The attempt to hike fees for government sponsored university students starting this September is a step in the wrong direction and may in the long term create political instability in Kenya. Those who care about the peace and prosperity of Kenya must ponder the words of a great poet; what happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up? Does it stink like rotten meat? Does it sag like a heavy load? Or does it explode? What happens when hundreds of thousands of young Kenyans are locked out of universities? Do they borrow some ten thousand shillings from Uwezo fund to set up milk kiosks? Do they join village polytechnics to learn 17th century crafts? Do they join criminal gangs like Mungiki and Baghdad boys or do they just disappear into the bush and transform into ‘musevenis’ and ‘kabilas’? Those who do not heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. It is curious that all those proposing an increase in the fees were beneficiaries of free university education during the days fondly remembered for the ‘boom’; when students were able to remit money back to their villages. Is this a case of burning the bridge after crossing the stream. Most of the technocrats can afford to take their children to universities abroad. Could this be a case of bombing the bridge because you can drop into your compound using a chopper? Whichever way one looks at it , the move will further entrench inequality. Since the days of Goldenberg and the scrapping of boom, university life remains one long struggle for an ordinary Kenyan student. Students cook using jua kali electric coils risking all manner of electric fires. Many go hungry. Many miss classes. Many are malnourished Many drop out of university from sheer frustration. To invent a program that further oppresses these starving youngsters is to crack the whip that will inevitably break the camels back. Top universities in the USA like Havard and M.I.T have elaborate financial support programs that guarantee college education to all students who make the entry mark regardless of their background and financial capability of their parents. At such a time Kenyan universities should be boasting special funds for needy students running into billions of shillings. Education is a social service and not a business. A university should be the ideal wormhole that gives society a shortcut through the space-time of civilization. What is the use of performance contracts if they fail to embrace progress? If university education worldwide had been commercialized from the beginning of time, great inventions that have revolutionized the journey of humanity would have never left the pages of science fiction books. Those science fiction books would never have been written to start with. Today Kenya is a haven of rotting genius brains.Our Albert Einsteins, Isaac Newtons, Stephen Hawkins, Charles Darwins, archimedes, Galileo Galilei, Leonardo Davincis,Marie Curies, Nikola Teslas, Aristotles and Socrates are all rotting in various villages and slums around the country because they have been denied education by our capitalist society where every aspect of our lives is going up for sale on the stock exchange of greed and corruption. Are we placing money ahead of humanity and life altogether? I therefore fully support the plans by university students to hold nationwide strikes and protests 100% . To do otherwise would be to enter into league with the devil. Let thousands upon thousands of youthful voices from every corner and clime join in this noble and timeless anthem - GIVE ME EDUCATION OR GIVE ME DEATH
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 07:04:26 +0000
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