Shame of tribal jingoism and why elections are ethnic headcounts

A story is told of how Tom Mboya and his fellow nationalists sought to build the new Kenya without relying on ethnic connections.

When Mboya was ready to run for elective position, he chose a cosmopolitan Nairobi constituency, rather than the easy option of going back to his native Nyanza for a walk-over seat.

Similarly, former President Mwai Kibaki chose to run for Parliament in Donholm, before much later on going back to Othaya to represent his home constituency.

The new nation thus started off on a relatively safe premise, that anyone could effectively represent any constituency so long as they had a platform that those voters identified with.

public appointments

And then things changed. Matters went belly-up when, in the 1970s and 1980s, ethnicity rapidly came to trump every other attribute as the defining criterion when considering people for public appointments and government tenders.

Fast forward to 2014, it culminated in, for instance, the infamous exchange between former vice president Kalonzo Musyoka and a journalist of the “wrong” ethnicity, when Mr Musyoka rather acidly dismissed the poor journalist’s question with the dry put-down, “your last name betrays you”.

Kenyans, ever adaptable, have learnt to swim with this tide. In Kenya, your tribe can be determined using one of two methods – your last name, or your “home”, the particular tribal enclave from which you hail.

It is such a dependable marker of ethnic origins that yuppie Kenyans – the new generation of latte-swilling, Blankets-and-Wine-attending, loan-taking, Subaru-driving, movie-going, Western-accent-toting, Facebook-and-Twitter-inhabiting Kenyans – have chosen to do away with origins and last names altogether.

tribal names

A quick look at their social media profiles reveals volumes about the identity crisis that these Kenyans face – for one, they almost invariably use their first names only, with their tribal names represented by a mere initial.

Some go a step further and list – and introduce – themselves using two Christian names, a habit they must have picked up from Tanzanians.

It is not unusual, in Dar es Salaam, to run into someone called “Jane John” – the name is toted with no apparent sense of irony. In Swahili, too.

Our politicians have not been left behind. Elections being ethnic headcounts in Kenya, a politician’s last name betrays him long before he has said anything of note. Not that the Kenyan politician has anything of note to say, though.

At election time – or by-election time, such is the conduct of our elections that petitions almost invariably succeed, our politicians change into their ethnic outfits.

Rival tribes are called astonishingly colourful names, as every aspirant seeks to whip up the primitive energy inherent in his tribe.

In a normal country, this would end with the elections, and everyone would return back to ordinary. Not in Kenya, where the vast majority of politicians remain in permanent election mode.

ethnic bpigots

For our pampered political representatives, getting into Parliament is merely the beginning of a long, disgusting personal foray into the world of mudslinging, name-calling, and tribe-baiting.

And so, as the latest round of by-elections has ended and we have a few newly-minted MPs in the house, Wananchi should not be surprised when these supposed honourable members turn out to be little more ethnic bigots spewing more of the same tribal jingoism that has long coloured our politics.

Perhaps there is a solution to all this. Word around the country is that a referendum of one sort or the other is needed to “iron out” the Constitution. Unfortunately, Wananchi are again letting politicians drive the agenda, with their self-seeking “questions” for the proposed referendum, most of them designed to grab or hold onto power.

Maybe Wananchi should turn the tables and spearhead their own referendum.

With just one question to be approved by the voters – one that proposes that a politician is only allowed to run for election in a region that is not a “home area” of his tribe!