Dangers of ethnic hatred unmasked in new book

Early this week, a friend sent me a clip on social media, in which people who looked like football fans were singing a common Luhyia dirge for Ababu Namwamba, whose fortunes, if we believe him, should be on the rise. Ababu has just kicked ODM in the back and, listening to his choreographed press performances, he did so in the name of the Luhyia, and declared his moment of quitting his party position (he lacks the strength to leave the party) as the beginning of a new Luhyia consciousness.

Only the other day, Ababu was effusive in his praise of ODM, and in his vilification of other parties. Now, this is the stuff that politics is made of. And it is what preoccupies scholars in the humanities and social sciences all over the world, many of whom try to unravel the thing in the tribe that makes it the most effective template of mobilisation, particularly in Africa.

One such scholar, Wanjala Nasong’o, has recently edited a book whose nuanced engagement with the question of ethnicity in Africa should make an interesting read for all those keen on understanding the predicament that politicians like Ababu, his benefactors and adversaries, subject us to.

Ambitiously titled The Roots of Ethnic Conflict in Africa: From Grievance to Violence (2015), Nasong’o’s book brings together reflections by Joseph Wasonga, Sam Okoth Opondo, Celine Jacquemin, Tom Onditi, and Martin Shanguhyia. 

CRIES OF ANGUISH

While the book is a densely theorised re-examination of how ideas of constructivism and primordialism can be employed to help us understand the role of ethnicity in African politics, it is in its dismantling of common assumptions that it can appeal to those who have, for long, been swayed by superficial arguments like tribe and language being key unifying factors.

I think those who indulge in the idle talk of Luhyia unity, for instance, should follow Onditi’s well advanced argument in this book. The idea is that language on its own can never be a unifying factor; at best it only creates temporary solidarities that are cobbled together to ward off a perceived threat.

We have seen enough of such examples in Somalia and Rwanda, and those who bother to look closely at the grouping called Luhyia, the one that Ababu and other political entrepreneurs want to unite, will admit that language is usually a pretext for pursuing external interests, often in favour of a few individuals and their patrons.

Nasong’o’s book does a great job of warning against those who preach the gospel of ethnic unity in a country of multiple ethnicities. Indeed, unity forged on such a dubious platform as tribe is, as Chinua Achebe suggested earlier in The Trouble with Nigeria, a kind of unity that looks and smells like a conspiracy against a bigger ideal of fashioning a nation out of the shell that is a nation-state.

Like my senior colleague, Godwin Murunga, I have always been apprehensive of individuals who call for Luhyia unity, knowing that such pleas are usually cries of anguish by political players in desperate need for the flippant yet soothing psychological warmth as they fall in the trap of ethnic enclaves that may eventually lead to implosions similar to what we have recently seen in Juba.

No one, not least I, can deny that different groups and regions in this country have long running grievances against the central government. The coastal region, the former Nothern Frontier District, Nyanza and Western Kenya have, no doubt, been done in badly by successive regimes. And they have reason to complain and seek redress.

ECONOMIC ASPIRATIONS

But, as Nasong’o shows in his book, retreating into ethnic cocoons as a basis of lodging such grievances is both ineffective and dangerous. It makes the hard task of nation formation harder, and it creates a spiral web of ethnic manipulation, rising expectations and rising frustrations, all leading to a political dead end.

Such strategies create ambiguities of belonging, where the tribe matters more than the nation — nothing wrong with this, where nations are already built — but in a manner that the cultural and social aspects of our ethnic identities are rendered secondary, even tertiary, to the political uses of such tribes. 

More importantly, the use of ethnic template for mobilisation distracts us from the real economic aspirations that should be the primary goal of any contest for national belonging. It was Ali Mazrui who, in a related context, once said that the conflicts between whites and blacks in history have been about who owns what, but black versus black conflicts are usually about who is who. As Nasong’o shows, such conflicts reduce what should be economic issues to ethnic ones.

It is not just about groups channelling their grievances in an effective way, the book also shows how the state can address such grievances without escalating them. Ignoring such grievances, the way Rwanda’s Habyarimana did prior to 1994, is one option. The other is how the United States dealt with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, making concessions and anchoring such in the constitution to ensure greater accommodation of genuine concerns from all quarters within the country. For our leaders, the choices are clear.