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Saturday, July 26, 2025

A land of small things

by

Dr Fazal Ali
2233 days ago
20190615

Prince Claus Lau­re­ate Hol­lis Liv­er­pool was charged in 1968 by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Don­ald Pierre, for draw­ing emol­u­ments as a per­former of satir­i­cal bal­lads in a tent the­atre while in ser­vice of the Crown. Liv­er­pool en­tered the po­lit­i­cal kaiso are­na in 1966. Kaiso is a genre of mu­sic trace­able to West African so­ci­ety with a clev­er­ly con­cealed po­lit­i­cal sub­text. At the ma­te­r­i­al time, Liv­er­pool sang De­val­u­a­tion. He pon­tif­i­cat­ed on in­creas­ing pro­duc­tion to avoid a de­val­u­a­tion of the lo­cal cur­ren­cy. His oth­er song was Brain Drain. These bal­lads along with songs like Three Blind Mice were not re­ceived with amuse­ment by the es­tab­lish­ment.

The min­is­ter like all Lil­liputians lived in a land of small things and lit­tle peo­ple al­ways em­pha­sise the trite and de­light in dis­plays of au­thor­i­ty and per­for­mances of pow­er. Er­ic Wainaina con­tin­ues this tra­di­tion of so­cial com­men­tary in Kenyan mu­sic to­day. The cho­rus of one of his pop­u­lar songs is that ‘a land of small things is a land of small peo­ple’.

Liv­er­pool replied to the min­is­ter in 1969 by singing—Re­ply to the Min­istry. He high­light­ed sev­er­al in­stances of pub­lic ser­vants work­ing at more than one job with­out ques­tion. The im­mea­sur­able Dr Er­ic Williams in­ter­vened and the mat­ter was closed. In one of Wainaina’s songs, the lyrics un­masked con­cerns that mon­ey is jus­tice as the plain­tiff be­comes the de­fen­dant in a so­ci­ety in which wealth be­comes the ev­i­dence. In a land of small things, the po­lice have no ve­hi­cles to re­spond to a bur­glary and a dri­ving li­cence can be bought. The price of petrol is pro­hib­i­tive for the poor and med­i­cine is scarce in Kenyan hos­pi­tals; ad­mis­sion to a school re­quires a do­na­tion; los­ing your na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card is a tragedy, and if you want so­da—drink Fan­ta.

Kenyan whis­tle-blow­er Michela Wrong, in her book It’s Our Turn to Eat un­veils what makes cor­rup­tion dif­fi­cult to erad­i­cate, so sweep­ing in its scope and so de­struc­tive in its im­pact across Africa. Why is po­lit­i­cal life re­duced to the self-serv­ing cal­cu­la­tion of which tribe gets to ‘eat’? Kenya has a youth­ful pop­u­la­tion, a dy­nam­ic pri­vate sec­tor, im­proved in­fra­struc­ture, and a new Con­sti­tu­tion. Ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges of pover­ty, in­equal­i­ty, the skills gap be­tween mar­ket re­quire­ments and ed­u­ca­tion, the gap be­tween skills for com­pet­i­tive­ness and im­mi­gra­tion, low in­vest­ment and low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to achieve rapid, sus­tained growth rates to trans­form the lives of or­di­nary Kenyans all re­main elu­sive tar­gets.

In a search for post-BREX­IT trade part­ners, There­sa May vis­it­ed Kenya in 2018. She guar­an­teed that pub­lic mon­ey loot­ed by ex-lead­ers in sim­ple suit­cas­es and com­plex fi­nan­cial schemes found in UK banks will be made avail­able for de­vel­op­ment projects as part of an ini­tia­tive by Britain’s De­part­ment for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment as they fol­low the so-called dirty mon­ey. In neigh­bour­ing Ugan­da, Bo­bi Wine was jailed in a max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty prison for his songs. His mu­sic spears Ugan­dan pol­i­tics. Three-quar­ters of Ugan­da's pop­u­la­tion is un­der 35 and Wine is a ral­ly­ing fig­ure for a youth an­gry at poor job prospects and stag­nant pol­i­tics.

The rit­u­als of re­bel­lion com­posed by Liv­er­pool, Wine and Wainaina para­phrase Jonathan Swift’s treat­ment of the treach­ery of pol­i­tics in Gul­liv­er's Trav­els. The 1726 nov­el opens with de­scrip­tions of Lil­liput and Ble­fus­cu—two lands of small things in the South In­di­an Ocean sep­a­rat­ed by a chan­nel 730 m wide. The is­lands are pop­u­lat­ed by small peo­ple who are one-twelfth the height of or­di­nary hu­man be­ings with pro­por­tion­al­ly tiny build­ings, trees, and hors­es. Diminu­tive in stature, but with all the ar­ro­gance and sense of self-im­por­tance as­so­ci­at­ed with full-sized men.

These king­doms are ruled by self-styled em­per­ors who ap­point of­fi­cials us­ing rope danc­ing as­sess­ments. Va­can­cies in high of­fices are filled by the win­ners. But these con­tests are dan­ger­ous. The danc­ing ropes are 30 cen­time­tres high and are po­ten­tial­ly fa­tal. In Lil­liput, po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion splits be­tween those who wear high-heeled shoes and those who wear low-heeled shoes. But the em­per­or's son is hard to pin down since he wears one high and one low heel—so no one knows where he stands.

Gul­liv­er mar­vels that Lil­liputians pre­fer to choose fools for of­fice over wise men be­cause they want to avoid cor­rup­tion. Their log­ic is that it's less evil for of­fi­cials to make mis­takes in of­fice out of gross stu­pid­i­ty than for them to make mis­takes in of­fice be­cause of in­duce­ment. But the same mis­takes have to be made ei­ther way. Swift satiris­es ac­tu­al events of Whig pol­i­tics in Eng­land. His mod­el for Flim­nap was Robert Wal­pole—the first prime min­is­ter of Eng­land and the most skil­ful of all the rope dancers. Rel­dresal was mod­elled on ei­ther Vis­count Town­shend or Lord Carteret. For Wainaina, the pol­i­tics of Kenya and Lil­liput re­late.

Per­haps The God of Small Things may al­low the fog of the fu­ture and the hard­ness of his­to­ry to fit to­geth­er like pieces of an un­solv­able puz­zle. NGOs will re­main cor­po­rate mis­sion­ar­ies that mop up the anger and fold our fears in­to flow­ers that women may pin in their hair. But when in­de­pen­dent think­ing peo­ple like writ­ers, painters, po­ets, and mu­si­cians blind­ly yoke their art be­neath a flag it is time for the rest to wor­ry.


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