The political society called the Republic of Kenya today wasn’t of our own creation. It’s a colonial concoction born out of the evil designs of European imperialism in the Age of Empire. The British carved Kenya out in the scramble for Africa and forcefully put us together for their ease of exploitation.
Kenya is a victim state. So, except for recent additions to the republic, the 40-plus nation groups who call Kenya home were beaten into colonial submission and lumped together. No choice there. That’s why Kenya is a political experiment. It’s not irreversible. Kenyans will not live together and cohere into one nation if the state becomes a Kikuyu-Kalenjin duopoly. Kenya must fully belong to us all.
Let me channel Dr David Ndii for a minute. Dr Ndii is a restless but brilliant intellectual albeit one given to strange outbursts. But he makes up for that failing with the occasional seminal thought. In one of his more remarkable eruditions, Dr Ndii opined that we needed to talk divorce because Kenya is a “cruel marriage.” He meant that the country belonged to a couple of nation groups at the expense of all the others. I don’t have the foggiest whether Dr Ndii still holds the same view now that he’s dining at the high table where he’s obviously high on the hog. But he was right then, and he would be right today if he’s intellectually honest.
President William Ruto, Dr Ndii’s boss, wouldn’t argue with his subordinate’s prior wisdom. In the emerging divergence between President Ruto and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, his tempestuous numero dos, Dr Ruto has put a marker down. In nomenclature not so subtle, President Ruto has in effect told Mr Gachagua to cut it out. He publicly and unequivocally rejected the idea that Kenya is a company limited by shares held only by the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin who overwhelmingly voted for Kenya Kwanza. He termed this idea propagated by Mr Gachagua as “primitive.”
Ethnic divisionism
He said his government will develop the whole country no matter how people voted. He decried the ethnic divisionism and “splitism” championed for GEMA — in reference to the Gikuyu Embu and Meru — by Mr Gachagua. Recently, Mr Gachagua attempted to tell MPs how to do their jobs and exercise their national mandate. In Mr Gachagua’s telling, an MP should sit only in his constituency and never go anywhere else in the republic, or comment on matters outside their constituency.
Mr Gachagua wants every MP to become a myopic villager. But this rule doesn’t apply to him. He can roam the entire republic saying whatever comes to his noggin. What’s behind Mr Gachagua’s re-interpretation of the constitutional mandate of MPs? The man from Mathira wants to kill opposition against him in Mt Kenya and keep “foreigners” from “meddling” in its politics. He wants his Central Kenya opponents tethered in the Mountain and people from the Rift Valley kept out.
In a remarkable retort, President Ruto reached back and used a term once employed against him in the previous regime. Directly contradicting Mr Gachagua, President Ruto told MPs to “tanga tanga” everywhere because that’s the only way they can effectively exercise their triple national constitutional duties of oversight, legislation, and representation.
It’s clear Dr Ruto doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Mr Gachagua on the on the “one-man, one-shilling” mantra adopted by some in the Mt Kenya region. It’s a formula that will pit community against community, and one region against another. Kenya’s constitutional model requires the wise application of the norms of equity and equality. Choosing one over the other, especially in sharing resources, will retard Kenya as an idea. Kenya won’t be irreversible if we don’t shun tribalism.
That’s why toxic conclaves like Limuru III or the “one-man, one shilling, one vote” call must be locked up in the dustbin of our history and the key thrown in the deep of the ocean. Mr Gachagua wasn’t elected Deputy President to champion the interests of Mt Kenya. He’s a national leader who must care whether all – and I mean every – community is taken care of. If he wants to use taxpayer money and the power of his office to dominate Mt Kenya and steer the national largesse there to the exclusion of other peoples, then he needs to resign or be impeached. Does he want to be a village chief or the Deputy President?
Tribal nativism
Kenyans must shun the politics of tribal nativism if we are to cohere into a nation of ideas. The top national leaders must lead the way, as Mwalimu Julius Nyerere did in Tanzania. Kenyans can’t forever be sullen spectators to a tribal tennis match between Central Kenya and the Rift Valley. That duopoly will break Kenya. Mr Gachagua must be reined in otherwise he will harden ethnic feelings and further alienate Kenyans from one another. The “tyranny of numbers” has never built a nation. Look at the US. Its success has come about because of its determination forge ahead with inclusive politics in spite of racist White nativism.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.
Source link : https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/opinion/kenya-is-not-an-ethnic-duopoly-4651732
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Publish date : 2024-06-08 21:00:00
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