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[Mulindwa Edward]

Election Platform  Thursday, December 12, 2002  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Party seeks to promote traditional cultures By DAVID WAWERU NG'ETHE Africans have gone through the process of conditioning by their former colonisers. This conditioning is called education. The major objective of this education is to annihilate Africa's cultures.  After generations of being conditioned to be like Europeans, Kenya's indigenes have the difficult task of re-discovering themselves.  To a real African elder, Africa has changed. His or her offspring have become foreigners in language, manners and way of life. The conditioned (or so-called educated) Africans boast of African values but denounce them by their lifestyles. They want to speak English and other foreign languages and dress in the most Western of fashions.  It is an identity crisis that makes them unable to support the right candidates and parties to vote into the next Parliament.  The African has been uprooted from his soil. This is the basis of our social, economic, psychological and political problems. It has led this country into unprecedented levels of poverty. Everybody has thus been crying for change. But how do we bring about this change?  A small African fire was lit several decades away. This fire has been spreading slowly. When fully ablaze, it will realise the full potential of the dignified, complete person that the African is. Chama Cha Uma (CCU) and my efforts, including my presidential bid in this year's General Election, are a drop of fuel to make the flame in Kenyans burn more brightly. Some of the areas my government will address in regard to education include: Language Without language one cannot be a full human being. And the language of the conqueror, when spoken by the conquered, is the language of a slave.  Kenya's blacks are lucky. We have our languages. They are very expressive. English has been tied to the propaganda we call education. Therefore, English and education have been inseparably linked in the minds of the victim.  Like Pavlov's dogs, many Africans today identify English with education. Many educated (conditioned) Kenyans have thus taken to speaking to their children in nothing but English.  We shall correct this. We will not allow this colonial hangover to destroy our languages. We shall liberate our people from the (conditioned) guilt which they feel whenever they speak our African languages.  Kiswahili will be promoted as our lingua franca. We shall encourage Kiswahili literature to cover even technical materials. I know Europeans will vehemently oppose this for it will tend to deprive them of the control they have over us. But we now know. This control has not been beneficial to us. We must liberate ourselves. We will conduct our learning through the medium of Kiswahili. Doesn't this scare the (conditioned) "elite" class? Education, unlike today, must satisfy Kenya's aspirations. It should not create confusion. It must promote progress and preserve all that is best in our people. Education must be relevant. "Experts" from the West, who often come to tell us what we really need as though we are incapable of determining it for ourselves, will not be allowed to come into our country if we take over power.  The often quoted guise of "maintaining international standards" is absurd. Which respectable nation in the world sacrifices its identity to a mere handful of foreigners to the extent of changing its own way of life - to please such foreigners?  Continuing to copy others condemns us to be second rate for ever. We can never be the people we copy. Why not be ourselves? Education must be seen as the key to progress. This key will be put in our best brains. Now the key is often put in the hands of either failures or mediocrities, those who cannot fit into any other profession. A radical change of attitude towards education will be encouraged. This will ensure that learners are exposed to an environment which will develop them fully. What we have been producing in our schools are students ashamed of being Africans.  Our learning induces in our children a psychiatric yearning to be Westerners. This pathological need blinds the students to anything good in the African.  This is why so many of our young people are copying the decadent European and American habits, such as drug abuse and homosexuality. All learning will be geared towards general development.  It will instil the virtues of nationalism and patriotism. Discipline and hard work will inevitably be the end results of education. Education will produce for us what we need as a nation. The first task of a new leadership will be to de-brainwash our people. Without this, there is a danger of our people lapsing into servitude under their former masters or under new masters. It is, therefore, unwise for Kenyans to maintain a weak government, which, in time, may be destroyed by stronger nations. History is replete with such governments. We will therefore: Have African languages taught to our children right from infancy; Teach in our schools the greatness of Africans - brave warriors, freedom fighters and great healers; Have history and culture taught from the way the liberated African mind sees it, taught differently from the present setting, whereby these subjects are taught the way our colonisers wanted to see or rather how they see it; Encourage cultural exchange between African nations: these were forbidden by the colonialists, and their puppet governments have faithfully abided by them;  A Chama Cha Uma government will, to a very large extent, be educative and its broad objectives will include: To instill self-confidence and self-hood in the people to eliminate dependency and inferiority attitudes among the citizens; To encourage creativity, innovations and general productivity; To expose ethnicity and tribal feelings as the root causes of conflict, violence and retardation of growth in all sectors of Kenyan life; To replace the vices of tribalism and ethnicity with responsibility, peace, hope, understanding and interdependence among all the different ethnic groups; To inculcate discipline and the work ethic as hallmarks of a civilised society; To promote patriotism, which is inner strength, integrity, moral and spiritual values, as a lasting solution to social, political and economic developmental problems; and  To reap the fruits of patriotism, which are, prosperity and peace. I call on all Kenyans to give me support. This way we shall liberate our country. We will realise the ideals of our independence, which aborted in 1963. We will also have realised the great yearning for fundamental changes which have been burning in the hearts of all thinking Kenyans. I am "the voice of the silent majority". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Waweru Ng'ethe, an educationist, is chairman and presidential candidate of Chama Cha Uma (CCU).        The Mulindwas communication group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"