We should change mindset on what political party membership entails

By Anyang’ Nyong’o

It is not really ethnicity, which is the problem in Kenyan politics; the problem comes from populism and opportunism. Faced by the fact that he did not really want popular participation of a democratic kind in Kenya while he was in power for 24 years, former President Moi resorted to opportunism and populism as the only two ways by which he could engineer political support among Kenyans. After that long period of time, this became so strongly engrained in the Kenyan political culture that it has been difficult to uproot it. The two pose great danger to our young democracy. Let me explain.

Without explaining what he really meant, Moi said his style of politics would be to follow the footsteps of Jomo Kenyatta. This idea was immediately elevated to the level of a philosophy called Nyayoism.

There was nothing really to be debated about it hence it was not a philosophy but an assertion of fact that whatever Kenyatta did while he ruled, Moi would do, and whoever deviated would not belong to his team either as leaders or followers.

The mere fact that this was the pronouncement of the president led to all leaders, real or aspiring, to drum up the idea and seek to make it popular among the people in a kind of dogmatic manner; this was populism at its best. There was no substantial discussion or reasoning about it; just acceptance and the mobilisation of cheering and unsuspecting crowds.

Due to peer pressure and the desire for upward mobility, even otherwise sensible elites joined the bandwagon of Nyayoism; this was opportunism at its best. Dissenters, however, were severely punished, especially those from the President’s ethnic base who were supposed to support without questioning. The fates of J M Seroney and Chelagat Mutai are well known.

It took a lot of sacrifice and struggle on the part of many Kenyan patriots during those 24 years to wear down the authoritarian rule of Moi. Finally, when it did crack in 1991 to give way to multiparty politics, it was again the same populism and opportunism that led Ford (Forum for Restoration of Democracy) itself to crack as well.

The opportunists from the old Kenyatta regime and those from the Moi era trooped into Ford shouting anti-Moi slogans, but having no intention whatsoever to dismantle the authoritarian regime. If anything, they wanted to inherit it lock, stock and barrel. In that regard, they found us Young Turks an impediment to their interests. Their first aim was to alienate Jaramogi Oginga Odinga from the Young Turks; this Jaramogi resisted successfully. Their next move was to form "Ford" in their own image; this they did one after the other until the spirit of the original Ford, enshrined in the speech that Jaramogi gave at Kamukunji in November 1991, virtually disappeared.

Populism and opportunism had once more taken over so-called opposition politics with the main beneficiary as Moi who ruled Kenya for an extra decade!

The attempts to get back to issue-based and ideology oriented politics that would bring democratic governance to Kenya with a political and social content is what led some of us to create the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1996. We were dissatisfied with the populism and opportunism that had invaded opposition politics and that made the leaders easy prey to the political manipulations of Nyayoism. The trouble with the SDP is that we were strong on ideas and very thin in mobilisation capacity due to lack of resources, both human and monetary.

We would have had to build the party very slowly over a long period of time to retain our ideological purity and our potential to offer a real alternative to the then status quo. We made a big mistake; we chose to dive into electoral politics within the terrain designed and manipulated by the same regime, and the same opportunism and populism, all of which were averse to our ideals and goals.

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ur participation in the elections of 1997 led to the winning of seats in Parliament and Local Authorities but lost us the ideological cohesion of the party. From then on, SDP became like any other party then: struggling for survival, fending off opportunistic onslaughts from within and without and endangered by populist politics that appear as tribalism at one time, regionalism at the next turn and even generational politics when it suits its promoters!

The National Rainbow Coalition (Narc), inspired by the ideals of democratic change as the French Revolution was in 1789, brought together the Kenyan popular masses into a brief moment of national political renaissance that almost delivered the democratic revolution instantaneously. But it did not. Once more, thanks to the combined force of opportunism and populism, this time spiced a little by ‘big tribe jingoism’, the Narc Government aborted the revolution in an absurd and rather uncouth manner.

A political depression followed. The economic ills of the departed Moi regime were resurrected with surprising vengeance at the summit of political power.

In the referendum of 2005 on the Proposed Constitution, the people rejected the Kilifi Draft precisely because it was aborting the democratic revolution; it was bringing back politics "as usual" with little social content. The crisis that followed the 2007 mismanaged and rigged presidential elections marked a turning point for the popular demand for democratic change and the non-viability of the politics of opportunism and populism. Real demands for equity and social justice came to the forefront; the regime answered with guns and bayonets against the people.

Had it not been for the intervention of the international community, the story of Kenya would today be very different. But from these intense conflicts came the progressive crafting of a democratic change to the Second Republic. What is the future of this Republic? We shall tackle this question in our next article.

—The writer is Minister for Medical Services