maũndũ makwa #7

(my things): against Kenya's occupation of Haiti

Dec 21, 2023

Preface

I am a Kenyan who was born and raised in the so-called US. I am reckoning with my US tax dollars funding the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Amid massive destruction and massacres, there must be a willingness to hold many truths simultaneously and work toward liberation for all oppressed people.

As the US funds and facilitates the state of israel’s attempted annihilation of the Palestinian people, the Kenyan government is making plans to send 1000 police officers to Haiti to “deal with the gangs”. I have spoken and taken actions against both the so-called US and the state of israel, and in my reflections, I have found that though there was shame and disgust at the Kenyan government’s attempts to invade and occupy the people of Haiti, I have been less vocal. This newsletter is an attempt to move within my values and grow in my understanding of and solidarity with the Haitian people.

This could have only been created in this moment, through these lessons on silence and hesitation. There have been Kenyans who have been vocally opposing this proposed occupation since it was first announced and I want to add my voice, heart, and spirit into the mix.

The US has long sabotaged, exploited, and oppressed Haiti and its people, and now Kenya wants to join in. I joke that I am endlessly enraged by the actions of both my homeland and current home, like when they both didn’t vote in favor of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (the US voted no, while Kenya abstained) in 2007.

Most recently, the government of Kenya voted in favor of the UN resolution that called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities”. The US voted no. Kenya also voted yes on the failed Canadian amendment to the resolution, “that sought to condemn the Hamas (al-Alqsa flood / October 7th) attack,” but failed because it didn’t receive the needed two-thirds majority.

I am the last person to regard the United Nations as a beacon of justice or truth, but some of the global political happenings can be indications of larger issues. I think the Kenyan government is seeking validation and power from settler-colonial empires.

I believe that the plan to send Kenyan cops to Haiti is a strategic move based on capitalistic and imperialistic goals. It must be stopped and the sovereignty of the people of Haiti protected. Kenya cannot and should not follow the path of oppression and exploitation that the US, and other imperialist powers, created in Haiti.

Part 1:

The US occupation of Haiti and yankees in colonial Kenya

The crimes of the US empire are many. US-orchestrated coups, occupations, and assassinations have long had to do with maintaining global power and exploiting others’ resources. They often use the excuse that they’re going to protect or promote peace and democracy, only to leave devastation and destruction.

The case for Haiti was and is no different. The US had eyes on the nation long before the occupation. The US State Department wrote in its history of U.S. foreign policy that:

The United States Government's interests in Haiti existed for decades prior to its occupation. As a potential naval base for the United States, Haiti’s stability concerned U.S. diplomatic and defense officials who feared Haitian instability might result in foreign rule of Haiti. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the island of Hispaniola, consisting of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to secure a U.S. defensive and economic stake in the West Indies. From 1889 to 1891, Secretary of State James Blaine unsuccessfully sought a lease of Mole-Saint Nicolas, a city on Haiti’s northern coast strategically located for a naval base.

The invasion and occupation of Haiti had everything to do with US interests. In any case, what kind of help could a settler colonial anti-Black nation be able to offer a Black nation like Haiti? Black people in the US were still being lynched yet it was expected that the US could somehow support the people of Haiti.

Marines 013 — U.S. Marines of the 1st regiment in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1915, the year of the US invasion and occupation.

It’s also important to note that it was a military occupation. Racist white american men sent to govern over a Black population. There were countless instances of killings, torture, and exploitation under the U.S. occupation.

Several decades later, the same makeup of white american men were traveling across the world to protect the white settler colonial project in Kenya. In Gerald Horne’s book, Mau Mau in Harlem? The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya, he writes that:

As the war in Kenya garnered global headlines along with the fierce battle to desegregate the United States itself, ineluctably some Euro-Americans felt their very way of life was at stake and this was worth fighting for. As a result, some crossed the ocean to take up arms, others volunteered to staff the massive prison camps that had developed, while others sought to lobby the authorities to back the besieged settler regime.

Someone once said that the U.S. is made of genocides and I agree. There is no hope of a nation built on the graves of others bringing good to anyone but a fellow imperialist and or colonial power. Again and again, we can find examples of the true nature of american foreign policy. There is also the fact that everyday white citizens take it upon themselves to protect their violent values and ways of life.

Haitian people are disempowered by western powers. Once they gained their freedom, they were forced to pay France for the lost capital of the enslaving class. Agencies like the United Nations have only further facilitated this disempowerment, by legitimizing invasion, exploitation, and occupation.

You would think that independent Kenya would never even consider becoming an occupying power, but the grips of neocolonialism are strong. The Kenyan state has long tortured, disappeared, and murdered those who challenged it and done everything in its power to maintain friendly relations with western powers.

Part 2:

Black Lives Matter, Policing, and State Violence in Kenya

What we inherit and if we choose to keep them matters. When newly independent nations emerged as their own governments, that could have been a time to access the institutions and systems that served their interests and which ones were inherently violent.

The Kenyan police are a colonial product. The harm that they practice is intentional and meant to suppress the people, engineered to keep the “natives” in line.

Officers in gear near a wall with graffiti. — Kenyan riot police during a protest against tax increases in Nairobi in July.

During the George Floyd global uprisings, protests against police brutality took place in Kenya. A shared link with Black folks in the U.S., policing is also a serious issue in Kenya. The Kenyan police are notorious for their violence and terrorization of the public.

How then can it be assumed that they won’t commit the same, if not more, terror on the Haitian public? When the lives and wellness of Kenyan citizens aren’t considered, what does it mean for an oppressive force like the Kenyan police to be sent to Haiti?

Part 3:

Kenya out of Haiti: Pan-Africanism, Neocolonialism, and Imperialist Desires

Some might argue that I am making too much noise for a proposed plan of sending 1000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti, but I say one would be one too many. There is no “light” imperialism, just like there cannot be partial liberation. It is or it isn’t.

We must know history so that we do not repeat it. We must challenge imperialism everywhere it shows its head. I am a Kenyan-”american” and I am against the proposed U.S.-backed and Kenyan-led occupation of Haiti because I believe in solidarity and pan-africanism. I see the lies being told about this operation and how it will only further harm the people of Haiti.

A graphic from Black Alliance for Peace which reads, “Hands Off Haiti. No to occupation. No to foreign intervention. No to Blackface imperialism.”

There is space to give light to multiple issues, to learn about them, and show your support for oppressed people throughout the world. It is never too late to join a movement or resist oppression. Lean into discomfort and show up for your global community. These are lessons I learned while researching and writing this newsletter. May Haiti be free and may we always know and resist, not become, the enemy of the people.

Additional Resources:

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! I also want you to take a moment to pause, stretch, and do what you need in this moment. It can be overwhelming to take in a large amount of information and sometimes we just need a second to process. When you’re ready, you can move on to the second half of the newsletter. - K

gũthikĩrĩria (listening to)

“‘Til we free you and me, they no go see the last revolutionary” has been stuck in my head and I’m not mad at it:
Jamila Woods’ 2019 album, LEGACY! LEGACY!. Especially the songs “MUDDY”, “ZORA”, & “SUN RA”:

Podcasts I’ve been listening to:

kũrora (to look)

The first episode of the Liberating Minds podcast. The podcast “aims to provide an alternative voice and interpretation of the struggle against oppression, inequality, neoliberalism, and capitalism in Kenya.” In this episode, they cover Kenyan Historian, Maina wa Kĩnyattĩ’s book, Kenya: A Prison Notebook:
This clip of Rage Against the Machine performing “Know Your Enemy” live at Finsbury Park:
Action must be taken
We don't need the key, we'll break in
Something must be done
About vengeance, a badge and a gun
'Cause I'll rip the mic, rip the stage, rip the system
I was born to rage against 'em
Fist in ya face in the place and I'll drop the style clearly
Know your enemy

gũthoma (to read)

This 1984 speech delivered by Thomas Sankara at the 7th Non-Aligned Movement Summit, in New Delhi:
Similarly, we believe that our movement cannot accept the role of the mute and passive observer that is being imposed on it, as on the rest of the world, in this conflict in the Middle East, which is now nearly 40 years old, where the combined forces of imperialism and Zionism have succeeded not only in expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland, but also, as a result of successive barbaric aggressions, in carrying out and maintaining the military occupation and annexation of vast territories of several Arab countries that are members of our movement.
Even more recently, less than a year ago, the government of Israel, publicly encouraged by the United States, and despite the unanimous condemnation of the peoples of the world, invaded the state of Lebanon with its army, subjecting the capital city of Beirut to the merciless destruction of its enormous military, land, sea and air resources, despite the heroic resistance of the city and of the Palestinians under the leadership of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).
Despite the ceasefire obtained by the international community, the Israeli government allowed the unspeakable massacres of Sabra and Shatila, whose perpetrators should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and still refuses to withdraw the aggressor troops from Lebanon.
Another Thomas Sankara quote. This one is from a recently translated transcript of an interview held during the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, a year before his assassination:
The most important thing in the struggle that we are leading at the current moment in Burkina Faso is to raise awareness in each Burkinabe, man or woman, young or old, from the cities as from the countryside, that imperialism exists, that it is not simply a word, but that it is stalking us and wants to destroy us. This means an awareness that it is imperialism that is the principal factor responsible for our backwardness, and that we cannot build a happy society unless we agree to struggle against it. It is very important to begin in this manner because otherwise, if we do not clearly situate the ideological basis of our struggle, we are going to blow hot air about our work, courage, determination, but in reality we will continue to serve so-called imperialist causes. The goal therefore of the revolution is to qualitatively transform the situation that so far was exploited by the enemies of the people and to allow the people to take their destiny into their own hands.

wa Ngamiro, meaning of or from Ngamiro. Ngamiro, a gourd used to hold milk and my maternal great-grandmother's name. an ode to vessels and also my grandmother who was of - from Ngamiro. this is a space for exploration, curation, na meciria makwa (and my thoughts). wa Ngamiro is a monthly-ish newsletter.

Sending you radical care and appreciation🌱

Other spaces I’m at online:

✦/ instagram

✦/ twitter

✦/ pinterest

✦/ patreon

wa Ngamĩro

Discussion about this post