The fallacy of living on hope and bar room talk

The tired line that Kenya is poor and makes poor political choices because she has only had 50 years of independence is a mediocre excuse from tired minds. Across the world there are examples of states that have transformed themselves from nations of peasants to economic power houses. To them 50 years is a long time; but to us 50 years is too short and we are a pubescent nation not yet ready to stop sagging our trousers.

You see the problem is, while the other nations realised early on that they needed to earn their space in the world, we in Kenya assumed that as a matter of time we would grow up and our democracy would mature naturally and our economy as well. As such we became like the philosophers and entrepreneurs in every bar in this nation; those who have the best solutions to politics, business and also somehow know exactly what to do to make Manchester United number one again in the EPL.

A nation of gamblers

These philosophers will bamboozle you with flawless business ideas which they never do. They will give you the history of every politician and call out the thieves but still vote for the same thieves 3 years from now. On football their beer belly tells you they can’t coach the local kindergarten let alone Harambee Stars. However, they are good at one thing; gambling and hoping that the next beer crown or super bet on their favourite team will hand them a breakthrough; winning all their dreams in one fell swoop.

To the man in the bar and to the nation, blind luck is a strategy. This is the same mentality with which Kenya approaches life. The shelves in the Ministry of Planning are lined with ideas upon ideas of how to transform this nation. A brief talk with any technocrat, in any field, will yield you a treasure trove of projects which if implemented would transform this country.

Heck, the grapevine is awash with stories of how our leaders would go to benchmark on various projects and find that the projects were originally copied from Kenya. The only difference is they faithfully did what we wrote down.

When Kenya was filling its bars and streets with “bunge la mwananchi” these countries were busy filling their factories with workers. When we spent too much time in economic theory and fighting each other how far trains should go, they built the infrastructure.

The Asian tigers all understood that all must be done to secure the future and that they did. They faced their challenges with bravery and resolve, something seldom seen in this nation of ours. China built itself up by pulling itself out of poverty by the bootstraps and they did it in just the last 30 years.

They made a plan and they stuck to it. Some worked excellently while others are still hollow and empty cities that never quite took off. At each failure, the Chinese didn’t sit and wail like we do, they learnt and went and built the next city.

South Korea’s example

South Korea dared to go into electronics in the 1960s when it was still recovering from war. Researching and developing electronics so successfully that today South Korea’s Samsung is the largest producer of electronics in the world. Meanwhile, all our corporations from that era are dead, for the simple reason that we refused to deal non-corruptly and to adjust for the future. Never mind that we never dared to think beyond a meat company, a dairy company, a few hotels and a failed car prototype.

While China built factories and wooed international investors, in Kenya we built co-operatives we stole from, researched nothing and we never once built an industry for the future. Our focus was on now and how much of today we can plunder. This is still our focus, we are hardworking thieves of today, tomorrow is expected to take care of itself. Like every gambler, we squander today.

Today as we speak somewhere in China, thousands of young men are being trained to take over the reins of power. In various party schools and party positions they are being given the information needed to lead the China of 2050. Meanwhile in Africa, the next president is probably throwing stones in a university and working for a Kenyan politician as a rapid stone throwing unit leader.

Hopeless future

The next generation has no idea what awaits them in 30 years’ time and no one bothers to prepare them. This uninformed and unprepared generation somehow knows who to vote for in 2022, what that decision is based on is as informed as the dance moves we have today; by absurdity and reckless regard to rhyme and reason.

There is no research and development for the future in Africa, like it was in the sixties so it is now. When all developed nations are in a race to produce true Artificial Intelligence, we are on a slow race to educate natural brains. While they are spending billions in the space race, we can’t agree whether we want SGR to reach Kisumu or not.

Kenya has no excuse for its poverty other than the fact that she is a lazy nation. Kenya has never left the bar, we are still drunk.

We are still better speculators than investors and our bar politics is all too often the same politics we practice on a national scale. We shall remain forever poor and misled if we do not abandon our drunken-gambler ways.

 

Mr Bichachi is a communication consultant. [email protected]