Ethnic paranoia, elite conspiracy and the ‘mottled offspring’ of past injustices 

Colonial settlement commenced a system transferring landlessness within and among communities. Settlers occupied endless tracts of the choicest parts of Kenya, while native peasants were squeezed into inhospitable portions. This process started in Central Kenya and spread westwards, engulfing the country in a pall of anguish.

At independence landless peasants from Central Kenya were relocated to tracts of land in the Rift Valley acquired by the Settlement Fund Trustee from departing settlers under an absurd and irrational arrangement that continues to defy accounting.

The land itself had been grabbed by the colonial state from local communities and allocated to white British soldiers who had fought in the World Wars. In any event, the allocation of this land for settlement by landless Kikuyu thwarted the expectation of landless Kalenjin that their ancestral and historical claims would be vindicated.

Anti-colonial resistance rapidly turned into anti-Kanu disaffection, which the local elite leveraged to mobilise their way into power. Kadu, the party founded on apprehensions about domination of small tribes by the larger ones, became the locus of a countervailing devolutionary reflex, symmetrically opposed to Kanu’s penchant for a centralised, extractive Leviathan. 

Kanu’s position on land and settlement was premised on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ philosophy underpinned by a vigorously promoted right of every Kenyan to live, work and own land anywhere in the republic. Kadu articulated its justice programme as entailing the perfection of national sovereignty by promotion of regional self-determination, recognition of indigenous rights and restitution of ancestral claims.

In 1964, the contending elite found unity of principle and Kadu crossed the floor to join Kanu. Their tacit agreement was to play the political game by invoking the grievances and fears of their constituencies, and present themselves as their champions who would stare down the other in Nairobi and ensure that their land was not taken away, or was returned.

Combustible ambivalence

A universally abused, identically precarious underclass therefore fell under the firm control of the elite, as the ethnic other became their central existential preoccupation. Political loyalty to ethnic chieftains was virtually irrevocable because the elite profiled themselves as utterly indispensable to their very existence. It is hardly coincidental that all our tribal chiefs and champions of ethnic land rights are themselves endowed with endless acreages.

The advent of multi-party democracy promised the possibility of cross-ethnic solidarity and mobilisation on issues other than historic ethnic antagonism. Although the violence that erupted was arguably principally state-sponsored, it was catalysed by the elite’s desperate cleaving to their traditional mobilisation tactics. 

Multi-party activists were politically insurgent and tribally defensive, while the Kanu stalwarts were politically defensive and ethnically aggressive. Incidentally, madoadoa became an emblem of this combustible ambivalence; it provoked aggression in certain contexts, and elicited defensiveness in others. The old elite game became explosively complicated.

Decades of peacebuilding efforts, notably led by the church and the civil society, as well as general social progress in the wake of relentless modernity, have elevated understanding and hopefully marginalised the rabid tribal distemper. 

An old elite, however, remains addicted to their privilege and the reprehensible means by which they traditionally acquired and maintained it. Thus, among a reluctant populace, inter-ethnic conflict can only occur at state instance.

Strategic escalations of tense situations, usually by intemperate police action or irrational administrative measure, is one method of using state resources to achieve this end. 

Delirious attention

When accompanied by ‘circulation of leaflets’ and disinformation, administrators can go far in priming ethnic consciousness in politically competitive environments.

The emergence of consciousness about economic conditions and the possibility of political mobilisation on a pan-ethnic platform has alarmed the old elite. 

The urgency of efforts to revive ethnic consciousness and tribal paranoia is telling. From the perversion of the BBI into a diabolical proposition for a political model of ethnic consociation, to the “one-man, one-vote, one-mile” proposal, the proliferation of ethnic and clan-based briefcase parties, and the visible participation of ancient tribal oligarchs in certain regional formations – all manifest a headlong rush to restore a status quo that long benefited the elite but immiserated ordinary people.

Under those conditions, it is not surprising that madoadoa would receive such delirious attention from people who are not known for their peace activism. 

As long as we are focused on what Taban Lo Liyong called lexicographicide in the quest for hate policing at the expense of overdue focus on solutions to present socioeconomic crisis and subsisting historical injustices that drive them, our elite is content. 

Deleting madoadoa from the dictionary will not undo the atrocious injustices the elite has meted on us since 1964. 

Like the protagonist of Jonathan Kariara’s poem, ‘ Leopard in a Muu Tree’, our preoccupation with the ‘mottled offspring’ of these injustices must not distract us from confronting our elite interlopers’ devastating rampage in our homestead.

The writer is an advocate of the High Court and a former State House speech writer. @EricNgeno