Publishers in Kenya have also succumbed to tribalism and money

Kenya’s publishing industry has been the only sector that operated for years with a minimum underhand from the twin forces of tribalism and corruption, but a recent survey revealed that as per today this is the most tribalised and politicized industry in Kenya which now allows the corruptible powers that be to call the tune. A beautiful example is that the writer of this article has a friend who has had her article published in one of the main daily circulating paper in Kenya a few days ago, after very many trials. This friend finally was very happy because her uncle; a brother to her mother helped her to publish an article in the newspaper. This friend has also offered to introduce the writer of this article to her uncle so that the writer can also be assisted to publish the articles. What a pathetic torture of tribalism! This was my feeling. Because publishing is based on content and quality of artisanship but not on who introduced the writer to the publisher. But the truth is that, this culture of beneficial net-working has hitherto gripped the Kenyan publishing sector in its diverse entirety.

Borrowing a style of analysis from Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow in which dictatorship in Africa is established as a cult enticed by both the oppressor and the oppressed. Tribalism and corruption in Kenya often form a social- political blend that transcends itself into a syndrome which tickles both the corrupter and corrupted, it is a syndrome which spreads like a cancerous cell and now it is here with us in the body of the publishers. It is a syndrome of public office abuse and ethnicity. It is not only in the print media publishers that the vice is thriving but among all the book publishers, university academic paper publishers, journal publishers, and tabloid as well as newsletter publishers, leaving the Kenyan young writers with the digital social media as the only communication platform on which terrors of tribe and money don’t reign.

The established book publishers in Kenya have a keen nose of commerce and politics. They do not publish to store and disseminate knowledge. But instead they publish either to make money or to gain political favour. What are their tools towards the goals? On money making, they have seasoned the art of recycling the old writers. They re-print and re-brand the same and pristine Achebe, Soyinga and Ngugi. They solicit for the manuscripts from such aged writers left, center and right. They rather publish a profile of Mazrui and Taban Lo Liyong or academic history of the Ugandan poet, Ogot P’Bitek and John Ruganda’s intellectual appreciation of Imbuga’s political comedies than even giving a look at manuscript of a penniless young writer from a family without stature of fame and politics. It was out of the spirit of condemning this vice that had one young frustrated writer from Kenya whom I happened to talk to make a desperate and misfortunate comment about Chinua Achebe’s death that; ‘It is good such old people like Achebe, Soyinka and Ngugi have began dying so that we young writers can also have an opportunity to be published. They are nothing else other than capitalists of literature.” To my chagrin this young man was not joking, was very earnest and calm. I mused about it; what a mourning so un-African!

On equal footing as money, politics and ethnic network monkey- wrenches Kenyan publishers like a Greek marionette in the hands of a heroic Negro gladiator. Political heavy weights easily publish. Whether whatever they are publishing is trash or treasure, they are often published smoothly. The vicious logic of all these pertains in the tribe and dirtiness of politics. It was out of this peccadillo that a Nigerian man emerged with a caricatureure of a book entitled Raila Odinga; Kenya’s political enigma. This was some few months preceding the 2007 general elections. The intellectual pithiness of this book was and is heavy. It has left the reading community in Kenya deeply agog to an extent that dear reader, the only words that can be used to describe the situation is ‘communal discombobulation’.

Those who have been in Kenya in the past two years must have had a glimpse of this publishing vice through practical encounter with Kenya’s two main circulating papers the Daly nation and The East African standard. The weekend editions of these papers have pages on literary discourse. The Nation has it in the Saturday Nation and the Standard in the Sunday Standard. The eyesore of time in both of these editions is a plethora of old and rich writers writing about old and rich authors. In both the editions you will obviously meet Ezekiel Mwazemba discussing Shakespeare, Tom Odhiambo discussing Ngugi, Okello Oculli praising poetry of P’Bitek as a tool of anthropology, Tom Mochoma appreciating Lolita of Vladimir Nabokov, Chakava praising Ngugi or Alexander Opicho describing Frantz Fanon and Denis Brutus as white African writers while at the same time in the same editions, the same Alexander Opicho is associating literary mystery with the name of Alexander Pushkin. Indeed, who can wear the blinkers to such an open sore in any society?

History of publishing discrimination in Kenya has its tap roots deeply impeded in the volcanic soils of the colonial era. This was when white settlers were owners of all the media and book publishing firms. Writing and publishing therefore was a reserve of the white. Africans had nowhere to publish their ideas. As Tom Mboya recounts in Freedom and after; invitation of a liberal Aga Khan to Kenyan publishing market on which he established the Nation media group was simply one effort against colonial misrule.

May be this legacy of publishing discrimination was passed piecemeal to the all subsequent governments in Kenya. The governments of the day and politically connected class have always used publishing as a weapon of power. They use a printed word to get power and maintain power against genuine intellectual efforts of true and honest but discommunicated writers. It was this political sub-culture that partially contributed to dispelling of intellectuals away from Kenya to Tanzania and other intellectual hubs during the last century. The top scholars like Walter Rodney who authored How Europe underdeveloped Africa, Frantz Fanon, Micere Mugo, Abdalla Abdatallatif and Ayi Kwei Armah all stayed in Tanzania, from where they researched and published because of intellectual friendly political culture which held publishing discrimination at distaste.

In spite of political misfortunes Uganda contrasts a lot with Kenya. A young writer in Uganda will meet lesser impediments in his career path as contrasted to Kenya. This intellectual freedom is barely seen in the Monitor, Uganda’s Daily paper published in English. There is practice of genuine editing, publishing by content not by tribe and class and objectivity of information as key attributes of this Ugandan daily paper. These are the publishing virtues that recently frustrated President Yoweri Museven to make an unreasonable move of closing down this paper.

The side effects of practicing discriminatory publishing have but only led Kenya to a crystallized pedestal of negative results useful in only extending the pale of the society, both economically and socially. Kenyan young book writers have resorted to publishing in Germany. This is sad when faced with a bare fact that Kenyans are sending their manuscripts to publishers in Germany, But once the books are published, Kenyan readers in turn are conditionally bound to import these very books at a very expensive price because of tax, transport and haulage fees and also a reality due to an economic condition that a Kenyan shilling is very week against European dollar.