It is the height of folly to think along tribal lines

What is Peter Kenneth’s vision for Kenya? At one time, I thought I knew. But now I grope. I keep asking myself whether the MP for Gatanga is the same individual who used to run the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) — youthful, intelligent, energetic, full of national ideals.

What has since happened so that, every time he opens his mouth to speak about the next president, the phrase “Central Province” must rush out of it? According to his increasingly belligerent utterances, there is no question about it. President Kibaki’s successor must hail from Central Province.

The only question — he said the other day — is numbers. But, even here, he assured those interested, that “.... we have enough numbers to ensure that one of us in Central Province is elected president in 2012.” That, then, is the answer to the question I began with.

Mr Kenneth’s ideology can be summed up in two words: “Central Province”. But even that is one word too many. For every child knows that “Central Province” is only a euphemism for “Kikuyu”.

But let us not stress Mr Kenneth’s tribe. I have lived in this country for too long to make the ludicrous claim that the Kikuyu were the only ones born with Original Sin and that every other ethnic community, including my own, is composed of vestal virgins.

As I have said before of Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and Agriculture minister William Ruto, the tribal elite resorts to such euphemisms because these provide a good psychedelic cover for their flaming greed for power and wealth as individuals.

That is why the leaders of the big tribes speak all the time of “Rift Valley”, not Kalenjin, “Eastern Province”, not Kamba, “Coast Province”, not Mijikenda, “Western Province”, not Luhya, “Nyanza Province”, not Luo. In common parlance, we know it as tribalism. And so the question is stark.

How can a young man think and talk of national leadership purely in terms of his tribe? Has our education system failed completely to broaden our children’s minds out of such. Wickets of thought as religion, gender, race and tribe? Is the money we spend on our schools and universities a complete waste?

I come from a moral and intellectual school which teaches that, in any dispute, you should never automatically side even with your mother. For, if you begin by investigating, you might find that she is the one on the wrong side — in which case, you must drum up the moral courage to tell her so.

Even where formal schooling has failed to drill us in these things, a modicum of intelligence should warn us that, in a country which has only recently been nearly torn to pieces by what Koigi wa Wamwere calls “negative ethnicity”, it is the height of folly to automatically side with your tribe.

I used to assume that being a product of two races was an advantage on racial and tribal issues. I thought that to grow up in such a climate naturally helped one to rid one’s mental system of all vestiges of racial and ethnic narrowness. But Mr Kenneth’s activities do not seem to affirm that thought.

And so the question is ineluctable: where is Kenya headed when our most highly educated young men and women — people young enough to be my children — are not in a position to propose production and governance ideas that can unite this country in the production of an abundance of material and intellectual goods under the leadership of a person who embodies, not a tribe, but only those ideas?

What is our future like when our sons and daughters do not have even the finesse to conceal in any linguistic finery the fact that, on social questions, they think only through the narrowest and most incredible straitjackets?

Education is what has failed even my generation. Clearly, moral and intellectual refinement is not a property of our elite, especially in business, the profession, the priesthood and politics. No wonder we cannot bequeath such social assets to our children.

I understand that some of our universities have lately — as if in an afterthought — set up ethics departments. But it is like trying to teach me, at my present age, to play piano. Piano is best taught when a person’s brain is most malleable and fingers most adroit.

Like the Serpent, you must supply the fruit of knowledge of good and bad right at the time of creation. If you do not begin imparting ethical awareness from the very cradle, it will be difficult to impart it effectively at a later date.

That is why — if we want a better generation of political and other leaders — parents must stop feeding their children with woeful tales about other tribes and races and the theory of leadership must be taught at all levels.

ochiengotani@gmail.com