What self-rule when graft cartels have gripped Kenya by the throat?

As a lad, the highlight of my existence was those afternoon song-and-dance festivals immediately before and after Kenya’s Independence Day.

During those seemingly impromptu celebrations which started around June 1963 and ended on December 12 of that year, patriotic Mau Mau songs were belted out by ordinary villagers, and many a tale of heroism during the struggle related with relish by chaps, a number of whom had never been anywhere near a forest let alone handled any weapon whatsoever.

They too had a right to celebrate because, though most had no idea what lay ahead, they had been told that with independence, many of the things they had been craving for — land, jobs, plenty of money in the pocket and curvaceous new wives — would at last become a reality.

The only people who wore long faces were those who had actively collaborated with wazungus, including village headmen, chiefs, paramount chiefs and schoolteachers.

The last, unfortunately, had no choice on the matter because they would lose their jobs — and more — unless they denounced the Mau Mau and refused to take the oath.

A year later, the only people who were laughing were the same ones collectively known as Ngati (homeguards), the village elite who had not been dispossessed of their land and property during the notorious villagisation policy. (This programme was specifically meant to herd people into villages, the better to control them during the struggle).

The majority others, who had been singing the praises of freedom heroes, went strangely quiet; their lofty expectations turned into dust, after discovering that they were no better off than they had been a year earlier.

They were even more incensed when the first President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, kept telling them to go back to the land and work it instead of dreaming about white-collar jobs which did not exist.

What land? They asked. The only land they could see was the same one they had laboured on all their lives.

Some of it was still owned by white settlers, but other plantations were being gobbled up by the scions of the old collaborators.

This is when deep cynicism crept in among the “patriots”, but since there was little they could do about it, they went completely docile.

Today, 56 years later, their offspring are about to celebrate yet another Madaraka Day and they are probably asking themselves why.

Mine is likely to be a minority opinion for it is true that Kenyans who work hard need a break now and then to unwind and catch up with relatives, but do we really have to mark this holiday at all?

Isn’t it enough that on October 20 (Mashujaa Day), we shall honour our national heroes while on December 12 we shall mark the more meaningful Jamhuri Day with pomp and circumstance?

Let us look at the issue dispassionately: Madaraka Day has lost meaning.

This country became self-governing more than five decades ago and the struggle against overbearing colonialists was over.

Today, we are mourning Kenya’s steady descent into premature senescence.

Corruption, the yoke that has gradually strangled us, has turned into a well-crafted lore that is slowly lulling people into somnolence, because despite all the drama, nothing seems to move.

Is it any wonder that President Uhuru Kenyatta increasingly appears frustrated that the war he repeatedly vows to wage against thieves in high places is not going anywhere?

Recently, I chanced upon a blog by one Darius Okolla, a brilliant exposition of what exactly ails us and why the war on corruption may never be won unless we change tactics.

For the first time, I realised that one needs to go back in history to understand why the menace is so pervasive and difficult to root out.

According to him, corruption in Kenya is not an anomaly; it is rooted in the creation of this territory by colonialists as an “industrial plantation to provide leisure for aristocratic adventurers and raw materials for their plants”.

Nothing has really changed — only the identity of the main players.

The primitive amassing of wealth and the proceeds of grand theft led to the creation of primitive elites that produced nothing but were adept at setting up “massive concrete feudal outposts like malls and real estate jungles, and inventing new ways of driving economic exploitation and corruption”.

This preoccupation, which continues to date, made them paranoid, and they sought ways to safeguard their stolen wealth, even if they had to use force on those protesting ruthless plunder.

The fact of the matter is that these primitive elites protect one another, which is why politicians, business magnates, prosecutors, lawyers, magistrates and even judges seem to belong to an exclusive club which has vowed not to rock the boat, but instead go through the motions of fighting corruption cartels.

They are one and the same people. It is therefore possible that those villagers who danced lustily on dusty paths in the euphoria of a new dispensation 56 years ago are turning in their graves when they see their progenitors dancing themselves silly in packed stadiums to celebrate Madaraka Day.