I will take you back to 1963, may be a little while before. When the British government of the day was warming up to the idea of an independent Kenya.
Jomo Kenyatta who would become the first Prime Minister of the new Republic of Kenya was in jail in Kapeguria. Probably not one of the most brilliant minds in Kenya in those days, Jaramogi Odinga,himself a defeatist coward was one of the first people to say ‘Kenyatta tosha’.
At independence the white men released from detention one of the fiercest looking bearded cowards of Independence struggle from prison and the other cowards went on to have their tails under their pants and this man who had changed his name numerous times ascended to the presidency of the Republic of Kenya. Little is known of his academia or his place and role in the fight for the country’s autonomy.
How would it be that two tribes came to create enmity, mistrust and a simmering hate between them beyond sense and reason?
A keen look and you will find an underlying similarity between two tribes, the difference between zebras will be obvious.
They belong to the same country, are governed by the same, common set of laws, they go through the same educational system, they eat the same food and share the same destiny as a nation, Luos suffer joblessness just like Kikuyus.
The fight for independence according to official history was the result of many tribes of Kenya that had the absolute inclusivity of even the collaborators of the colonialist agenda.
There goes a story: The ethnic Luo as they are known throughout the region of East Africa is a voluble, articulate and organized lot as compared to their Bantu brothers. In Uganda they were the original author of the celebrated Buganda Civilization when they fused together in the early centuries of migration. The tale goes on: Baganda, a Bantu-speaking ethnic people of present day Central Uganda borrow heavily from ethnic Luo dialect.
That for example, they Bantulized the Luo word oganda to Baganda, or people in English. That it is also true that the first King Oyoo of Tooro was a Luo, it so goes.
These two examples are open to any criticism. I am not responsible for lack of any justification; verbal or written. But it shows something about inter-ethnic cooperation that began way in the ancient Africa. The power of ethnic cohesion is way beyond Michuki’s torn socks and Maina Njenga’s Mungiki or Ruto’s Kalenjin march against PEV victim’s justice.
NB: am not responsible for your ignorance hence forth.
Back to Kenya, the true founding fathers of this country’s liberation are not Kenyatta or Odinga or their sons. There existed a nationalistic ideology at all. By the time the white man arrived, there wasn’t Kenya as a nation, in fact here existed tribes under ghee-lotion-skin and tobacco munching red-teeth elders with wisdom to declare war or pray for the rains, who did not know peace.
My grandmother told of how the Kalenjin and Luos fought every now and then. The diluted Lwanda Magere folk tale that has since been retold to romantically fit a misguided national psyche was the epitome of the bloody struggle between Luos and Kalenjins.
Many lives were lost, houses burnt and children and women abducted. The abducted boys were circumcised and became Kalenjin warriors. My grandmother told me of her relative who was caught by the Kalenjin in Agoro area of present Nyakach district. This is as late as approximately 1910 when she was a teenager.
The boy would contact his family later, “used to meet us near River Sondu”. She told me of how her family was unable to raise 200 heads of cattle to pay as ransom for the boy’s release from Kalenjin captivity lest he be initiated and assimilated. He was probably circumcised by the Kalenjin and they never heard from him again.
At independence a Kikuyu ascended to power with the promise of a free prosperous Kenya. The Luos pretended to like, but believing they were the best placed and able to lead. It is true, and understandable that Kikuyus were obsessed by their loss of land to the gun-trotting Brits, and livelihood.
Before Krapf and settlers, the Kikuyu tilled their land for subsistence and sold the surplus to the dry and hungry Ukamba. Krapf never succeeded in pacifying them. They subsequently went to the bushes to fight the whiteman’s occupation of their homeland.
The Luo in their style believed Kenyatta would lead and they would be the ones to run government.
The Luos with nothing to loose back in Nayanza were the labourers and managers at these farms, their children went to the white man’s schools and got good education that is the modern European culture. They became better managers and accountants and lawyers and clerks and doctors and teachers and name it. These while young Kikuyus were hunted down as either Mau Mau or potential and were generally uneducated.
According to Peter Kabibi Kinyanjui, former MP for Kikuyu, any one who went to school in his time was a British sympathizer in the eyes and mentality of Mau Mau. And they would lynch a ‘traitor’. He says it was by good luck that he went to school.
Then the Kikuyus whose kids would go to school smoothly were the home-guards and cooks and soldiers and the ones that got lucky and came to Nairobi. The Mau Mau raided schools and abducted young men and women and recruited them in their ranks. Yes you had child solders in Kenya at the height of a bloody independence struggle.
Kenyatta’s name features nowhere even less prominently in the books of Mau Mau. But the kleptocratic rule and regime endeared him to the House of Mumbi.
That the house of Mumbi is known by the sound of Kenya shilling coin jingle was but a comradiere joke that came due to the Kikuyu’s love for quick money business ventures. It is something of a belief that a Kikuyu will have little patience for the processing. A welder in Kiambu once told me that my people are not keen on such jobs as welding or shoe repair job because of the slow on revenue. A typical Mumbist would like to go for ready-made and trade at whole-sale of finished products rather than go through the sparks and fires.
With Kenyatta in power, loans became easy for his close hench, government funds were diverted. He grabbed more land. A story is told of Kenyatta going out on a land survey of Taita area. He fell a sleep in the car, no one was allowed to awake the mighty President. So he woke up after 6 hours drive at 60 kph and said, Wow, sasa hii ndiyo nchi yangu!”. And the surveyors put beams and three-quarters of Taitaland went.
On the other side the opposition (read Luo) watched from the fence. Getting poorer and poorer by the day. Government offices became Kikuyu affair. Barrack Obama’s father lost his job and was later ‘assassinated’ for his forthright opposition to the primitive way of doing things of his ‘Kikuyu superiors’ as one old man from his kin in Kendu Bay told me.
How a man who few months back at independence was poor with only lice-infested blanket from prison became rich overnight and own half the Republic’s land to his title is simply explained by greed, utter impunity and lack of common sense.
Then there came the goat-herder turn politician from Turgen who by virtue of Kikuyu misfortune of miscalculation became president of intellectual Kenya for 24 years. He ruled both the rich Kikuyu and the ‘intellectual’ Luos with heavy hand beyond their money and intellect. He manufactured a coup in 1982 to consolidate power the more, or an excuse to have his tribesmen in army and police. No wonder all police have some ungodly accent at night.
In his allegiance to the hand that put him in power Moi tried to bequeath the country’s leadership mantle to the son of the big bearded snake.
Uhuru Kenyatta had by the time hadn’t an iota of idea what the presidency of a country like Kenya meant. Or the problems, challenges, or opportunities the country was facing. There’s not a little doubt that nothing has changed to him.
He chaired an ‘emergency’ meeting at State House Nairobi at the height of the post election violence, that reportedly took contribution from top Kikuyu businessmen and women to transport vigilante to Naivasha that wreaked havoc on the innocent.
The Kikuyu launched a retaliatory attack on Luos, resulting in a bloodbath in Naivasha. Mr. Kenyatta in his element ‘our people’ mentality reiterated his plans to do the same should violence break out again in the country.
It should be remembered that Mr. Kenyatta was whisked by state security from an after Thirsty Thursday stupor one morning in a USA college where he was scoring Sups and was put on a plane back to Kenya to run for president.
After an ‘insensible campaign trail’ to him in 2002, Moi pronounced him the heir apparent to the Moi’s murderous and repressive regime of 24 years, the same government that saw chipukizi William Samoei Ruto and Cyrus Jirongo rise through what one observer called lynchings and waylaying of KANU opponents. The 500 shilling note was named after Jirongo’s name unofficially. They printed and bribed the electorate with counterfeit money to retain Moi in power.
Uhuru had lost his Gatundu bid and Moi had to split the constituency to let Uhuru’s family vote him to Parliament after uneventful but drunken stint as nominated numb nut in Parliament.
Interestingly to his family, he is reportedly had been a waste, a black sheep, if it was not for Moi who injected more capital to his estates to help build an image and the family estate in his name had been plundered by non other than his own wussy management style . No wonder he was reported to have resorted to heavy drinking when he was named among PEV suspects destined for the ICC. It is rumoured in the diplomatic circles how his mother visited the old Queen of England to beg for Royal Family’s intervention, which the queen gladly welcomed, given the job Kenyatta did for the British interest in Kenya after independence.
It is not a surprise that the AU is endorsing Kenya’s ungodly bid to pull out of the Rome Statute, fronted in the diplomatic offence by opportunist and CV-less anti-reformist VP Kalonzo Musyoka, another Kenyan “leader with nothing for his country but the self drive of the loin, and a personal crusade to avert a Raila (Luo) Presidency” Says a Bunge member.
But looked keenly, soberly and pragmatically, the country is suffering from misguided political maneuverings by leaders at the helm. Think about it this way. When violence broke out after the bungled election in 2007, Kibera burnt almost to the ground, neighbour turned against neighbour. Suddenly you were not Otieno’s tribe, and Njuguna ‘s. a brand new form of altruism entered the fore. Who lives in Kibera anyways? The poor of the poor.
As Mathare streets lined with the dead, and houses billowed in arson’s wake, the up-market Nairobi thrived with life as usual, members of the political elite were safe, their children pushed trolleys full of meaty and veggie shopping and the elite arranged flights outside the country “should this thing get worse”.
The common Mwananchi was going hungry and thirsty but the supermarkets in Westlands looked a distant irony from the burning Kenya in Naivasha or Kiambaa. The poor’s flesh roasted like the red meat at Choma Base, all these while Anyang Nyongo called for mass action, and Hon. Martha Karua spit fire at the same people she wants their vote now. Lest we forget.
When Raila celebrated his birthday anniversary last month, the guests were his best and sworn opponents and, allies, mingling drinking and smoking and bribing journalists for favourable narratives in the good-for-nothing newspaper columns.
At the Constitutional Referendum victory party in his Karen backyard last year, the same elite glad-handed the media like in a Hollywood party pad. How much was the celebrations worth? Of course we should celebrate a good win, but to some modest extent, since the IDPs are still in the cold!
Just for once the country needs to go forward. The time is now, the people for that is us. No one else.
Ruto is re-arming the Rift reportedly. Mungiki just shaved their heads, skin-heads...? Kalonzo is keen on the presidency; ODM is wounded beyond the PM’s show of unseen might.
I fear a Kalonzo presidency. Just like aKikuyu should fear a Luo presidency.The game of numbers of Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo might turn the tables in 2012. All these people have a questionable past
A black man’s fear pain is his own undoing, that an Egyptian stunt is almost impossible here is a sad fact. But those who could lead such an activity are only keen on donor money in their civil society outfits.
It would be good for change to have a president outside Central Kenya or Kalenjin land, and it is obvious Mr. Musyoka might be headed to State House. Again the game of numbers. We are still driven by ‘it is our turn to eat’ philosophy that we will let, regrettably, the politics of old Kanu rule us again.
So who is the way forward? It is me. It is you. The individual is that man. We have only one chance to make this country better for our children and generations to come. The sum total of my input and yours will be the a result called social change.
Uganda will hold a general election later this month. They have to understand that a free country in Uganda good for Kenya and Tanzania and it also true in the EAC members.
We are all one people, with varied capabilities. Arrogance, impunity, stealing from government coffers, hating your brother or sister because s/he is not from your tribe is as a sin just like having your younger sister raped by a beast. They all deserve same strongest condemnation.
And so is not taking action to the right honourable thing of making your country a better place. Isn’t it a pity that at this point in time we still fight over who is CJ or who becomes Budget Comptroller?
The fobias and manias don’t hold. For both the ruling elite and the following mass are powered by ignorance and idiocy like an Intel processor inside a Dell PC.
Think about it. How many Kikuyus do you meet out there without shoes, poor and live in the slum? How many Luos are out there capable of great hearts and intellect, but who are poor?
It is in the person, not the community or tribe, Ramogi, Mumbi, Kamba, Luhya, Giriama and all other Kenyans.
Who will save you?
The ideal Kenyan president therefore must base his leadership (not power) on informed pragmatic and sound principles, and inclusive presidential doctrine, not the dead-on-arrival ‘my people’ façade.
‘Yourself’ is the simple answer against an arrogant tribalist and plunderer. Now get ready to rebuild the Area Code 254 in 2012.
