National Identity (ID) cards.
I know the challenges of getting an identity (ID) card and passport in Kenya as a northerner. However, I am no ordinary northerner as I grew up in Coast region and speak Kiswahili better than most immigration officials. I can’t help but boast as Kiswahili is all that is spoken on the Coast. I was born and bred there, but for brief stays in the North. The latter is still my ancestral home, and I am sure every ‘born town’ in Kenya must have their ushago (village).
My knowledge of Kiswahili and doing much of my schooling on the Coast has not stopped me from being mistaken for an alien. It still happens every time I renew my passport. This time the immigration official went as far as accusing me of being Sudanese! See my name is Kaltum, the capital city of Sudan is Khartoum.
Easy mistake, right? No! An immigration official should have a basic understanding of ethnography and geopolitics to qualify as one. If they can’t tell the difference between a name and city, they are in the wrong job.
My man did not accept my qualifications and career either. I am from the North, and he must have thought education and career women don’t exist there. I thought I did my best to explain myself as calmly as I could. However, I discovered later that he left the part in the passport showing my career blank. He had to prove a point I guess-that I was both an alien and uneducated northerner with no career!
Vetting
I bet many people from the North have their stories to tell on vetting. Mine could be a PhD thesis on its own. However, despite the challenges faced on vetting the people from the North, I believe the politicians cottoning on to the idea of removing vetting for Somalis are not being sincere. Somalis are not the only people faced with the challenges of being vetted prior to getting ID cards.
Most people in the border towns of Kenya undergo vetting, although in a less traumatic and humiliating way. Vetting of Somalis has not stopped corrupt immigration officials issuing IDs like confetti to a willing bribing foreigner-Somalian or not. The vetting process is not working and won’t work with corruption in its midst. It is just becoming M-Pesa revenue for unscrupulous immigration officials.
My guess is that leaders from the North-Eastern waking up now to demand the removal of vetting for Somalis is not based on helping Somalis. The Kenyan Somalis have suffered for decades and none of them cared to stump out the problem until now. Why? Like many Kenyans, I, too, believe that the attempt to remove vetting for Somalis is for leaders from the North-Eastern to help shore up votes in the 2027 election—something that should not even be on the agenda as the election is nearly two years away.
The leaders in NE are whipping up emotions around the vetting issue and playing populist games to save their own political career. They care less whether the ID will help Somalis and NE to level up economically with other counties. If that were the plan, NE should have been on a par with the rest of the country had they bothered to end vetting decades ago.
If NE leaders really cared about their people, they should not have stood by as the counties are looted by local politicians who have impoverished the area with corruption. Northern politicians have been fingered more than other counties when it comes to corruption. Look up the EACC records and the proof is there. For an area that is nearly 99 per cent Muslim, it shocks to say the least that stealing public funds is a hobby.
Voting machines
Somali leaders, whether in Kenya, in the diaspora in the West, or within Somalia itself, the priority should be about bringing peace to Somalia so that the refugees who are only going to be used as voting machines in Kenya can return home and build their country. East or West, home is best. Most leaders who are advocating removal of vetting for IDs are silent on the civil war in Somalia because they are comfortable in major cities, including Nairobi, as the civil war does not affect them directly.
Being proud of investing in other countries while Somalia lags behind is not helpful for the country’s future but to individual politicians benefitting from the chaos. Islam is peace and as a majority Muslim country, Somalia should be enjoying peace. That responsibility is not only for religious organisations but that of every Somali political leader.
It is well and good to fight for removal of vetting for Somalis in Kenya. However, the timing is suspect, and refugees are just being used as collateral in Kenya’s political games. Northern counties need trustworthy leaders who can spend every penny on developing the area and not themselves. The risk is when the political game for 2027 backfires. Kenyan Somalis will be even more isolated!
Ms Guyo is a legal researcher; [email protected]; @kdiguyo.
