Freedom is not free, or so some wit said. I could have heard that witticism on a gangsta rap track, but I am not sure. In any case, freedom, surely, is not free going by the rant that Binyavanga Wainaina embarked on on Twitter last night. Mr Wainaina is a colourful figure and an influential writer and thinker and last night he trained his sights on the hypocrisies of the Third Sector, sparing no one from his barbs. He did not seem to have bouquets for anyone.
It is really an insidious arrangement. Leading members of the European Union have identified key political outcomes they would like to see occur in Kenya. They sponsor civil society organisation and activists to pursue those political outcome. The marketing for that activism persuades many Kenyans, and Europeans, that there is "grassroots" support for the political activism, and that every time the Established political order resists the activism it is a sign that political intolerance runs high in Kenya. Therefore, we must fight corruption, we must promote free and fair elections, we must accept open markets, and we must allow expatriate Europeans to work unrestricted in Kenya because we are "part of the global economy."
Anyone who resists these ideas is an enemy of freedom. Anyone who promotes the idea that we should support our government when it subsidises water or gas or public transport will be branded a socialist and an anti-market anarchist. If we squeal loudly about the jobs Kenyans are losing to expatriate wazungu we will be excoriated as racist or xenophobic. The only legitimate message, it seems, is the propaganda that is promoted by those civil society stalwarts of "freedom" funded and "supported" by the European Union and its like-minded friends.
The Europeans surely appreciate this other witticism: he who pays the piper calls the tune. Take the "free" market, for example. Key elements include limited regulation, "private" investment and profits repatriation. None of these things are bad, per se, but they must be reviewed in the context of the market in which they are applied. We learnt this lesson the hard way from the implementation of the Bretton-Woods Institions' implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes and the enforcement of the Washington Consensus. The misery visited upon least developing countries by these "pro-market" programmes continue to be experienced in the twenty-first century.
Kenya has liberalised its economy to very great extent. It is how key economic sectors are dominated by foreign-owned and foreign-controlled companies. In the hospitality sector, more and more "tourist" hotels are in the hands of foreign investors. In banking and finance, the leading banks in terms of market share and credit-creation (loan-books) are foreign owned or controlled. In news and broadcasting, a major player in the industry is a foreign religious foundation. Our market is, for good or ill, open to investment and competition. Kenyans, on the other hand, face hurdles after hurdles should they want to emigrate to or invest in parts of the European Union, and the only jobs they are "permitted" to aspire to seem to be in the lower end of the "service" industry. Kenyans, and Africans, generally, are a marauding horde to be kept out of the fortress that is the European Union or they will overrun it and run it down.
Those promoting political freedom in Kenya seem unwilling to question the bestial attitudes of the members of the European Union towards Africans fleeing wars that members of the European Union have promoted through their sales of arms and their refusal for global intervention. Anders Fogh Rasmussen was blase about how, when he was its Secretary-General, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation toppled Muamar Gaddafi from power, stood by as militia took over the country and washed its hands off the mushrooming Islamic State problem today. We have our problems, that we cannot elide. But let us not chide ourselves that the European Union is an example to emulate.
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