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"id": 185393,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/185393/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Mr. ole Ntimama",
"speaker_title": "The Minister of State for National Heritage",
"speaker": {
"id": 200,
"legal_name": "William Ronkorua ole Ntimama",
"slug": "william-ntimama"
},
"content": "This is done deliberately and purposely for the reason of trying to make us permanent slaves of other people in this country. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, if you do not have education, then definitely you are destined to serve other people. You are destined to disappear completely. You know, when they talk of \"compulsory\", I can tell you that the only compulsory education that I saw myself and was part of it, was during the colonial time. This is because today, I would not have gone to school if it was not a white man who came to my father, grabbed me and took me to school. There would not have been a Ntimama today, with all the successes and all the shortcomings like all human beings. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we can blame other people but you know, I have read a little bit of the story of the Americans. You remember the way our people were shipped to America, naked and in chains. However, when they arrived there, somehow, the Americans called the slaves' children and sent them to school by force. They could not stand the sons and daughters of the slaves. There would not have been a struggle of civil rights if Martin Luther King did not go to school. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we know that our Independence would have been delayed, or probably forgotten altogether, if the late Jomo Kenyatta had not gone to school. In Nyanza, the late Oginga Odinga was educated and that was why he fought for the release of the late Kenyatta. Some of these things must be recognised, whether we like it or not. That is why I want to say that this question of not giving some people teachers is just a properly and well organized system of destining those children as slaves of other people. Affirmative action is not only for giving women jobs or business opportunities, but under it, we try and make sure that other people are deliberately given an opportunity to come up. During Mr. Moi's regime, we had extra classes; Mr. Moi said that some children with low marks could be attached to schools like Maasai Girls. As soon as the current Government came in, those classes disappeared. We know that they had not passed well, but how do you pass well when you have no teachers. How do you compare a child in North Eastern Province or Maasailand with a child who is already having computer classes and the area he comes from is over-staffed? It is unfair. These are things that must be dealt with in this country. As far as I remember - I have been in the public service for long, including being in councils, Parliament--- I was also a teacher along time ago; I have always known that we have been short of teachers. How do you explain these things? If we do not start applying fairness, justice and equity, especially in education--- We need a deliberate system of shifting financial and human resources to some of these areas and uplifting them. For example, I know we have shortcomings in some of these areas like the arid areas, because we have cattle rustling and other things, which are not comfortable. But we need a plan to help the rural pastoralist areas, so that children in them are not destined for slavery as far as this country is concerned. Leaving them like that means that they are going to be slaves of other people. That is what some of us do not agree October 7, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2513 with. We do not want tokenism. We want a proper plan . With those few remarks, I beg to support."
}