Why the tribe may be Kenya’s undoing in achieving nationhood

Makau Mutua

Twitter@makaumutua

Kenya is 50 – a lifetime in the life a person, but a nanosecond in world history. What’s shocking is the lack of progress in forging Kenya into a nation. Yes, Kenya is a country with a state and a government, but – and this is huge – its existence as a nation is founded on quicksand.

A nation unlike a government, or a country, is basically an idea. It’s a form of consciousness – a zeitgeist – that conveys an irreducible identity. You can take this to the bank – very few people who call themselves Kenyans can define Kenya as an idea. This means a lot of people who live in Kenya aren’t Kenyans, although they are paper citizens.

I will tell you why Project Kenya is in reverse.

At no time in the last 50 years has Kenya been so divided — and utterly polarised. But this slow burning process of de-nationalisation didn’t start yesterday. Kenya had one brief period of national sanity immediately after the British caved in to grant us flag independence.

That’s when Kanu — under Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and freedom icon Jaramogi Oginga Odinga — were a political item. But ideology and the tribe quickly put their relationship asunder. What followed has been a cold war between the Kikuyu and Luo communities.

That schism retarded the emergence of a national consciousness and opened the way for full tribalisation of the state.

The other major groups — Kalenjin, Kamba, and Luhya –— quickly got the bug of tribalism.

The term tribe is pejorative.  Developmentally, it refers to a primitive or primordial — stage. It speaks of a people who exist before the development of, or outside, a state.

It’s the opposite of modernity, the stage that’s presumed necessary for the democratic state. It behoves Kenyans to know the connotation of the term tribe when they use it.

I use it here tongue-in-cheek — to parody Kenya’s tribal elite, but to also explain why Kenya hasn’t cohered into a nation.

I find it disturbing Kenyans use the word tribe in some sense the way African-Americans deploy the racist term ‘nigger’ within the group.

In either case, I find the terms unacceptable. But that’s the paradox of an oppressed people.

Let me tell you why we aren’t a nation. First, Kenyan political elite across all the divides have failed the country. Rather than use the inspiration of an emergent post-colonial state to forge a common — but diverse — identity, the elite have abused ethnicity to feed at the trough.

They have mobilised the tribe as a political weapon by cynically posing as champions of “their” people. Of course nothing could be farther from the truth.

Every political scoundrel in history — from Germany’s Adolf Hitler to Uganda’s Idi Amin — has used the bogeyman of racial, or ethnic, identity to capture or retain power.

Kenyan politicians go to that well time and again to leverage access to power and resources. They have created a siege mentality among “their” people.

Secondly, because Kenya lacks a true national project, every issue is seen through the prism of the tribe. A case in point are the polarising trials of President Uhuru Kenyatta and DP William Ruto at The Hague.

Public support for the International Criminal Court is lowest in the Rift Valley — which is inhabited largely by the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin — and the Central Kenya, which is populated by the Kikuyu.

The two groups see the trials as persecuting “their” sons to prevent them from leading the country.  Conversely, support for the ICC is highest in Nyanza, Eastern, Western, and the Coast — areas that supported Cord leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka. Honest debate on the merits isn’t possible.

Third, every election cycle — in spite of the 2010 Constitution — is still highly tribalised. I believe that the Constitution is largely a progressive document.

But constitutions don’t implement themselves. As long as Kenyan politicians approach every election by cobbling tribal alliances, the country will never become a nation. It was shocking that the 2013 election — conducted under the aegis of the 2010 Constitution — was the most tribal in Kenya’s history.

That suggests either a congenital defect in the Constitution, or in the political class. If this trend continues, the 2017 election could be considerably worse. Can Kenya manufacture an elite consensus to turn away from certain political Apocalypse? We can’t do the same thing and expect different results.

Finally, let’s take stock. At 50, Kenya should be able to think more honestly about itself. There’s no doubt the country is highly entrepreneurial.

But that spirit of entrepreneurship should be extended to crafting a national identity.

I am not vilifying sub-national groups, or advocating that they be suppressed. That’s impossible and destructive. The question ought to be this — how does the Kenyan elite engineer the transference of sub-national loyalties to the nation?

How do we subsume the tribe in the nation, and not the other way round?

Writer is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.