MWANGI: Africans arent bandits, we simply want justice

MWANGI: Africans arent bandits, we simply want justice

The killing of a rancher by pastoralists in the Laikipia paradise that hosts former colonialists – and a few privileged black African families – brings to the fore the tensions caused by long-running historical injustices in East Africa.

Tragically, hardly any major news outlet has tried to report such matters in context. Many of them have simply advanced the establishment lie that this is a conflict between ranchers and “bandits”, a demeaning reference to pastoralists who have moved around with their livestock in the area for millennia.

A comparison is easily made between what is happening in Laikipia with events in Zimbabwe and even South Africa. The logical deduction that consumers of news are encouraged to make, of course, is that the invasions are bad for Kenya and that the pastoralists must be stopped by all means.

But that can hardly be a solution to the emerging conflict. Indeed, it is doubtful that any of the governments in the region, save perhaps Rwanda, is capable of dealing with issues of injustice that are rooted in colonial legacies.

The reason for this state of affairs is not difficult to fathom if one were to carefully study the history of our countries in the period immediately before and after independence. Essentially, the new black elite took over the mantle of leadership and selfishly entrenched the oppressive power structures of the outgoing colonial masters.

Rather than dismantling these systems and structures – the very reason for African resistance to colonial rule – the new masters prided themselves in displaying their newfound toys of power. They sought to assert their authority and bring down any resistance to themselves using the same tools that the colonial powers had used. They sought to distance themselves from their fellow Africans and did their best to align their thinking, values and mannerisms with their former white masters.

In order to bring about this hatred of themselves and anything African by locals, Europeans instilled a great sense of inferiority into colonised peoples. Once their minds were thoroughly brainwashed, the colonised peoples saw anything African as inferior to what the whites had to offer. Those who excelled in aping the white man were rewarded with more toys, including with appointments as foremen, home guards and chiefs to oppress their kith and kin.

From there, it was easy for the white man to quit the scene and still control events from far away. Leaders like Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president, never saw anything wrong in grabbing huge tracts of land for themselves and their friends as other citizens wallowed in extreme poverty. When confronted with the pain of the betrayed masses, they resorted to detentions, assassinations, and divide-and-rule tactics that play one ethnic group against another.

But the problems of dispossession and disempowerment that came along with colonialism cannot just be wished away. The descendants of colonialists who control vast ranches in Laikipia today know very well that their ancestors never bought that land from the Africans who lived on it. They simply grabbed the land by virtue of being the colonial masters; more than 50 years after independence, how can the descendants of those dispossessed be expected to sit back and accept that they have absolutely no right to that land?

Pastoralist communities – who since time immemorial had grazed their animals on what are now privately-owned ranches that were taken away without compensation – are now being labelled bandits when they seek water and pasture from such land. That can only be the case if we decide as a region to shamelessly internalise the values of our oppressors.

By any means, there should be a peaceful resolution of the current conflict. The pastoralists have a right to life, and to protect themselves from destitution through the death of their animals from prolonged drought. If anyone is to be labelled a bandit, it should be those who travelled thousands of kilometres to take away other people’s land by force of arms, and who are now crying foul.

Beyond the immediate conflict, issues of historical injustices must be addressed once and for all. If that is not done, we can all expect a greater fire next time – not just in Kenya but throughout the region.

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