Use the Supreme Law to hold this country together

If the op-ed proposing the Kenyan divorce had been written by a less distinguished scholar, I would have dismissed it without further thought. In any case, every so often some headline hunting politician will pronounce the need for "his people" to depart, now that they have been excluded from national cake eating. But the piece came from Dr David Ndii, a man whose intellect I have the highest regard for. There has been as much support as there has been opposition to Dr Ndii's piece, including the ridiculous calls for his arrest. I want to pen my two cents worth because I believe that Dr Ndii was a "thought provocateur" presenting his case in the extreme so as to generate debate. I would be horrified to imagine that he intended to be taken literally; that would tell me that he, like many intellectuals before him, has lost the plot.

Dr Ndii in his piece recognised, which any honest Kenyan has long recognised, that we are caught up in a troubled union; the analogy of a marriage is rather simplistic for a complex thing as the Kenyan Nation is. The dreams that sent people to the Aberdare forests, produced freedom fighters like the late Arap Samoei and later bore the likes of Tom Mboya have long turned into nightmares for the Kenyan majority. What Dr Ndii implicitly assumed is that the troubled union is between ethnics and that one or two ethnics have received an unfair share of the marital blessings. Consequently in his view, if we divorced these ethnics, the new singles could do better alone or better yet look for new suitors!

Unfortunately and I am sure the scholar and student of history in Dr Ndii knows as much, the problems of Kenya are more complex and attempts to resolve them through such unimaginative proposals will only create new challenges and leave the bulk of the citizenry worse off than in the current union. Naturally, the ethnic dimension is more politically palatable, not only does it produce the vilest in us, it also enables the political elite to herd Kenyans into voting or rampaging blocks without having to put too much thought and argument into an issue. The reality however is that the abusive Kenyan union has more dimensions than ethnicity; indeed the dominant abuse dimension is class, not ethnicity. The Presidency has been in Kikuyu land for most of Kenya's history. Yet the overwhelming bulk of the Kikuyu Nation suffers the challenges of a broken state in the same way that the Kuria in Migori do. How else would you explain the presence of jiggers, that ultimate symbol of poverty, in large parts of Central Kenya? Is education faring better in Central Kenya? Is the infant mortality rate any significantly different? Even where there are nominal differences it's the case of a taller midget than any real difference.

One thing I will admit is that because our politics are unfortunately defined ethnically, the Kikuyu has traditionally held a disproportionate share of the public sector but this small number is hardly one per cent of the Kikuyu Nation. It will in any event be gradually rationalised. It cannot be the basis of assuming the entire Kikuyu Nation benefits from a Kikuyu as President or a demand for dismembering the union. Naturally, the fight for more space for others at the top is legitimate and will be pushed by the elite from "excluded" ethnic groups. It will sometimes be disguised as a fight for a better Kenya for all but it is not. The fight to build a better union for all is what the writers of the Constitution, of whom Dr Ndii was a prominent member, sought to address fundamentally. Through devolution, a reformist political and socio-economic Bill of Rights, and opening the state to more accountability, the union sought to be restructured for the better. Have we in five years already given up? While our problems are real, what the intelligentsia, Dr Ndii included, owe the country is imaginative ways of making this Constitution work.

Otherwise, what we unwittingly do is endorse the anti-reformist narrative that the Constitution has failed. If we cannot finds answers in this Constitution, let no one cheat you that better answers exist elsewhere.