Kenyan dream will be tenable if youth reject tribal alliances

By Tom Odhiambo

A time comes when a man and a woman leave their parents to become one. Marriage creates a new family, clan or community.

Yes, a time comes when the youth have to leave familiar grounds, the people, the home, the village, or the community, which made them who they are, to find and make a new life for themselves.

Millions of young men and women, the world over, have rejected their parents’ wishes and orders or cultures to forge new relationships, to get married, to start careers and start families on their own. Often, we defy our parents’ dreams to make our own.

This is not rebellion. It is just that at some point in life, one will have to make difficult choices, decisions that may in some circumstances, be seen as disrespect or even criminal. Today is such a time in Kenya for many youths.

Kenya youth must reject calls to give their political souls and lives to ethnic associations such as Gema and Kamatusa, and any other organisations whose principal philosophy is ethnic superiority and supremacy.

Ethnic nationalism means that either the Gikuyu or the Kalenjin or the Luo or the Luhya see themselves as special, as communally better than other Kenyans. This kind of thinking ruled in Kenya for a decade and a half since independence when a few among the Kiambu Kikuyu saw themselves as just not better than the rest of the Kikuyus but as possessing a God-given right to domineer over the rest of us.

Whenever they felt that this God-given ‘right’ was threatened, they called on the rest of Kikuyus, Embu and Meru to protect their power and money.

Some Kalenjin behaved similarly beginning 1982 and reached a climax in 1992 when they deemed that the then President Moi’s government was threatened by ‘opposition’ tribes, mainly seen as Kikuyu and Luo.

The post-referendum Narc regime was about defending Kikuyu power. Yet all regimes these groupings have sought to defend have been usually elected by voters from across the country.

Now, have these past ethno-nationalist behaviours been in the interest of the particular community in power? Was Limuru II just like the Limuru of 1969 in any way serving all Kikuyus? What about the Kamatusa meeting; how many young Tugen, Marakwet, Pokot or Maasai women and men even know what the acronym stands for? Were these parleys held to pursue the economic, cultural, social or spiritual interests of the interested communities? How many people, between the age of 18 and 35 were allowed to speak at the two meetings? And, what’s the fundamental difference between the calls by the Mombasa Republican Council that they deserve to rule at the Coast and the claims by Gema and Kamatusa to rule over Kenyans?

The future of this country doesn’t only belong to wealthy Kenyans and their families. The future doesn’t belong to women and men who tell young people that it is tribe A or B that wants to steal their money or stop them from power. If you are a young man in Eldoret, Nakuru, Nyeri, Kiambu, Embu or Murang’a, reject claims that some Luo, Luhya, Kisii or Kamba intends to make you poor or powerless. There is no tribe that rules Kenya; it is a few individuals from some tribe.

Kenya’s future doesn’t belong to priests who will pray for crimes against humanity suspects while a few kilometres away, IDPs languish in camps.

The youth should disown such ungodly men. The youth should say their own prayers of peace, love and unity. They should seek to engender nationalism. If Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto and Eugene Wamalwa believe they represent the youth, they must turn back from ethno-nationalism and assure the rest of Kenyans that they still believe in the Kenyan nation.

They must desist from politics of insults, anger, innuendos, war mongering, or alienation that seems to waft from their rallies and meetings.

Instead they should seek to persuade, convince and assure the rest of us that we all belong to Kenya. If the youth is the future, then it must offer hope of renewal to the rest of Kenyans.

Kenyan youth must say ‘No’ to the Gemas and Kamatusas of today because these are merely vehicles for political blackmail and intimidation. If one day these political matatus and tuk tuks become worthwhile economic groupings, then the youths of Kenya will have reason to join them.

The writer is a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi