Stop ‘ethnic’ race to bottom and grow Project Kenya

The campaign season is in full swing as politicians mobilise their voting blocs to register. And because our national elections are essentially ethnic censuses, the patterns of mobilisation have been purely ethnic. It is true that as a country we have been made to think this is normal, and just the way things work. But I would like to remind us that the naked practice of ethnic politics is something that should not be normalised. We should still demand basic decency and respect from our politicians.

Perhaps the most tragic thing about negative ethnicity in Kenyan politics is our blind acceptance of its inevitability. Our education system does precious little to educate our people of the malleability of ethnic identities; or the fact that a good chunk of our population is composed of multi-ethnic individuals.

Throughout history our different cultural groups have intermarried and engaged in all manner of economic and social exchanges. People have switched ethnic groups, by marriage or migration. People have learned and become fluent in languages that were not their mother tongues. Our refusal to accept this reality is reflected in the elite aversion to investments that would promote the learning of our languages outside of their geographic origins. And it is costing us a lot.

As a country, we are culturally poorer because of the barriers we have built between our different cultural groups. We are also economically poorer, because of the distrust we have built in our hearts and minds about each other. Imagine what country we would be if we were all free to live, work, and own property wherever we wanted? Why should the lottery of birth determine where each of us lives within our borders?

Now, even if we forgot the idealism of total ethnic acceptance, there is still a way in which our inter-ethnic rivalries could have been channeled to produce a much better outcome. Imagine if the nature of inter-ethnic competition involved building and operating the best roads, schools, water systems, and hospitals. Or investing in the learning of our histories, arts, and cultures. Or in the design and construction of civic buildings that encapsulated our localised notions of what it means to belong in a state.

I think most reasonable people would argue that this kind of inter-ethnic competition would result in a much better outcome for the entire country. Competition would force our different ethnic chiefs to think critically about the improvement of public goods and services in their different ethnic homelands. And all Kenyans would be better off.

And I would go as a far as to suggest that this kind of inter-ethnic competition would actually end up being inclusionary. If, for instance, it emerged that the Giriama had it right, it would create incentives for other cultural groups to copy what the Giriama did, and in a sense, we would all become a little Giriama. Further competition and borrowing would in turn allow us all to build a rich national collective, full of contributions from the very best of each of our different cultural communities.

Instead, however, what we have is a race for the bottom. It is the practice of inter-ethnic competition in a manner that only benefits the ethnic chiefs; and which is inherently exclusionary. The same ethnic chiefs have no understanding of their histories. They invest precious little on cultural production, but cut down other cultural groups.

And the fact that they are basically guaranteed public support means they constantly under-invest in essential public goods and services. Our ethnic chiefs are agents of our economic and cultural stagnation.

For the longest time we have lamented the fact that we have not invested much in Kenya as a country, partly because we are too hang up on our different ethnic groups. I would argue that we have done neither.

Part of the reason we have not invested in the Kenya Project is because we have no understanding of how to collectively harness the powers and talents of our people, whether at the clan level or the ethnic group level. We steal from Kenyans with the same rapaciousness with which we steal from our co-ethnics.