On Tuesday afternoon, the University’s African Studies Program, which became an academic program about two weeks ago, hosted Kenyan poet, author and journalist Mukoma Wa Ngugi. About 40 students, faculty and community members attended the presentation in Pacific 30.
Ngugi writes for the BBC’s “Focus on Africa Magazine” and has written two books. The doctorate student in Post-Colonial Theory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, opened his lecture titled “The Kenya Crisis and the Pitfalls of a Second-Hand Democracy” with a photograph. In it, the tiny toes of an African child protrude from the front end of a pair of worn, Western tennis shoes.
“What you’re looking at here,” said Ngugi, “is essentially Western democracy in Africa.”
He explained that the shoes in the picture are part of what is known in Africa as “mitumba.” Mitumba, which means “bale” in Swahili, is second-hand clothing that carries the connotation of being discarded by rich, white Westerners and subsequently recycled by Africa’s poor. Ngugi said while mitumba is helpful in some ways, the exchange also undermines African textile companies and creates more dependency on the West.
Ngugi said that Western democracy “provides cover for unequal trade relations,” treating African businesses and organizations as “second-hand institutions in that they’re expected to be subservient to Western interests.” Today’s unequal globalization is as abusive as slavery or colonialism once was, he said.
Ngugi referred to modern African democracies as caricatures in so far as their inadequacies allow “new forms of exploitation to build on old forms of exploitation.” He cited farm subsidies from the U.S. and the European Union that have indirectly caused market prices for agricultural goods to decline, forcing African farmers to lose money by selling their goods at lower prices.
Augmenting economic problems, said Ngugi, is the African elite who “hemorrhage money” by investing in Western businesses and banks, and in turn perpetuate the debt of their African counterparts. Part of the problem, he said, is that these African elitists also hold relatively unchallenged political power.
According to Ngugi, the opposition party in Kenya and other African nations is nothing but “a surrogate of the ruling party,” functioning primarily to turn poverty-stricken Kenyans against one another.
“What unites the ruling party and the opposition is a basic contempt for the people,” he said.
Ethnic and class violence erupted in Kenya in January following the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki over opposition leader Raila Odinga. The violence left more than 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, according to National Public Radio.
Graduate student Emily Henderson and her husband Brandon Guthrie were living in the capital city of Nairobi when the fighting broke out, and stayed locked in their apartment for two weeks until the violence ceased. Guthrie said they had a hard time “distinguishing the state violence from opportunistic score-settling” related to the ethnic and class issue.
“Mind you,” said Henderson, “it was really just an inconvenience for us. For others, prices went up so much that they couldn’t even buy food.”
She said that in spite of recent events, “Kenya is a wonderful country and we’re excited to go back.” Both Henderson and Guthrie will return in October to do more graduate research in the area.
Ngugi said that in the political war between elitists, both the state and the opposition can stomach a lot of people killed. But until ethnic and class inequalities are resolved, the conflicts will continue to incite violence.
“There is hope amid the chaos,” said Ngugi, referencing February’s power-sharing deal between the ruling party and the opposition that made Odinga prime minister and created new cabinet positions in Kibaki’s government. However, he said, there will be no permanent peace in Kenya until there is a redistribution of wealth.