The link between history, inequality

This election cycle has brought to light the issues of class and economic access in our country. Nearly 60 years after independence and numerous elections we have still seen familiar faces contesting for political seats and the presidency.

Our political elite have been in power for the past 20 years since the election of Mwai Kibaki in 2002. During these past 20 years, many of these politicians have leveraged their positions of leadership and political power to amass huge sums of monetary wealth and assets.

But President-elect William Ruto's Hustler narrative of the majority working class doggedly eking out a living while a small cabal of rich Nairobian elites remain determined to hoard wealth and power is true only at face value. The roots of perceived inequality in our country require a far deeper reading of our history.

When the British occupied East Africa, there main objective was to own and control the land, which they sought to farm for profit as well as for raw materials to feed trade throughout their colonies and the economy of Britain.

The British introduced capitalism, and a skills-based economy into all their colonial possessions, and it is subsequently today's global economic model. To fully participate and reap the benefit of this economic system, you require skills, which are learned through education.

Certain communities in Kenya gained this education far earlier than others simply because they were occupied by British East Africa Company first and received missionary education earlier.

In pre-colonial times, Kenyan tribes were ruled either by elected assemblies of elders, as with the Kikuyu or by kings and diviners such as the Ker's of the Luo, the Laibons of the Maasai and the Orkoiyots of the Nandi and Kipsigis Kalenjin.

But to govern their new subjects effectively, they created the positions of local chiefs and paramount chiefs in every tribe across the land, regardless of existing structures of leadership.

These chiefs were paid a salary by the colonial government and given privileged access to land and capital if they pledged fealty to the Crown.

Evanston Wamagatta writes that many chiefs took advantage of their position to accumulate land (and subsequently, wealth) at the expense of their subjects, and these chiefs also granted British schooling and education for their children, rather than the menial trades taught at missions.

Because of this, most of Kenya's intelligentsia in the 50s and 60s, those who led our struggle for independence and the founders of today's dynasties and elite families were descended from these chiefs.

When Jomo Kenyatta founded the first independent government in 1964, he did little to undo the cronyism and nepotism which the British used to co-opt Kenyan colonial chiefs into British collaborators.