Tribal slur only serves to defeat the war against graft that is rife in Government

NAIROBI: The most useful thing about the tribe is that it is a weapon in primitive societies. By the same token, it is the most useless thing about the tribe in modern times. You can employ the weapon of tribalism against other tribes, regardless that you have justification or not. This is why the political class invests in tribal hostility.

A governor somewhere may accordingly deflect public debate from the main issues to bring in a cultural angle that has nothing to do with the great questions of the day. A tribe that does not circumcise its men may be ridiculed.

The aim is to kill the original debate while preparing your tribe to pounce upon the other tribe, should the original debate continue. A matter of national importance becomes an emotive and divisive tribal affair. The original debate is thus lost and buried. Traditionally, having clear tribal identity was vital for survival. The tribal “army” at once secured the breed against external attack and initiated attacks against others. Equally important was the need to preserve the identity group through reproduction. Children were born as an assurance that the tribe would survive as a homogeneous community.

Marriage to outsiders was discouraged – sometimes in a hostile manner. To marry an outsider was to dilute breed identity. Sometimes it was even an act of betrayal.

Besides, the tribe considers itself a moral community. It has intra-group laws, rules and regulations governing relations and behaviour. The ethical and moral firmament is limited to members of the tribal group. Anybody who does not belong to the group is excluded from acts that are unacceptable within the tribe.

Hence while killing may be taboo in some tribe, killing an outsider may be acceptable. It may indeed be even heroic. You may not steal from a member of the community. But you can steal from anybody else – even kill in the process.

We read of the Igbo tribal hero, Okonkwo, in Chinua Achebe’s seminal novel, Things Fall Apart. Among the factors defining his heroism is valour in war. When we first meet him, he has already killed five people. In his clan’s last two wars, he was the first person to bring home human heads.

Thus on festive occasions, he proudly displays the skull of his first victim. He drinks palm wine from it while lesser men drink from ordinary domestic vessels with women.

A real man among these people is never afraid of blood. But we get to learn that it is not just any blood. First it must be human blood. Secondly it must be the blood of an outsider. Yet, even here, there are checks that would bring to shame Kenya’s bloodthirsty tribal politicians. The people of Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia, receive a young lad – Ikemefuna – as ransom after an enemy clan has slain a daughter of Umuofia. The boy lives under Okonkwo’s roof. He learns to look at Okonkwo as his father. And Okonkwo is very proud of the boy, treating him as a son.

In the fullness of time, however, the Oracle decrees that Ikemefuna must be killed. Okonkwo does not hesitate to kill the boy with his own hands. The man’s conscience is only troubled for a few days. How do you cut down a boy who has lived under your roof, calling you “father”? Even if the tribal gods said the boy must die, how do you become the one to kill him? Yet do we see latter day tribal gods in the guise of political overlords decreeing the death of people who have become a part of us?

In traditional African society, you don’t kill people who have lived with you. They become a part of your family. Before the killing of Ikemefuna in Achebe’s story, the oldest man in the clan – Ezeudu – visits Okonkwo to caution him to have no hand in the killing of the boy. “That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death,” the old man says.

Fearing that people might think he is afraid of blood, Okonkwo ignores this advice. Later, in conversation with his best friend – a man called Obierika – Okonkwo suggests that Obierika did not participate in the killing because of cowardice. Obierika admonishes him, “Let me tell you one thing, my friend. If I were you, I would have stayed at home. What you have done will not please the earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families.”

When people have lived with us, we learn to trust them. We get to understand why they don’t do some of the things that we do. We also accept some “strange” things that they do. We all become part of an expanded new moral community. This is how new nations have evolved through history.

Fifty-two years after independence, it is shameful to find a governor addressing people he considers his tribal followers, vilifying people from another tribe because of something called circumcision. It is patently primitive. In Emanyulia where I was born, every boy aged four and above has had the cut.

We don’t waste time thinking about who is cut and who is not. We have far more important things to occupy our collective mind.

Some people have been asking a politician to apologise for his recent polarising public pronouncements about circumcision. The man says he will not apologise. And I think that is as it should be. Apology is part of civilised conduct. You cannot impose it upon atavistic mindsets that seek unity through external tribal symbols like circumcision and blood.

More spot on is the need for public consciousness and caution against the bigger sinister agenda that hides behind this ethnic sentiment. Someone is trying to feed you on tribal opium so that you can lose focus of what really matters.

Kenya is today in global crosshairs as the home of thieves. When we travel, people refer to us as “the people from the land of thieves.” Even global pariahs like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have the temerity to laugh at us. We occupy the same berth as Alberto Fuji Mori’s Peru, Jean Claude Duvalier’s Haiti, Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’s Philippines.

When we begin asking why we must be classed with the worst in the world, the political class will derail us with the weapon of the tribe. Suddenly, you are hearing that you are abusing the President. Some other one wants to label a whole tribe as thieves. Both sides are diversionary, divisive and wrong.

They only serve to defeat the fight against the plunder that is now rife in Government. Pray, keep tribes and tribalism out of the fight against theft. Even individual thieves are known by names. Let us deal with them at that level.