As the presidential elections appear around the corner, Kenyans are getting anxious about how they are going to manage an election in a toxic political environment poisoned by ethnic animosity.
In such troubling times, the role of intellectuals is crucial: to help Kenyans clarify the issues, and to help them imagine a different scenario that would help us vote peacefully and with our conscience and intellect - as opposed to violently and according to our primal instincts.
Yet over the last few weeks, Kenya's two main dailies have carried unfortunate opinion articles in which educated Kenyans appear just as imprisoned in the tribal framework as the rest of the population.
In the East African Standard was a debate between Onyango Oloo and Ken Opande on the vote of the "Luo Nation." Oloo criticizes the Luo [1] for failing to vote strategically and for instead voting the Odinga father and later the son almost to a man. Opande replied [2]a few days later, criticizing Oloo for speaking against a community that is intelligent enough to speak for itself, after which he defends the community against accusations (which Oloo did not make) of the community being hostile to presidential candidates other than Raila.
Neither of the two writers noticed the absurdity of speaking of a "Luo Nation" when we shall be voting for the president of the Kenyan nation. And the argument that one can embrace their ethnicity and be Kenyan at the same time is not very helpful. That's because the choice Kenya is faced with is not between ethnicity and nationhood; it's between justice, law and care for our most challenged and vulnerable populations on one hand, and on the other impunity, corruption and arrogant disregard for Kenyans from impoverished regions.
Secondly, the two gentlemen assume that Luos voted for Jaramogi and Raila only because the two Odingas are Luo. Did they consider, especially Opande who defends the Luo as intelligent, that maybe those who overwhelmingly supported either Odinga also did so because they believed in what either stood for?
As a staunch admirer of Jaramogi, I think the pity is not that Luos voted for him; it is that other tribes didn't. And if those who voted for Jaramogi did so with conviction, rather than ethnic adrenaline, there is nothing to apologize for. Voting should be a declaration of what we stand for, not a lottery in which we hope that ours is the winning ticket to the State House. Oloo and Opande would have helped Kenyans if they would clarify the voting issues, so that Kenyans everywhere can see the diversity of issues and opinions, not just of ethnic groups.
A similarly unhelpful discussion was sparked by Hassan Omar Hassan's criticism of Kibaki's Kikuyu-centric government. Hassan has received many criticisms for spreading ethnic hatred, but I will respond to that of Koigi wa Wamwere [3]. I resent Wamwere's articles because they are based on flawed reasoning and worse, he is given extensive space in the newspapers and politicians even quote him.
Yet Wamwere offers a shallow analysis of the complicated tribal quagmire in Kenya. His simplistic logic is that there are the Kikuyu elite and the poor Kikuyu. He normally doesn't say what Kenyans should do about the Kikuyu elite, but he says that the poor Kikuyus should not be banded together with the Kikuyu elite, and should be able to live and own land anywhere (he doesn't argue the same for poor from other ethnic groups).
What is frustrating about that argument, besides its flawed understanding of the intersection of economic class, gender and ethnicity, is the obsession with the innocence of Kikuyus from the lower classes, when that innocence is largely irrelevant.
It matters little whether the elite straddle across all ethnic groups; what matters is that they are exploiting us in the first place. No poor person gets food to eat and a roof over their head from knowing that poverty affects Kenyans from all ethnic groups. No bereaved person whose loved one died from poor medical attention is comforted by knowing that people from other communities die in the same way. No one suffering from injustice is consoled to know that it is not unique to their own ethnic group. There is no comfort in mediocrity and injustice just because the people who face it or perpetuate it are from all ethnic groups.
But Wamwere's criticism of Hassan proves that his constant defense of the Kikuyu non-elite is not just irrelevant; it is also tribalist. Wamwere rushed to defend Kikuyus even though Hassan had criticized Kibaki and not Kikuyus. Hassan condemned the impunity of the Kibaki government which is very Kikuyunized; which is very different from condemning the Kikuyu. Nowhere in the article did Hassan say that Kenya's next president should not be a Kikuyu; what he said was that most Kenyans will not want to vote a Kikuyu president because of the Kikuyu-centric poor leadership of Kibaki. So by defending the Kikuyu when Kibaki is criticized, Wamwere has done no different from the typical Kenyan politicians who, when criticized, say that it is their community which is being targeted.
Wamwere's article ends up being ethnocentric, despite the author's intentions, because it equates ethnocentrism to hatred and discrimination, when hatred and discrimination are merely the product of what Kenyans call tribalism. Ethnocentrism is a framework of viewing the world. In Kenya, it means interpreting everything in terms of a person's tribe. It means explaining someone's behavior or choices ONLY by the person's birth and never by the person's experience, ideas, belief, history and environment.
Tribalism is mediocrity, intellectual laziness and myopia, because one decides they don't need to know, learn or understand anything; they just need to look for the tribe. Tribalism is degrading because people no longer see themselves as human beings with a mind, body and soul; all they see of themselves and others is the blood running through their veins.
The promise of nationalism is therefore not the absence of tribalism. The promise of nationalism is the absence of this mediocrity. It is the ability to use our intellect and think creatively, to make wise political decisions and to love God and our fellow Kenyan. The promise of nationalism should be revolution which destroys the conditions that incubate our current vicious and voracious political elite. But the tragedy of nationalism shall be the failure of Kenyan thinkers to lead Kenyans in achieving that promise.