Why do Kenyans always find tribalism convenient in crisis?

On December 12 this year, Kenyans will celebrate 60 years since the country gained independence from the British. Millions of Kenyans who witnessed that day have passed on. More millions are now grandparents.

Those born 10 years after independence have now crossed the half-century mark. In 1993 Kenyans welcomed multiparty politics for the second time since independence.

In 2003, Mwai Kibaki inaugurated a government in a country of the ‘most hopeful’ people on earth at the time, as some media reported. In 2013, Kenya got its fourth president, who was also the youngest ever. Uhuru Kenyatta was elected into office 50 years after his father had been elected the first president of Kenya. 

These milestones give the illusion of a progressive country, a country on the move. Indeed, Kenya has been described as the economic hub of East Africa. Before the eruption of violence during the 2007 elections, Kenya had been labelled a ‘peaceful country.’

There are individuals who still think of the country as more sophisticated and developed than the neighbours. Why? 

Because comparatively Kenyans have been quite good and creative at offering these illusions to any visitor to the country. We are the country of hakuna matata.

We are the people who speak English like no other on the continent when we wish to. Kenya has some very globally connected people and institutions. It is not surprising that Kenya hosts bigger foreign embassies than its neighbours. Nairobi hosts the UN’s official headquarters in Africa. Kenya is the only country in the global south that hosts two of the UN’s program headquarters – UNEP and UN-Habitat. 

Ooh, one would feel blessed if they were Kenyan, right? One would imagine that with Kenya’s supposed good education system, fairly working transport infrastructure, competent bureaucracy and robust media, Kenya’s democracy would be the envy of the rest of the continent.

Surely, Nairobi should be quite cosmopolitan; Kenyans should be very Afropolitan. After all, Nairobi has always received thousands of visitors since it was founded.

Nairobi should belong to all races, ethnicities, religions, classes, genders, and cultures. Nairobi should lead the rest of the country to overcome the asphyxiating spirit of ethnonationalism that rises every five years. 

So, how does it happen that during elections, Nairobi resorts to tribalism? How does the city that should be welcoming to all and sundry, a metropolitan whose very identity cannot be reduced to Kikuyu, Maasai, Luhya, Luo, Kamba, Gujerati, Goan, Kipsigis, become divided and designated by tribe during elections? How does Westlands become Luhyaland, Kibera Luoland, Mathare Kikuyuland or Dagoretti Kisiiland? 

Election determiner

But why do our politicians choose to use the tribe as the basic determiner of their voters every time there is an election? Why do they opt to divide the country into tribes and regions in appointing people to public office? How did tribe become the defining characteristic in the debates on maandamano?

Why did conversations about electoral problems, the cost of living, and national inclusivity get reduced to a ‘certain’ tribe? What motivates Kenyans to name fellow Kenyans as ‘troublesome, thieving, conniving, lazy’ etc during moments of political disagreement? 

Is it really competing interests or is it that as a people we have mutually refused to build a shared culture? Would we even be having such institutions as National Commission for Integration and Cohesion if we had planned and worked hard to create a Kenya that would be hospitable to all its citizens? How did one Tom Joseph Mboya think about such an inclusive and integrationist project as the ‘Kenya Students Airlift to America’ when at the time Kenyans were truly still ‘tribal’ if we allow the phrase? 

The recent struggles to keep Kenya together politically and socio-economically, remind one of Bethwel Ogot’s book, Tom Mboya: Life, Death and the Disintegration of the Nascent Enterprise ‘Project Kenya.’ How were the ideals of independence aborted when the politicians and civil servants that took power from the colonialists had sworn that they were nationalists? How did the dream to create what Mboya called ‘national pride’ collapse? 

This is what Mboya wrote in The Challenge of Nationhood, “… nationalism can be a negative force, as Europe has seen in National Socialism and as we have seen in the racist nationalism of South Africa’s Afrikaners. We, on the contrary, need to mobilise this force of nationalism against racialism and against tribalism.

More than that, our efforts for economic, political and social progress can draw inspiration from national pride. The emblems, the symbols, the banners of any nation, the pride of the people in their institutions and their achievements, all these can and must be harnessed if we are to achieve the progress which the citizens expect.”

How many of Tom Mboya’s contemporaries actually ever thought in such terms? How many ordinary Kenyans in the few towns at the time think of themselves as Kenyans and not necessarily as tribesmen, according to the colonial identification tag?

How many Kenyan farmers, priests, journalists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, train drivers, mechanics, clerks, bankers, sportspeople, and traders, in the towns, villages or abroad ever paused to think about what Kenya would or should look like in 10, 20 or 50 years after independence? 

Did Kenyans ever collectively invest in the emblems, symbols and banners that Mboya refers to? What culture could Kenyans have forged 60 years ago to deliver independence, personal freedom and social justice, economic prosperity and social security, the right of workers to a living wage, free education for all our children, and a national health service for all Kenyans? For these are the same promises made today (as they were made by KANU in 1963). Yet, today politicians are only too eager today to claim that not all Kenyans should necessarily expect the delivery of such goods and services. 

Mboya may even have been killed for having such a vision. But if Kenyans are still struggling to actually define this country’s identity; if politicians haven’t understood that nationhood is more difficult to imagine and create than thinking about one’s village and village mates; if Kenyans still privilege tribe over the nation-state after 60 years of self-rule, what would Mboya think of us today were he to come back from the dead? 

Or should we just ask our politicians today to read Mboya’s writings and speeches, especially The Challenge of Nationhood and give them a short test on what is best for Kenya: nationalism or ethnonationalism? 

The writer teaches literature, performing arts and media at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]