This archive report was first published on 27 December 2019.
As I reflect on the recent renaming of Boxing Day to Utamaduni Day, I am reminded of the disconnect between our leaders' words and actions. While they claim to be promoting African culture, their actions suggest a shallow understanding of what it truly means to be Kenyan.
On December 26, I plan to wear my precolonial African underwear and hold a spear, just like the hunters and gatherers of Murang'a. This is not just a gesture of cultural pride, but also a statement against the intellectual atrophy that seems to have afflicted our leaders.
Their fixation on renaming national days is a distraction from the real issues facing our country, such as flooding, rising youth unemployment, and corruption. By prioritizing cultural celebrations over concrete solutions, they are failing to address the pressing needs of Kenyans.
When they speak of culture, our policymakers seem to be thinking of a static, remote past that has been destroyed by modernity. They mobilize the term to discourage democracy, revolution, and popular education. But culture is dynamic, and it is the sum-total of the ways we struggle daily to overcome unemployment and exploitation by a repressive regime.
Modern Kenya needs new songs about betrayal by our so-called leaders, who practice not the 'utamaduni' they preach but 'tamaa duni' (laughable greed). The youth value the urban Genge Tone, not traditional mugoiyo (Kikuyu), kilumi (Kamba), or entabanana (Kisii). To them, Boondocks Gang's lyrics are the true expression of Kenyan culture.
Change cannot happen without theory. What might be needed at the moment is to expose the artist to the radical philosophy of Amilcar Cabral, Malcolm X, Thomas Sankara, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Micere Mugo, Steve Biko, and others, so they can produce politically conscious music in the same league as the poetry of Ukoo Flani Mau Mau.
With some little dose of theory, the youths will fully embrace change from below and stop using dynastic stage names. The major problem is that once the establishment feels threatened by the youth, it will either selectively bribe them to drive its agenda or provide them with drugs and alcohol to destroy them from above.
Utamaduni is a mirage. Discussing the Ghanaian kente clothing in his beautiful book Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah has demonstrated how foreign some of the items and concepts we consider traditional can be. In the era of globalisation and intercultural exchanges, very little in Kenya today is authentic.
As I look back on my own experiences, I realize that even the 'African' shirts I was given by my students were made in Malaysia, probably using Vietnamese fabric. The irony is not lost on me, and I am reminded that our so-called leaders are more concerned with appearances than substance.
