We don’t have a welfare state in Kenya. Or do we?
Look at it this way. Of our 35-plus million people, only around 2 million are in any form of ‘formal’ or ‘modern’ employment. Kenya as a country offers proper employment to fewer people than Wal-Mart does. It is these few people who form most of the tax base in the country; it is these people who have sustained paychecks and proper rights and benefits. The rest are ‘jua kali’ workers; living off the land; too young to work – or idlers expecting others to support them.
And so we do have a welfare state: one person in employment may be sustaining twenty others. Is this just a natural consequence of poverty? Is it caused by a skewed demographic profile in which more than half of Kenyans are underaged? Or is it a cultural thing – in Africa we believe in extended families and the spirit of sharing?
None of the above, I want to argue. This informal welfare state is not caused by factors beyond our control, nor is it a desirable thing that reflects the charitable instincts of the average Kenyan. It has simply become a way of thinking, and a way of life. And a very bad one, at that.
I once visited the business office of a former MP, now departed (known as “mheshimiwa” until his death, as all former parliamentarians in Kenya are). In his small reception area we found thirty or forty people, many of whom leaped up in excitement on catching sight of their target. They surrounded the famous man, shouting out pleas of supplication and trying to push CVs into his hand.
Annoyed, he pushed through the throng shouting “Ngoja, badaye!” After we had managed to seat ourselves in his office, he muttered an expletive and told me this was a daily occurrence. All the people were from his home area, all were looking for handouts or job opportunities. After an hour or so when our meeting was done, I watched him peer out of his door, gather a bundle of hundred-shilling notes from a drawer, and walk out. The assembled swarmed around him; he dished out handfuls of notes at random and clutched the CVs given to him. He then said a hasty goodbye to me and beat a retreat into his office.
And that is the lot of anyone who has any material advancement to his or her name. There will be a perpetual stream of relatives, idlers and leeches waiting to feed off you. Visit any large company and count the number of ‘visitors’ waiting in the reception. Or hanging around the gate, since many companies bar those without appointments from entering the premises. Spend time with any well-to-do Kenyan, and note how nervous he will be in taking calls on his mobile phone. Who are these visitors and callers? The would-be dependants, of course. The people who want you, because of some nebulous connection, to pay their school fees, their rents, their fares and their medical bills.
Call me a cynic, but I fail to see any positives in this state of affairs. For one thing, it promotes corruption. It is the reason that MPs and managers are incessantly clamouring for higher pay, and incessantly looking for ways of increasing what they earn, by fair means or foul. For another, it breeds ill-will, not gratitude. The relationship between giver and recipient, between donor and dependant, is only superficially positive. Deep down, resentments and feelings of injustice are harboured, which often turn ugly.
A friend told me how she had been paying the school fees for an employee’s daughter for many years. After the daughter completed high school, this charitable soul thought she was off the hook. Far from it. A request to cover university fees soon arrived. When my friend declined, she sparked outrage in the employee who seemed to think it was a lifetime commitment. The relationship ended in bitterness and acrimony.
But the most debilitating effect is on the mind of the dependant. Once you think someone else owes you a living, you are finished. You will never develop the mindset needed for personal success. Once you think it is OK to hound and harass other people to give you a helping hand, you are never really going to be able to help yourself.
Personal success is about personal endeavour. You need to be extremely determined and extremely focused on your goal if you’re ever going to make it. That focus will be utterly lost if you imagine that success comes from other people helping you. We all need a helping hand once in a while, sure; life is full of the unexpected. But to imagine that help from friends and relatives should be perpetual is to imagine your own prison.
A spirit of self-help and self-sufficiency is a vital ingredient in national success, and literally millions need to wake up to this reality in Kenya.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sunny
As usual your commentaries are on point.
Even some Kenyans who have been abroad for a while nowadays ‘lie low’ when they visit because most people will imagine they’re minting millions overseas.
If they don’t they risk bursting their budgets as they will be under constant pressure to ‘treat’ their many ‘friends’.
Have a good week.
W
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Your comments are not entirely true in my opinion. There are certainly individuals in every society that become dependant on others, but most are actually hard working. In the informal sector, they tend to excist with little to no financial aid from the governemt or financial institutions and are the majority of the working class.
Your friend should instade of paying for the childs fee’s facilitate it in the employees pay so that they can have a form of independence and badget for thr future, instade of taking on a long term goal such as education that requires a conclusion. That’s like a doctor doing half the job for free, then sending you to another expensive one to finish the job. That is why we have so many unfinished social programs driven by MPs who then expolit them poor masses and complain of having to give handouts while there actions create the problem of porverty.
We should work to bring each other up instade of having charity as a solution.
Intresting artical though and has created debate in my house.Great week to you…
brian
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Hi Sunny, As I read your article I was reminded of an incident where an acquaintance saw a mheshimiwa stopping at a red light next to him in traffic.The man (who drives his own car and is gainfully employed as far as I know) proceeded to ask for a kitu kidogo from the mheshimiwa. I was mortified because I did not expect such from a man of his standing. I think, we do live in a welfare state we just pretend that we don’t!
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Wamoronjia:
Being a successful Kenyan is a source of immense stress! Many have to ‘lie low’ or engage in deceits…
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Brian:
Excellent – the whole point is to stimulate debate, even if we don’t agree. I agree with you that we should not doubt that most people want to work hard if given a chance. Our state is clearly deficient – but my point was that our thinking is also wrong. We are breeding a whole generation that thinks nothing of taking handouts. Actually, it should be a source of shame and only done temporarily. I’m sure you have encountered many ‘career dependants’ who have killed their own initiative by seeing life in the wrong way…
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Prousette:
As you observed, the ‘beggar’ mindset is not confined to desperate people! It is a state of mind that is limiting our personal and national ambition.
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The mheshimiwa’s should stop handing out cash to all these beggars – especially those who have a car and a job! Then perhaps they would stop expecting hand-outs.
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Sunny, you are one of my favourit daring writers (dissidents?) in Kenya.
It is one thing to sit in New-York and write.
It is another thing to sit in Kenya and being head of an internationally supported organization. Whether it be news-service or NGOs or Human rights or powerful religious organizations….
You are some kind of an expert on corporate business. But!!!! Mind you, a country or even a family at the low end, does not work according to other laws than “economy” or to be fair and cite the Greek words “oiko nomia” which literally means “the laws of the house”.
No community which is divided against itself will, eventually, persist.
Now we are experiencing a divide in know-how and power. That is the last resort of the powerful to try to escape accountability.
The Germans said: “Wir haben es nicht gewusst!” (We did not know!) Let’s say like this: Manure from bulls will not safeguard your eternity!
When those in power either do not have know-how or deny it by politicizing everything in own interest, and when those with knowledge and stature are allowed to preach but have no menas to implement their GOOD advice, that is when the end is near.
I do realize that this message is controversial. But with 97% of Kenyans loosing faith in the leadership, we are in deeply troubled waters. Anarchy is not the solution!
True leadershiip is where Responsibility, Accountability, Support, Consultation and Information walk hand in hand.
The opposite is wild west politicians shooting at random in order to secure own profit gained by crime which (they believe) will never be punished..
A, well, on Earth, that is. But eternity is inevitable for everyone.
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This has been caused by the unfair distribution of wealth.
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Felix:
Agreed, poverty and inequality are the drivers. But a culture that ‘accepts’ dependency is just as much to blame – it amplifies and propagates the problem. We won’t work our way out of this until we accept that we make our own destiny.
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