Kenyanisation from within: The limits of a new constitution

The padlock of development has been locked by ethnic chauvinism and the bestial corruption of values, but I wonder if we really need a new constitution? Which reforms are these? Are we a nation, or just a packet of tribes packed in a cocoon? Who are you? These are some of the questions that eat away at me as I listen to Kenyans in the media, on the street and in forums. When I was a student of Political Science at the University of Nairobi, I always believed that if ever Kenya was attacked from outside, and the national government called for volunteers to defend our homeland, I would be one of the first one to enlist in defending my lovely country. But today how Kenyanised we are confuses the nationalist in me as well as my pan-Africanist spirit. I believed we were united in blood and bonded nationally as a family.

Kenya has long had a reputation of being politically risky and of being a place of ethnicised minds, of geological scandals of corruption, of famine, of insecurity, of uncertainty and where political connections are paramount. The major institutions such as the church, the judiciary, parliament, civil society and national organs have become platforms for a realm of ethnic contestation and tribal orgy shows, where the minority form a coalition umbrella of ethnic cosset cocoons while the majority are subjected to tyranny. All of this conspires to undermine the state in its quest for nationhood.

In his book 'The Wretched of the Earth', the Pan-Africanist thinker Frantz Fanon warned that the post-colonial African states that were created held within their design all the seeds of a divisive and ultimately violent future for African people and societies. Fanon observed that the typical political party ‘which of its own will proclaims that it is a national party, and which claims to speak in the name of the totality of the people, secretly, sometimes even openly organizes an authentic ethnical dictatorship’. Fanon goes on to note that ‘this tribalising of the central authority, it is certain, encourages regionalist ideas and separatism. All the decentralizing tendencies spring up again and triumph, and the nation falls to pieces, broken in bits.' Kenya needs to go back to soul searching in order to derail the state from the rails of ruin.

When Hilary Clinton addressed us at the University of Nairobi, I disagreed with her on many issues but accepted her sentiments that Kenya has a political culture, where everyone – rich or poor – is politically updated. Only good, if for our betterment. We are inhabitants of tribalised culture composed of small, boorish, poor, pitiable moguls and big-time rich barons, the chiefs of ethnicity. Kenya can never go anywhere with tribalism. The prophets of doom say Kenya has a strong ability to come good when the worst is about to happen. This national drive points to self-destruction. I think we are fools as far as nation-building is concerned. A politician gains out of it, but it is sad to see people languishing in poverty wrestle and spill the blood of another poor individual, deny opportunities and unfairly treat the other because they do not come from same community. How sad it is. This reflects bad leadership and the election of irresponsible figures into positions of responsibility. Thus the birth and path of trapping the state.

We are languishing in misery, we are being ‘eaten’ by poverty, yet the Kroll report says our billions are being ‘eaten’ abroad. We are tribalists, even when we know tribalism destroys a state. We politicise every national issue, even when it is non-political. We refuse to fund agriculture yet we know it is the key to wiping off poverty. We accept rumours which we know are false. We accuse other tribes even when we are wrong. We steal from the poor whom we know to be off the beam. We support multinationals who grabbed our ancestral lands. We occupy other people's land and properties, yet we know this is unjust. The big landowners reject land distribution to the poor, yet they grabbed this land following the collapse of colonial rule and in the many years of misrule and mismanagement that followed. No electricity, no water, no food, no justice, no jobs, no transport, no security, no rains, nothing. A trapped nation supplies basic needs in scant supply, if at all. We cannot feed our country's people, neither can they feed themselves, yet this is the 21st century. We take pride as a regional hub, yet we are legions of hate-fest. This nation is under a web of traps and there is only one hope: the reform of hearts and minds.

The change we want has to start at a personal level. Many times we shout that political elites are to blame for the woes of the nation. It is true, but we, the governed, are also to blame. We accept, receive and pay bribes, litter our environs, accept the tribalisation of the state, misuse national resources, overlap at the roads, misuse public toilets, believes our own tribes are superior, leave the water tap running, misuse our employers' time and do not obey traffic lights. In the estate where I live communities loudly play the music of their tribes. A kind of tribal music festival competition. The Kenyan masses have adopted and woefully embraced the culture of ethnic-eyeing, thus weakening their ability to bring their leaders to account.

As argued by Fanon, it is evident that through the ‘ethnicisation’ of the state, political elites were and are able to appropriate state power to advance their own private accumulation. Asymmetrical economic development and ethnic jingoism are contributing factors to the exacerbation of ethnic chauvinism, particularly when ethnic coalitions utilise and instrumentalise the apparatus and machinery of the state to advance capital accumulation. The degree of ethnic animosity has been fuelled by years of misrule, economic mismanagement and corruption. Stephen Ndegwa suggests that ‘ethnic identity in Africa is a relatively recent phenomenon whose salience is largely a product of colonial rule and post-colonial dynamics in which elites have continued to reify ethnic identity for political mobilisation.'

There is a perpetuated national myth that citizens are good and politicians are bad. Reality shows that most of us are but a bunch of greedy orang-utans, economic separatists, nihilists, anarchists, pugilists, evil-motivated, ill-intentioned and unscrupulous citizens – politicians included. We never accept to amend this reality, yet it is the key ingredient for a healthy national psyche and self-discovery.

At a personal level many people identify themselves through the negative tribal lens. It is a question of values. We cannot expect everything to be solved by a new constitution; changing basic things like attitude and behaviour doesn’t require a new constitution. We have elected youthful leaders, elected women whom we thought would be the real agents of change, but who have turned out to be the ‘greediest’. The system we have is at an all-time low. Those at its helm couldn't change the system; instead it has changed them. Our values have become acerbic, acidic, bitter and priceless. The padlock of development has been locked by ethnic jingoism and the bestial corruption of values.

Have faith though, the key is still within. The system needs to be overhauled. Our hearts and minds need to be re-clocked, and set on the path of national development and unity, and not this path of self-destruction. Tribalism robs us of our patriotism. The kind of revolution we need today in Kenya is therefore not constitutional, political, social, economic nor of ideas, but rather a revolution of values inspired by the desire to reform hearts and minds. This is our homeland; I pity and pray for my motherland. I pity and pray for my homeland.

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* Cheruiyot Collins is a committed pan-Africanist working in Nairobi.
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