For over sixty years, the Kenyan state has remained a neocolonial formation, modeled in the image of the colonial state. Our war for national liberation was led by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army — the Mau Mau. The Mau Mau had taken up arms because Kenya was a settler colony — land had been seized from the people by force. But during the independence negotiations at Lancaster House, the Mau Mau were not invited. When Jomo Kenyatta took power in 1963, he said the state would fight maradhi, ujinga, and umaskini — disease, ignorance, and poverty.