Switching from ‘divide and rule’ to ‘unite and govern’

Let me pose some pertinent questions. Is rotational presidency premised on Kenya’s 46 ethnic communities feasible? Is it proper to exclude citizens from the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin nationalities from the 2022 presidential contest because they have so far produced four presidents? How do we address the ethnic or micro-nation or nationalities and ultimately nation-state question? What then is the suitable governance structure through which to express the voice and legitimate interests of all Kenya’s citizens?

No doubt daunting questions!

In her book, The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision (2009), Wangari Maathai deftly explores the crisis of national identity. She writes: “The largest of the micro-nations (ethnic communities) can have populations in the millions; the smallest usually number only in the thousands. With a few exceptions, it is these numbers that determine political power.”

She continues to argue “that each community hopes to have access to the resources of the nation-state should someone from their micro-nation assume political power (particularly the post of president or prime minister). In this way, the community will have, as is said in Kenya, its ‘time to eat’. ”

Wangari’s thesis is that Africa’s political elite, while largely remaining united in pursuit of its politico-economic spoils, fragments the micro-nations so as to control them.

The colonial divide-and-rule strategy is perpetuated or even reincarnated. Each micro-nation kingpin mobilises his group as a first step, after which several kingpins enter into coalitions, bringing their coalesced ethnic groups to the electoral table.

A clear example of constitutionalising the micro-nation is to be found in Ethiopia, where nations, nationalities and people are candidly recognised.

Article 39 of the Constitution stipulates: “Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.”

These entities have the right to develop their language, culture, history and exercise self-government.

In Ethiopia, a nation, nationality or people is defined as “a group of people who have or share a large measure of a common culture or similar customs, mutual intelligibility of language, belief in a common or related identities, a common psychological make-up, and who inhabit an identifiable, predominantly contiguous territory”.

Indigenous languages

Ethiopia’s 1994 constitution created nine states based on micro-nations, with a rider that any nation, nationality and people within a state had the right to establish, at any time, their own state as determined by Article 47(3).

Kenya’s 2010 constitution is not as ambitious as Ethiopia’s in its treatment of ethnic groups.

Although indigenous languages, culture, the rights of ethnic and other minorities and marginalised groups are recognised, and discrimination on ethnic status barred, Kenya’s constitution does not grant official status to the ethnic community as a political or governance unit.

Kenya’s devolved system of government is largely built around each county’s dominant micro-nation population except in Nairobi, Mombasa and Nakuru. On the contrary, the 1963 constitution created a multi-ethnic system of decentralisation based on seven regions and the Nairobi municipality.

Unless Kenya’s 2010 constitution is amended, any citizen who qualifies to be a presidential candidate according to Article 137 cannot be barred from contesting. The BBI itself has not introduced any provision to bar individuals from any ethnic community from participating in a presidential election or establishing the institution of rotational presidency.

The question is begged: is the rotational presidency idea a fall-back position in case the BBI five-member top executive aborts?

Should, then, Kikuyu and Kalenjin political elite wake up to the fact that if BBI flops, then the rotational presidency will exclude them from apex leadership?

Further, given that Kenya is home to 46 micro-nations, would the rotational presidency make pragmatic sense?

 One rotation cycle of five years for each ethnic community would take 230 years.

Hunger for power by ethnic kingpins is likely to produce a proliferation of new ethnic groups. The Luhya could lay claim to 18 groups, the Kalenjin nine, the Mijikenda nine and so forth to increase their chances on the rotational queue.

The earlier strategy of aggregating sub-groups and ethnic consciousness could now be abandoned.

The rotational presidency notion will not kill the electoral practice of competition through ethnic coalitions led by ethnic political barons.

Even if, for argument’s sake, the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba are excluded from 2022 presidential candidature, ethnic kingpins from these communities would most likely groom political surrogates from the other minority communities.

In Kenya, the drivers of elections are the following: Ethnic political kingpins supported by the leadership of ethno-cultural organisations especially elders; corrupt business cartels; rogue senior state bureaucrats and security personnel; state-inclined intellectuals, faith and trade union leaders; and state controlled media.

This is the “system” also called the ‘deep state’ in Africa.

These actors mobilise electoral resources to facilitate the hegemonic coalition of tribes.

The voter is reduced to supporting their son/daughter and unwittingly, a galaxy of political elite who are nationally oriented.

In a previous electoral season, there was popularisation of “tyranny of numbers” and “41 versus 1”. Do we now want to awaken the genie of “44 versus 2”? Won’t we still perpetuate the notion that the incoming president must, first and foremost, serve his/her ethnic community and collaborating elite?

Does it mean a tribe will rule as an entity? If so, this would not be the proper route of achieving equitable development country wide.

The dominance of ethnic coalitions also sidelines critical sectors such as youth, women, persons living with disability, senior citizens, other minorities, marginalised groups, the ‘diaspora tribe’ and the ‘tribe’ from inter-marriages.

National dialogues

Some of these are Kenyans who in the 2019 population census identified themselves as “Kenyan so stated” numbering 183,023 or the 27th tribe by population.

Micro-nations and their culture are extremely valuable realities.

Wangari believes at independence national dialogues about how to create a nation-state should have taken place. Tanzania did it.

Kenya and other African countries ought to hold such crucial nation-building conversations.

In a context in which politics and the economy are democratised, ethnic-based political coalitions will begin to lose their allure.

We shall then transit from the practice of ‘divide and rule’ to a new paradigm of ‘unite and govern’.

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