Even though the gap between the rich and the poor in Kenya can be read from a postcolonial angle of hybridity, poverty in Kenya can also be viewed within the wider matrix of the poor nation itself. The state of official poverty in Kenya can best be described using Webner and Rangers (1996:31) words,
...exports have declined in relative and absolute terms. Food production has declined. Imports of food and other necessities have risen greatly. Import- substitution industries have not lived up to expectations. Industrialization has, with some exceptions, failed to materialize. Borrowing and debt have soured. Currencies have weakened or collapsed. State revenues have plummeted. State controlled economic activities have foundered. State funded services have declined or disintegrated. Official economies have shrunk and parallel economies have grown.
Given this picture of poverty in Kenya and the potential representation of inequality in a mature class society, then it can be expected that pockets of resistance and violence must result from time to time and especially from the ‘submerged’ (Horsley, 1998:155) classes.
The reality of poverty in Kenya can also be seen through the eyes of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)36 report. As stipulated on the front page of its website, the UNDP is the United Nation’s (UN) global development network. It is the organization that advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. Moreover, UNDP is on the ground in 166 countries, of which Kenya is one of them, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. UNDP produced the first Human Development Report for Kenya in 1999 with an aim of assessing human
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development. Subsequent reports have followed annually and in many of them, human development in Kenya linked to issues of unequal distribution of resources has been a key concern. The UNDP Kenya National Human Development Report 2006 with its theme, ‘Human Security and Human Development: A Deliberate Choice’ particularly dwells on how a secure environment enhances human development, and also deals with issues of the gap between the rich and the poor in Kenya.
One of the key observations that the report makes is that poverty in Kenya is systemic, partly due to deliberate marginalization of some areas. The sentiments of the report can further be buttressed by Munene’s (2012:82) argument. Munene argues that creation of poverty is as a controlling mechanism. Poverty as a controlling mechanism becomes a tool to be employed by those in power against those who would challenge the status quo. Although the UNDP 2013 Human Development Report testifies to a profound shift in global dynamics driven by fast-rising powers of the developing world, human poverty appears to have deepened. This can be attributed to the growing structural inequalities in the HPI components (access to health, water, doctors, and nutritional status of children) (UNDP 2013:17).
Analysis from HPI distribution per county for example show that those without representation in the ruling class are the most affected by poverty levels, while those from where the majority of the ruling class hail attain relatively rich indexes. The rich index attained by the poor near the centers of power can be explained as benefit by default i.e. the benefits are not intended
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for the poor in the first place, but as the rich bring services closer to their localities, the poor who are close to them and mostly from their communities end up benefiting in a way. Therefore, counties like Kiambu and Muranga have a lower HPI as compared to Vihiga and Marsabit which have a relatively high index. The same case applies to counties within the central areas as opposed to those in the northern areas and coastal areas. The point is, even collective wealth in Kenya is unequally distributed and its distribution follows after the patterns of poor and rich classifications whereby the rich are typified by the elites who are colonial hybridists and mimics while the poor are lower middle class and the general masses.
Poverty and its creation in Kenya is a contrived process that has long historical roots (Murungi, 2000:87). As a contrived process, it is deliberate and manipulated by some people in power for the purposes of favouring or victimizing persons or particular groups of people. Those who believe they are victimized become resentful believing that their perceived poverty is due to those in authority (Ibid). They in the long run encourage a disregard of the authority of those in power. Some of them nurture feelings of betrayal which in long run become justifications for full blown impunity.
Economic inequalities in the Kenyan society can be attributed to a schemed or deliberate imbalance (Munene, 2012:87). As Thiong’o (2006:216- 217)37 has also argued, when the colonialist left Kenya, they only took away their physical presence but left behind their ideologies. A breed of neo- colonialists who were willing to foster the interests of the colonialist and their
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own interests connived to create poverty by amassing wealth for themselves (see also Munene, 2012:86, Murunga, 2007:43). Githiga (2001:89) further also observes,
since independence, there had been known cases where people in authority had accumulated property without thinking of the plight of the poor and the marginalised… this grabbing of economic opportunities by a few Kenyans created a wide gap between the rich and the poor.
What can be argued is that this phenomenon is a direct import from the colonial experience through interaction with the colonialists (Munene, 2012:85).
According to Horsley (1998:155), the agenda of postcolonial discourse is to give voice in the central cites to subjects from previously colonized areas. A postcolonial reading of impunity and poverty in Kenya must aim to emancipate previously submerged histories and identities in the process to reveal complex hybridity and contingencies in contemporary world. Postcolonial discourse must reveal that conventional poverty and marginalization in Kenya contributes to the prevailing culture of impunity. Seen in this way, two strands of impunity begin to emerge; impunity as exercised by the ruling class and impunity as enjoined by the subaltern in their struggles.
Impunity of the empire becomes the tool by the ruling class to maintain their status quo, while impunity by the subaltern becomes a tool of resistance. Impunity becomes an attempt by the subaltern to redefine authority hence redefining self. Impunity of the subaltern becomes aware that resisting laws that be, is rejecting hegemonic or normative worlding that ensures the
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subaltern will never get to the centre of economic freedom. Under postcolonial thinking, perhaps rejecting the laws of the dominant is no longer impunity. It is an emancipatory quest for life that can provide a basis for political challenges to regnant or prevailing forms of domination.