It is not yet uhuru for some people in Africa

The handover of power from the Brits to local leadership at independence was like the abolition of slavery. It wasn’t a freedom contract. It was a re-framing of the system to appear politically correct while still exploiting the people for their labour. Structurally, Black people were still enslaved.

The institutional framework of Blacks as workers and Whites as owners remained. As the years went by, pillars of discrimination were built on the foundation of enslavement, to the point that even in America, the country has become a White House of oppression for Black people, and other people of colour. They can work in the house but they don’t have a stake in it, or a right to anything in it.

In most of Africa, the colonialists picked out a suitably pliable candidates and handed them the keys to State House. They acquired the right to everything in it, and anything else that accrued thereof. With power, came land, resources and the authority to co-opt instruments of the State for personal gain.

In return, we got our so-called Independence. But it came with the implicit understanding that our new leadership would maintain the foundation of enslavement, and build upon it with homegrown oppression and aggression.

Since then, some citizens have been squatting in their own countries, owning nothing, and not having the right to make any decisions that affect their destiny. A good example of the powerlessness of modern African populations is Kenya’s 2017 presidential elections. That was rubber-stamp politics at its best, but we accepted and moved on. And now with the latest shenanigans in elite circles, we can see evidence of the revisiting that was promised after the historic August petition.

A promise that was a visceral reaction to democracy. Because democracy is not part of the social contract. This country is not built on democracy. The Kenyan Protectorate was built on racism, discrimination and oppression. And the Independence project on classism, Black supremacy and unbridled greed.

We – the people – are not free. We don’t live in Kenya; we exist here. Our value is in our utility as workers, not in our agency as citizens. Our job is to uphold the pillars of discrimination that support this land of the suppressed, pillars that are deeply rooted in the foundations of colonisation and racism.

Apart from the failed attempt at a second liberation, by and large, we have become used to living as sharecroppers, beholden to a capitalist elite who only know how to extract. Yes, we understand what democracy means, and for fleeting moments, we have tasted the sweet elixir of real freedom, active economic development and shared prosperity.

Which is why it’s clear for anyone who has eyes and ears that our current state of affairs is not what we signed up for. This latest round of political manoeuvering, including the most recent Executive Order issued by the president, is an unsettling roll back of our rights and freedoms. The order rearranges key State offices and institutions with little regard for the provisions of the 2010 Constitution that exists to curb the type of power that President Uhuru Kenyatta is now exercising.

We might not be able to do much about it now, but the one thing we can do is take note. We can be alert and watchful as the players take their positions on the field, and as the cabal of coaches creates the plays. We can ‘stay woke’. Keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground. The beauty about our kind of politics, and the nature of our State capture, is that for ‘legitimacy’, a good part of the planning must happen in the open.

Many questionable deals have been made in the harsh light of day. The unfortunate truth is that we live in a land of pink elephants. This includes such tuskers as tax free bank mergers, the occupation of public conservation boards by private logging interests, and the erasure of the ‘great unwashed’ to make room for the landed gentry and their economic ambition.

These elephants got their tusks as we watched. The architects of our endemic inequality grew horns as we watched. It is in that watchfulness that we can reclaim our agency as citizens: We know how the cookie crumbles, and we know the people who always get to have their cookie and eat it too. A time will come when this knowledge will become power. It is lucky for them that all we want is equal opportunity, not revenge.

Ms Masiga is Peace and Security editor, The Conversation