Cecil Yongo

No it's not difficult. Our academic elders withstood the government when the cost of thinking was exile or the dungeons of Nyayo House. Have you even heard Kenyans call Mazrui, Ngugi or Atieno Odhiambo irrelevant? Yet that's what we're called every time we so much as think beyond the immediate. So we retreated. What changed was that the attack stopped being physical and became ideological. And the media became the mouthpiece of that attack. Kenyan PhDs were cheated that thinking is useless if it doesn't produce immediate solutions, and they didn't push back. We decided we won't fight the Trevor Ombijas and the flashy TV anchors who kept telling Kenyans that theory is worthless. We agreed with them, and so we were absorbed into the cult of donor worship. We sank in the cess pit because we were afraid of being called too theoretical and irrelevant. We accepted to be shamed for the work we are supposed to do. Kenyans are now praising an Iranian for writing about mathematics and philosophy, but guess who will attack you if you wrote such a book. The same Kenyans. The media will laugh at you and complain how your students are not fixing taps and sewers. That's where Kenya is.