Why Kikuyu community must not be misled again

By Koigi Wamwere

Today, for a second time, Kikuyu leaders of the right hue will congregate in Limuru to chart the way forward for the community.

Last time these leaders met, it was to urge Kikuyus to vote for the new Constitution and all, believing leaders had read it for them.

What will they meet to discuss this time?

Many would want to believe, since most Kikuyu people are poor, their leaders will meet to discuss elimination of poverty among the Kikuyu and Kenyan people.

Despite false belief that most Kikuyus are ahead of other communities, poor Kikuyus are victims of vicious colonial poverty that breeds jiggers, emasculates male youth with alcoholism, recruits gang members for Mungiki and sets women against men in a war of sexes.

Because colonial loyalty was rewarded with land, education and work and Mau Mau rebellion punished with deprivation of same, Kikuyu poverty is a product of Kikuyu wealth which it is today recruited to defend.

Kikuyu leaders would also be expected to discuss the problem of IDPs whose camps stretch from Kenya to Uganda as a national eye sore that Kenyan and Kikuyu elites should clean up before their coalition government expires. But will they?

Limuru meeting should also condemn corruption by Kikuyu elites in Gema-affiliated firms, pyramid schemes and recent collapse of the shilling that impoverished millions of Kikuyus and other Kenyans but whose architect Kikuyu MPs defended in parliament.

At the meeting, Kikuyu leaders must also take a strong position against negative ethnicity and money as the two factors that most negatively influence elections and give us bad leaders.

On the other hand, negative ethnicity isolates Kikuyu community from other communities. It divides the nation during elections.

Unfortunately, Limuru meeting is not called to address Wanjiku problems but ethnic unity and dearth of good, inspiring and nationalist leaders in the Kikuyu community.

With the recent demise of John Michuki and Njenga Karume and ICC case hanging over Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kikuyu community feels leaderless while aristocrats urgently want to fill the vacuum of leadership with their own sons

The crisis of leadership among the Kikuyu has two faces. One face is ethnic as kikuyu elites scramble for power and resources with other ethnic elites. Second face is class, as ageing Kikuyu aristocrats like Michuki, Kenyatta, Karume and Kibaki fight to enthrone their sons and daughters in a struggle between haves and have-nots in the community.

Having been under the leadership of the rich for so long, this is the time Kikuyu people should make a paradigm shift in community leadership in order to include able but not rich men, youth and women as leaders. Why is it unthinkable that leaders from outside Kikuyu aristocracy like Martha Karua, Peter Kenneth or Paul Muite cannot give Kikuyu community and Kenya alternative leadership? Are some Kikuyus more equal than others?

The Kikuyuwant to enthrone Uhuru Kenyatta as king of the Kikuyu and president of Kenya, not on account of what he has done for Kenya like his father, but merely because he is his father’s son.

There is however an obstacle on Uhuru’s way to State House – ICC – which must be the real agenda of Limuru’s meeting. With ICC threatening to derail plans of Kikuyu haves to enthrone Uhuru Kenyatta, how shall the Limuru meeting deal with it? Resist ICC trial of Uhuru that everyone is advising against or look for alternative leadership that is not encumbered with ICC? If Uhuru is right now not eligible for presidency, shall the Limuru meeting advise the community to commit political suicide with an elections boycott or soberly look for an alternative leader?

To protect and enthrone Uhuru, how will the Kikuyu elite defy ICC without endorsing crimes against humanity, risking security of Kenya and jeopardising settlement of IDPs?

Among the Kikuyu, there is a sense of crisis but no sense of direction. While it is leaders who sacrifice for people, Kikuyu leaders want people to sacrifice for them.

As a former detainee, I sympathize with anybody on trial. However, political prisoners should not make unreasonable demands on people like hiding them, fighting for them or leading them from jail. A Kiswahili proverb says: ukishikwa shikamana. Once in trouble with authorities, unless they want to assassinate you, it makes more sense to face your fate sooner rather than later, than flee from the law which is itself captivity.

Ultimately, Kikuyu community is not just in a crisis but also at crossroads. Which way will it go – that of collaborators or freedom fighters? By excluding Kikuyu champions of second liberation from the Limuru meeting, self-serving elites want to take Kikuyu community away from the path of Mau Mau and freedom fighters.

COLONIAL CHIEFS

It wants to perpetuate leadership of colonial chiefs, home guards and loyalists through their sons and daughters.

Finally, at the Limuru meeting, Kikuyu elites there gathered, must discuss how it shall embrace leadership from other communities who prove better for Kenya than their own.

Like other communities, Kikuyu people have come along way. Before Europeans, they were Kikuyu nation. They became Kenyan under the heel of colonial rule. Today they are Kikuyu nation again. But they must move on and become Kenyan again. Then, like Kanu of independence, they will meet at Limuru, not to discuss ethnic interests but welfare of whole Kenya.

The writer is a former MP.

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