We have a chance to de-tribalise Kenya

I had an interesting discussion with a taxi driver recently about the prevailing political situation. As it is, these people are a good barometer of the political sentiment on the ground.

The man, a stranger, started off gingerly by discussing mundane things like the la nina phenomenon we had been promised by the weatherman (and which, by the way, has yet to make landfall) and such; that is until I asked him about the political situation on the ground. It was as if he was waiting for such a prompt. He shot off immediately with what appeared like an argument that he had prepared quite well.

“You kikuyus,” he told me in an accusatory tone – he had already judged me, found me guilty and ready to hang me. “You Kikuyus hold the presidency in your hands. You are the ones who put William Ruto in power with that ridiculous song of yours about waking up early in the morning to go vote for him,” – here, he broke off to attempt the chorus of that absurd song – “and now see where we are.”

I was not good at debating in school, and have since not improved. I therefore chose to give the man my ear.

“Now, you people from the mountain have the votes to remove him next year and install someone else. Whomever you people (that phrase again) choose to support will be the next president, as long as it is not one of yours.”

I asked him why he thought so, given that being a democracy, anybody from any community had a right to vie for any seat in government. “You already had your turn,” he told me.

The man even had the winning combination: the Kikuyus are this many, Luhyas and Luos, that many, Kambas etc. If this and that community stood before their man – and the Kikuyus gave them their support – the man would be a shoo-in.

This is truly the tragedy of my beloved country. We think tribal, and as a result, we end up with tribal chieftains whom, once elected, have no regard whatsoever for the tribal dynamics that placed them where they are.

We need to detribalise the mindset of the Kenyan voter. You cannot put entire communities in buckets, crunch numbers and come up with likely winning combinations for this or that person from my tribe.

Yet, the harsh reality is that we vote as a man for whichever clown our tribal chieftains direct us to vote for. Nobody cares about the credentials (or lack thereof) of the man on the ballot as long as he’s the Chosen One by the party leader, the lead demagogue.

I understand that being a party leader for any of the top parties (and at any one time there are no more than three) is tantamount to having an open cheque.

People troop to your manicured lawns (preferably on the edge of the forest) with wads of cash so that you can crown them as the party aspirant in the political area where you have a following. Of course, the wads of cash is baptised with the euphemism of ‘campaign finance’ but it is no more than a bribe for the big man.

When this political scientist of a taxi driver talked about ‘us Kikuyus’ having been in power, I could see the insinuation that we as a community had our turn at the feeding trough and therefore, we needed to move over to allow another herd of cows to eat to their fill.

As a country, we must urgently pull ourselves out of this miasma. We must start finding ways of becoming a homogenous country, where we look at our candidates for office through the lens of what they can deliver for us rather than which tribe you come from.

The other day, we saw some neanderthal chastising a certain community for choosing a light-skinned individual as their member of parliament – asking the meeting rhetorically whether their women were unable to bear leaders that they must import them – I was truly appalled. This is the kind of stone-age thinking that we must emerge from if we are to become enlightened.

-The writer is a communication consultant