With every passing year, I feel like our passion for Madaraka Day keeps fading. For most of us, it’s a perfect opportunity to pop bottles or have some moments of Netflix and chilling; our children born from the year 2000 have absolutely no emotional attachment to the holiday; it’s just something they study in the boring History lessons; but 57 Years ago, Madaraka Day changed the lives of our ancestors and it is their resilience that gave us the opportunity to live our lives like this- with freedom and wildness.
We have achieved so much as a country. Developed infrastructure, fancy buildings, businesses, education among other things; but do we really have independence? Can we really, honestly and openly declare ourselves free? Jomo Kenyatta’s vision was to see our country become independent from the governance of the British colonialists but we fail him, every day.
In one of his speeches, he said, “When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
Now they don’t come with Bibles anymore. They come with gifts- free masks, several job opportunities in their restaurants for our black brothers and they are always eager to help in road constructions and Standard Gauge Railways. When they offer us their creativity, we clap and chant and Say ‘Thank You China!’ because we have sunk so deep in these extensive loans that the only way for survival is to appease them and agree with all their demands.
When they openly call our president a monkey we just deport them without a charge, when they beat up our black brother in the name of punishment for coming to work late, we were quick to accuse the Kenyan for being weak, desperate and having no dignity to stand up for himself. When we saw them mistreating our Kenyans in their country and accusing them of spreading Covid-19, our government looked the other way for weeks because we have their money plus we needed free sanitizers and masks.
The Chinese keep flooding in our country. The power we have allowed them to have is slowly draining our independence away. If we are not careful, our buildings will be renamed ‘Ching Chong Wo’, their red flag will become our flag, we will speak their language, we will become voiceless, we will be ruled and we will fail Jomo Kenyatta, the man who fought so hard to get to us to this promised land.
The 57th Madaraka Day should give us the motivation to fix our country. We do not need more loans and more gifts. What we need are competent leaders who are true and dedicated to this vision. No more Harambee China.
