Prof Ogot merely scratched the surface in new Mboya book

Tom Mboya would have turned 91 years in 2021. Where would he be right now? Maybe retired far away in the Rusinga Island, enjoying the tranquillity and solitude that comes with old age.

Or once in a while giving interviews to local and international media on the state of nationhood. Sometimes, during national celebrations such as Madaraka Day or Mashujaa Day, or even say, Jamhuri Day, addressing Kenyans to remind them of the earlier sacrifices they made and the vision they had for the country.

So far, have we achieved them? And if we have achieved just a few – as is the case – what has prevented us?

His address would be meant to disturb our conscience, to elicit debate and to provoke us into action as a nation.

Unfortunately, Mboya has been dead now for 52 years.

Every year, towards or slightly after the anniversary of his assassination, the country remembers him in different ways. Newspapers rush to remind us of his stellar achievements in the education sector, citing the famous airlift programmes that provided an opportunity to scores of brilliant students from around the country.

Television shows will replay footage of his heydays in the pan-African movement, especially his remarkable stint in the All-African People’s Conference in Ghana. The conference brought together such leading anti-colonial stalwarts as Kwame Nkurumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, among others.

Talking heads will be at pains to remind us that Mboya’s “Sessional Paper No 10 on African Socialism” was also beset by contradictions.

They would argue that, while the paper championed for an economic model that would be inclusive for all its citizens with the protection and intervention of the state, that was not how it later turned out to be.

The notion of “equitable distribution of wealth and income”, as Mboya himself spelt it out in a speech in Parliament in 1965, never actually materialised. Instead, primitive accumulation of wealth became the norm, even as a majority of citizens languished in poverty.

Of course, that was not largely Mboya’s fault.

The paper was visionary enough and ideologically grounded without the fluff and rhetoric that nowadays characterise what passes as manifestos by contemporary politicians.

Prof Bethwell Ogot’s new book, Tom Mboya: Life, Death and the Disintegration of the Nascent Enterprise, ‘Project Kenya’ should be read against the above backdrop.

Ogot’s book, or to be specific, booklet, is divided into six parts. It begins with Mboya’s early years as a committed man dedicated to the struggle for Independence.

This was in the wake of the declaration of the state of emergency in 1952 in which the British colonial rulers proscribed all political activity and arrested Mau Mau members and their sympathisers.

It then traces Mboya’s well-known labour union days before taking a detour to the airlifts to America and, finally, to the question of ‘Project Kenya’.

Ogot illustrates how the project collapsed under the weight of what he refers to as “a politicised ethnic elite which soon captured the authoritarian political structures of the Kenyatta regime and imposed an ethnic dominance.”

The concept of ‘Project Kenya’ has been the subject of intense debates among historians, economists, politicians, ordinary citizens, musicians, and even filmmakers as we saw with Hilary Ng’weno’s “Makers of a Nation” documentary series.

Ogot contends that Mboya embodied and lived to the true spirit of ‘Project Kenya’ – in other words – the Kenya we want wthat advocates the treatment of everyone equally irrespective of their ethnicity or religion or class.

The Kenya we want where the state cares about the wellbeing of its citizens and directly intervenes, not when it is too late as is often the case, but because it is its responsibility as enshrined in the Constitution. And also because it is morally right to do so.

The Kenya we want, as Mboya and his generation envisioned, where resources would be distributed equitably to give each group a chance at success in the post-independence era while encouraging hard work and honesty.

However, Ogot laments that what eventually transpired for a country that was destined to be an African powerhouse was “the emergence of a kind of internal colonialism.”

The state turned to a predator that preyed on its citizens as has been the case with the rise in police brutality and endemic corruption where civil servants and politicians collude to disenfranchise those they are supposed to safeguard their interests.

Ogot justifiably draws his arguments from Mboya’s autobiography Freedom and After and The Challenge of Nationhood, which when read as a whole, aptly sums the overall vision that the former Minister for Economic Planning had for Kenya.

Unfortunately, that is also the book’s central weakness.

It spectacularly fails to reveal any fresh insights on what ‘Project Kenya’ should look like, for example, in the advent of technology and a digital culture that has both been a boon and doom for younger Kenyans.

Technology has generated new jobs and caused disruptions in the structures of various state and non-state institutions, but in the Kenya we still want – a majority of young people are still excluded from enjoying some of the attendant benefits.

Lastly, despite the monumental gains of devolution, the political elite, in collusion with the private sector, are still reluctant to champion equitable distribution of resources, which means confronting the scourge of corruption and state wastage.

There is fear that taking such bold steps would likely trigger even more complicated conflicts that are not only economic in nature, but even lead to the overhaul of the current socio-economic structure, as it were; something that worries owners of capital and their sympathisers.

So ‘Project Kenya’ will always remain ‘nascent’ just as Ogot describes it, which is a tragedy to the vision Mboya had crafted when he was still alive.

Amol Awuor is a sub-editor at The Star