To save post-colonial Africa we must address co-existence

Kenyans should stop going gaga over David Ndii’s tease of secession. The idea isn’t radical, or even new. Secession is perfectly legal under certain conditions in international law. Some constitutions — like Ethiopia’s — explicitly provide for the right to secession. The right to secession is an integral part of the norm of self-determination. Self-determination is an ironclad and incontestable principle of international law. Colonisation wouldn’t have ended but for the right to self-determination. Kenya wouldn’t have become an independent republic without the right to self-determination. Folks shouldn’t be running around with their hair on fire simply because Dr Ndii has raised such a tame — utterly harmless — concept. Let’s grab a fire extinguisher and put out the flames.

Last year, Ndii ignited a minor firestorm when he suggested that Kenya should be broken up because it had failed as a project of nationhood (“Kenya is a cruel marriage, it’s time we talk divorce,” Saturday Nation, March 26, 2016). False nationalists took up cudgels against him. This week, Ndii went to the same well again. First, he retweeted an online petition that purports to advocate secession for the large section of Kenya that rejected Jubilee. Then on a TV interview with anchor Larry Madowo, Ndii doubled down and asserted the right to “mass protests” should the Supreme Court’s decision on the presidential petition be unpalatable. Again, folks need to accept that the right to protest is a core constitutional entitlement.