Kenyans, political class are travelling on familiar road of negative ethnicity road

Barrack MulukaIn 1920, American poet Robert Frost published his famous poem, The Road Not Taken. Frost’s poem, concurrently rendered in the fashion of an iambic tetrameter and hypermeter, is celebrated not just for its beauty of form, but also for its enigmatic conclusion."Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller," Frost said. He continued in part, "I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference."He concluded, "I shall be telling with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." The riddle resides in the sigh at the end. "Ages and ages hence," he will tell the story "with a sigh". For, what difference did the taking of the road not taken make? It could be a sigh of relief, or it could be the sigh of regret; I do not know. However, when you know the road taken, you can tell the nature of the sigh the wayfarers are bound to make. You cannot travel by the familiar path and expect to end at a different destination. The Kenyan nation is travelling by the familiar road. Ages and ages hence, it is likely to be the same old story, told with the same old rueful sighs and tears. I was in Bukura, Kakamega, last Saturday, to mourn a departed friend. Councillor Evans Ashibikha was a friend from my youthful 1970s. As is the custom, the political class abused the funeral. They turned the mournful occasion into an orgy of threats and insults. The place was awash in verbal diarrhoea and constipation of ideas. Nobody sat down before bathing someone else in pure verbal sewage. The grand climax was when verbal diarrhoea eventually gave way to honourable fisticuffs. I saw how designer shoes fashioned in London, shod on honourable feet, could kick a honourable man as ordinary village children cheered, in an ordinary African village. I saw how a honourable fist could connect with a honourable jaw. Such are our honourable leaders.But honourable fisticuffs in the village are not even the issue. These fellows have no face to lose. That is why it does not bother them that they talk dirty and throttle each other before a village crowd. The worrying thing is rather the display of raw ethnic machismo. You recall how only three weeks ago I said in this column that I should reject to be part of a gullible cheering ethnic crowd. Leader after leader stood up to menacingly remind us how the time had come for one of us to take over at State House. We do not owe the Kikuyu anything. Nor do we owe the Luo or the Kalenjin anything.Anyone who does not think that the Abaluhya should produce the next president does not even deserve to be called a Muluhya, we were told. A team of journalists covering the event was threatened with banishment for saying in the Press that "Luhya ministers do not support Musalia Mudavadi’s presidential campaign". Never mind that every speaker threatened "Luhya ministers who do not support the DPM" with political perdition. At this juncture, we were asked to demonstrate by show of hand our commitment to a Luhya taking over from President Kibaki, no matter what. Hands flew into the air. Wild clapping. Perhaps this was going to be my last day, I thought. My arms remained tightly clasped across the chest in my trademark fashion. My mother did not take me to school so that I should become a part of wild ethnic choruses. I wish the Abaluhya presidential aspirants well, of course. I may add that I could very well vote for one of them, if he convinces me that he has something to offer the Kenyan nation. But I am not about to run after any mobile object just because it bears the tag "Abaluhya." I am averse to Abaluhya negative ethnicity no less than I am to negative ethnicity from other tribes. But this negative ethnicity played itself out again in Parliament. The debate on Central Bank Governor Njuguna Ndung’u and the fall of the shilling was scandalous. Issues sank under the weight of raw ethnic sentiment. People spoke from ethnic passions. It was appalling. Parliament has steadily degenerated into tribal shame headquarters. Days when members addressed issues out of national passion are long gone. The place is suffocating under the putrid odour of ethnicity. Because you know that you will enjoy the support of the tribal surrogate, you do not even respect the decorum that should be the hallmark of business in the House. And so Yatta MP Charles Kilonzo brings to the House papers of dubitable integrity. He charges that the ICC, the British Government and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have conspired to fix DPM Uhuru Kenyatta, Eldoret North MP William Ruto and President Mwai Kibaki.Good grief, what has Parliamentary decorum come to? Martin Shikuku and JM Kariuki would never do such a thing when Evans and I were young people in the golden ‘70s. They spoke for Kenya, not for Kikuyus against Luhyas and vice versa.In all this, one thing is clear. We are once again travelling on the familiar road. The political class is leading the choir of the drums of ethnic passion, in Bukura, Eldoret and Kiambu. Dissent has been criminalised. If you cannot say Mudavadi in Bukura, you are a traitor. If you do not say Uhuru in Kiambu, you should fall sick. And if you say anything seen as against Ruto, even in this column, you get a plethora of hate mail from his tribesmen. The thing about ethnic passions is that they ripen like bananas. When you walk into the room, you smell the ripeness. They are like a baby, coming to birth. Nothing can stop it. We simply do not learn, do we? The writer is a publishing editor and media consultant

Kenyans, political class are travelling on familiar road of negative ethnicity road

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