I spotted a security guard and excitedly shouted ‘Karibu Kenya!’ He was both taken aback and confused and again I yelled ‘Karibu Kenya’ then he smiled and told me “why are you welcoming me when I live here? I think I should have been the one welcoming you.” Well that was the end of a rather enthusiastic flirtation with that beautiful language.
I came to Kenya with the intention of grounding with the progressive forces which span its length. In 2019, I was fortunate to be here and to meet with the brilliant and the magnanimous, the zealous and the brave from these spaces. I kept in touch even as I shared my writings and analysis on our shared condition as subjects of the neo-colony. I was treading in known territory this time round. Speaking of territory, do you remember the geographies of grief; those places deemed illegal and unloved – the ghettoes and slums that abound the urban landscape of the neocolonial state? I have been to them here in Nairobi and met some of the most beautiful and righteous people there are. They rose above social death, leaving behind cascades of hope and possibility in their wake; flowers blooming on concrete and stone, confounding dialectics of defiance.
The official name of these ghettoes is informal settlements. It got me thinking of naming and placing as an act of both violence and violation. It reminded me of how illegal and irregular have been the prefixes of migration under neoliberal discourse even though it is clear that freedom of movement is a birthright that goes beyond the binaries of good and evil. Welcome to the barbaric, deodorized language of capital.
There is no such thing, in my opinion, as informal settlements. There are informalized settlements of course —even settlement is another site of contestation, but that’s for another time. This is how the powerful decide on behalf of the people on how home should be named. Since language is a site of power and resistance, the dehumanization of the dispossessed begins right there in the naming that turns to shaming. The ontologies of the dehumanized are here tied directly to the disappearance of their agency to name home as home. They are denied the mere right to move from the utilitarian nature of a system that monetizes the lives and afterlives of those deemed informal and illegal — which are just scripted words branded on the poor and powerless.
But onwards to more joyful grounds. Wouldn’t you want to know how these rejected architectures are being rocked and shaken at their core by the great movement of the people into history? There I sat in spaces and centers and listened to comrades build new worlds in their speeches and silences. In Kayole, I joined my compatriots in campaigns for one of theirs who ran for elections and held other groundings with the masses. At Mathare, we sat together at the Social Justice Center and held discourses on what it means to hold on to the Pan-Africanist programme in these times. We debated and broke bread even as I contemplated the gut-wrenching view of the ghetto sitting below me.
In Mukuru where they evicted the people, I saw the naked violence of the anti-people. In all fullness, the violence and the creation of those demographies of anguish met their most brutal fate for me on those demolished grounds. But the people still go on. The beat does not stop. We sat with the brothers and sisters and learned hope in the presence of despair. We spoke about difficult truths and came to the conclusion that transcendence of place and person into something more radiant is possible. This paragraph is a fist up and a tribute to those deferred dreams.
The left in Kenya is ever evolving and moving at its own pace. Its strength in many ways lies in its emphasis on political education, intellection and analysis. This is an important meeting point between the dream and the real and it is a beautiful thing to watch and learn from. Despite its small size compared to more liberal spaces, it holds an ever important place in the history and current conjuncture of the worldwide leftist movement. Here you’ll find some of the sharpest and most serious on revolutionary practice and the qualitative leap. There are many contradictions that mar it but aren’t those the very things which when resolved, move us all along to higher ground? At Ukombozi Library which is a Mecca of the left, especially for young activists, there are advanced conversations and educational projects that give one hope that we will win.
In the library sits portraits of revolutionary ancestors with their heads held high and unapologetic. It is as if they are saying how comfortable they are as they watch these young comrades carry on the mantle and torch into the future. And the books! You will find old books that attest to the genealogies of rebellion that populate this most beautiful land. There are newer ones too which contrast nicely with the history of the old —an ancient future of some sort. It is a space that leads to water; to the very pulse of the coming world that will be built by the toilers of all lands. I love being there as I hold onto its poetry of possibility.
But not all time was spent in Nairobi. There were great moments in Kisumu as we went there to build Mwamko as an organization to move along with the rising tides of the African Revolution, for our eventual triumph. I went with my beloved comrade and brother, Sungu Oyoo and met with other brothers and sisters who have since become family. We visited the ancestral lands of Oyoo and stood high on the hills of Kajulu in wonderment at the beauty of place and space.
A quick shout out to Nanyuki where we spent a few days and danced and sang along to good vibes at the downtown club ran by a friend and comrade, Vinny. This is even as we met the comrades in that cold, clean air town that stand anciently by the awe inspiring Mount Kenya.
We came back to dear old Nairobi to further the conversations we started, spending time by bonfires at Comrades Retreat in Kibichiku village, Lower Kabete, on the outskirts of Nairobi City. This is the sort of place you come to feel the stress of the times leaving your body and rejuvenating your very essence. The space is dedicated to the comrades and the movement by its owner, Njuki Githethwa, a veteran of the struggle who still holds onto those ideals and continues to struggle alongside the young and old alike. In this house sporting a garden of edible plants we debated, agreed and disagreed on a plethora of issues around our shared conditions. We recited poetry, listened to music and danced to a joyful noise. This is one of the dearest places to me in Africa.
One of those mornings Njuki took us to the Mwakenya House. Mwakenya was an active leftist organization that fought against the neocolonial state and the tyranny of Daniel Moi, Kenya’s second president. At its peak it had people like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Karimi Nduthu, Maina wa Kinyatti and other powerful and brilliant comrades. This house —wooden and small standing on a downward flow of earth — is both a testament and monument of a protracted struggle waged to the bitter end of that dictatorship of the anti-people. It lives on in the many annals and formations located in the Kenyan and African left.
There is much to recount but so little space and so little time. The honour is all mine in sharing these reflections on those who chose to defend the territory of life. This is a beginning as I ground evermore and build in the Kenyan front of the African Revolution.
In closing this love letter to the righteous everywhere, I’ll quote an earlier essay I wrote as a tribute to our meetings as Africans who believe in revolution and resistance:
“But as young Africans meet and recount tales, they’re telling similar stories. These are stories of nostalgia, of unfinished liberation projects and post-neocolonial Africas. They meet in virtual communities or sometimes at conferences organized by the imperial masters. After they have played by the book, they would sit at night by fireplaces and bars to tell stories and trade hopes of a new, beautiful, re-crafted Africa. Their meetings are inevitable, pushed by the old but strong hands of time. They believe in their victory. I believe it too.”
Pamoja na Mapambano!
*Alieu Bah is a writer from the Gambia and a member of Mwamko, a vanguard of a way of thinking that aspires to another order of being and doing within the African continent and her dispersed diaspora.
This is a brilliant and necessary analysis. Power to the people! ✊🏾