This script is becoming all too familiar..and boring. Tell me why every few years, when unemployment rises and citizens begin asking difficult questions, politicians suddenly discover someone weaker to blame.
This week that target seems to be Burundians. The argument now appears to be that foreigners are taking jobs and accepting lower wages. It is an argument that is emotionally satisfying because it offers a simple villain for a complex problem. And mostly, it flares emotions – and we all know reasoning becomes blurry where emotions are involved.
It is also a dangerous distraction. The real question Kenyans should be asking is not why a Burundian labourer is willing to work on a construction site but rather why, decades after independence, politicians still cannot create enough decent jobs for their own citizens.
For crying out loud, a man (or woman for that matter) who crosses a border looking for work is not the architect of Kenya’s unemployment crisis. How is someone fleeing economic hardship in Burundi responsible for youth joblessness in Nairobi?
I’ll tell you who is responsible. The leaders who have overseen years of corruption, mismanagement, wasteful spending and broken economic promises. That is the real culprit.
Because rather than explain why millions of young people remain unemployed, some politicians have chosen an easier path. They point at the foreign worker carrying cement / mixing concrete or cleaning a building and declare him the problem. Cowardly politics, that’s what I call them.
We should be very careful about where this road leads.
Across the continent, we have seen what happens when politicians begin blaming foreigners for failures of governance. The language starts with jobs, then it moves to crime and housing. Then healthcare. Before long, ordinary people begin seeing their struggling neighbours as enemies rather than fellow human beings trying to survive.
South Africa’s periodic outbreaks of xenophobic violence did not emerge from nowhere. They grew from years of rhetoric that suggested foreigners were somehow responsible for problems created by political and economic failures. Kenya must never walk that path.
We are a nation built on movement. It would actually be very ironic for Kenyans to start talking that talk, while our people are scattered all over the globe looking for so called greener pastures. Kenyans live and work in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Botswana, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and virtually every corner of the world (let’s not even start on the middle East). We celebrate when our own find opportunities abroad while proudly calling them members of the diaspora.
What moral authority do we have to condemn others for seeking the same opportunities here?
If there are employers violating labour laws, punish the employers. Let immigration department do its job, ffs. It’s there job to ensure that all workers are operating with proper permits. Aren’t they, after all, being paid to do exactly that?
Leadership is making sure wages aren’t being suppressed, and creating jobs when youth unemployment seems to be rising. But do not tell struggling citizens that the reason they cannot find work is because a Burundian labourer accepted a day’s wage on a construction site. That explanation is not only intellectually lazy; it is an insult to the intelligence of Kenyans.
The politics of blame is always easier than the politics of solutions. You see, a politician can create outrage in a single speech, but creating jobs requires years of competence and accountability. Clearly, it is easier to point a finger at a foreign worker than to look in the mirror.
Therefor, to the politicians attempting to import the politics of xenophobia into Kenya, a gentle warning that we are not South Africa. We are not about to take up sticks, march through our streets chanting against foreigners, or stand at hospital doors interrogating pregnant women and sick patients about where they were born. That is not who we are. Kenya has its flaws, but we have long been a crossroads of East Africa, a place where traders, workers, students, refugees and dreamers have crossed paths for generations. If politicians think frustrated Kenyans can be manipulated into turning on vulnerable foreigners instead of demanding accountability and better governance, they have badly misread the national mood. The average Kenyan’s anger is directed at the people in power, not at the labourer doing menial jobs.
Lastly, when the rest of Africa see Kenyans on the street protesting, we are labelled names. Some say Kenyans love to protest, but what other options do we have? Why are the rest of you comfortable with being taken for a ride and taken for fools by the very people you put in power? Others might see us as being troublesome, but Kenyans are constantly in the streets protesting because many refuse to quietly accept poor leadership and broken promises. Democracy is not merely voting every few years; it is the daily insistence that leaders serve the people. The day every African government feels that pressure from its citizens is the day fewer people will be forced to leave home in search of what should have been available to them in the first place. Hold your leaders accountable and push them to do right by you. That way, when people shout at you, treat you as lesser beings and demand for you to go back to your country, it wouldn’t sound like an insult.
