National redemption demands collective introspection

By Tom Odhiambo

"Then, one day, the chiefs voted to put bananas on our flag. They sneaked a banana verse in our evening prayers and ordered that it be said for afternoon tea too. That is how we became a banana republic." These are the opening words of Meja Mwangi’s latest novel, The Big Chiefs, a narrative that testifies to the collapse of a post-colonial African nation-state.

The Big Chiefs is an allegory; it is an old man’s walk ‘down memory lane’ in search of the essence that could redeem his society. The unnamed African nation-state is a fallen one. It is haunted by a genocidal violence that nearly annihilated a part of its population. Definitely it is not difficult to see the spectacle of the genocide in Rwanda in The Big Chiefs. The similarities between the attempts by the Hutu to exterminate the Tutsi and the effort by the ‘big chiefs’ to wipe out the whole population of the so-called cockroaches in the tale are unmistakeable. But probably there is where the literalness of the novel ends.

In one sense, The Big Chiefs can be read as an indictment of leadership in postcolonial Africa. The text is more of a drama of what afflicts Africa’s political class than a mere fictive recreation of the genocide in Rwanda, and possibly the murderous violence that was witnessed in this country in the wake of the December 2007 General Election. This is why we should reflect on the notion of ‘a banana republic’ alluded to at the beginning of this essay.

There is intense debate whether Kenya is a failed State. There are erudite manuscripts on how and why a majority of post-colonial African nation-states are irredeemable; on why, possibly, only recolonisation will help us out of the rotten state; on when and how things started going wrong with the main culprit being identified as the ‘carrying over of colonial institutions into the independent era’. There are arguments galore out there suggesting Africa is cursed and the curse is its leadership. That is the pessimists’ verdict.

Victim of colonisation

But there are also sharply-argued tomes that will go to any lengths to convince one Africa is a victim. And that as a victim of colonisation and neo-colonialism, especially now from all over the world including the Russians, Chinese, Japanese and such other formerly non-Imperial Powers, Africa needs to pull together and fend off both the old and new enemies; she needs sympathy and reparations for having been raped and culturally disoriented by the colonisers.

Both sides of the divide have their merits. But the bigger question of how the near and already banana nation-States of Africa came to be begs an answer. How does one start to rationalise how Somalia, a nation-State that is not among those African countries where tribes can be tinder for interethnic war, fell apart? How did Sierra Leone and Liberia get so rotten as to disintegrate so easily? Why is a country so mineral laden like the Democratic Republic of Congo so perpetually unstable? How could some Kenyans just wake up one morning and issue their neighbours with quit notices or declare war on them? A glance across the continent from Egypt down to the Republic of South Africa reflects back a powerful image: Instability. How and why? And what can be done to ‘stabilise’ the continent?

The Old Man in The Big Chiefs has something to offer those who may despair. He revisits an old theme: Bad leadership. But his introspection on poor leadership offers insight into how collective failure can destroy a nation.

We are currently debating the shortcomings of post-colonial leadership in the country. Many of us are disappointed by the failures of the regime that ushered in Uhuru. Jomo Kenyatta’s government is being blamed for bequeathing us tribalism and unequal distribution of resources. But we conveniently forget that accusing dead men will take us nowhere. Couldn’t former president Moi have corrected the mistakes his predecessor might have made? Indeed Moi rectified some blunders; but he also made his. Yet he can argue he left us a relatively peaceful country. For sure, the so-called ‘tribal clashes’ had been with us from years before. But ethnic animosity had not become the ‘badge of honour’ that it is today.

The current regime still has the time to make amends and reparations over the iniquities of the past.

Our ‘chiefs’, as opposed to Mwangi’s, still have a grace period within which to secure their ‘legacy’ as Kenyans would say. The significance of the old men and women in the rituals of national dialogue and reconciliation cannot be gainsaid.

Power-drunk Chiefs

If we are seeking genuine peace, we may need to urge leaders, including those retired, to play a leading role in that search. We should expect nothing less from them but a commitment that they shall act wisely not like power-drunk chiefs in The Big Chiefs.

Like the Old Man, our chiefs should renounce violence and advise the young that differences can be bridged through peaceful means. Threats, intimidation or incarceration of oppositional voices; corruption, greed and navel-gazing among the political elite and ignoring the poor in the society can only lead to instability. A natural reaction by the politico-economic elite, in defence of their ill-acquired wealth and power, is to balkanise the same marginalised poor into artificial or false ethnic groups who are then urged to take up arms to ‘defend what is ours!’

Therefore, the only way to arrest the slide into a banana state is to guarantee peace, security and some degree of equity in the distribution of national resources and opportunities for all.

Can Kenya’s old men and women be ‘big enough’ and assume the responsibility to bequeath us the expected Uhuru na Madaraka that so much bled was for, even if belated? Can they deliver us from disease, poverty and ignorance? Or will they leave us an inheritance of mendacity, hunger, post-election violence, police brutality and the general animosity that have ravaged our bodies and souls in the recent past? That is Meja Mwangi’s challenge in The Big Chiefs.