Groundings: Development, Pan-Africanism and Critical Theory

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• Introduction to these Reflections on Maina wa Kinyatti's Kenya: A Prison Notebook

  Every society and generations within it are inspired and influenced by similar, yet very distinctive characteristics. They relate within a particular context of struggle. In every generation, there are primary and secondary tasks to be accomplished. Frantz Fanon has consistently reminded us, that: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it” – words that we have held precious within the frameworks of our liberation struggles. They keep reminding us of the revolutionary tasks that history has accorded our generation.

• Editor's Introduction to the Kenya Edition, Nairobi: Vita Books 2021

  Written 25 years ago, Kenya: A Prison Notebook has inspired generations and proved a great resource and a hand book in political education in Kenya and beyond. It chronicles Maina Wa Kinyatti’s arrest and detention by the Moi regime, and powerfully captures Kenya’s history.

• Front Matter

  Contains cover, credits, and linkedtable of contents.

• What are the Alternatives to Jail?

  The book starts with an event that Maina can’t forget for a lifetime. The arrest of Maina and other political prisoners are learning manuals and memoirs of honour to the struggle. Not compromising his beliefs and political stand made Maina’s life hard and miserable for years, but that was a revolutionary decision.

• Reflections on Kenya - A Prison Notebook: Intergenerational Inheritance of Social Struggles in Kenya

  “June 9th 1982 After refusing to sign a written confession statement, I was given back my clothes, blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to the CID headquarters where I was physically abused, photographed, fingerprinted and charged with possession of a seditious publications entitled Moi’s Divisive Tactics Exposed, a document the Police had planted in one of my research files.” —Prof. Maina Wa Kinyatti

• Education for Self-Effacement - A Student's View

  Considering the ultimate limitations of instructing Kenya’s children in ‘civilised’ acts like eating a banana with a knife and fork at the expense of an education true to the nation’s history, Wangui Kimari wonders whether the current educational system simply upholds students’ self-effacement. When my sister was in primary school (the school where we all were had a supposedly pious nature that was the talk of town), like all of the students within this institution she had to take a mandatory ‘ethics’ class. The title of this class appeared to us ambivalent, big and intimidating, but from what we could garner, ‘ethics’ were simply tacit rules that we needed to embody in order to live (or pretend to live) in religious harmony with each other.

• The Unfinished Task of National Liberation

  Reflecting on the process of national liberation as a struggle against neo-colonialism, Kinuthia Ndung’u draws from Kinyatti’s example and looks at the role of revolutionary petty bourgeoisie intellectuals and students in the struggle against neo-colonial oppression. In today’s Kenya this is a reminder to intellectuals and students that it is their duty to give ideological guidance to the ongoing class debate (hustlers-dynasty) and other struggles everywhere they find themselves.

• 25 Years Later, Marxism Remains a Tool for Our Struggle

  Brian Mathenge notes the actions of successive regimes in Kenya in overseeing the suppression of staunch Marxists and progressives who seemed a threat to the establishment - including political assassinations and arrests of those who happened to have different perspectives or ideological orientation - primarily because the ruling class was (and still is) frightened by efforts to educate and develop the consciousness of the masses. But as he reminds us, young cadres from the Social Justice Centre’s are today adopting Marxism as a tool for struggle, and 25 years after the publication of Kenya: A Prison Notebook, a defiant generation with a fighting spirit is ready to advance the struggle for socialism as a generational mission.

• The Struggle for Social Justice is Not a Walk in the Park

  Drawing strength from Maina wa Kinyatti, Esther Waigumo Njoki shares her reflections on how we work and organise with others for a common cause. She emphasises the importance of defining the oppressors and the oppressed, of identifying our comrades and enemies, of educating cadres and cultivating their integrity, loyalty and commitment to the cause.

• Prisons Do Not Disappear Problems, They Disappear Human Beings

  Nicholas Mwangi explores how our generation has been forcefully torn apart from the true history of our land by hegemonies around knowledge and learning. He reminds us that though the neoliberal education system continues to depoliticise young people, we must dare to dream of a better society, educate ourselves politically, and organise towards a system that takes care of the majority and not a few in society, as Maina wa Kinyatti did.

Featured documents

• The Black Panther Party's War of Position, Neoliberal Passive Revolution, and the Origin of the Prison Industrial Complex in the U.S. and Canada
• Book review

  Amzat Boukari-Yabara's portrait of Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney (Walter Rodney: Un historien engagé, 1942-1980, Paris: Présence Africaine, 2018) is not a traditional biography, but rather a narrative of the context in which ...

• Introducing Groundings: Development, Pan-Africanism and Critical Theory: The Journal of the Walter Rodney Foundation
• Introduction to these Reflections on Maina wa Kinyatti's Kenya: A Prison Notebook

  Every society and generations within it are inspired and influenced by similar, yet very distinctive characteristics. They relate within a particular context of struggle. In every generation, there are primary and secondary tasks to be accomplished. Frantz Fanon has consistently reminded us, that: “...

• 25 Years Later, Marxism Remains a Tool for Our Struggle

  Brian Mathenge notes the actions of successive regimes in Kenya in overseeing the suppression of staunch Marxists and progressives who seemed a threat to the establishment - including political assassinations and arrests of those who happened to have different perspectives or ideological...

• I Shall Never Surrender

  Lewis Maghanga gives us a timely reminder of how jails and other state institutions have historically and continue to be used to repress and break the Kenyans struggling to change the order of things. He draws similarities between the colonial administration and neo-colonial government, reminding...

• Reflections on Kenya - A Prison Notebook: Intergenerational Inheritance of Social Struggles in Kenya

  “June 9th 1982 After refusing to sign a written confession statement, I was given back my clothes, blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to the CID headquarters where I was physically abused, photographed, fingerprinted and charged with possession of a seditious publications entitled Moi’s Divisive...

• The Struggle for Social Justice is Not a Walk in the Park

  Drawing strength from Maina wa Kinyatti, Esther Waigumo Njoki shares her reflections on how we work and organise with others for a common cause. She emphasises the importance of defining the oppressors and the oppressed, of identifying our comrades and enemies, of educating cadres and cultivating...

• Maina wa Kinyatti: The Patriot Who Stood at a Time Many Would Have Preferred to Lie Down

  In beautiful and captivating prose, Mzalendo Wanjira writes about Maina wa Kinyatti’s detention and ordeal in the hands of his captors - the pain, anger, frustration, resilience, commitment and loyalty to the cause. She recollects how her first encounter with Kenya: A Prison...

• Books by Maina wa Kinyatti

  Brief bibliography of books by Maina wa Kinyatti....