New Super Tribes Shaping Kenya's 2017 Election
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ISSUE NO. 8, JULY 2017 NEW SUPER TRIBES SHAPING KENYA’S 2017 ELECTION. Africa’s misfortune, is that politics is not about a higher idea of the nation. It is all about the use of the ethnic identity in political competition with other groups. Nonetheless, understanding political tribalism is key to ending conflicts in Africa. However, Kenya’s solution to ‘political tribalism’ lies in the hands of the youths who are nearly 70 percent of the voting power and the growing Muslim identity totaling to 4.3 million (11.1%) dominating over 10 counties. Ethnicity is a worldwide social fact. But On the one extreme, as trade unionist, nations must rest on shared values, not educationist, Pan-Africanist, nationalist, shared ethnicity. Cabinet Minister and one of the founding fathers of modern Kenya, Mboya was a The tragedy of Africa is that politics is not man of pan-Kenyan, pan-African and about a higher idea of the nation. It is all globalist vision and achievements. about the use of ethnic identity in political competition with other groups. Born and raised in Kilimambogo, Central Kenya, Mboya was a polyglot who spoke This is what British scholar, John Lonsdale Dholuo, Kikuyu, Kikamba and some Luhya perceptively called “political tribalism” as dialects, enabling him to cross language opposed to “Moral Ethnicity” as a positive barriers that keep ethnic groups apart. force that makes us moral—and thus social—beings. Regionally, at 28, Mboya was elected Chairman of the All-African Peoples’ Understanding “political Conference, the precursor of the African Union, convened by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah tribalism” is key to ending of Ghana in 1958. conflicts in Africa. Globally, he worked with the US President John F. Kennedy and Civil Rights leader, July 5, 2017 marked 87 years since the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the African birth of Joseph Tom Mboya, and 48 years Airlifts of the 1950s and 1960s. since an assassin’s bullet prematurely ended the life of one of Kenya's most The election of Barack Obama as US celebrated nationalists. But Mboya’s President drew attention to a nationalist legacy is a great paradox. icon David Goldsworthy described as, “The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget” (1982). Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., benefited from Mboya's airlifts to America, Academics love thinking of and during his stay he married and sired ethnicity as an invention of the future President. Professor Wangari Maathai, later Nobel Peace Laureate, was colonial state power— as a a beneficiary of the airlifts. gambit to divide and rule At Mboya’s requiem mass, President Jomo the natives. Kenyatta eulogized his fallen compatriot: "Kenya's independence would have been seriously compromised were it not for the However, the Mboya aftermath signified courage and steadfastness of Tom the strident re-invention of "political Mboya.” tribalism" in post-colonial Africa. On the other extreme, Mboya’s brutal death In life, Mboya’s political adversaries intensified the instrumental use of the caricatured him as not a true Luo ethnic identity for political ends. (“jamwa”), and rallied behind Jaramogi Odinga, his political rival since the 1950s. In his autobiography, Freedom and After, In death, he became a martyr in the Mboya graphically captured the bad blood narrative of Luo ethnic exclusion in post- between the Kikuyu and Luo in the 1930s: colonial Kenya. “the antagonism between [them] was such that they fought on sight” (1963:71). However, ‘Bwana Tom,’ as the Kikuyu And, true Mboya was not a Jaramogi. He voters fondly referred to Mboya in the late was a Suba, a Bantu people in Kenya, 50’s and 60’s, thrived in politics in a estimated at about 350,000 who speak predominant Kikuyu urban constituency. both the Suba language and Dholuo—but whose language is classified as By 1969, he was far and away the most endangered. eligible successor to Kenyatta, inclined more to the ‘House of Mumbi” than to the In a recent IGAD Heads of States Summit “House of Ramogi”. This is my thesis in the on Refugees in Nairobi (March 2017), re-published book: In My Mother's House: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni Tom Mboya and Identity Politics in Kenya depicted Mboya’s ancestors as Baganda (July, 2017). royalists. Having lost a bitter succession struggle in A détente between Jaramogi Odinga and Buganda Kingdom during the reign of Daniel Moi after the 1992 election inspired Kabaka Wasaja Semakokiro Nabbung an even larger "super tribe," celebrated by (1797 – 1814), the Suba fled as refugees the eminent historian, Bethwell Ogot and settled in the Lake Victoria Islands of (1996), as the "Jii-Speakers" or Western Rusinga and Mfangano and the mainland Nilotes (the Kalenjin and Luo). areas of Kaksingri (Suba South), Gembe (Suba North), Gwassi and Migori. An The ‘Jii ethnic ideology’ propelled the short- additional 80,000 Suba settled in Tarime lived merger of KANU and Raila’s National District, Mara Region in Tanzania. Development Party (NDP) in March 18, 2002. As Secretary-General of the “New Today, Mboya’s Suba are an integral part KANU”, Raila believed he was Moi’s heir. of one of Kenya’s invented mega-tribes— the Luo—based on the logic of "unite and But the Jii alliance collapsed in the run up rule." to the 2002 elections when Moi named Uhuru Kenyatta as his anointed successor. In line with this logic, in the run up to independence in the 1950s and 1960s the However, the Jii-Speakers Alliance soon ‘Kalenjin’ and ‘Luhya’ emerged as hybrid resurfaced ahead of the 2007 election with tribes to counter the hegemony of ‘majority the birth of the Orange Democratic tribes’—the Kikuyu and Luo. Movement (ODM) as a Luo-Kalenjin entente. However, by 2013, the Jii ideology had collapsed. Similarly, faced with the political challenges In the 2017 elections—and possibly the posed by the politics of Mboya’s death and politics of Kenyatta succession in 2022— Kenyatta succession in the late 1960s, two main ‘super identities’ will decide the former Mau Mau communities— Kikuyu, winners and losers. Embu/Mbeere and Meru—launched Gema as a supra-ethnic identity. One is the Muslim identity—an estimated 11.1 % (4.3 million) Kenyan Muslims. From the late 1980s, the ruling KANU elite These are dominant in over 10 counties, responded to the threat posed by the and present in other counties and cities. ‘Bantu-based’ (Kikuyu, Luhya, Kisii) opposition by launching a ‘pastoral’ alliance The other is the youth category. known as KAMATUSA (acronym for Comprising of nearly 70 percent of the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu). voting power, the youth category will perhaps trump political tribalism. ©Africa Policy Institute, July 2017 About API Research Notes API Research Notes Series publishes scientifically valid research outputs that cannot be considered as full research or methodology articles. Its aim is to provide a forum for sharing data, useful information and perspectives on topical issues of concern to the policy and research communities. Articles published under this series cut across disciplines, and include some short articles or opinion pieces that have already been published by the experts of the Africa Policy Institute. Some are brief publications, updates to previous work, abridged versions of research agendas or concept notes or brief reports of policy forums. Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute and former Government Advisor. Previously, this article was published on July 9, 2017 under the title- Young voters will perhaps trump political tribalism. .