Chapter One Introduction
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Chapter One Introduction Imagine trying to cover Northern Ireland‟s troubles without using the words „Protestant‟ or „Catholic‟. Or reporting Iraq without referring to „Shias‟ and „Sunnis‟. The attempt would be absurd, the result unfathomable. And yet, in Kenya‟s post-electoral crisis, that is exactly what much of the local media doggedly tried to do. When we read an account in a British newspaper of shack-dwellers being evicted from a Nairobi slum, or see on the BBC gangs attacking inhabitants in the Rift Valley, we are usually told whether these are Kikuyus fleeing Luos, or Kalenjins attacking Kikuyus. But, in Kenya, this particular spade is almost never called a spade. No, it‟s "a certain metal implement". The "problem of tribalism" may be obsessively debated, the gibe of "tribalist" thrown with reckless abandon at politicians and community leaders, but it is just not done to identify a person‟s tribe in the media. The results, given a crisis in which the expression of long-running grievances has taken the most explicit ethnic form, can be opaque. When Mr Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, addressed displaced people in Eldoret earlier this year, he was booed and heckled. Kenyan media reported the incident without explaining why. The answer was that the displaced he met were mostly Kikuyus, and Kiai, a vocal Kikuyu critic of a Kikuyu-led Government, is regarded by many as a traitor to his tribe. Sometimes, the outcome is simply bizarre. When one newspaper ran a vox pop in January, one entry was meant to capture vividly the predicament of a 15-year-old girl of mixed parentage. "My mother is from [one of the tribes that had a Presidential candidate]", Faith was quoted as saying, "but my father is a [member of the other tribe that had a Presidential candidate]." How‟s that for gritty realism? (The Standard April 3, 2008). The excerpt shows how difficult it was for the Kenyan media to openly address the question of tribal identity in its coverage of the 2007 post-election violence. This thesis is not about how the Kenyan media covered that violence. What the excerpt seeks to do is to set the tone for a conundrum. The salience1 of tribalism in Kenya‟s politics was an issue that both politicians and the citizenry were aware of but not willing to hold a candid dialogue about. Even the 2007 post-election conflagration could not encourage such a conversation. This thesis aims to explore why and how tribalism came to be the only ideology in Kenya‟s politics especially under multiparty politics as seen through the formation of political parties and instigation of ethnic violence. 1 Le Vine defines „salience‟ as „the heuristic significance of ethnic identity in situations of interaction with others/other groups‟ (1997:52). 1.1 Ethnicity in Politics in Kenya Ethnicity acquires enormous power to mobilise people when it becomes a predominant identity and means more than just a particular ethnic origin; it comes to define people as speakers of a certain language, belonging to a particular religion, being able to pursue some careers but not others, being able to preserve and express their cultural heritage, having access to positions of power and wealth or not. In short, when ethnicity becomes politically relevant and determines the life prospects of people belonging to distinct ethnic groups, it is possible to mobilise group members to change a situation of apparently perpetual discrimination and disadvantage or in defence of a valued status quo (Wolff 2006: 31). The excerpt shows that once ethnicity becomes more than an expression of cultural identity and gets connected to social status, it determines people‟s fortunes in life and becomes politicised. It makes it possible for those who feel aggrieved as a result of discrimination and those in power who want to protect their privileges to invoke ethnicity. In Kenya‟s political context, ethnicity was a factor in political competition and in the allocation of national resources hence its salience. It was for this reason that the Constitution promulgated in 2010, sought to streamline political parties. It contained a framework for political parties that was principally meant to rid the country of ethnicity- driven political parties. The Constitution also spelled out the devolution of power and resources between the national and county governments and stipulated that the face of the civil service must reflect Kenya‟s ethnic diversity (Republic of Kenya 2010). Since independence in 1963, members of the President‟s tribe disproportionately dominated the civil service. First, it was the Kikuyu from 1963 until 1978, then the Kalenjin until 2002 (Ajulu 2002). The Kikuyu were resurgent after 2002 until the time of writing (Murunga and Nasong‟o 2006). Significantly ethnicity was a determining factor in party loyalty during multiparty elections. Political leaders across the political divide formed political parties and campaigned on the strength of ethnicity. The upshot was ethnic bloc voting. However, Kenya‟s politics seemed to transcend ethnicity at some points. Chege shows that in 1961, the electorate in the then Nairobi East constituency overlooked ethnic differences and voted for Tom Mboya. Mboya, a Luo, defeated one Dr Munyua Waiyaki, a Kikuyu, despite the electorate being 64% Kikuyu (Chege 1981: 76). The electorate in this particular constituency evaluated the two candidates on the basis of leadership qualities. In the 1950s, Oginga Odinga had led a campaign calling for the release of Jomo Kenyatta and others from detention (Karimi and Ochieng‟ 1980: 16; Morton 1998: 88-9). However, 2 Morton linked this call to a power struggle within KANU in which the Odinga faction tried to use it to neutralise a rival one (Morton 1998: 102). This nationalist approach to politics had been replaced by ethnic solidarity in which politicians tended to stand by fellow tribesmen regardless of the circumstances. Under multiparty Kenya, a candidate almost stood no chance in a constituency in which his tribe was the minority. Although referring to Africa generally, Meredith offered insight into the above question. He observed that in the first elections before independence, African politicians conducted politics around national identity thus, candidates were voted for regardless of ethnic belonging. However, the issue of access to state largesse in the form of scarce resources heightened the political stakes. The result was that some politicians abandoned policy- oriented politics and resorted to canvassing for electoral support along ethnic lines (Meredith 2006: 156). Meredith argued that politics took an ethnic form because of lack of class identity among African societies (Meredith 2006: 156). I argue that ethnicity was the most significant variable under Kenya‟s multiparty democracy because competition for state resources had made it hard for politicians to devise alternative bases for political organisation such as class. Hyden acknowledged this point when he argued that the influence of „community-centred networks‟ in African politics was due to the inability of class-based identity to dislodge kinship ties (Hyden 2006: 55). Ethnic divisions among the first generation of Kenyan politicians over the control of the state had two significant outcomes. It led to the assassination of Tom Mboya and the political marginalisation of Oginga Odinga, both politicians from the Luo community. Mboya, an astute politician, had been a key player in the political neutralisation of Odinga by Kenyatta‟s allies. The two politicians battled for political supremacy within the Luo community (Maloba 1995: 18). Kenyatta‟s allies perceived Odinga as a threat to their hold on power. He had the capacity to mobilise political support and create an alternative political powerbase, was opposed to the politics of wealth accumulation and remained among a tiny group of Kenyan politicians inclined towards ideological politics. Kenyatta‟s close allies led by Mboya frustrated Odinga out of the government. Odinga resigned in 1966 as both the country‟s and KANU Vice President and formed the Kenya People‟s Union (KPU) (Morton 1998: 125). 3 Mboya‟s ability to garner support among Kenyans of diverse ethnicities in the 1960s posed a political threat to Kenyatta and his close allies and he was a front-runner in the Kenyatta succession. In addition to being endowed with political acumen, Mboya had financial backing from America (Ochieng‟ 1995: 101). After the Kenyatta inner circle had used him to neutralise Oginga Odinga, they dispensed with him. He was assassinated in 1969, allegedly at the behest of some influential individuals in the Kenyatta government (Muigai 2004: 213). The Luo who had split their loyalty between Mboya and Odinga closed ranks and rallied behind Odinga (Karimi and Ochieng‟ 1980: 18). Mboya‟s assassination threw a wedge between the Kikuyu and Luo communities and contributed to the politics of resentment in Kenya thus the confrontation between Odinga‟s Luo supporters and Kenyatta when the latter visited Kisumu in 1969 (Owuor and Rutten 2009: 313). The sidelining of Odinga and his allies and the physical elimination of Mboya was meant to create room for the exclusive access to power and the attendant economic advantages for the Kikuyu elite. So polarised did the political landscape become that it was difficult for Kenyans to conduct policy-based politics. Ethnicity became the ideology2 that informed political choices. Kenyatta was considered as the founding father of Kenya yet I argue that he contributed to sowing the seeds of Kenya‟s postcolonial instability. The challenges bedevilling the country such as exclusionary politics based on tribalism, regional inequalities because of skewed allocation of national resources in favour of the President‟s region and lack of national identity required to harness Kenyans‟ energies and talent for the attainment of economic progress were reinforced under the Kenyatta régime.