By Simon Juma
Laikipia University
On December 12, 1963, at Uhuru Gardens, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta watched the Union Jack descend as our black, red, green, and white flag ascended. Thousands wept. We believed we were finally free. We sang "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu" and convinced ourselves the mzungu had gone home.
Sixty years later, walking through the streets of Nairobi, Turkana, Kisumu, or my hometown of Kitale in Trans Nzoia looking across Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and the DRC a painful truth emerges. The flag still flies, but the chain was never cut. Africans remain colonized; only the colonization has become smarter, cleaner, and invisible.
The Economic Chain
The first chain binds our economy. This is the heaviest chain. What do we truly own? In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which holds over 70 percent of the world's cobalt essential for phones and electric cars Congolese children dig with bare hands for $2 a day while American and Belgian companies fly the mineral abroad for processing. The phone you are using to read this article contains Congo inside it, yet Congo receives nothing from that phone.
Consider Kenya. We are the world's third-largest tea exporter. Our mothers in Kericho wake at 5 a.m. to pick tea. That tea travels to Mombasa, ships raw to London, gets packaged in beautiful small bags labeled "English Breakfast Tea," and returns to us in Naivas at five times the original price. We grow coffee in Murang'a, but the price is not determined in Murang'a it is decided in New York and London. We have gold in Migori, oil in Turkana, titanium in Kwale, maize in Trans Nzoia, but no factories to process them. We export jobs and import poverty. This is not independence. This is economic colonialism by another name.
The Political Chain
The second chain binds our politics. This is the chain that embarrasses us. Observe the behavior of African presidents. Immediately after being sworn in with Bible and sword, their first trip is not to Tanzania, Uganda, or Ethiopia. Their first trip is to Washington, London, Paris, or Beijing. Why? Because they understand that the real power to approve their presidency does not lie with voters in their villages it lies with those powerful nations.
These nations run Africa through what they call "development partners" the World Bank, IMF, USAID, and major foundations. They offer loans with conditions: privatize water, remove subsidies on unga, freeze teacher employment, impose foreign ideologies in our curriculum all in the name of aid. If a president refuses, suddenly a report emerges declaring him a dictator, corrupt, and sanctions follow. If he complies, he is praised as a reformer and granted more loans.
They preach democracy but are first to fund military coups when it suits their interests. They champion human rights while purchasing minerals from warlords. They give us $100 million in aid with cameras and press conferences, then quietly extract $1 billion in minerals under cover of night. The African Union meets in Addis Ababa, but the real decisions for Africa are made in Brussels, Washington, and Beijing.
The Psychological Chain
The third chain and the most dangerous binds our minds. The colonizer left our land but refused to leave our heads.
Visit any primary school in Trans Nzoia today. Ask a Class 6 child to name five European football clubs. He will recite Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona. Ask him to name five clubs in the Kenya Premier League, and he will fall silent. We know more about London than we know about Lodwar.
Across Africa, from Kenya to Nigeria to Ghana, I witness this daily. A student from Turkana is ashamed to speak Turkana. A girl from Kitale bleaches her skin to appear lighter. We call our own languages "vernacular" and punish children for speaking them, yet applaud when a child speaks English with an American accent. We call our food backward. We call our elders primitive. We equate development with becoming like the white man.
We even colonize ourselves. We have been taught to hate ourselves by tribe and by borders drawn in Berlin. A Kikuyu is told to fear a Luo; a Luo is told to fear a Kalenjin; a Nigerian is told to fear a Ghanaian while the real owner of the economy sits in a European boardroom laughing at us. While we fight over "one term, two terms" online, they are signing 30-year contracts for our lithium.
Why Africa Must Remain Poor
Why do powerful nations need Africa to remain poor? The economics are simple. If Africa processes its own resources, Europe's factories will close. How will France generate 70 percent of its electricity without uranium from Niger and Mali? How will America manufacture electric cars without Congo's cobalt? How will Britain survive without our raw materials? A poor Africa is profitable. A rich Africa is a threat.
They taught us that freedom means voting every five years. But what freedom exists when the leader you elect must still beg in Europe to pay teachers and doctors? What freedom exists when your budget requires IMF approval before parliamentary reading? What freedom exists when obtaining a good job requires a certificate written in a foreign language?
The Path to Real Freedom
Real independence will not come from lowering flags. It will come when we process our tea in Kericho, our coffee in Murang'a, our maize in Kitale, our oil in Turkana. It will come when we trade among ourselves as Africans first from Mombasa to Lagos to Accra to Johannesburg when a child is proud to speak Sabaot or Bukusu as much as English, and when we refuse to be pawns in conflicts between America, China, and Russia.
Until then, let us not deceive ourselves. We celebrated independence in 1963, but we have not yet become independent. The mzungu left State House, but he remains in our mines, our banks, and our minds. True Uhuru is still coming and it is our generation that must fight for it.
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