Breaking up the country no answer to social disunity

Last week, leading economist David Ndii unleashed the most primeval instincts in Kenyans. In his article “Kenya is a cruel marriage, it’s time to talk divorce,” Dr Ndii opined that the project of the Kenya Nation had irrevocably gone to the dogs. He then concluded, rather jarringly, that it was time Kenya’s 42 tribes divorced the state, and went it alone. The divorce would be concluded without alimony — zilch. Dr Ndii didn’t say anything new. Everything in that article has been said times without number. What’s new was the clarity and finality of his conclusion — that it’s time to end — terminate — Kenya as we know it. Let me tell you why Dr Ndii is right — and wrong.

In 1995, I wrote a widely quoted law review article in the Michigan Journal of International Law, a flagship publication for international lawyers. The 64-page scholarly piece — Why Redraw the Map of Africa: a Moral and Legal Inquiry — argued that the West had balkanised Africa into artificially unsustainable states most of which had failed to cohere into nations. I postulated that ravenous African political elites could have rescued the post-colonial state, but didn’t do so. But my view wasn’t that Africa was now destined for damnation. No — I articulated a new cartography both of geography and politics to re-engineer the African state. My new African map compressed the 50 African states to 14. I killed many a state, including Kenya.