US-based author compares Kenyan politics to polygamy

       By ABENEA NDAGO
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Many westerners have written books about Africa’s conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Only two years ago, the Belgian Theodore Trefore’s The Congo Masquerade (2011) attempted a historical analysis of the same conflict.  Yet, what these analyses often lack is a touch of art, which that country personifies. What if people looked at Congo as a failed polygamous marriage, tracing her problems to the historical baggage between Joseph Mobutu’s (Ngbandi tribe), Joseph Kasavubu’s (Bakongo tribe), Patrice Lumumba’s (Batetela tribe), and Moise Tshombe’s (Balunda tribe) peoples?

That is exactly what a Kenyan author based in the US has done. He explores Kenya’s discordant politics through a marital lens. Joseph Alila’s Birthright (2011) may be an anthropological novel, but the reader will not help peeping into our national bedroom through it.  Whoever ascends to power in Kenya ought to instantly become a fair distributor of national wealth to over 40 households in the country’s family yard.