In Nairobi’s industrial South B district stands the Highway secondary school, alma mater of Rishi Sunak’s father. It was established for Asian boys in 1962, one year before Kenya’s independence, during a time when there were separate schools for whites, Asians and black Kenyans.
Days after Sunak became prime minister, the principal told the Kenyan press that his premiership was “an indication that with determination and focus, one can be anything in this world. We are not limited if the example of the UK premier is anything to go by.” The celebration reflected an aspirational approach to life, emerging from deep within the postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined by proximity to that centre. “Endeavour to excel”, the Highway school motto, is hand-painted neatly on a blue sash on its walls.
Standing outside the slightly weathered building last week, as the violent suppression of anti-government protests played out across Nairobi, it seemed to me that this striking journey over two generations, culminating in what will probably be Sunak’s final days in Downing Street, tells us a great deal about Britain, and a certain type of Conservative politician.
Sunak the man may seem like a cipher – political hinterland opaque, motivations unclear – but he is best understood as the product of a postcolonial, post-Thatcherite ideology that considers social mobility as the sum total of achievement. That achievement is secured not just through “determination and focus”, but through proximity and affinity with the establishment and its institutions.
In the world of Sunak’s father, British officials regarded Indians who moved to east Africa from south Asia as second class, but still planned to develop Kenya as “the America of the Hindu”, with middle-class Indians as intermediaries who would help the British lead Africans towards “civilisation”. That was the context from which east Africans of Indian origin........