Thursday 8 August 2024

It's All Connected by Imperialism

 I've been intending to start a series on the current maandamano taking place in Kenya and the events of today's #nanenane demonstrations was the kick in the butt I needed. This post will be freeform but subsequent posts will contain receipts. 

Let's start from the beginning. 

But where is that?

Let's talk about imperialism. It's a monster, with tentacles spread out worldwide. The head of the monster, however, is nestled in the United States. It's headquarters, one might say.

What is imperialism you might ask. 

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.

It's important to realize that governments are not the imperialists. They are just the instruments by which the imperialists seek to exploit others. The government works for them. They always have. The Dutch East India Company was a private outfit, but the Queen of England had shares as did other noblemen. They are the ones who ate and left no crumbs. The government is left with no one else to consume and now see, they're eating themselves.

The riots we're seeing in Britain right now are a direct result of imperialism and white supremacy.

We might have been colonized by England but it's still the queen's friends who own vast tracts of our land.



Prince Harry is the president of African Parks and don't get me wrong, I love the fella but when they say 'governments have given them the parks to run' I have to wonder. 
Why?
What is the bottleneck that stops Africans from running their own game reserves? Looks to me like we're the only continent still with significant wildlife populations. Everyone else has depleted theirs so why are we not 'able' to run our own parks.
Question for another day.


Let's get back to the events of #nanenane and how they brought me here, to you. The police completely shut the CBD down. It was impossible to hold a lawful demonstration because the police kept scattering people.
This led to a lot of frustrated Kenyans and there was a back to the drawing board mood. Bangladesh ousted their prime minister this week. Their parliament was dissolved.
We must find a way to do the same. 
But the foiling of the demos led to a lot of demoralization for some, hardened the determination of others and got me off my ass so I can show you all how far we've come.


Stay Tuned.