Devolution may come a cropper if we do not adopt a new political culture

P Anyang’ Nyong’o

The referendum is now over. The dust is settling. Kenyans’ attention is now being drawn to the implementation of the constitution, and the first task is the membership of the two implementation committees: the National Constitution Implementation Committee and the Parliamentary Oversight Implementation Committee.

Important as these two committees are, more attention should be paid to the issue of the counties, not in the banal way in which some elite are already seeing them as opportunities for upward mobility in the electoral process, but as the new focal points for national development. Enough emphasis has been made on the importance of devolving 15 per cent of the national budget to counties. This will lead to more equitable development and national integration of our people and our economy. It will also reduce the political tensions that have bedeviled the stability of our nation as communities see the competition for the presidency as the only way of accessing resources to the people.

This "presidency-focused" political competition has been the preoccupation of Kenyans as long as the authoritarian presidency was the fulcrum of Kenyan politics. With the devolution of both power and resources to the counties, the fulcrum of politics will likewise be devolved, with equally intense competition being felt at the county level.

But all this may become a cropper if we do not begin to prepare for a new political culture. First and foremost this culture needs to be shaped by public discourse in the media, in Parliament, by entrepreneurs both big and small and among the people themselves.

To begin with, the province is dead and buried. Anybody who has invested in the politics of the province must move on to embrace the political culture of the county.

The media needs therefore to begin analysing issues in terms of counties. For example, what was the pattern of voting during the referendum in terms of counties? How many counties are likely to elect to Parliament more than five Members of Parliament? Is there adequate infrastructure in the counties to ensure they will take advantage of the resources available to speed up agricultural development? These are some of the questions that will prepare Kenyans for the new political dispensation that comes with the new constitution.

Further, as a result of the referendum campaigns, there is need for intense civic education to civilise Kenyans out of the politics of ethnic exclusion to the politics of positive cultural identity within a national culture of social solidarity. The campaigns that tended to isolate certain ethnic communities from a Kenyan national identity due to the fact that the new constitution would deprive them of land, hence victimise them economically need now to be addressed positively by dismissing any such isolationist claims.

The new law does not provide the Government, or any other entity, with powers to deprive anybody of private property. Hence ethnic targeting is opposed to the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights.

At the county level, therefore, popular involvement in decision-making and economic development needs to be emphasised as an important gain for the people, giving them fresh opportunities to mobilise their own resources and energies for self-improvement. Here, of course, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere got it right: development is first and foremost about the improvement of the "life chances" of the individual person before it influences the growth in the Gross Domestic Product.

Much more important, however, is the importance of investing in civic education as a long-term project of national development and national integration under the new Constitution. In this regard, Kenyans need to learn from the experience of the Germans after the Second World War.

Having gone through a painful history of fascism and the defeat of the German nation in the War, the Germans were a demoralised and discredited people after the War. The ideology of fascism itself had been internalised by many Germans, including some of those who actually suffered under it, and to create a democratic nation under the new Federal Democratic Republic of Germany was not going to be easy. A deliberate process of political socialisation and engineering was necessary. This became the task of the political foundations, such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which were funded by the State though allied to certain political parties and orientations.

Civic education in Kenya needs to be seen in this perspective. In fact, civic education has just started and will have to go on for many years as Kenyans get civilised out of the repressive political culture ingrained in them during the many years of living under authoritarian rule. Politics of inclusiveness will need to give way to the politics of inclusion over time. Ethnic profiling will need to be deliberately shunned as a national political culture gives identity to Kenyan citizens.

In that regard, the county will be a primary focal point of national identity where civic education will need to be intense and deliberately carried out not only to make the county citizens identify actively with their local political system but also to know the linkages they have to the nation, and their rights and obligations to both the county and national government.

This identity will only become real in people’s lives through the changes that people will experience in their lives as a result of this new devolved system of Government. So performance and results are vital; let leaders with ambition to become county governors not see such positions only as "retirement havens". Indeed, Kenyans need to realise the development potential of this nation now lies with what will happen to county governance and developmental outcome.

The writer is Minister for Medical Services