We Need New Names,Kenyans' Elusive Search for a Cultural
We Need New Names
By Oduor Obura
In late 2019, the Luanda Boda Boda Riders’ Association purchased a bus for public service. The association is located along the Maseno-Luanda border and its membership is largely drawn from the Luanda and Maseno catchment area.
The name of the association has a lot to do with the state of our union as a country or even as a region. It is a microcosm of ethno-nationalist tensions existing in Kenya and many other regions of Africa, and the changing times that bring new and multiple ways to negotiate these invented differences. The boda boda association is a chance to look at how we negotiate citizenship daily, and how we can overcome some essentialist ideals that are so deeply entrenched in eastern Africa.
The boda boda association draws membership from Luanda and Maseno, two small towns that are barely three kilometers apart. Maseno was established as a mission town and gets its name from oseno, which is a Luo word for the indigenous tree that used to be dominant in the area before ecological colonialism. The Kinyore (the Luhya sub-group inhabiting the Maseno and Luanda corridor) calls the same tree luseno. Oseno has since been colonised by the blue gum commonly called bao, which is indigenous to Australia. Young people would be at pains to identify oseno in Maseno today. Shortly before colonialism, Luanda had been established by a Luo chief from Gem Yala. Currently Luanda is dominantly a Luhya town, and it is located in Vihiga County. I have grown to like the sound of Maseno. For me, the word conjures pleasant images of green hilly spaces. Imperial creations
Kenya, like the majority of other African countries, has never been a nation-state. Kenya’s territorial boundary, as we now recognise it on maps, was drawn exactly a hundred years ago, in 1920. It is a border that split, for example, the Luos into three different countries (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania). As part of these colonial processes, the Somali people were also split into three countries, with a section of them occupying Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia and Somaliland. It is instructive to recall that coastal East Africa presented similar challenges. The current Zanzibari semi-autonomy in Tanzania and the conspicuous Pwani Si Kenya slogan are witness to the inherent pressures in the formation of nation-states in this part of the world. The boda boda riders in Maseno-Luanda zone show us only too well how we have an incomplete sense of ourselves and our politics when we are inclined to always think and conceive of ourselves and our communities as complete.
In 1929, the colonial administrator, Charles W. Hobley, said, “The Kikuyu and its blood relations on the slopes of Mount Kenya are, next to the Kavirondo, the most numerous native society in Kenya colony. They have no internal homogeneity, so were brought under control section by section.”
Therefore, the Kikuyu as we popularly know them today, are a creation of the colonial empire and each section was amalgamated onto another until they were made to imagine themselves as one whole part. This imagination has seeped into the dominant Kikuyu popular imagination, yet tensions still exist on who should claim the authentic Kikuyu title and name. A popular myth names Murang’a as the place where Mumbi first set foot, and thus the Kiambu Kikuyu are actually considered proper Kikuyu as opposed to the Murang’a Kikuyu who have interacted with the Embu and Meru communities. It is weird how we still stick to these categories as authentic, without the slightest examination of the histories and names behind them.
Electoral voting patterns and the legendary Kiambu-Muranga division still remind the Kikuyu of their incompleteness as a nation. This also applies to what we have think of as the Luos, the Luhyas, etc. The “tribes” (I will use the terms community or nations) as we see them today were invented in the colonial era. The introduction of a centralised and domineering government was a creation of the British empire. It was created along the Westphalian Christian state system to enhance resource extraction and organise labour along pliant and easily micromanage-able paradigms in Kenya.
Before colonialism, local communities had several centres of power, not necessarily along political lines, but sometimes along religious leaders and familial loyalties. This is still evident in the way religion plays a major role in our conception of ourselves and their celebrity status in national governance dialogues. As an illustration, Mgahanya, the rainmaker of the Banyore community in colonial Kenya, drew his power not from politics but from his hereditary technology of controlling rains. Indeed, Mgahanya’s power would be sought by the Luo neighbours as well whenever the need arose to have a rainmaker present. For his prowess and popularity, Hobley gave Mgahanya the title of a principal chief, thereby instilling new ways of looking at a rainmaker, not as a helper in the society but as someone who had the power to lord and rule over his relatives, friends and foes with an iron fist. Mgahanya’s rainmaking power was finally, and dramatically, curtailed by Hobley himself. In divesting Mgahanya of his political power gained through rainmaking, Hobley instituted new ways of gaining power in the society. Power would never be the same again in eastern Africa.
Evidently, government in pre-imperial Kenya was largely by consensus. But this was not always the case. The Mazrui family’s control of the slave trade in Mombasa reminds us that consensus was not always the default governance case in colonial and pre-colonial Kenya and that power was not always benign. In other words, the long history of governance in Kenya has experienced ruptures and transformations. Perhaps this history, culture and knowledge of power might be useful when we finally decide to finally form a government that is focused on ourselves. This would be a better alternative to the exhausting gerrymandering the political elites in Kenya frequent.
Moreover, Hobley, in Kenya: From a Chartered Company to a Crown Colony, further notes that he played an important part in reviving the importance of the Kiama among the Kikuyu, but of course to enhance colonial government. The idea of a Kikuyu elders was revitalised and invented as an essentialised entity by the colonial government. While reconstituting the tribe for the colonial agenda, Hobley instructed the heads of the Kiama (for whom he invented the title “chiefs”) to be detached from their compatriots in order to give proper judgments. In one instruction, the Kiama authority was not only centralised but also given sweeping powers and stripped of communal ethos and emotions. The colonial reconstruction of African societies was an unmitigated cultural disaster whose legacies we still contend with in present-day Kenya, such as the nationalist insinuations in differentiating Luos from the Banyore people in the Maseno-Luanda corridor.
From Hobley’s new ways of creating and accumulation of power, political leaders in Kenya have since stuck to the idea of leadership as a manifestation of paramount chiefs. The impersonal detachment and the attempts by public officials to centralise power can also be seen in how Kenyan doctors perceive their patients, how head teachers treat poor parents, how immigration and customs officials mistreat Kenyans in their own country, how bus conductors mishandle passengers, and how factories pollute Lake Victoria and its environs with impunity. The colonial system is replicated in every public sphere. Scarcely does one transcend this system.
The Westphalian state
After the end of colonialism, we did not take stock of our various systems of power and ways of naming in the community. Rather, we adopted and imported the Westphalian state model that was used to institute various hegemons, with each community waiting for a turn to lord over other communities. The communities that have been at the helm have ensured that the patronage system instituted by Carey Francis, Charles Hobley, and Lord Delamere, among others, has been perfected for a post-independence Kenya. Community nationalism as a basis for mobilising power is a narrative that has been employed in Kenya. This happened right from the first Kenyan president to the present president, since they could not pursue an alternative Africanist ideology with which to administer the country. They failed to either take notes from or apply the history of the country as far as governance was exercised. They lost a grand chance to decolonise governance and bring back the government to “we the people” of Kenya. And now Luanda boda boda riders have shown us how one can undermine such dominant narratives.
To appreciate this, one needs to understand that Maseno-Luanda is divided along “Luo” and “Luhya” communities. During each election period, this division is amplified by politicians. They incite tribal animosity among people who ordinarily intermarry, language differences notwithstanding. Indeed, the dhoLuo language has evolved to use Semeji or Omejo in reference to Luhya in-laws. That is how frequent intermarriage occurs here and how transcultural conversations have been conducted here despite the politicians and Kenyan comedians who frequently prop up negative ethnicity in their speeches and performances, respectively.
Maseno was the place the Church Mission Society (CMS) missionaries established the first Anglican church in western Kenya, circa 1906. The two communities grew around this church. Along with the growth of the church, the established ethnic differences also grew. Thus, Maseno Mixed Primary School would later be created, not as a mixed school for boys and girls, but as a mixed school for Luos and Luhyas! The idea of “mixed” in this case was founded on ways of negotiating cultural differences and not to denote gender.
For a while, in its long history, this primary school had its own Luhya and Luo staff coming to teach at different times of the day. Independence-era Kenya would see the split of this Maseno Anglican church into North and South. Maseno South diocese became the Luo church while Maseno North diocese became the Luhya church. The growth of Maseno as a mission town was doomed due to its cultural topography. The Maseno South diocese relocated its headquarters deep in Luo land, to Kisumu. Maseno North pushed its diocese deep in Luhya land to Kakamega. In other words, a single Christian religion could not keep its adherents from the two cultures together. This was the design of the colonial government. Each community would be coalesced together within itself, especially as a way of breaking down each community’s governance structures. But inter-community solidarity would be robustly discouraged. Mgahanya would eventually be appointed a principal chief within the Banyore community, after all his power was no longer needed among the neighbouring Luo, for Hobley had effectively taken charge of administering the Luo nation.
The independence-era Kenyan state also drew a border between the two communities, locating Maseno in Luo Nyanza and Luanda in Western Province. This imagined boundary was based on the colonial separation of the Luo from the Luhya. What if the boundary was to be re-drawn along matters that boda boda operators find useful, such as geographical features, and not along ethnic territories? For boda boda operators, features such as hills, muddy terrains, valleys and flat lands denote how much fuel a motorbike consumes.
We need new solidarities
Can we have associations not based on the colonial structures, like this boda boda group does? Africans are saddled with the burdens of colonial structures that the post-colonial elites simply refuse to supplant. Post-independence Kenya has cost lives, in the name of the community. The Kenyatta presidency quickly consolidated ethnic capital to misrule the state. Ethnic patronage quickly grew deep roots and it has irretrievably thrived, until now. Nearly all the chiefs under Moi rule were imperial personalities in their own right and might, just like they were in colonial Kenya.
We need new solidarities like the Luanda Boda Boda Association, but devoid of unchecked rugged capitalist ambitions. Kenya’s model of its solidarity is based on capital accumulation. In the fullness of its agenda, organisations founded on purely commercial interests morph into monopolies and create the same trap that the founders initially ran away from: poverty, disempowerment and powerlessness for others. The Luanda Boda Boda Association might not be cognisant of the fact that the public transport business is usually the function of an operational government. Even if they are, they have chosen to ignore that, under the illusion that they are working hard and sustaining themselves. The self-employment agenda of this association rips apart ethnic loyalties because it co- opts Luo and Luhya communities.
I am not into economics, here, I am on the use and ab-use of names – how innocent names like Luanda Boda Boda Association circumvent a nationalist current. The afterlives of this name embrace the inclusion of other communities not associated with the cultural geography of the Maseno-Luanda route. The association teaches us how to bring back two communities that have been divided by colonial and post-colonial Kenyan rulers. Resiliently, the people still head back to certain elements of solidarity that existed way before the arrival of Hobley and his imperial British associates.
At the same time, we might have to remember that Luanda was founded by a Luo chief, as we are reminded by Bethwel Ogot who convincingly presents this event in his autobiography My Footprints in the Sands of Time. Contrary to its founding, Luanda is currently located in a Luhya-administered ethnopolis. The street-level motorcycle association undermines the political narrative in the control of Maseno-Luanda borderlands. The politics of Maseno-Luanda is pegged on community divisions. These boda boda motorcyclists, however, teach us lessons on cosmopolitanisms. It is also instructive to recall that the Maseno-Luanda topic is a divisive factor and always comes up during election periods. However, the boda boda riders frequently move in and out of Luo and Luhya “tribal” zones conveniently and daily, with or without electoral cycles. If only the road network could catch up with the socialised motorcycle networks! These riders transcend the names and political divisions that were issued by the colonialists and their successors in post-colonial Kenya.
Boda boda riders transport passengers with little reference to ethnic origins. They move within and around the Luo and Banyore nations. Indeed, the motorbikes work across the tribal difference in a way that seems to shorten the already -narrow cultural distance between the two communities. In the process, they circulate cultural contacts between the two, and defy the political elite who thrive on the divisions. And now their bus will move passengers beyond Luo and Luhya nations. Linguists will observe the historical and structural complexities that separate Luloogoli, Libukusu and Kinyore from the Luo language, the obvious one being that dhoLuo is a Nilotic language and the other dialects belong to the Bantu language family.
The thing with language is that one owns the power to name things, to make a world with yourself at the center, to rewrite (hi)stories of far-flung peripheries. Take the ethnonym Luhya, as an example. Before this coinage, the Luhya were part of the Kavirondo people. The Kavirondo was initially the Eastern Province of Uganda before it was switched to Kisumu Province of the East Africa Protectorate, and finally moved to western Kenya. The umbrella term Kavirondo included both Nilotes and Bantus around Lake Victoria, all the way to Mumias and Mount Elgon. The freedom of colonialists’ naming of African communities was an enaction of the powerlessness of these communities vis-à-vis the colonial imagination and grammar. Within the Luhya nation there are a total of about 17 linguistic groups. The term Luhya is an artificially constructed ethnolinguistic reference to many closely related (some of which are not mutually intelligible) Bantu-speaking peoples. They include the Bukusu, Tachoni, Wanga, Marama, Tsotso, Tiriki, Nyala, Kabras, Hayo, Marachi, Holo, Maragoli, Idakho, Isukha, Kisa, Nyore, and Samia in Western Kenya. Their cultural divergences are many and multilayered, with the Tachoni tracing their ancestry to the Nilotic group of Nandi in the around the 14th century.
To fit yourself in a name that classified and considered you part of exotica needs careful self- extraction out of such languages. This need is even more immediate when one remembers how this classification was done without the agency and input of the local people and their collective consciousness and knowledge systems. Thus, the iLoikop people are made into Maasai, the iSampuru became Samburu. The various communities known as Nandi, Kipsikis, Pokoot, and Tugen are collapsed into an easily classifiable and ruled “tribe” called Kalenjin. This is in spite of the cultural and linguistic differences between them. In these cultural acrobatic movements mediated by colonialist linguistics, Kakamega (spelled as Kakumega in colonial orthography) was not the name of a town but an ethnonym in reference to the Idakho and Isukha communities.
If language is a unifier of cultural, economic and social values, then we need a new generation of names. We need Names 2.0. These names could consider political and cultural differences and histories. We need a new name for a governance that will neither be called kleptocratic nor a kakistocracy. We need new names for Luos, who pride themselves in Nyikwa Ramogi (based on a point of origin, not a colonial classification). Don’t we need a new name for the daughters and sons of Mumbi? We need new names that denote plurality, but account for differentiated identities, like the Mijikenda. (My translation of “Mijikenda” would not be a tribe but “nine homes”.) We need decolonised names in order to open or transcend some of the worlds which were closed by colonial naming processes.
Renaming ourselves might not be an easy way to redesign our nominal worlds, which were forced into cruel unions in Berlin in December 1884. It might even prove to be a messy but it is still a necessary activity. We need to open these worlds that were closed by colonial naming processes, like the Luanda Boda Boda Association has done. Every time we use these new colonial names, we acknowledge the problematic grammar that inherently operates within them. We also reiterate that the names did not aim to usefully matter to Africans. We repeat the insufficiency of English to capture the nuances that exist in our cultural worldviews and political lives.
I must reiterate here that these names were not arbitrarily drawn; they were created to enhance control. Perhaps post-colonial eastern Africa should ask what control mechanism the various ethno- nationalities initiate. For example, the Luhya group is one of the reminders that ethno-nationalism is an invention that is a mirage. It was created for divide et imperium purposes. As Bethwel Ogot reminds us, there was no Luhya empire prior to colonialism. Yet the colonial history implies the presence of a Luhya empire. The Nabongo Mumia was no threat to the neighbouring Kager clan. However, as a paramount chief, Nabongo Mumia, was a creation of the British to pacify western Kenya, especially to control the northeastern Kager clan of the so-called Luos.
We need new names, donge?
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We Need New Names
By Oduor Obura Sometime back, Kenya was presented with several designs of what was envisaged as the “national dress”. A team of eminent persons in the culture scene had been tasked by the Ministry of Culture to search, identify and come up with designs that would help us finally resolve the longstanding issue of “What is a Kenyan national dress?” This debate was not happening in isolation; it was replicated in many other art genres in Kenya, such as the culinary arts (What is the national dish?) but it was particularly prominent in the music scene.
Artists and experts continue to dialogue on whether we have what can be described as a truly Kenyan beat. Is it benga? Is it kapuka? Or do we stick with the beats that have come to be identified with our communities like omutibo in Western Kenya, mwomboko amongst the Gikuyu, sengenya, bango and chakacha at the Coast?
Do we have a beat (read music), such as mbalax from Senegal, kwaito or kwela from South Africa, juju music from several countries in West Africa, or rhumba from the Democratic Republic of Congo, that if heard out there could rightly be claim to be from Kenya? Do we need a beat that gives the country a distinct musical identity? Is this the same in other countries like Senegal, DRC, South Africa, Tanzania and globally?
In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat? Most experts argue and agree that it takes more than language to give music a national identity. It takes more than just singing in Kiswahili, Dholuo, Gikuyu or Sheng.
Some industry players argue that Kenya has indeed achieved a similar feat with benga and that benga is not confined to Kenya alone; it has been exported to other African countries, notably Zambia and Zimbabwe. Shades of Benga, a book detailing the origin and growth of benga, makes a case for this beat as a truly Kenyan musical sound that has also had an impact beyond Kenya. Benga aficionados argue that this is the most distinctive sound to have come out of Kenya’s 70 years of creating urban guitar music.
In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat?
“It may still not be considered an upmarket genre, but it has managed to establish its hold as a definite Kenyan style and beat,” the experts at Ketebul Studios, who put together a booklet, an audio CD and documentary DVD dubbed Retracing the Benga Rhythm note. “Sprinklings of it are to be found as far south as Zimbabwe and it has been borrowed, repackaged and offered in big-name music countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. From its humble rural beginnings, this music has been nurtured into a club circuit affair in numerous urban areas in East, Central and Southern Africa.”
Identity struggles beyond the arts
The musical discourse is not about to wane and the success or failure of the national dress experiment is still up for debate. However, this search, whether in the music scene, fashion, film or even the culinary arts, is without a doubt one of the clearest illustrations of our collective struggle with the complex issue of identity that also manifests itself in every other aspect of our national psyche in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres.
When we gained independence in 1963, the constitution prescribed a Westminster-model where the governor and the prime minister had their roles spelt out. However, immediately after independence, the KANU political elite sought to dismantle the independence constitution in order to implement a theory of a singular executive authority vested with the presidency. The elite wanted something akin to the American presidency but they fell short because they did not put in place other stronger institutions that would provide the necessary checks and balances. This resulted in a political struggle that culminated in a new constitution that is now faced with reverberations from this past era.
Eighteen months after Kenya attained independence, the government of the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta published the African Socialism Sessional Paper No 10 that contained the basic tenets of what the founding fathers termed as the concepts and philosophy of a Democratic African Socialism that would guide their future planning. “We rejected both Western Capitalism and Eastern Communism and chose for ourselves a policy of positive non-alignment,” Jomo Kenyatta wrote in his opening remarks.
However, just like in politics, the economic blueprint was strong in rhetoric but failed miserably in its implementation. We gravitated towards Western capitalism and even became very hostile to countries and neighbours like Tanzania that had adopted socialism through Ujamaa. Alexander Chagema, in an article aptly titled “Kenya, the Epitome of the Capitalist State”, described the country as “the epitome of the capitalist system of governance”.
David Himbara pointed out the same in his article “Myths and Realities of Kenyan Capitalism”. Other writers and experts have written about this dual existence. They all demonstrate how we have been struggling with economic identity. The political and economic identity struggles and the resultant machinations are reflected in the tussle on whether to support the nation or “my community”.
This struggle is often exhibited during elections when the political elite whip up ethnic emotions over national issues as they seek political office that is often associated with the economic rewards they are bound to reap or protect.
“The marriage of ethnicities in Kenya was arranged by the colonialists,” noted Prof. Kimani Njogu, a former Professor of African Languages at Kenyatta University and director of Twaweza. “During the struggle for independence, a spirit of nationalism was ignited, but this vision was not pursued by the new leadership. Instead, ethnic affiliations have been stimulated and perpetuated by the political elite to acquire or maintain power. Ethnic cleavages continue to undermine national consciousness, often over competition for resources and access to political power. They undermine Kenyan nationhood.”
Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience. Broadly, noted Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi in Linguistic Realities in Kenya: A Preliminary Survey, “There are three language groups in Kenya, namely Bantu which includes Kiswahili, Gikuyu, EkeGusii, Luhya and Kamba; examples of Nilotic languages are Kalenjin, Luo, Turkana and Maasai, and Cushitic includes Rendile, Somali Borana and Gabra. Each group includes more than five dialects, which makes Kenya a multilingual country with nearly over forty-two languages.”
Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience.
The languages have been recognised by the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Besides these languages, the constitution also made Kiswahili the national and official language of Kenya. English, a colonial legacy, has been recognised as an official language. However, this has not helped to stop the wrangles on identity and recognition that have persisted between Kiswahili and English, given the historical context they stem from.
“The colonial language policy in Kenya is important putting into consideration that it impacted greatly on post-colonial language policy,” notes Dr Wendo Nabea, a lecturer in linguistics and the Director of Laikipia University, Naivasha Campus, in his seminal article “Language Policy in Kenya: Negotiation with Hegemony”. The article states:
Contrary to the long-held postulation that it was the objective of the colonial government to promote English language in the colony, the colonial language policy was always inchoate and vacillating such that there were occasions that measures were put in place to promote or deter its learning. However, such denial inadvertently provided a stimulus for Kenyans to learn English considering that they had already taken cognizant of the fact that it was the launching pad for white collar jobs. This can be said to have been the genesis of English’s hegemonic and divisionary tendencies, between the elite (those who could use it) and the masses (those who could not use it).
Identity struggles within culture and the arts
Political and socio-economic identity struggles in Kenya are taking place with such intensity because our cultural identity has also not been addressed. Observers note that we fought for political and economic emancipation, and while we might have scored some victory on these fronts, we did not sufficiently consolidate it through a well thought-out cultural policy that took note of our diversity and grounded our aspirations on the strengths that these diversities presented. We defined ourselves clearly as Africans when we wedged the political war through fronts such as the Mau Mau but failed to develop similar clear identities when it came to our culture that would be explicitly defined through our artistic impressions and expressions.
Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms, notes: For a full comprehension of the dynamics, dimensions and workings of a society, any society, the cultural aspects cannot be seen in total isolation from the economic and political ones. The quantity and quality of wealth in a community, the manner of its organisation from production to the sharing out affect, and are affected by the way in which power is organised and distributed. These in turn affect and are affected by the values of that society as embodied and expressed in the culture of that society…the wealth and power and self-image of a community are inseparable…culture gives that society its self-image as it sorts itself out in the economic and political fields.
The first cultural policy for Kenya was launched in 2009 – 46 years after the country had attained her independence. Before it could even be implemented, the country gave itself a new constitution a year later and that necessitated a further review of the cultural policy to align it to the new constitution. There was an intensive process to align the policy to the constitution but the subsequent document has never seen the light of day. The country went back to its default mode of trying to define itself and realising matters to do with culture and producing artistic expression and impressions without grounding these on an official policy.
There is no doubt that culture and cultural identity are at the centre of the quest to resolve identity issues in Kenya’s arts scene. This quest certainly includes our continued obsession with a national dress. It also includes a desire to identify a beat that can be called truly Kenyan.
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We Need New Names
By Oduor Obura When I was in high school, one of my uncles asked me if I had a boyfriend. It was a typical question that many of our parents or relatives ask at this rather awkward period of our lives. The conversation remained a playful exchange until my uncle got really stern and told me this: “Before you get into a relationship with someone, make sure they have an ID.” At the time I thought that remark to be rather odd, and didn’t know what to make of it. I dismissed it with the thought that maybe he was under the influence or maybe it was just a recommendation that adults give based on their personal bias such as “make sure they are God-fearing.”
I never thought much about national identification cards until it was time to get my own. I had never heard of any odd stories around securing this document, the legal evidence of initiation into adulthood. My cousins and older friends before me had had a fairly easy time, so I never imagined that it would be an experience that would change my life forever, or one that I would be writing about five years later.
The beginning
On the morning I went to apply for my ID, my mother, a very organized person, had prepared a folder containing the documents that were required by law. We went to the chief’s office – a walking distance – chatting and laughing as she teased me about what “adulthood” meant. We got there and there were a few young people, so I went in, oblivious of what would happen. My mom seemed a bit nervous but I was very excited. I was thinking of all the things I would be able to do; drive, travel alone, go out dancing, drink… She gave me the documents and I went into the application room, not knowing that I would come out a different person.
My father had died in 2007, seven years before I applied for my ID. I was aware that one of the requirements for the application process was copies of your parents’ identification cards and my birth certificate. The folder had a copy of my mom’s ID and my birth certificate. My father’s ID was not there because he didn’t have one.
When the chief asked me about my father’s documents and his ethnicity, I didn’t know what to say, because I was unprepared for any kind of interrogation. Actually, I didn’t even think that I was going to interact with the chief in any way. I had expected to be given forms, fill them, have my biometrics taken and go home in time for lunch, with my interim ID in hand. I called my mom into the room and had to witness her saying that my father never got an ID after decades of applying, because he was a Nubian and somewhere along the way, he gave up. In that moment I was being exposed to this kind of alternate existence that had not been a part of my reality but would affect how I saw everything from then on. For so many years, my mother had hoped that by the time I was applying for this document, that things would have changed and that I wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation that she witnessed my father go through for so long. She tried to explain the situation to the chief, but he dismissed her by saying “all foreign tribes must be vetted…huyu itabidi vetting.” (She will have to be vetted). The walk home was silent and heavy. My mother was teary and I was quiet.
Nubians were brought to Kenya from Sudan in the early 1890s to serve as soldiers in the British army under the Kings African Rifles, first during the building of the Uganda railway and second, in the First and Second World Wars. The British denied the Nubians the freedom to return back to Sudan after demobilization, and then categorized them as aliens, a label that has since been perpetuated by consecutive post-independence governments. Because they weren’t allowed to go back to Sudan, the British allocated the land that covers present-day Kibera to the community to settle on, but their status as “aliens” has meant that there can never be any legal documentation to show that the land in Kibra is, to my generation, Nubian ancestral land. This, in turn means that the state can and has refused to legitimize the rights of Nubians, keeping them in a permanent state of stagnation, which benefits powerful elites.
My father was Nubian. This label didn’t mean much to me in the sense that I never thought that being Nubian would shape my lived experience in any significant way. I just thought I was just a child, a person, a Kenyan. Outside of my grandmother’s house, this Nubian identity was basically an inconsequential part of who I was. Growing up I just found it strange, fascinating and finally tiring when people would ask me if Nubians were Kenyans, having never heard people asking Kikuyus or Kambas whether they were Kenyans. With my limited view of the world I just thought it was a game of popularity, like how we had the popular guys in school, who everyone knew, and the ones who were not so popular, but were still part of the school and still enjoyed the structural providences. So, Nubians, like the Mbeere and the Pemba, were just few in number and perhaps not well known, and my assumption was, even though these groups of people lacked social capital and recognition, they very much enjoyed all the rights that all other Kenyans enjoyed.
I did not know what vetting was or what it entailed in this case, and frankly, I had never heard of it. The chief had given us a piece of paper, on it, a list of documents that I was to produce to prove I was Kenyan enough for an ID. The list absurdly demanded that I bring; copies of my grandparents’ (dad’s parents) identification cards, my father’s death certificate, primary school and high school transcripts, my immunization card, and most surprising of all, a copy of the ID of our building’s caretaker, accompanied by a signed note saying that he knew me and that I was resident in the building I claimed to live in, for an extended period of time. There was also mention of appearing before a ‘council of elders’ and paying a fee to a magistrate.
By then, I had figured out that what I was being subjected to was not standard procedure, but an act of institutionalized discrimination. I had been asking my friends about their experiences, and they all seemed to have flawless experiences. Most of them praised the government for “making the process easy.” On the other hand, my Nubian cousins weren’t even trying to get IDs. They already knew that hurdles were too great.
To the government, it was clear that Nubians were not human, because to be human is to belong. “At the age of 18, your life as a Kenyan stops” one Nubian youth from Kibra lamented. “It is only when you apply for an ID card that you realize you have been living a lie. This country does not want you, and the years you have spent here are all a farce.” Without an ID, one cannot register their sim card, therefore access to M-Pesa or any other form of mobile banking is impossible. One cannot vote, cannot access government buildings, cannot obtain a passport, cannot apply for jobs, higher education or even acquire a driver’s license. It is so absurd, to the extent that without an ID, one cannot legally die, which is what happened to my father. He does not have a death certificate because he did not have an ID. The state neither recognized his life nor his death. In the eyes of the state he never existed. To me, this is what statelessness truly means. The right to live and the right to die and the right to belong are taken away, without being granted in the first place.
Proving my humanity
Nubian youth today go to great lengths to get a chance to even apply for their identification cards. Many lie about belonging to other tribes, mostly the “popular ones,” many save up in order to afford to bribe officials in the many different offices they will likely have to go through. All this because the Kenyan state gets to play a game of the politics of exclusion and inclusion, who is “in” and who is “out”, but these acts have real implications to real people whose lives begin to be defined, first, by statelessness before they can claim to be anything else.
I have a great uncle, who by several untruths, social connections and stubbornness, was able to obtain an ID many years ago. His single ID caters to every official need that people in the family may have. Any dealings with the Kenyan government and he’s your guy. People depend on his vote to speak for many. Many M-Pesa transactions go through him. He takes people’s children to school; his bank account is basically communal. So this uncle’s details are the ones outlined on my father’s burial permit. The one legal document that bears my father’s names is his burial permit, written in my living uncle’s name, with my uncle’s ID number.
Back to my application for an ID. On the day that I returned to the chief’s office, I wasn’t hopeful. I wasn’t excited. I was dreading the humiliation of having to prove the only nationality I knew, in front of many people. I went with all the documents that had been demanded for the vetting process, except the death certificate which didn’t exist, and my grandparents’ IDs which also didn’t exist. Standing there, being talked down upon and ridiculed, all I could think of, strangely, was the caretaker. I had spent the week chasing him all over the estate. Once I explained the reason why I needed his help, he became too busy, an act he put up in order to get a bribe out of my mother and I. Being a heavy drinker, he always asked for “pesa ya kachupa”. I always said I didn’t have the money. Then he would get angry and tell me to look for him the next day. This went on for a couple of days until he finally gave me his ID which I photocopied and the next day he wrote a brief note, signed it and I attached it to the copy of the ID. The day I was going back to the chief, I met him at the gate, sober, telling me that he knew the chief. I didn’t know what that meant, but I saw my mum giving him a 200/- shilling note. Standing in front of the chief, I now knew what he meant. He could unravel this whole process just by his word of mouth. I felt so small and dispensable, like my life was hanging in the hands of these men who had more citizenship than me.
The chief sent me home, and as I was walking back, I was trying to think of all my family members; maybe I have lawyer cousin that I didn’t know about? I needed a lawyer, and I knew legal fees were expensive. See, the chief said the documents were insufficient to prove anything. The caretaker’s note was there, my mum even managed to find my immunization card, all my transcripts up to my final year of high school were there, but he said that the documents that were missing were the most important. So he advised that I seek the services of a lawyer in which I would swear an affidavit that my father died not being a citizen of Kenya, and that I was aware of this and was ready and willing to take the ID using my mother’s details only. This was to me, a protest to my protest. Here I was, trying my best to prove that I belonged, holding on to everything I knew about myself, but being told that I am not who I know I am, my life being unraveled, in an embarrassing and truly heartbreaking manner. When I was turning 10, a year before my father died, my mom threw a birthday party for me. Till this day, even in the pictures, I have tears in my eyes because my dad couldn’t make it. I wanted him there so bad. He was my dad. Here I was, at 18, being asked to erase his existence in order to exist myself. I couldn’t process it. I just couldn’t. I always want him to be with me, and my country was asking me to wish away someone that I was part of who I was because of the favor of belonging; of legally obtaining the Kenyan identity.
My mum wanted me to get the process done as soon as possible, because like any mother, she wanted to see my life moving. You don’t realize how hot Nairobi is during the dry months until you have to walk up and down Argwings Kodhek Road looking for an affordable lawyer. Luckily my mum remembered one of her friends from church who was a lawyer. She got his number from his wife; we called him up and were able to locate his office just before 3pm. We explained everything, and while he was baffled, he prepared the affidavit and I signed it soon after. I was soon back home but I was wondering if all those feelings were worth the trouble of trying to be a Kenyan.
I have heard stories of Nubians today only being allowed to apply for IDs on Tuesday and Thursday from 9am -1pm on each day, with only three government officials serving thousands of young and old Nubians. Other people from other tribes can apply on any day at any time that falls within the business hours. My father’s mother has been sick for decades. She had a growth in her abdomen that requires very specialized and expensive care. She doesn’t have an ID, therefore she can’t access insurance services. She knows she is in pain because she doesn’t possess any form of proof of citizenship. Hearing about this time that has been set aside for Nubians to apply for identification cards excites her, and she is happy at the prospect of more of her people being recognized as Kenyans and participating in society. She does not know that this process is just an extension of the injustice orchestrated by the oppressor, because the person who denies you your humanity cannot turn around and give it to you in small doses at their own convenience and by their rules. It is false and inhumane for a part of the population to be made to feel like their access to human rights is a favor and the little attention they are given, a privilege.
Where life stops
Like other Nubians, my uncle, the youngest of four sons, married outside of the Nubian tribe, hoping that this would mean that his children would have better chances of legal belonging. Creating a situation where people would rather marry outside of their tribe so that their children may have a chance of legally existing, is by design, ethnic and cultural genocide. My uncle was in a relationship with a woman from a different tribe, with whom he had a child and lived together. The girl was hiding her relationship from her family because of fear of their disapproval. Unfortunately, one way or another, her family found out and they forcefully removed her from my uncle’s home and took her, and the child, back home. Their reasons were that they had heard that Nubians are lazy; they sit around all day, without jobs and at the risk of deportation because they are not Kenyans.
A couple of years ago, another of my uncles, a father of three sons, was suddenly left by the mother of his children. She was frustrated by his lack of a steady income. She left him with the children, and we received word that she was married elsewhere. He would die two years after, because of lack of access to proper healthcare. He died still waiting for his ID application to be approved so that he could apply for insurance.
My uncles’ stories are testimonies of real life consequences of the evils of the state. This lack of legal identification affects more than just the one individual seeking the document. Many Nubian people are not able to provide for their families. They are left feeling that they are not doing right by their spouses, their children, and themselves. The situations that Nubians find themselves in are locked in by helplessness and despair. It is not my uncles’ faults that they are not able to even have the opportunity to have steady sources of income. When I see Nubian men, young and old, seating around their houses, playing draughts, I see men whose ability to affirm themselves has been taken away. So they carry their politics in their bodies. They talk to exist, to pass the time and fill the void of uncertainty. They talk, therefore they are. When I see my uncles, I don’t see ‘lazy, unmotivated’ people, which is a dominant narrative about the Nubian people. This stereotype is, behind the scenes, advanced by the difficulties faced in obtaining identification. When you don’t legally exist, legally love, legally die, when you don’t legally belong anywhere, it is easy for narratives about you to be formed and advanced by the people who belong. They have the voice, you don’t.
On the day that I was to pick up my ID, I was nervous about being turned away. It had been a couple of weeks of back and forth. After the humiliating vetting process where one man on the council tried to get me to sing the national anthem in Kiswahili, I just knew if I had to go through one more hurdle, I’d weep and probably just give up on the process all together. As I was standing in line, I thought about how I was being forced to basically denounce my father in order to be a ‘real Kenyan’. I wondered if that was the price I had to pay, and if any of it was worth it.
When I got home, I showed off the new shiny plastic proof that I was a human being worthy of being seen and heard to my mum, my cousins and my aunties. They were very happy. Getting this little thing was such an achievement and they all congratulated me for “keeping steady”, “staying strong” and “doing all it takes.” An outsider listening in might have genuinely thought that I was participating in a vigorous Olympic activity. And isn’t that absurd? I was just trying to drive and drink and party, and perhaps vote. It’s absurd. Every time I look at my ID card I feel like I am looking at the absurdity of it all. I hate being in situations where I am asked to ‘show ID’. It’s traumatic because it’s a symbol of the humiliation and the pain, and it hurts even more thinking of all the young Nubians who do not have the loopholes that I had, like having a mother of different ethnicity, or having gone to a national school which somehow made my transcripts more credible.
My grandmother is very happy that I was able to get an ID. She says that I should thank God for my mother, that I should be happy that I can participate in society, legally marry and legally die. When I go to visit her in Kibra, I pass the mosque at the corner, the children playing in a small open field next to a pile of garbage, the old men seated outside seemingly staring at nothing, the young men playing draughts next to the women painting beautiful henna patterns on each other. Sometimes I am unable to figure out if the glint in my eyes is my tears, or the glare from the shiny new apartments being put up by private developers, shiny like my new ID. I am lost to the realities of this place, Kibra, where people exist but not really, where nobody in the real Kenya knows the young men seated outside playing draughts are waiting for casual labour here and there, and the old men are seated in silence because there is nothing left to say, they have been talking about the same things for generations. My grandmother’s house is no longer a place where I excitedly go eat ngurusa and spicy beef while listening to taarab and her long stories. Now, it is a place where “real” life stops and everything happens day to day, because there is no security in thinking of the future. The future is a luxury left for ‘real’ Kenyans.
I have lecturers who, when I talk about Nubians in class, will still ask me where “these people” are from. There are adult Kenyans that don’t know the existence of Nubians in Kenya. During the census, we are grouped as “other.” Sometimes with my generation, when I say I’m Nubian, it is taken as a celebration of “blackness” and “authentic Africanness” because the word does not resonate as an ethnicity but as a label used to celebrate dark skin, kinky hair and non-European features. With my mum’s side of the family, my Nubian-ness is seen as the latent threat that may erupt one day and deny me opportunities that would have been accessible to me had my mother fallen in love with a person from the “right” tribe. On my dad’s side, my Nubian-ness is the thing I rejected, so much that I denounced my father’s involvement in my life – his entire existence – and took an ID claiming to only be my mother’s tribe. For me, it is the arrow in my heart. It does not pierce, it will not come out. I can feel it there, a constant reminder of a feeling I want but don’t know how to get, a feeling that I have but can’t seem to get rid of. It is my baptism by fire, my lens through which the world began to make sense through pain and contradictions.
To belong, and claim identity, in the Nubian Kenyan context, is to have privilege. It means that because you belong, you have the luxury to dream, to hope, to love. It means that you can participate in conversations around higher education, politics, health care, insurance, life, death. It means that the justice process is accessible, it means that you can live naturally as a human being, able to fully participate in choice, building community and that the possibility of dignity is a reality that is available. My uncle’s main concern that I end up in a romantic relationship with a person who has a national identification card was his way of taking care of me. It was his way of saying that he wanted me to have a chance at hope, at dreaming, at living as a person free of the complexities and humiliation of alienation.
Published by the good folks at The Elephant.
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We Need New Names
By Oduor Obura Kipande
In 1915, the colonial government enacted the Native Registration Ordinance but it was not until 1919 and 1920 that it was implemented. The registration was an instrument to control and regulate the recruitment of African males into colonial labour. It contained a registration certificate and fingerprint of the holder. The Ordinance made it mandatory for all adult males aged 16 and above to be registered. Upon registration, they were issued with registration papers kept in metallic copper containers attached to a chain commonly referred to as “Kipande.” The Kipande was worn around the neck like a dog collar. The Kipande contained the wearer’s tribe, their strengths and weaknesses and comments from his employer on his competence, therefore, determining his pay or whether or not he would be employed.
The government used the Kipande to curtail freedom of Africans and monitor labour supply. It also empowered the police to stop a native anywhere and demand to be shown the document. For Africans, the Kipande was like a badge of slavery and sparked bitter protests.
Passbook
In 1947, the Kipande was replaced by an identity booklet which had fingerprints but not the bearers portrait. A new law, the Registration of Persons Ordinance, was passed to make it mandatory for all male persons of all races of 16 years and above to be registered. But under this new law, the identity cards issued distinguished between the protectorate and non-protectorate persons. Although the Ordinance sought to remove discrimination based on race, it made no attempt to remove gender- based discrimination. The trend continued even after independence until 1978 when an amendment was made to what has become the Registration of Persons Act (Cap 107, Laws of Kenya) to include the registration of women who had attained the age of 16 years and above. A further amendment to the Act was made in 1980 to raise the age of registration from 16 to 18 years.
The first generation Identity Cards
In 1980, legislation was amended to include women and the booklet was replaced by the “First Generation” paper identity card with subtle security features embedded in the new document. The document design contained the bearers portrait and fingerprints. Raphael Musau, who was the officer in charge of National Registration Bureau and driving the whole process, witnessed the handing over of the new generation national identity card to the former president Daniel Arap Moi. In 1977, Raphael Musau was requested by the then vice president Daniel Arap Moi to design a new Kenyan Identity card which was to replace the blue colonial passbook. His first port of call, accompanied by Principal Registrar of Persons, was De La Rue, Company in London who eventually were tasked with making the new design.
The second generation card
The first generation identity card was replaced in 1995 by the smaller credit-card size “Second Generation” card, that was in essence, a laminated paper card. The card includes basic information [name, sex, date and place of birth, date and place of issue] a photo, a signature and an image of one fingerprint.
Plastic card
In 2011, the second generation card, in turn, was upgraded to the present plastic card without fundamentally changing its features. The current generation of IDs therefore date back to 1995, the last time that the population was re-enrolled.
The card includes basic information [name, sex, date and place of birth, date and place of issue] a photo, a signature and an image of one fingerprint. It also includes a sequential 8-digit national ID number (just a sufficient number of digits to cover a population the size of Kenya’s) as well as a 9- digit serial number. The information on the front of the card is machine readable on the back. Since 2007 there have been intentions to move to a “Third Generation” e-ID card with a chip and enhanced security features, but these have not materialized because of financial constraints.
Under the Registration of Persons Act (Cap.107), it is a requirement by the law of Kenya that a Kenyan citizen who attains the age of eighteen must have an Identity card facilitated through the Department of National Registration Bureau.
The National Registration Bureau (NRB) is responsible for collecting biometric and biographic information and issuing National IDs (NIDs). The NRB also operates the Automated Fingerprint Identification System that checks for duplicate or multiple registrations.
The Kenyan NID is mandatory and must be acquired when an individual turns 18, and is issued free of charge. The Kenyan NID does not have an expiration date. Thus far, Kenya has issued 24 million cards, but this total may include duplicates as well as the inactive cards of deceased individuals. There are about 1.2 million new registrations each year. Foreigners who remain in Kenya more than 90 days are required to register as an alien and get an alien registration card.
Every citizen in Kenya not previously registered has to go through the first category which is the initial registration of applying for an identity card. At this stage, no fee is paid to access this service. In Duplicates – resulting from lost, defaced or mutilated cards. National Registration Bureau charges a service fee of Kshs.100 with effect from 16th March 2018 for replacement and change of particulars resulting from a change of name(s) and residence which attracts a fee of Kshs.300 and Kshs 1,000 (depending on the request).
The requirement needs for the first stage of ID application by Kenyan citizens include a birth certificate or baptism certificate, both parents identity cards and copy, two passport size photos and a school leaving certificate.
Huduma Number
On 19th September, 2005, the Head of Public Service appointed an Inter-Ministerial Taskforce on Integration of Population Register Systems (IPRS) in line with the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) recommendation on the fast-tracking of the integration of the registration systems. The Taskforce made several recommendations one of them was the introduction of a unique national number – Personal Identity Number (PIN) for all individuals resident in the country. That the number be assigned at birth for all residents and serve as the control number for all registration systems, Establishment of a National Population Register, containing information of all residents and serve as a central reference for all population registration systems, a central database. Development of nationwide ICT infrastructure backbone to link government agencies for purpose of information sharing and verification. According to Kenya Law Reform Commission, the recommendations of this taskforce formed the basis for the formation of the Integrated Population Register System (IPRS) to serve as the single source of truth for the population data in the country. Although IPRS was a good step towards the integration of population data, it was limited in capacity since it only consolidated data from primary population registration agencies, these being Civil Registration Department (CRD), National Registration Bureau (NRB) and Department of Immigration Services (DIS), which are established by different legal regimes. Further, IPRS did not seek to validate the information received from primary agencies by getting information from the source, Kenyans. There were a number of shortcomings of IPRS hence the Government took up the challenge. In order to improve and build upon the progress made by IPRS, the Government initiated the National Integrated Identity Management system ( NIIMS) programme under Executive Order No. 1 of 2018. NIIMS was subsequently approved by the National Assembly vide the Statute (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, No 19 of 2018.
The purpose of NIIMS project is to create and manage a central master population database, which will be the ‘single source of truth’ on a person’s identity since it will contain information of all Kenyan citizens and foreign nationals residing in Kenya and will serve as a reference point for personal data for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and other approved stakeholders. NIIMS involves registration of all Kenyans both locally and abroad and also all foreign nationals who live in Kenya. Upon registration, the enrolled persons will be issued with a unique identification number referred to as Huduma Namba and later a multi-purpose card referred to as Huduma card, which will substitute the current inefficient identity cards. The Huduma Namba, being a unique identification number, will be used to identify all persons in the country and thus will be used while accessing government services and identification both by government and the private sector. It will waive the need for issuance of multiple registrations of the same person and will be used from cradle to death. NIIMS will be the single source of foundational data about a person and all government agencies will tap into it. The Huduma card will contain the integrated personal and foundational data of the cardholder. The mass registration for Huduma Namba began in March 14th 2019. Published by the good folks at The Elephant.
The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.
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We Need New Names
By Oduor Obura
An Interview with Joy Mboya
Joy Mboya is the Director of the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi—a nonprofit institution for the convergence of the arts in Nairobi and East Africa. Between 2003 and 2005, the GoDown Arts Centre hosted the Sunlight Quest for Kenya’s National Dress; an interactive process that was designed to generate concepts for Kenya’s national attire. This project definitely advanced conversation but was not publicly adopted by a critical mass, with many Kenyans saying that the outfits were not practical or suitable for daily use. There has been little reflection on the objectives and scope of the project, the extent of its public engagement strategies, and its successes and failures. Joy spoke with us about her experiences with the project and her thoughts on Kenyan national identity.
***
Back when I was in my 20s, there were very few spaces that had been fleshed out to support the newly minted fashion designer. So for the longest time, if you wanted to get anywhere, the Smirnoff Fashion Awards were huge. At this level it was quite your run-of-the-mill show; maybe somebody bought a piece or two but not too much else happened there. However, it was still exciting, and in the event that you won the local award, you qualified to compete for the global award at a ceremony attended by huge international designers and fashion houses, and maybe somebody important would notice you and something might happen.
Now, more and more, I think corporates do better in the arts when they form foundations that have a separate plan for their engagements from their general business agenda. This way, their support can be more deliberate and long-term, aside from having one moment in the light. But the Smirnoff Fashion Awards, other early fashion shows, and all the beauty pageants were real opportunities back then. Corporates were growing and solidifying their brands by linking up with fashion, glamour, contemporary style, you name it.
Patricia Ithau was a former Miss Kenya and had been a model for a long time, remaining very interested in fashion even after she left the scene.
So it was no surprise that when she had the opportunity to spearhead the idea of a national dress, she really ran with it. It would not have happened without her interest and her push at Unilever, without her saying “Here’s an opportunity, Sunlight,( a Unilever detergent brand) let’s do something”. She had a big connection with fashion designers because of her history in the industry, so she begun to seek out people she knew to see how they could be involved. She is the one who brought in the government through the Ministry of Culture, to ensure it was something the state bought into, to make everything national and formal.
The GoDown was still fairly new then—that was around 2003—and we said we would be happy to host the tangible parts of the process and coordinate whatever meetings they needed. Unilever would put out the call and then we would receive the submissions, exhibit them publicly, assist them in identifying teams of cultural experts for follow-up, that kind of stuff.
Ideating a National Dress
Early on in the process, our priority was moderating the designers to make sure they kept an open mind, that they did not get bogged down with individual perspectives but remained aware of the wider space. The first thing they did was gather all the ideas that had been submitted, pin them on the walls and stand back and ask themselves, “What’s happening here?” I think they recognized early—and this was of course rather difficult to relay—that the notion of a national dress, especially in Kenya, was going to be influenced by too many different things, and that they were never going to actually create a national dress, by themselves, from scratch. What the designers could truly offer was an informed way to see how we as Kenyans clothed ourselves, how we worked with the body and what parts of the body we emphasized, combined with what was happening in the contemporary space, and what elements of all this were worth carrying forward.
It was tough. The designers would make presentations during the earlier focus group meetings, and many people would come in actually expecting a final dress. But the designers would still be talking about concepts that were showing up in a lot of traditional dress: the cape representing a moment of ceremony or status for men; some kind of adornment across the chest; the loincloth with optional cover of the behind for women (this was where the notion of the apron came from); headdresses to make the face an obvious focal point and such. Everybody was hanging something around their ears, piercing their lips, or even wearing mud caps that they could stick feathers into, to give some examples.
The designers were wondering how to begin working with all these interesting sensibilities to create a final product. Just before they began, they wanted the public to participate in the process, so that there could be buy-in from the very beginning. Having them choose a dress at that stage was going to be impossible, so they thought through what would be a more realistic set of options. They decided that perhaps the public could choose the colours they would most prefer on a Kenyan national dress. Sunlight tied it in with a marketing gimmick about washing clothes that wouldn’t fade, which I think was a bit myopic. Marketing is fine, but not if it is going to interrupt an intricate, important process.
The ideas that the designers actually put forward were just concepts. They never, ever, described them as dresses. They wanted to put these out so that Kenyan fashion designers would begin to design original pieces interpreting them, which they would then sell to the people, also hoping that some members of the public would be a bit adventurous and absolutely do their own thing. Building familiarity with and acceptance of these would need a huge marketing push, obviously. Fifty million shillings had already been spent mobilizing ideas from the nation, taking the designers to visit different places to learn about different cultures, putting together focus groups, having presentations, and all.
So How Did You Sustain That Kind of Momentum and Energy?
This was where Patricia was really clever and strategic—she knew that once the brand was done making their statement, they weren’t going to throw any more millions into the project. That was her main reason for bringing in the Kenya Government, through the Ministry, because hopefully they would become excited enough to kind of keep this thing going.
That was the grand hope, that these things would find their own legs. Some of the designers who were not part of the original process began to pick it up. Wambui of Moo Cow* (*Wambui Njogu, one of the two founders of the Kenyan fashion label Moo Cow, which was established in 2002.) did some funky leather aprons that could be worn over denim jeans. People got excited about making their own extended aprons from the neck all the way down. Even the government picked up some elements of it. One of our sports teams actually made some of the concepts into the team costume, of course in the Kenya colours. The ladies had a red skirt, with black trim, embroidered on, which suggested the apron—I don’t think there was a separate flap. The men in that particular group had the three-notch treatment at their necklines.
Ideally, we would be seeing pieces evolved from the national dress concepts all the time, not just for special occasions or trips abroad, until it was no longer new or weird and it became part of how we saw ourselves. We would be feeling like we needed these pieces for our full identity, and starting to buy them. We didn’t have that opportunity to make a lasting presence, however. One thing that ended up happening was that designers made items that the public considered overpriced and were labelled as luxury items when the designers didn’t intend them to be seen that way. They were just trying to make back their money and make a decent profit. Nobody quite picked up the cape. I wonder whether it was too expensive or if they just were wondering, “How am I going to pull this off?” But we almost introduced it again when Willy Mutunga was Chief Justice. We said we would be happy to pull together a team of designers to really think about the Supreme Court judges’ dress. He was excited about that*.
*Kenyan judges eventually opted to retain their existing robes, but made the donning of the whitish- grey horsehair wigs optional. Mutunga, Hon. Justice Dr Willy, S.C., Dressing and Addressing the Kenyan Judiciary, 2011, Kenya Law Journal, Nairobi, Kenya
One of the designers said, “Hang on, what if we revive the cape from the national dress? We could rethink it for the Chief Justice, maybe for the big ceremonies so he doesn’t have to wear it all the time?”
That idea was taken to the judges and some of them thought it was a bit too much. I remember meeting one of them in the corridor and he asked, “Joy, what are you guys about to dress us in? Taking us back to hides and skins?*”
*Kenyan Judges Change Titles, Dress Code, 2011, The Daily Monitor, Kampala, Uganda
People always come back to me and to the Godown, trying to find out what happened to the national dress, and why it just vanished into the ether. University students especially have come by to investigate this as part of their Master’s Degree, so all their theses must be sitting around somewhere*.
Misati, Beatrice N., Kenya National Attire: Factors Influencing adoption, 2008, School of Arts and Design, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
Imo, Beatrice Elung’ata, Adoption of the Kenya National Dress as a Basis for Developing a Decision- Making Model for the Local Industry, 2013, Department of Fashion Design and Marketing, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
Many of them were a lot more interested in the process of the design. But most feedback from the general public was asking the question, “Why did you think that you could prescribe a dress for us that was not the dress we wanted?”
We’d all conveniently forgotten the extensive public participation and iteration. But I also think that some things just take time, and perhaps people only really get into a thing like this when given a certain amount of time. Perhaps the national dress needed that kind of continuous engagement so that ten years on we would consider saying, “Actually, what happened to the apron? What happened to the shirt?” People needed to interpret their own nationhood through growing familiarity with the national dress concepts. They needed to be reassured that these concepts had actually come from long deliberations over our diverse origins and cultural heritage, and that the concepts were open for all kinds of interesting interpretations as time passed, not just what the designers had put together back then.
We needed exhibitions and discussions over a much longer period than we imagined, to get a project of this weight to stick and gain traction with the people. The Sunlight process with the public and the designers provided the opportunity to say, “If you create something that doesn’t reference heritage or doesn’t pay attention to culture, Kenyans will reject it.”
Coming To Terms with the Rejection
But diverse cultural references were there, and yet there was still rejection.
So was it that it was not pretty enough, and if so, what could people have wanted ‘pretty’ to be? I don’t know. The most interesting question now, for me, is how to get to the root of what Kenyans are actually complaining about, because it wasn’t clear then and in many ways it still isn’t. None of the shirts ever took off in any way so the men did not really have anything, but there had been a few ideas here and there that the women had found interesting. There was even a concept of the dress for women who wore hijab. I think there was also a real missed opportunity in the Minister for Culture—that was Balala*, then.
* Hon. Najib Balala, who served as Minister for Gender, Sports, Culture and Social Services between 2003 and 2004.
He would seize on anything that would amplify his ministry and his role. He could have said, “For as long as I’m the Minister for Culture let me just keep this thing alive.” I think that perhaps the urgency was just not seen at that time. Perhaps the designers didn’t succeed in communicating that the concepts they saw were prototypical aesthetics, if they can be called that. That the way that women in one community would cover themselves across the front was by using a loin cloth, certainly, but that loin cloth was not exactly the same from one community to another. Everybody did it in whichever material was locally available, for their local climate and regional sensibilities. So, again, there was never going to be a national dress in that immediately formulaic sense of, “Ah, that’s a Kenyan dress. Are you Kenyan?” “ Yes.” “ I see you’ve got an apron, and the other Kenyan’s got a different apron.”
How Do We Just Accept That We’re so Incredibly Diverse and Different?
It was not going to be like that for a long time, at least, not without continuity, public education and sustained visibility. It was always going to be a difficult project. It would have been progressive to keep it alive for a decade or two and see what would we would have had in the end. I think Kenyans are beginning to accept is that one of the things that stands out about us is our diversity. We haven’t reduced that diversity yet into a single thing or a few core things in the same way that the West Africans seem to have done. I do not know how they did it. Perhaps their kingdoms and organizational structures were much more visible, and therefore notions of kings, chiefs and ceremonial dress were much more immediate in their minds than in ours? I have no idea. But more and more now I wonder, “How do we first of all just accept that we’re so incredibly diverse and different?”
How can we become excited about that, and then allow it to organically find the things that will coalesce into the cores, into the singles? Everything else that remains can just be allowed to stay different, you know? Maybe trying to look at these things in only one way is a reason we will continue going astray, or asking ourselves questions that have no answers.
In terms of diversity, one of the people who has a wonderful story around that is Tabu Osusa of Ketebul*, who says that when Kenya did a showcase at the 2014 Folklife Festival at the Smithsonian Institution, our musical presentation was called exceptional because it was so diverse.
*Ketebul Music, a Kenyan record label and studio founded in 2007.
People already knew the South African sound, or the West African kora which was lovely and beautiful but nothing was really changing. It was just the same kinds of sounds all the way through. But when they saw the Kenyan spread, they began to pay attention because it couldn’t be defined by one thing or a few things. So my thought now is to interrogate that and figure it out, instead of panicking and seeing it as a problem.
It is not clear whether the failure of this project to gain traction with the Kenyan public was due to the communication and marketing, the underestimation of the work and time needed by the parties involved, or a combination of these and other factors. Several things have happened in the thirteen years since this process, with regard to urban national conversations on identity and fashion.
The Africa Rising narrative, with increased optimism about Africa’s future and greater continental esteem, has led to the opening up of cultural borders to new generations of young Kenyans. This has had a wider audience because of access to tech, information and social media, with more of them finding ways to integrate cultural pieces not just into ceremonial or occasion clothing, but also into practical, everyday garb. The 2009 publication of a national culture and heritage policy* openly declared state interest in development of national attire. (National Policy on Culture and Heritage, 2009.)
There is also a greater desire for and consumption of clothing designed by Kenyans and inspired by Kenyan cultures. It is possible that this set of brewing cultural conditions could better demonstrate the importance of a national dress, beyond an abstract need to stand out from other Africans in international fora. Perhaps wider cultural dialogue must occur before a national dress can truly evolve from our shared, diverse ethnic experiences in a way that will be more widely acceptable to citizens. It is also possible that national dresses evolve organically from cultures only when they are ready to do so, and that it is not a shortcoming to lack one.
Endnote
The 2004 Sunlight Quest for a National Dress remains a critical attempt to create recognizable national symbols through attire, beyond the flag, the national anthem, the coat of arms and the public seal*.
(Article 9: National Symbols and National Days, from Chapter 2 – The Republic, The Constitution of Kenya, 2010, Kenya.)
This interview was originally published in the fashion book Not African Enough ( 2017) by the Nest Collective and republished with their permission.
Published by the good folks at The Elephant.
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By Oduor Obura
Governmental policies in Africa have laboured towards elevating their countries from poverty, ignorance and disease, legacies of colonial rule. This value system is based on needing the industrial revolution to come of age as it did in the rest of the world, creating employment and wealth for citizens on the national scale. Severe resource limits curtail easy achievement of this aim, preventing even delivery of essential public goods like water, sanitation, literacy or security.
Due to macroeconomic opportunity cost, conversations about culture, aesthetics, beauty and particularly fashion are left behind as luxuries in favour of basic amenities and universal development goals. Any data collected and research done is mostly in a small cluster of prioritized fields, with very little in the areas of arts and culture. Investment in the development of cultural knowledge is unfortunate to remain on the outer margins of the Continent’s priorities.
It is essential to remember that the colonial enterprise succeeded in devaluing native cultural presence and knowledge in order to assert full dominion. As such, indigenous aesthetics and beauty were not considered serious or important in the face of any continental plan for overall advancement.
Gathering, presentation and analysis of information about and around these subjects, and presentation of the same, continues to be viewed as frivolous. Research into these ephemera is left to those who can spare the time, intellectual labour and resources. These often tend to be Western researchers familiar with structures for archiving characteristics and evolutions of their own cultures. Western knowledges continue to be analysed with patriotic fervour and full cognisance of historical worthiness and future aspirations. These archives retain a dynamism and emotional connection with their curators, keepers and publics, characterised by open and often re-animated exhibition, and endless possibilities for re-imagination. In search of Africanness
When research is done on African cultures, however, the weights of old histories and power dynamics continue to play a significant role, whether consciously or unconsciously. These philosophies place African bodies lowest on a hierarchy of disadvantage, meaning that the lens of a Western researcher into African cultures is often that of a curious onlooker fascinated by the exotic. This viewpoint also leans heavily towards the perception of the pristine African, undamaged by Western interaction, perhaps in a bid to cover the violence of colonial reality. When information on contemporary aesthetic practices or cultural products is collected, it is mainly for niche media archives, or to fit neatly into the subset of ‘world art’. These particular subsectors find themselves separated from mainstream art history and the classifications that centre Western artistic practice. The definition of what differentiates African Art from antiquity, with attendant declaration of value, is often the province of Western curators, dealers, gallerists, collectors and auctioneers. The Western academy polished numerous perspectives as professional outsiders and gradually became the definitive voice on African art, gaining increasing access to institutions that stored indigenous African knowledges. These archives of artefacts and information were collected for examination, classification and preservation by others, adding to a vast compendium of knowledge to be referenced, often without a right of reply or even invitation to dialogue.
For a long time in the eyes of the world, the idea of Africaness has remained static. The focus on heritage as defining for this geography has overshadowed wider shifts into a globalised, more equal understanding of Africaness. It was essential to present Africans primarily in this revisionist way, so that the moral complexities of how particular elements of contemporary modernity reached African shores could continue to be avoided. Honest explorations into culture cannot evade these holistic reflections, but hyperconcentrated jaunts into antiquity and technicalities can. Regardless of focus, the net result remains that more people from the West publish and own far more functional knowledge about African cultural aesthetics—whether historical or modern—than indigenous Africans do.
The Western researcher and curator cannot be painted as the solitary villain here, though: this story is much more complex and layered. Modern iterations of the Western gaze are continuations of centuries of anthropologist-explorer histories, of people excited to discover new things, who took on the exclusive ability to name these into existence, and who eventually developed a widening catalogue similar to those developed by other civilisations. The problems began when one voice generated the power to establish and maintain itself as the sole objective standard, and made countless political and other decisions to eliminate other voices and frames.
In a changing world, where conversations in the post-colonial space among Africans on the Continent and people of African descent in the diaspora are gaining traction and value, difficult questions are being asked about the place and authority of the universal white gaze. Ethical demands also arise to counter the hoarding of African artefacts and knowledge by Western museums, libraries and galleries, which aside from being archives and centres for education have served as temples to Hegelian ideologies on race and blackness.
Is it possible to have African worldviews when wide swathes of African history are locked away, displayed and contextualised by others? By positioning itself at the top of the ivory tower, has the Western worldview also held itself captive?
What has it failed to hear and see? As Africans embrace the discomfort of a re-emerging self-esteem, new generations of Africans are taking back the ability to name, prioritise and create African spaces beyond developmental lack and industrial aspiration. These generations must assume the power to describe and analyse their worlds relative to their own diverse points of view. Fashion, art and culture are far from the only windows through which African reimaginings and reclamations can take place, but they are a more than worthy arena for essential debates to begin.
Identifiers of Kenyan Identity
There are important conversations between the different tribes and language groups of Kenya that have not been had – conversations about deep post-colonial injustices and inequalities generated and sustained to favour a few select tribes above others, and to locate power with some ethnic groups and not others.
Definite resource advantage accrues in coming from one tribe as opposed to another in this country. Competition for these resources instrumentalises these primary identities. This creates tensions that explode into episodes of physical violence, often catalysed by the electoral process. However, all the conversations about seeking justice have been located exclusively in the political space.
There remains, understandably, a deep and unresolved internal conflict of belongings: between being part of the nation of many and belonging to the community with whom one shares a language and an ethnic origin. A growing number of people prefer to embrace tribeless-ness, and with that, a full release from the problematics of ethnic labeling. Others locate their own tribe as their community of first loyalty, willing to erase others if it means they can reclaim what they view as theirs. Resource advantage links to direct survival ideology and even the possibilities for building wealth, and political and socio-cultural performances of tribe become increasingly valuable in this regard. This is upheld by the convenient narrative of monolith tribal purity, treating tribal origin as immutable even though different ethnic groups have influenced each other via intermarriage and other ways for centuries, over and above the effects of globalization on all Kenyans.
Despite commonly patrilineal naming customs, it is becoming more common to honour multiple heritages symbolically with names from these different groups, creating new groups of people who have multiple and compound ethnic identities. This makes the whole conversation around tribe even more complex. It has been easier for Kenya to claim international languages for her own national expression than have difficult debates around communication in ethnic strongholds and beyond: English, the language of the former British Commonwealth, and Kiswahili, a hybrid of Bantu and Arabic languages spoken widely over the East and Central African region. There are thus legal instruments to avoid directly nationalising tribal performance, but none to counter its unmappable, often toxic, sometimes violent spread into the lived experiences of Kenyans.
When any time is given to exploring indigenous Kenyan dress-practice, it is often as a moral trip into the civics of conscience, to arm-twist citizens into a surface appreciation of diverse ethnic origins in a bid to engender peace despite the screaming inequalities that remain undiscussed.
Kenyans prefer to deal with equalising cultural costumes on stage to feed a benign fantasy of surface nationhood, over delving into the process of national justice, reparations and reconciliation, perhaps because expressed cultural belonging has caused so many wounds for so long. Can it truly matter to Kenyans what tribes A, B, C or D wore centuries ago, if the knowledge of this answers no contemporary questions? In this case, tribal dress practices are used as political instruments, regardless of their potential as symbols of new national narratives. The state-endorsed and published 2009 National Policy on Culture and Heritage* (“Article 2.1.2: Kenya National Dress, and Article 2.1.3: Design, from Chapter 2 – Culture and Heritage, National Policy on Culture and Heritage, 2009, Kenya.) painstakingly points out the government’s duty in creating an enabling environment for inclusive cultural expression, and investment in development and protection of tangible and intangible aspects of Kenyan culture. It clearly maps out the state’s role in defining Kenyan national identity with regard to a national dress (even though the document is curiously silent on the 2004 national multi-stakeholder effort to evolve the same, despite the fact that the state openly encouraged and applauded it at the time). It also notes the importance of exploring diverse national identities in the field of general design, specifically mentioning dress as one of the pertinent arenas. This document, alongside several other international documents referencing culture that the government has ratified, is an important part of Kenyan landscape that forced to remain functionally inert by lack of political will to implement it.
Beyond its creation of room for potential legislative intention in an indeterminate future, little can be said about the effect of its existence on Kenyan cultural theory and practice. Individual tribes may derive power in identifying what makes them unique to strengthen negotiations for dignity and selfhood. However, many of the costumes showcased as the sole bearers of heritage are often those of influence and prestige: kings, warriors, elders and the like. There is, indeed, a manner of healing and restoration in the nostalgia of power, and there are also similar leanings in Egyptophilic attitudes towards ancient Africa in significant parts of the black diaspora. Everyone knows how to value the trappings of monarchy and aristocracy. We do not, however, lean towards recognition of the garments and implements of the everyday person, beyond hierarchies of affluence and occupation. Modern day iterations or reconstructions of the clothes that leaders used to wear may be wonderful to behold, but difficult to embody as more than symbolic in the real lives of contemporary people.
An exception to this idea, however, is the way in which Kenyans travelling beyond borders become oddly apolitical by way of wearing pieces exclusively associated with the Maasai tribe as markers of corporate Kenyan identity, whether they associate in any way with Maasai people at home or not. The hypervisibility of the Maasai may have originated from colonial fascination with and significant documentation of their way of life, becoming exclusively associated with Kenya despite a significant Maasai population in Tanzania. The Maasai shield retains a place of honour in the national coat of arms. Citizens, to display Kenyanness, select and wear pieces that speak to them of strength, courage and beauty – layers of intricately wired bead jewellery and leather belts, highly polished hardwood knobkerries, or the ubiquitous, multi-use, multicoloured checked blanket. These are part of the daily lives of the Maasai, communicating the dignity, oneness and belonging that is so elusive elsewhere.
Within contemporary fashion dialogues, Kenya has been anecdotally known as a net consumer of all kinds of cultural content from all over the world, and this cosmopolitan litany of influences—including those from the diversity of ethnicities in our geography—has lent to our artistic practices an eclectic quality that is difficult to pin down or describe holistically under one label. Fashion has not been left behind in this conversation: no one aesthetic has been able to be described as uncompromisingly Kenyan. A description of the term ‘Kenyan fashion’ has therefore not been easy to find, whether from the perspective of the Kenyan designer, the international fashion market, or even the local consumer, who may have different ideas about being and looking Kenyan than they do around the practice of the same.
Not African Enough
Constructions of urban Kenyan contemporary culture continue to take many shapes and forms, with few more interesting than the area of fashion and apparel. The self-rule of the new post-colony engendered an exploration of universal equality – if a Kenyan was able to shop for and buy the same garment as anyone else in the Commonwealth, it was a celebration of the access that had not been available before, and the ability of the newly free young people to define what was then possible for their own lives. A push began to promote and stabilise cotton production in Kenya, though it failed under subsequent political regimes*. (Alila Patrick O. and Atieno, Rosemary, Agricultural Policy in Kenya: Issues and Processes, 2006, Institute for Development Studies, Nairobi, Kenya)
This economic failure, which also occurred in other agricultural spheres, was followed by structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank looking to open out the previously protected infant industries to free market trade opportunities and global supply chains.
To combat sticky colonial legacies despite these challenges, a desire for more conscious expressions of blackness began taking root in a new generation on the Continent, with people beginning to demand certain levels of ‘Africanness’ from their clothes to link more strongly with their cultural origins and heritage. With this came the culture and politics of wearing so-called African fabrics, the most ubiquitous of which is Ankara (the origin of the name ‘ankara’ is unclear, as is when it came into common use).
The origin of wax print in Africa is commentary on the power imbalances within international supply chains. It was created by the Dutch* (* Akinwumi, Tunde M., The African Print Hoax: Machine- Produced Textiles Jeopardize African Print Authenticity, 2008, The Journal of Pan-African Studies, California, USA) in a failed bid to mass-produce Indonesian batik fabric that was usually handmade, to gain a market by the ability to offer it to consumers cheaply. When an African market was found for the rejected cloth in the 19th century, the original Indonesian designs were replaced by local ideas and motifs, to increase their relevance to their new clientele.
China then joined the industrialization race, manufacturing wax print at cheaper rates and successfully overturning the Dutch monopoly. Regardless of the producer, a critical mass in West Africa had used this fabric almost exclusively for a long time. As hunger and effective market demand grew across the Continent for identifiers of Africanness, wax print was easily taken on in other regions as a pan-African symbol, despite the fact that its symbols and patterns were specifically designed to have special meaning for communities in West African countries. Copying any garment in wax print became the singular textile representation of the Continent, an idea given legs when black diaspora celebrities in the global North gave it visibility and a seal of approval by wearing it proudly. It became easier to design with wax print than anything else, leading to a dearth of actual design—pushing the marriage of colour, cut, theme, drape, texture and fabric in order to explore new volumes and silhouettes.
The true essence of the term ‘fashion’—to make—became less valuable. This identity conversation became part of the ‘Africa Rising’ story, a problematic, composite sub-Saharan identity that has significantly limited many other African possibilities, far beyond fashion and expression. The ankara debates, therefore, are a serious conversation about the politics of origin, assimilation and belonging. The fabric clearly does not pass basic global standards for rules of origin*, (World Trade Organization, Technical Information on Rules of Origin, Geneva, Switzerland) to rightfully earn the label ‘African’, based on the location of the last substantial transformation before it arrived on our shores for our use.
However, does calling it African for centuries actually make it so? Does being its majority users and manipulating it in increasingly innovative ways make it irretrievably ours? Is it odd that fabrics that have been made by others and travelled so far have a belonging to our sense of self that supersedes that of textiles actually woven or fabricated on our shores? It can seem strange that we consider a pattern on a piece of cloth as such a site for cultural contest. For us, this hyper-analysis of ankara is underpinned by the Western looting of the tangible artefacts to which cultural meaning is assigned. Having artefacts taken away during colonialism deeply and irreversibly interrupted our senses of origin and belonging. Subsequently, Kenyan culture has appropriated the remaining symbols— such as Maasai cultural goods and experiences—to serve the need and desire for both nation-building and belonging. Conversely, the currencies of identity in the North not only include a vast archive of tangibles, but are also anchored in the assumption of wealth and plenty (without questioning their histories of plunder and conquest), as well as the value of cultural intangibles. ‘Frenchness’, for example, is globally associated with luxury, and the magic of the words ‘chic’ or ‘couture’. Scandinavians are known for placing a high premium on futuristic, minimalist design, with Italy remaining famous for giving the richness of their past a place of honour in modern cultural conversation. New African worldviews—around value, culture, significance, and the potential for futures beyond colonial crippling—are essential for Africa to begin to generate and evolve its own autonomous agenda.
This thinking forms, for us, part of that wider aspiration. Within these frames of thought, we aim to dismantle this heavy super-concept ‘African’; the assembly of words, images, sounds, ideas, weaknesses, histories and failings associated with the entire Continent. This is our way to say that we are more than kitenge, khanga, kikoi and ankara. We are not West African—we are East African, Kenyan, particular and individual.
NOT AFRICAN ENOUGH is a derogatory term routinely lobbed at artists, creators and thinkers who step outside the narrow confines of what the world—and Africans—are told it means to dress, talk, think and be like an African. In response therefore, we endeavour to unapologetically contextualize and position black African bodies as beautiful renderings of humanity, in resistance to the pervasive tokenism, exotification and fetishization of blackness in global fashion conversations. We simply assert our right to be more than enough.
Excerpt is a foreword from the book, “Not African Enough”(2017) by the Nest Collective.
Published by the good folks at The Elephant.
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