“Until the lion tells his own stories, the hunter will always be the hero”
“Until the lion tells his own stories, the hunter will always be the hero. “1
by Ayda Fento
This year 2024 is proving to be a year of great resistance and social mobilization in Kenya. The new year began with January and February marked by massive protests against femicides throughout the country. Faced with a terrifying increase in the murders of women, thousands of women took to the streets to denounce the systematic violence to which we are subjected and demand reforms to ensure greater protection, leading the most massive protests against gender oppression in the history of Kenya. April was marked by protests against the evictions and demolitions perpetrated by the state during the floods that swept away a large part of the popular settlements on the outskirts of Nairobi. More than 200 people lost their lives, further highlighting the conditions of misery and dispossession to which the state is subjecting society. With all this, the spirit of resistance and social discontent was rekindled and an imminent tax hike by the government served as a spark for the popular uprising led by the youth and women that has been shaking the foundations of the status-quo since June 18. But these protests are just the tip of the iceberg of a much deeper process taking place in this region that has great potential for transformation.
Kenya’s independence: the hope of a free life that does not come.
Kenya is home to more than 70 different ethnic groups that have been fragmented by the borders imposed by European colonization and the consequent dismemberment of Africa into nation states. Between the 1950s and 1970s, national liberation struggles were fought throughout Africa to put an end to European colonization and its brutal enslavement. The independence of the different territories was the result of heroic social resistance. The strategy of national liberation was linked to socialist concepts of people’s self-determination that was foremost connected with it the dream that a nation state of its own would put an end to slavery and bring the longed-for free life. Kenyan independence, for example, was achieved in 1963 as a result of a long liberation struggle in which the Mau Mau Rebellion was especially key. Kenya’s newly independent nation state was seen by society as its own achievement and as the path to free life. In the 40 years since independence, society has witnessed the continuation of plunder: the absence of democracy, the expropriation of their ancestral lands, the non-recognition of the vast majority of ethnic groups, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the state and the some tribes that have become part of it, the condemnation of society to extreme poverty, the perpetuation of the subjugation of women as the basis on which the system is sustained, European and international neocolonism with the majority of the land in the hands of international investors, etc. The continuation of exploitation has generated throughout these 40 years several waves of social mobilization to achieve reforms that could lead to a more egalitarian society. But domination continues and although many people still place their hopes in the state, every day that passes the contradiction between society and the state becomes more evident and more people become aware of it. The protests of the last months are influenced by this awakening.
The cradle of the natural society.
The fiery red earth, the rivers and lakes, the forests, the volcanoes and mountains and also the plains of the geographic region that is now called Kenya are part of the cradle from which humanity took its first steps about 2 million years ago, bringing to life the first human societies2. Since then, as Reber Apo points out, humanity has lived in freedom as an ethical and political society and conforming itself as matrifocal clans for 98% of its existence. It was only 5,000 years ago that the first traces of the global system of domination in which we live nowadays were observed in Mesopotamia. Taking the economy out of the hands of women, controlling their sexuality and creating a dominant male mentality through mytology, religion, philosophy and science were necessary for the imposition of a system based on the plundering of society and whose main institution is the state. But in spite of everything, the legacy of communal and egalitarian natural societies has endured to this day. Their spirit and values cannot be annihilated because they are the basis of human nature.
One such place where the resilience of natural societies is very much alive is Kenya and the East African region. Social organization in the form of tribes and clans is still very much alive and influential. Within these structures, values inherent to the society such as communality, attachment to the land, ethics as the soul of the society, creativity, etc. have been protected. Ancestral forms of self-government and justice have so far resisted the tentacles of the bureaucratic and legislative apparatus of the state. Around 70%3 of the population still lives in rural areas. Agriculture and cattle are still important economic activities, despite the fact that as a result of the new colonization methods implemented by neoliberalism ¾ of Kenya’s land is today in the hands of foreign multinationals. This territory is home to a multitude of different cultures that are still alive not only on a ritual level but also on a material level. This cultural richness and vitality is plausible on many levels: in the architecture, with multiple ancestral forms of construction; in the ways of obtaining or cooking food; in the methods of cultivating the land; in the systems of obtaining water; in traditional medicine; in textiles and clothing; in music and so on and so forth.
At the same time, and in spite of the resistance throughout history, the patriarchal and capitalist mentality has nested in the communities and has left its mark on their beliefs, aspirations, traditions and forms of organization, posing an obstacle especially for women’s freedom. The struggle against the dominant male mentality that has permeated our communities is essential for the freedom of any people and self-defense against the capitalist modernism that wants to dissolve the ancestral peoples in its tentacles is of vital importance.
The legacy of women’s resistance.
“Shoot me so that you will be happy. But know that the will for justice breaks even the strongest bow. “4 It was with this determination that one of the mothers of political prisoners addressed the police during a hunger strike in 1992 to demand the release of their sons and the other prisoners who had been imprisoned for rebelling against the dictatorial regime of then Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi. On the fifth day of the hunger strike, camped in a Nairobi square, the mothers faced heavy police violence, were injured and some of them were arrested. In the midst of the police attacks, some of them bared their chests as an act of resistance. The nudity of mothers is an act of rebellion in African tradition, symbolizes a curse against the adversary and is also a tactic to shame him. As Wangari Maathai states in the documentary “Taking Root: the vision of Wangari Maathai”, “In African tradition, any woman of your mother’s age is like your mother and you must treat her with the same respect. A man who beats a woman is like a son who rapes his mother.” The protest of these mothers culminated in the progressive release of many political prisoners, won legislative changes and was a key impetus for the achievement of a new Constitution in 2010.
In the nudity of mothers as an act of resistance and public shaming of the aggressor, we can see the important social role of mothers in the African tradition and the strong ethical basis of the society. The figure of women-mothers, not as a biological role but as a social role as creators and defenders of the community has been and is essential for the existence and resistance of societies in the face of different attacks and their survival both culturally and physically. In the history of Kenya there are hundreds of examples of women who like the mothers of Nairobi have fought with great courage for the defense and freedom of their communities. From Moraa Ng’ti5 who foresaw the arrival of the colonizers to the Abagusii lands back in 1900 and fought against the occupation; the leadership of the Kikuyu women in the Thuku revolt or in the so-called “women’s revolt” of Fort Hall 6 against British colonization; the women who fought for independence in the ranks of the Mau Mau guerrilla7 fulfilling different tasks from military to medical or logistical; the Green Belt movement led by women and with the leadership of Wagari Maathai8 that has fought for decades for women’s rights and the protection of nature, or all the mothers who have cared and still care for their communities and the survival of their language and culture in the midst of a colonizing system that even today wants to homogenize, plunder and wipe out the peoples.
Kenyan women have organized themselves in different types of social groups, institutions and organizations throughout history with the aim of participating in the political life of their communities and defending their freedom as women. With the advance of colonization many of these groups were redirected and assimilated by Catholic missionary institutions or by colonial governments with the aim of “civilizing” African women, i.e. inculcating them with European and Catholic colonial ideology in order to subjugate them and thus dominate the communities9.This stage was a hard blow to women’s freedom and their social leadership. However, as we have seen, resistance has continued to this day.
Today, women’s struggle is experiencing a new dawn in this region. The importance and the need for self-organization as women is becoming more and more evident. The participation, especially of young women, in political life and in decision-making spaces both in urban movements and in communities (for example, with the recreation of women’s councils) is on the rise. In the urban sphere, the struggle for the xwebûn, of each woman’s own form and color, is particularly strong. In rural areas, the struggle for hebûn, the collective existence as women, has the greatest weight. Without hebûn there is no xwebûn, and without xwebûn there is no freedom. Therefore, the synthesis between the struggle of urban and rural women seems to be a key to liberation.
The mass protests against femicides earlier this year and the participation of thousands of young women and mothers in the uprising of the last few weeks, initially against the tax hike and now with the aim of overthrowing the government of the current president Ruto, are the result of this historical legacy and the rekindling of the fire of women’s resistance. The words of the socialist leader Thomas Sankara “There is no real social revolution without the liberation of women” are echoing ever louder.
Unearthing the history of women and peoples: the best weapon for liberation.
Youth throughout history has been the engine of struggles and the spark of revolutions. Today however, we live in a historical moment when the capitalist system is attacking the youth with the most sophisticated means of special warfare ever seen, generating great confusion and demobilization among the youth. Kenya and East Africa however, has a very young population, with 80% of the population under the age of 35 and more than a third between the ages of 15 and 34 years10. The young people in this region and very active in social struggle and political leadership at both urban and rural areas. The youth protests of the last few weeks are proof of this. This characteristic together with the rest of the particularities that have been exposed throughout this text mean that the road to a social revolution in this territory is open. To advance along this path and as suggested by Wangari Maathai in her phrase “When you know who you are, you are free” it is essential to recover the history of women and peoples. That history that has not been written and that keeps the secrets of our identity, our cultures, the true role of women in our communities throughout history and beyond the roles imposed by patriarchy, our forms of organization for a democratic and free life, the ancestral knowledge of women and communities and also keeps the memories of the resistance to defend all this. As many of the indigenous communities defend and as Reber Apo proposes with the paradigm of Democratic Modernity: It is not necessary to invent anything new but to unveil the truth of democratic, ecological societies in which women have played a creative role throughout history. It is necessary to know who we are and where we come from in order to know what we want to recover and how to protect ourselves from the attacks of patriarchy and capitalist modernity. In the light of our true history we will be able to carry out a revolution of the mentality that will open the doors to an autonomous and free life again. As an African proverb says “Until the lion tells his own stories, the hunter will always be the hero”.
Figure Mothers of political prisoners on hunger strike. Nairobi, 1992.
1African proverb
2https://paleontology.fandom.com/wiki/Homo_habilis
3https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eastern-africa-population/#google_vignette
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/kenya-population/#google_vignette
5https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9SLVf5Pc_I
6https://www.africanfeministforum.com/kikuyu-women-in-the-thuku-revolt/
7https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files/s.m._shamsul_alam_rethinking_the_mau_mau_in_colobook4me.org_.pdf
8https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai
9http://www.nawey.net/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/05/History-of-Feminism-in-Kenya.pdf