Kenyan Middle Class: You Cannot Afford to Ignore Party Primaries - Get Deeply Involved in Them!

The middle class is that group of people mainly comprising of professionals - medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, high school teachers, university lecturers, high level computer programmers, among others. Members of this group usually have at least one university degree or a prestigious diploma in some highly sought after area of expertise. They are neither very poor nor very rich. They are better off than the farm hands in rural Kenya, or the urban poor such as the artisans who eke out a living in jua kali sheds or in the go-downs of Nairobi’s industrial area.

Yet the compound term “middle class” is quite imprecise - quite elastic - as it is used to refer to people who can hardly get by with their monthly salaries to others who hold considerably well-paying jobs that enable them to go for a few holidays in plush resorts within the country and even overseas. What is common to all members of the middle class is that they do not own substantial assets in the form of land, houses and factories. Many live in homes that they are struggling to make their own through mortgage, a few have homes they can truly call their own, while many live in rented accommodation. This has led to categories such as upper middle class, middle middle class and lower middle class. Some people prefer to refer to this class by the French term bourgeoisie, but this term can be misleading, as it is used in Marxist theory to refer to the Western urban middle class that hastened the breakdown of Western feudalism and became the owners of the means of production in the capitalist society that emerged thereafter.

The foregoing is a layman’s definition of “middle class”, as a more precise definition should be expected from an economist, and I am not one. Yet the philosopher, the chemist, the historian, the mechanic, the sweeper and the so-called “mama mboga (small-scale green grocer)”, and everyone else has a right to comment on economic policies because they have a direct impact on his/her life. In the eighth chapter of his Practical Philosophy, the Late Prof. H. Odera Oruka made a helpful distinction between positive economics and normative economics, the former being the domain of those who have studied economics in an institution of higher learning, the latter the right of anyone wishing to reflect on the ethical standards that guide economic policy; so I gave my definition above from the point of view of normative economics.

My concern here is with the attitude of most members of the Kenyan middle class towards what we have come to call, imitating Americans, “party primaries” - the process by which political parties determine which of their members will receive party tickets to run for positions in an election. During the most recent American presidential elections, many wondered how the U.S. ended up with two quite elderly persons as contenders for the top job. One answer that was given was the apathy of the middle class during party primaries. In our case, many often wonder how political parties end up with persons with very little school education and often with a scandalous public ethic as candidates, and part of the answer is that many members of the middle class do not come out to campaign or vote during party primaries.

Why do many members of the Kenyan middle class stay away from this important exercise, where, in some cases, winning the party ticket is tantamount to winning the seat? One of the reasons is the chaotic nature of the exercise, where goons are hired to force specific results through ballot stuffing, intimidation, or even outright violence. I suspect that in the comfort of their homes, members of the middle class hope that the goons in support of their preferred candidates will have the upper hand. My suspicion is partly informed by the fact that during the 2007/2008 post-elections crisis, I heard members of this class who were discontented with the declared results celebrating the violence in the slums, but of course they themselves were not to be found anywhere near the railway that was being uprooted or the crude road blocks set up by the irate slum dwellers.

Let the truth be told: many members of the Kenyan middle class love comfort but fear taking risks in pursuit of comfort. They love to reap where they have not sowed, as illustrated by the way they took over government at independence despite not having gone to the forest to pressurise the colonisers into taking their leave; they were nowhere to be seen during the saba saba riots in the early 1990s, but have been quick to occupy the lucrative offices that have come with the expanded political space; they avoid voting at party primaries, but are the first to “reconnect” with victorious former school and college mates in order to get a share of the state largesse that comes with such positions.

On election day, many members of the middle class wake up late like they would do on a weekend, put on their "smart casual" wear, have their BEST (bacon, egg, sausage and toast) breakfast (if they can afford it), and then take a leisurely walk or drive to the polling station, all the while hoping that they can cast their ballots and get home without encountering any ugly scene. Once back home, they glue their eyes on the TV, particularly once the counting of ballots begins. What they fail to realize is that by having been absent during the party primaries, they had allowed the final results of the general elections to be predetermined to a considerable extent without their input.

 In the third chapter of his celebrated work, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon points out that the middle class in Colonial African states failed to play its role in the struggle against colonialism: “It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.” Fanon went on to assert that this class is plagued by intellectual laziness and spiritual poverty. In addition, he wrote that “In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness or the will to succeed of youth.”

Early this year, and two days before her untimely death, the late young and truly beautiful Dr. Eunice Songa-Saraceno wrote an article which she titled “A CALL TO ACTION: Wake up Middle and Upper Class Kenyans! – The New Mau Mau Revolution”. In it she passionately urged the Kenyan middle class to get out of its comfort zone and to be agents of positive change (see https://thenewmaumaurevolution.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/a-call-to-action-wake-up-middle-and-upper-class-kenyans ).

Kenyan middle class: you have college education; you have access to some finance; your world has been broadened beyond imagination by your access to the Internet; you have massive social capital in the college and professional networks that you have formed over the years; many of you have some speaking and writing skills; you have access both to the poor who look up to you for assistance to meet their most basic needs, and you have access to the high and mighty who use your professional skills in their pursuit of self-actualisation. All this intellectual and social capital places you in a unique position to contribute to positive change in the social, economic and political life of our country, but you are under-utilising it. Instead, you prefer to spend your time eating out in “classy” places, buying toys (the latest mobile phones, state of the art cars, home theatres, town houses and country resorts, etc.), and crafting ways of amassing more cash, all the while abandoning your country’s politics to the basest of society. Get up and get involved in party primaries - campaign for your preferred candidates through your diverse networks and media, and show up to vote for them. If you are scared of goons at the polling stations, pool resources to hire security for the all-important exercise; after all, you do that for other ventures that you deem worthwhile. Only in this way will the poor masses benefit from your college education in which they have invested so much. Only in this way might we transform our politics into the civil affair that it ought to be. In this way we might even get election results that are so decisive that the vanquished side, whichever one it turns out to be, will have no option but to accept them and save us the kind of upheavals that are becoming characteristic of our elections. Yet in this final paragraph I am out of order on one point - I should say “we”, not “you”!

 

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

Down Memory Lane: Reflections on the 2002 KANU-NDP “Merger”

18^th March, 2002 was an important date in Kenya’s recent history, yet many who were present then have forgotten it, and a host of young people know close to nothing about it. Karl Marx memorably asserted that History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Marx’s co-ethnics, the Jews, say that “It is in forgetting that we go back into captivity.” Indeed, it has often been said, very correctly, that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The Preacher declared:

“That which has been is that which will be,

And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

‘See this, it is new’?

Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10; Holy Bible).

 

We are in for another season of party “mergers”, “dissolutions”, and coalitions. I want to tell a true story which many young Kenyans probably do not know, and which they, regardless of their political affiliation, all need to hear in order to make sense of what is currently taking place around them. Thus whether you are sold out to the Jubilee Party (JP) or have thrown your lot with the National Super Alliance (NASA), whether you are in the Third Way or plan to create a Fourth, Fifth or Sixth one, consider the reflections below.

 

On 18^th March 2002, Kenyans witnessed a strange phenomenon indeed - Raila Odinga, who for decades had been synonymous with opposition politics in Kenya, and who had spent considerable time in detention during Moi’s presidency, led his troops, then under the National Development Party (NDP), to join the then ruling party - Kenya African National Union (KANU). They “willingly” dissolved NDP, whereas the narrative in the run-up to the event had been that the two parties would merge. This was the culmination of a warming of relationship between KANU and NDP that began soon after the 1997  General elections - a relationship which was first referred to as “co-operation”, then “partnership”, and which culminated in the “merger” on 18^th March 2002, with KANU briefly changing its name to “New KANU”.

 

At the Kasarani Gymnasium where the “merger” took place, then President Daniel arap Moi drew a parallel between what was happening on that day and the dissolution of the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) and the relocation of its members to KANU in 1964 - a move which Raila’s late father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, in his “Not Yet Uhuru” (1967), had confessed that he deeply regreted. In the 2002 deal between KANU and NDP, Raila was made Secretary-General of KANU, with Moi as Chairman with enhanced powers, and with four vice Chairmen, namely, Uhuru Kenyatta, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi and Katana Ngala. Raila’s troups were assured through amendments in the party’s constitution that their man would be second in command to Moi, and they firmly believed that this meant that he would be Moi’s successor.

 

However, on 31^st July 2002, about four-and-a-half months after the dissolution of NDP, Moi declared Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta his preferred successor, after nominating him to Parliament to replace the late Mark Too who “voluntarily” resigned from that slot. Consequently, about two-and-a-half months later, Raila led a formidable number of KANU heavyweights to quit the party and form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) out of the Rainbow Alliance - a group that had been formed within KANU to protest Moi’s choice of Uhuru as his successor, and which included Kalonzo Musyoka, George Saitoti, Moody Awori and Mosalia Mudavadi, among others (Mudavadi later found his way back to KANU as Vice-President in place of George Saitoti, and became Uhuru Kenyatta’s running mate during the 2002 Presidential Elections). The LDP then joined forces with Mwai Kibaki’s National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK) to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), with Raila declaring “Kibaki Tosha (Kibaki is fit [to be President]).”

 

NARC went on to get a landslide victory during the elections held in December 2002, apparently, but only apparently, frustrating Moi’s “project” of making Uhuru Kenyatta his successor. Yet one of the ironies of history had occurred: Kibaki, who only left KANU to join opposition politics after the struggle for the return of multi-party politics had been won, got the ultimate political prize, while Raila, who had been in the trenches fighting the KANU Leviathan for more than two decades, missed it.

 

Yet Raila’s woes were not to end with the defeat of KANU at the ballot box in December 2002; for soon after Kibaki took power, he (Kibaki) damped the pre-election Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between his NAK and Raila’s LDP factions of NARC, and gave his wing of the coalition almost unfettered power while subjugating the LDP wing to “flower girl” or “page boy” roles. Kibaki’s men even chided Raila for having accepted to join the coalition on condition that he would be made Prime Minister, all the while knowing very well that the post of Prime Minister was not provided for in the then Constitution.

 

Following the 2005 “Banana-Orange” Constitutional Referendum which Raila’s wing of NARC resoundingly won, Kibaki sacked all cabinet ministers allied to Raila, and even brought in KANU MPs into his cabinet - the NARC dream had been snuffed out, and the scene set for the 2007/2008 post-elections crisis. One result of that crisis was the crystalisation of the closing of ranks between Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta, leading to Kibaki’s appointment of Uhuru as Deputy Prime Minister in the Coalition Government that was formed after the imbroglio.

 

In Raila’s camp, the narrative has consistently been that Raila knew all along that by joining KANU he would immobilise it, thereby ochestrating its defeat. The truth, however, is that Raila’s plan of becoming President through KANU was frustrated by Moi - the self-declared “Professor of Politics”. With hindsight, it is clear that Moi lured Raila into dissolving NDP so as to immobilise him politically. Indeed, by the time Raila returned to the opposition about two-and-half months before the 2002 elections, those who had remained in the opposition had already shared out the plum jobs among themselves, so that he really had no choice but to support Kibaki as a way of punishing Moi. What is more, since LDP’s goal was to keep Uhuru Kenyatta from ascending to power, it is now manifest that their plan eventually came to naught when Kibaki, who had run against Uhuru in 2002, clearly indicated his choice of Uhuru as his preferred successor in 2013.

 

It is noteworthy that the 2002 Presidential elections, in which Mwai Kibaki won over Uhuru Kenyatta, were the only ones that were widely considered to be free and fair. Indeed, many boldly declared at the time that Kenya’s democracy had matured, whatever that means. Many could not foresee that the very next elections would drive Kenya to the brink of the precipis. Yet the 2002 elections were unique in that the two leading presidential candidates were both Kikuyu, thereby considerably reducing the impact of politicised ethnicity (or ethnicised politics). Kibaki’s 2002 presidential candidacy, supported by two large ethnic groups (the Kikuyu and Luo) and a number of not very small ones, got a landslide victory, making it difficult for the loser to contest it or tinker with it. Come the 2007 elections, and the old rivalry between the Kikuyu and Luo elites was revived in the persons of Kibaki and Raila, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

As NDP was preparing to “merge” with KANU on 18^th March 2002, I repeatedly questioned the wisdom of this move in conversations with fellow Luo people, expressing serious doubt at the possibility of Moi tapping Raila for his successor. However, many of them replied to me in our shared tongue, “ONdiki”, that is “It is written”. They were referring to the fact that Moi and Raila had agreed to reconfigure the power arrangement in KANU to suit Raila’s presidential ambitions, and that the terms of the reconfiguration had been put down in writing by the party constitutional amendment that stipulated that the Secretary-General (read “Raila”) would be second in command. A fellow Luo even accused me of wishing Raila ill, and declared that I was one of the many Luos who are hell bent on pulling their brothers down instead of supporting them in their endeavours to achieve great things! In response, I told them that they had an inordinately strong faith in written agreements. They were soon to begin to see what I meant when, as they were smarting with disappointment and anger due to Moi’s choice of Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor, Moi himself declared to a crowd in Kisumu that “KANU IKO NA WENYEWE (KANU has its owners).” History had validated my evaluation.

 

A consideration of the foregoing events leads to at least four conclusions:

1.      Kenya’s political parties are vehicles of immediate convenience rather than carriers of ideology.

2.      Kenya’s ethnic elites, like their counterparts all over the world, are guided by expedience rather than principles.

3.      It is crucial that a coalition with a wide appeal be formed by either one of the main contestants for power to ensure a landslide victory that would be difficult to distort through electoral malpractice or to competently challenge in a court of law.

4.      Politicised ethnicity (or ethnicised politics) is with us to stay. Consequently, contrary to the prescription of Western liberal democracy that we build an ethnically blind society, we would do well to factor ethnicity into our political engineering instead of condemning it, for such condemnation has only produced a public culture of hypocrisy - where we declare that “We are one”, all the while executing ethnically-based political strategies.

 

 

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.

We Must not be Forced into an Ethnically-Blind Kenya

In the Saturday Nation of 6th March 2010,  my esteemed colleague, Tom Odhiambo, wrote an article titled “Dying of tribes is the only way to end tribalism”. The issues he raised continue to be pertinent almost seven years later, and were as pertinent more than four decades before he wrote the article.

 

Odhiambo suggests that the concern over disappearing “tribes” might be a worry of the “superior tribes” feeling uneasy that such a disappearance will leave them without someone to feel superior to. I would encourage Odhiambo to look at another possibility - that Kenyan minority ethnic groups feel strongly about the orosion of their identities as distinct cultural communities, and that they have a right to feel that way. Take the Yaaku community which was featured in the same Saturday Nation: they desire to maintain their identity, but are swamped by cultural and economic forces way beyond their control.

 

Odhiambo goes on to suggest that we would all be happy to wake up one morning to find that we all belonged to one “tribe”. This view seems to be based on a very high premium on social cohesion at the Kenyan level. What it fails to acknowledge is that Kenya as an entity is a colonial imposition which is not even one century old, having been conceived in 1920 when the said territory was declared to be a British colony. Why, then, must we feel obligated to maintain and enhance a colonial identity? What prevents us from building a strong multi-national state that respects our cultural diversity and ensures that each and every cultural group gets a fair share of the state’s resources?

 

Did we fight in 2007/2008 because we belonged to different “tribes”, as Odhiambo and those who share his view seem to think? Far from it: we fought because greedy politicians over-stimulated our ethnic sensitivities, and duped us into believing that their interests were our own.

 

In his celebrated 1994 essay, “The Politics of Recognition”, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor correctly observed that demand for recognition of cultural groups is given urgency by the link between recognition and identity. Taylor’s thesis is that members of a cultural group can suffer real damage if the people or society around them mirror back to them a demeaning picture of themselves. Consequently, urges Taylor, due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people; rather, it is a vital human need.

 

Odhiambo’s vision of a “tribeless” Kenya is inspired by the tired Western liberal democratic thought, which advocates the autonomy of the individual, ignoring the fact that individuals’ decisions are influenced by their cultural backgrounds. Again the Canadian Charles Taylor would be of real help to Odhiambo when he (Taylor) notes that the so-called difference-blind approach to politics tends to negate the identity of groups by forcing people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue to them. Minority cultures are then ‘forced to take alien form’, that of the dominant culture. The supposedly fair and difference-blind society is then not only ‘inhuman’ (by suppressing identities), but also ‘highly discriminatory’ against minority cultures.

 

Odhiambo correctly points out that there are many Kenyans today who are not happy to be identified with their purported ethnicities. However, from this fact it does not follow that we ought to obliterate ethnic identities from those Kenyans who are happy to retain them. The more reasonable inference would be that we ought to be tolerant of both perspectives.

 

For Odhiambo, members of smaller communities such as the Suba and the Tachoni have no basis for fearing being swallowed up by their more numerous neighbours. Such a view is quite typical among members of larger communities who are not motivated to delve into the real concerns of their minority counterparts.

 

According to Odhiambo, the questions asked in the process of obtaining identification cards today are evidence that ethnicity is fading out: really? Is Odhiambo aware of the fact that the Kenyan establishment has always preached against “tribalism”, only to be guided by it at every turn in the public policy road?

 

It is time to abandon the rampant denial of Kenya’s ethnic diversity, and to appreciate that if properly managed, it is an asset rather than a liability. Remember how the Communist countries tried to suppress religion? The result was the astronomical growth of underground religious organisations. We are in real danger of watering negative ethnicity through the persistent moralising against “tribalism”. Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki all moralised against it, but all that moralising did not avert the near cataclysm that was the post 2007 elections crisis. Let us therefore get out of the denial trap, and arduously work towards a society that fosters tolerance and fairness to all its members - both those who love their ethnic identities and those who prefer to disown them.

 

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.

 

Why I Do not Make New Year Resolutions

I have not made a single New Year resolution for more than sixteen years now. However, I do not condemn those who do. Nevertheless, I wish to give four reasons why I do not make such resolutions.

First, I do not make New Year resolutions because I do not wish to blindly follow the crowd. The easiest way to live is to do what most people do without asking why they do it. To some extent this is understandable, because from childhood we learn a lot of what we do and believe by imitation. My two little boys want to “work” at my laptop because they see me busy at it; one of them has even declared that he will go to work, get money and buy me a toy! Nevertheless, now that I am a grown up,  I need to chart the path of my own life, and a major part of this endeavour is to determine to desist from acting in certain ways simply because most people act so. I therefore do not make New Year resolutions because I do not wish to be a conformist, but rather a reformer if not a revolutionary. History is made by the few people who dare to be different in the name of personal and social progress: the vast majority who keenly but uncritically conform to tradition are only its backdrop. 

Second, I shun New Year resolutions because they very often arise from baseless optimism. To be sure, I have met a few people who carefully choose their New Year resolutions based on an incisive evaluation of their lives, and take concrete action to implement them throughout the year. Nevertheless, for most people, such resolutions are borne out of the illusion of "new beginnings". Thus year after year, as December draws to a close, I hear politicians declaring that the “New Year” will be markedly different from the old one - that it will be a year of reconciliation, or of resolutely fighting corruption, or of addressing whatever other pertinent issue about which the citizenry has been pressurizing them, only for them to revert to their bad manners within a week or two. As for the vast majority of the citizenry, exhausted by the pressures and disappointments of the last twelve months, they are excited, declaring that the year that is beginning will certainly be better than the previous one. They make New Year resolutions, but by the beginning of April, many of them have forgotten their resolutions, or if they still remember them, they sadly have to admit that they have long abandoned them in practice. It is also very rare to find anyone reviewing how well they did with the resolutions of the year that is ending: why? Because this New Year resolution thing is very often about baseless optimism without real determination to see through the implementation phase. I often imagine that if a “New Year” was a person, I would tell him or her, “Enjoy the fondness with which you are being treated on 1^st January, but also understand that in the next twelve short months those who lauded you will be keen to dispose you as though you were a filthy garment or used tissue paper!”

Third, I do not make New Year resolutions because I wish to focus on lifelong objectives rather than those of a mere twelve months. Placing undue emphasis on a single year misses the point that what I am today is the result of years of my good and bad decisions, and what I will be twenty years from now, if indeed I still have that much time, will be the result of numerous decisions that I make over the coming nineteen years. What I want to keep asking is “Who am I?” “What is the purpose of my life?” “Is my lifestyle aiding me in achieving the purpose of my life?” Such questions cannot be addressed adequately through the making of New Year resolutions, but rather through deep soul-searching that soberly assesses the past and projects into the possible future. Thus instead of New Year resolutions, I want to be guided by awareness that grows into understanding and crystalises into genuine conviction; for genuine conviction translates into lifelong practice. Thus if I am overweight, I need to be aware of the extra Killos by standing on a weighing machine; I then need to understand the debilitating effects of carrying those extra Killos around day and night (dangers of systemic diseases, many of which result in early, or even sudden death); the understanding grows into a genuine conviction that I must take decisive lifelong action to keep my weight at a healthy level, and this will result in lifelong action to control my weight (diet and exercises), rather than a New Year resolution that I will break by April. This process is helpful whether I am dealing with personal financial management, use of time, hot temper, or the many other challenges that I may confront.

Fourth, I avoid New Year resolutions in pursuit of cultural decolonization. Making such resolutions entails conceding that the European New Year is also my Luo New Year. The declaration of a day as the beginning of a “New Year” is always based on a religious calendar that is tied to certain religious events. The Wikipedia article titled “Gregorian Calendar” lists the numerous religious calendars in the world today. Thus most, if not all, religions have their own distinct calendars. The calendar by which 1^st January is declared to be the beginning of a new year is based on European religion (and here I do not mean the teaching of Jesus Christ, for He is not a European). Recognising 1^st January as the beginning of a new year is paying allegiance to European gods, ancestors and kings.  As clearly indicated in the Wikipedia article I have just cited, the names of the months of the year that we use today are all in honour of European gods, ancestors and kings to whom I owe no allegiance:

• January: Janus (Roman god of gates, doorways, beginnings and endings).
• February: Februus (Etruscan god of death) Februarius (mensis) (Latin for "month of purification (rituals)" it is said to be a Sabine word, the last month of ancient pre-450 BC Roman calendar). It is related to fever.
• March: Mars (Roman god of war).
• April: The Romans thought that the name Aprilis derived from aperio, aperire, apertus, a verb meaning "to open".
• May: Maia Maiestas (Roman goddess of springtime, warmth, and increase).
• June: Juno (Roman goddess, wife of Jupiter).
• July: Julius Caesar (Roman dictator) (month was formerly named Quintilis, the fifth month of the calendar of Romulus).
• August: Augustus (first Roman emperor) (month was formerly named Sextilis, the sixth month of Romulus).
• September: septem (Latin for seven, the seventh month of Romulus).
• October: octo (Latin for eight, the eighth month of Romulus).
• November: novem (Latin for nine, the ninth month of Romulus).
• December: decem (Latin for ten, the tenth month of Romulus).

In another article titled "Names of the Days of the Week", the Wikipedia informs us that those are also all in honour of European gods.

I do not wish to suggest that I have any power to change the reckoning of years, as well as the names of months and the days of the week: I must relate to my employer, to the marketplace and to the state in terms of those foreign categories. What I have power to do, and what I am doing, is to preserve my liberty, as far as I am able, by refusing to conform to European cultures in personal aspects of my life about which I have considerable latitude to do things differently.

In sum, my view is that life is too short to be wasted on New Year resolutions whose practical lifespan is likely to be one to three months, and that are not solidly related to my long-term past and future. Instead, pursuit for awareness, understanding and conviction leading to decisive lifelong action is the way I endeavour to go. Every 1^st January the sun rises just the same way it does every other day, but the decisions I make daily affect the quality of my life and the lives of my family, friends, neighbours, country, and humankind as a whole.

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.

It is High Time We Set Up a Citizens’ Memory Bureau

As we draw closer and closer to the General Elections, politicians will invariably pick on a few issues with which to lure voters towards themselves.  As a result, the memory of many voters concerning the vital issues about which they intended to bring their tormentors to book at the ballot box will be very easily forgotten.  Yet in view of the fact that we lack a workable Recall Clause to tame our elected leaders during their term in office, it is crucial that we maximize on the power of the ballot.

A short trip down Memory Lane reveals a long list of political, social and economic injuries inflicted on us by most of the current key contenders for power, both in government and in the opposition.

Is it wise to gloss over the fact that the self-professed human rights activists of yester-years have become today’s big bullies in power, violating the right of citizens to express themselves through strikes, demonstrations and public rallies?

Must we not ensure that at the polling booths we take note of the fact that our M.P.s have proved that when it comes to matters of raising of their salaries and allowances, party divisions evaporate, and only reappear once they have concluded that particular illegitimate house business?

Perhaps most crucially, dare we forget how politicians regularly dishonour MOUs which they sign just before elections?  Can such people be trusted to deliver on the promises they have now begun to make to us?  Furthermore, does deliverance lie in the quarters of an opportunistic “Third Force” waiting on the wings to strike a bargain with whichever of the two “horses” carries the day?

Yet despite their plethora of political misdeeds, these power mongers know with certainty that they have one reliable way of escape from the voters’ wrath - the voters own short memory.  No matter how gruesome their actions, the politicians only need to wait a few weeks, and the worrying event will fly out of most Kenyans’ memory.  They can then present themselves as far-reaching reformers or champions of human rights, and they are sure to have an enthusiastic audience from many of us.  We are then in danger of swallowing their lies and catapulting them to power to increase their salaries, and to sustain the rampant systemic injustices.

Consequently, I suggest that we as Kenyan voters set up a Citizens’ Memory Bureau, charged with the responsibility of constantly reminding us about the shortcomings of our incumbent and aspiring leaders.  However, politicians would certainly seek to infiltrate and divert this bureau, as they have done with other civil society outfits.  We must therefore see to it that the board of this organisation consists of people from across the political divide, along with professionals of divergent political persuasions.  In this way, we shall ensure that the shortcomings of both government and opposition are equally highlighted, thereby enabling voters to make informed decisions.

Let us then not be carried away by the numerous “visions” and manifestos characteristic of electioneering seasons - those are merely products of technocrats geared to lure the voters.  Instead, we must look long and hard at the past in order to make the right decisions for our future.    For as the Jewish people say, it is in forgetting that we go back into captivity.

 

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.

We must Face Up to our Multi-ethnic Reality

At the dawn of independence, our political leaders told us that we needed to build a united “nation” – one in which we accepted each other as equals, regardless of factors such as race, creed and ethnicity.  However, the reality has been far from that ideal.  It is common knowledge that all the three regimes that have governed our motherland have engaged in open ethnic bias, while preaching an anti-tribalism message.  This has resulted in heightened inter-ethnic tensions in contrast to pre-colonial days, when our various communities engaged in some cattle raids and inter-ethnic skirmishes, but also in trade, technological exchanges and intermarriage.

What compounds our problem is that one of the easiest rallying points for politicians to marshal a following is the idea of ethnicity.  It is for this reason that they seek to be installed as “elders” of their communities.  From that vantage point, they can go to the negotiating table with other “elders” in the hope of clinching selfish deals.  Thus the very people who claim to be solving the problem of “tribalism” are the actual cause of it, engaging in what some social scientists have referred to as “politicized ethnicity”.  Yet common sense tells us that the Malaria parasite cannot itself be the cure for Malaria, and so our opportunist politicians cannot help forge real communication between our various ethnic groups.

Who can deny that lucrative parastatals and key ministries have almost always been headed by people from the ethnic group of the man in the “big house”?  Who can gainsay the fact that key positions in our security services have very frequently been held by people from the sitting presidents’ ethnic groups?  Who can disavow the fact that the allocation of our country’s resources has been skewed towards the regions from which the heads of state have hailed?  Yet the same appointing authorities and their associates trumpet how “de-ethnicised” they are!

After the 2007/2008 post-elections crisis, some politicians took this empty moralizing a notch higher by trumpeting the purported need for legislation to outlaw “tribalism”, and by overseeing the establishment of the "National Cohesion and Integration Commission". Such politicians claim that they are “nationalists”, that is, people who believe in working towards a de-ethnicised Kenya.  This pervasive hypocrisy has now resulted in unnecessary euphemisms such as references to “residents of central Kenya” instead of talking about “Kikuyus”, or “residents of Nyanza” instead of mentioning communities such as Kisiis, Kurias and Luos. This kind of euphemism is most painful when journalists report the inter-ethnic clashes that flare up sporadically in various parts of the country.

The term “nation-building” refers to the endeavour to forge a single “people” out of an ethnically plural society.  Yet we need to re-evaluate the rationale for such a venture.  Social theorists are agreed that among the key features of ethnicity are common history, material culture (tools, artwork etc.) and language.  These shared elements result in a feeling of community, even kinship, so that all those in the group see themselves as an “us”, as opposed to the “them” – those outside the group.  A successful process of nation building would therefore have to eliminate the “us-them” dichotomy.  Yet such elimination cannot be achieved by legislation, as laws cannot uproot the deep attachment that people have to their culture.

Think of how the criminalization of religion in Communist countries only resulted in its flourishing underground, while the “freedom of worship” in the West has not abated the march towards post-modern secularism.  This should tell us that legislating against “tribalism” will only cause the phenomenon to gain an unprecedented vitality in the underworld, and to erupt with vigour and venom at an opportune time.  To resume my medical metaphor, a drug wrongly administered can actually cause resistance in a pathogen instead of eliminating it, thus even encouraging it to reproduce faster.

In sharp contrast to the centuries’ old strong historical and cultural cords that bind members of an ethnic group together, the idea of Kenya is less than a hundred years old, having only been introduced by the British colonialists in 1920, when they renamed the then so-called East African Protectorate to Kenya.  Think of how difficult the quest for a Kenyan national dress has been: we all know what Maasai or Turkana or Giriama dress looks like, but there is no Kenyan dress to talk about – we can only try to design one now.  Consequently, we should be wary of any politician who tells us that he or she is first and foremost a Kenyan before being a Digo, or Kikuyu or Luo.  In fact it has now become abundantly clear that most, if not all, of the politicians who shout loudest against tribalism are the chief perpetrators of it.

It is therefore high time we boldly acknowledged that Kenya is not a nation; rather it is a multi-ethnic state.  Once we do this, we can undertake candid debate on how to manage this reality to the advantage of all involved.  It will then not be necessary to deny that Ford Kenya enjoys massive Bukusu following, or that the Orange Democratic Party has overwhelming Luo support, or that KANU has a vast Kalenjin grassroot base.  Instead, we shall put in place the legal framework for coalitions among the various parties, rather than camouflaging such alliances under single parties as happened with NARC in 2002, and with Jubilee and CORD in 2013.

Once we openly admit and accept the fact of our ethnic plurality, the ground will be ready for discussion on how the various communities can work together.  The 2002 elections in which Kibaki was more popular in Luo Nyanza than Orengo, and in which Raila was briefly a darling of many Kikuyus because of his support for Kibaki, would then be the rule rather than the exception.

We also urgently need to strengthen democracy within the ethnic groups, or else our acknowledgement of our ethnic diversity will merely be fertile ground for opportunists to present themselves as ethnic chiefs.  Thus the dizzying and almost unchallenged hegemony of the Odinga family in Luo Nyanza, the close to divine status of Moi among some sections of the Kalenjin umbrella of ethnic groups, and the breath-taking veneration of Kibaki in Nyeri must be replaced by vigorous internal debates to determine the political destinies of the various communities.  Once this is done, the communities can then be engaged in inter-ethnic negotiations with a view to identifying ways through which they can be of mutual benefit to one another.  If this process goes on long enough, ethnicity will become a peripheral issue in our collective psyche, as various ethnic groups gain a deep appreciation for one another and other concerns take centre stage.

Due to our politicians’ persistent but empty moralizing against “tribalism”, it is now widely believed that once ethnic sympathies are eliminated from our midst, all our political tensions will be buried in the sea of forgetfulness.  Those holding such a view will do well to look at Somalia, where for more than two decades Somalis have been maiming and killing fellow Somalis, despite belonging to one ethnic group.  For the fact of the matter is that it is part of human nature to cluster, if not as ethnic groups, then as clans or families or genders or members of a religious faith or of an economic class.  What we urgently need is a workable long-term formula of managing such clustering instead of denying it. We must begin to ask, without shame, camouflage or euphemism, how fairly the country's economic and political resources are being shared among its various ethnic groups. Let us stop living a lie.

 

 

 

We Must Teach History like Never Before

Over the past few decades, the international financiers who call themselves “donors” have discouraged Third World countries from promoting the humanities and social sciences in institutions of higher learning. Their view is that such subjects are irrelevant, if not an outright waste of time, for countries striving to feed and clothe their impoverished populations. Yet human beings are not merely organisms desiring food and clothing; rather, they are also rational and emotional beings whose quality of life is greatly enhanced when these two latter faculties are developed – and this is where the humanities and social sciences come in.
What is more, a mature citizenry, one capable of making intelligent choices, knows its history, social dynamics, fine art, literature, and its philosophical orientation.
Let us therefore resist the forced death of the humanities and social sciences by insisting that our young people have a right to holistic education – not merely training that moulds them into cogs of international capital.

Reginald M.J. Oduor, Ph.D.