r/bookishke

Reading as a Kenyan has honestly shaken me. I don’t know why I thought this kind of extraction was mostly a “past” thing, but realizing how recent and ongoing the situation in still is — especially the child labour — has been hard to sit with. I keep thinking about and how those systems just seem to have morphed instead of ending. It doesn’t even feel like just reading a book anymore, it feels like being forced to see something I didn’t want to see this clearly.

Just finished The Count of Monte Cristo this morning and i thought about starting War and Peace straight away.. Who would like to join and maybe discuss it later on.

The book offers a modest but thought-provoking introduction to the capitalism versus communism debate, framed through the lens of post-independence Africa. Its central preoccupation is the meaning of statehood within the African context, specifically, the capacity of a nation to make independent decisions free from external interference. Sovereignty, in other words. The author's argument is that while post-independence African nations are sovereign on paper, that sovereignty is systematically undermined by the continued economic, political, and cultural influence of their former colonial masters. Kenya serves as the primary case study.

Kenya was, and in many ways remains, a prized possession of the British imperial project. Even after independence in 1963, Britain's influence did not dissolve, it retreated into the background, growing quietly like a shadow. The reasons were both economic and ideological. If Kenya succeeded as an independent nation, it would vindicate British involvement in Africa, the self-appointed civilising mission, and by extension, validate capitalism over communism in the contest for the soul of the developing world. Britain was therefore, as the author frames it, "obligated" to assist its former colony, though that assistance came with strings. Britain exported goods to Kenya, trained its military, maintained bases on its soil, provided intelligence services to President Kenyatta, and even devised what became known as the MacDonald Formula, a political arrangement designed to help Kenyatta consolidate his rule.

The author uses Kenyatta's rule from 1964 to 1975 to flesh out this argument, and it is here that the book is at its most compelling. Kenyatta is presented as a man of deep contradictions. He began as a Pan-Africanist, became a radical agitator whom the British genuinely feared, and eventually transformed into a conservative nationalist and, by the standards of his era, a dictator.

His early career earned him genuine popular legitimacy. His involvement in trade unions, the Kenya African Union, and the Mau Mau insurgency made him a hero to ordinary Kenyans. His imprisonment, alongside figures such as Achieng Oneko, only deepened that status, giving him an almost messianic quality. He had suffered on behalf of the people. He was, in the book's implicit framing, a black Moses: the man destined to lead the masses out of colonial poverty, restore land to the landless, and drive a new national development narrative.

What followed confounded all of that promise. Rather than dismantling the colonial system he inherited, Kenyatta preserved it and turned it to his own advantage. He adopted a reconciliatory posture toward Britain, cultivating forgiveness, inviting former colonisers back to participate in the country's development, while quietly entrenching nepotism, tribalism, corruption, and favouritism at home. Those closest to him prospered; the gap between rich and poor widened. When criticism came, he met it with repression. The murder of J.M. Kariuki, linked to individuals within Kenyatta's inner circle, stands as one of the starkest examples. Kenya's national narrative was reshaped around him, he occupied the centre stage while Mau Mau fighters from other communities were gradually written to the margins.

The author's conclusion is: Kenyatta had the historical moment and the popular mandate to steer Kenya toward genuine transformation. Instead, he stagnated the country. His accommodation of British interests ultimately impoverished the very masses who had placed their faith in him. And as a result, successive governments were set up for failure from the word go. However, I'd counter this by arguing that Kibaki too had the golden chance of steering the country into its golden age but he too chose 'forgive and forget' police that might have emboldened politicians and consequently contributed to the country's impoverishment (think about golden berg?)

The book's broader thesis is that capitalism, by its very nature, enriches the few at the expense of the many, and that Kenya under Kenyatta illustrates this perfectly. The author leans toward communism as the more equitable alternative, though this is where the argument begins to lose its footing.

The case against capitalism is well-evidenced through the Kenyan example. The case for communism, however, is largely asserted rather than demonstrated. The author offers no concrete success story, no working model against which the Kenyan experience can be measured. This is a significant gap, and it weakens what is otherwise a coherent argument.

There is also a deeper complexity the book does not adequately reckon with. African society is not a blank slate waiting to receive either capitalism or communism wholesale. Communal economic principles are already deeply embedded at the grassroots level, the practice of harambee, collective community fundraising, is one such example. At the national and macroeconomic level, however, market dynamics are both entrenched and, in certain respects, functional. The more honest and productive question is not which system should replace the other, but how these two modes of organising economic life can be harmonised into something that reflects the actual texture of African societies, rather than importing ideological frameworks that were built elsewhere, for different conditions.

The book does not also tackle the issue of socialism vis a vis communism, it assumes they are on the same. Socialism is more concerned with socialisation of production whereas the latter is concerned with socialisation of both production and consumption. Socialism is believed to be the stage between capitalism and communism. In this context, which one applies to us? And why?

The Anatomy of Neo-Colonialism is a useful entry point into debates about dependency, sovereignty, and the afterlife of empire in Africa. Its strength lies in the Kenyatta case study, which is rendered with genuine historical depth. Its weakness is the author's reluctance to subject communism to the same critical scrutiny applied to capitalism. A stronger book would have done both. Even so, the questions it raises, about who benefits from the post-colonial order, and whether African nations have ever truly governed themselves, remain urgent, and worth sitting with.

What's your point of view

HMU for any audiobooks, including this one

Maybe the truth is we’re not meant to be one dimensional. Because when you’re more than one thing, one failure doesn’t get to define your entire story.

I like them big, i like them chunky... these bad boys are so much fun on / off work. For scale, regular sized pieces are on top of each. Showcase some of your bad boys... and/or girls😅. Forgive Blue, on the first one, she too was impressed.