Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1520620,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1520620/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 214,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Baringo County, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Jematiah Sergon",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker. At the outset, I support this very timely Culture Bill, which will promote unity in our country. Before I even go far, I will read a quote from a former legislator in the British Parliament, or someone who addressed the British Parliament on 2nd February 1835. His name was Lord Macaulay. He said and I quote: “I have travelled across the length and the breadth of Africa, and I have not seen one person who is a beggar and who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage. And, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Africans think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture, and they will become what we want them. A truly dominated nation it is.” That was in 1835. It was a calculated move to fragment African culture. We are currently discussing the same matter in what was a former British colony – Kenya. What haunts us today is how we can bring back our culture. As Hon. Oundo has said, the proponent of the Bill has attempted to give us the best way possible to preserve our culture. However, the Bill focuses too much on the hardware, while the African culture is based on software. The problem is how we passed it down. We were unable to write down our cultures and histories. That is why we found ourselves in those fragmented situations. I will be very particular on many things. I am a believer in culture, specifically my culture. I am a Tugen and a Kalenjin. African culture is very similar. If you go to the Nilotes in Luo Land, the Kisii, and the Kalenjin nation, you will just see the African way of life. We are barely surviving because colonialism fragmented us. As Hon. Ndindi has just put it, the colonialists gave us imaginary borders. We were forbidden from certain things because we were from a different country. The proponents of colonialism realised that Africa is a small vault. Every time you want to save something, you put it in your vault. You can transverse the entirety of Europe from morning to evening without being hampered by borders. However, you need a visa to visit our neighbours Tanzania, Uganda or South Sudan. That has eroded our culture because we were just one family. I look forward to a day when all of us in this House will comfortably walk in and out in our cultural dresses. I want to put on my Tugen traditional dress and showcase my beads. Whether I am half-naked or not, that has always been our pride. Africans have demonstrated pride in their cultures in many other ways. Most of our culture is what is now known as artificial intelligence. For example, rainmaking is artificial intelligence. Our mothers and grandmothers would walk into a room and know that a small girl of around 18 years was pregnant without necessarily going for tests in hospital because there was a way to do that. There was a way they would just know. You could also not marry from The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}