Bash me for anything but not over my ethnic origin
AMERICAN SINGER INDIA Arie has this wonderful hit titled I am not my hair. In just five words, she captures the sentiments that I have been feeling lately — what with all these tribal alliances and counter-alliances.
Only the good Lord can tell what new permutations we can expect ahead of 2012. You would think that we had enough to worry about in December 2009, let alone three years down the road.
But we love a fight so much that we don’t know when to stop. If we can rope our tribal hair into every spat and bare-knuckled fight for power, Kenya is supposed to get all the sweeter to live in.
It is not enough that we want to partition the country into tribal fiefdoms constantly looking beyond the horizon for imaginary enemies — and short-lived allies.
We want to turn internationally acclaimed VIPs like Kofi Annan, Graça Machel and Benjamin Mkapa into nannies who referee our petty squabbles, much like nursery school teachers have to run around after their little charges.
As for Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the very name is enough to send some of us into paroxysms of terror — and rightly so, considering the number of bloodied hands in powerful positions. The best part of it is that The Hague cannot be manipulated into tribal cocoons.
Nevertheless, I am sure someone somewhere is hard at work trying to establish whether Moreno-Ocampo has any connections with groups that migrated from the Congo or down the Nile — and whether it is possible to hound him out of the picture by simply marshalling the war-cries of the tribe.
When the day is done, it is all about our tribes and how much of the booty our so-called leaders can take home. You can be sure that they are careful not to encourage the idea of communal salaries and accounts, so you always get the short end of the stick.
I don’t know about the rest of you — and I am not going to speak for all my tribesmen and women past, present and future on this — but I am sick and tired of this “them versus us” business.
There is nothing wrong with tribe. It is just something you find yourself stuck with at birth. It becomes a completely different ball-game when it mutates into tribalism, which is a conscious choice to discriminate against others who speak a language other than your own or who do not share in your particular culture.
There should be no shame in belonging to a tribe, and no special pleading either. Yet it would be dishonest to argue that it is all about politicians and all the jazz they like to make at rallies. They do so because they know our dirty minds.
PEOPLE WHO ARE HELL-BENT ON playing on our ethnic differences can go ahead and make all the noise they want. But we have no obligation to listen to them, let alone act on their devious scheming.
The tribe can be just an identifying mark, or it can be the sum total of your life. Unfortunately for this country, many Kenyans have chosen to make it a yoke around their necks.
This is where the sickness comes in. We have criminalised the tribe. The rise and rise of the tribe in Kenya has come with more than just a difference in language or way of life. It has brought with it censorship, discrimination or favouritism on the basis of your surname and even death.
I am not my tribe. I am me, uniquely put together and with a mind of my own, thank you. I don’t want to be branded by what veteran journalist Philip Ochieng once called the “O” factor. I do not want to be accused of representing the interests of someone called “Ogwambo”, as another witty Kenyan put it.
I believe “Ogwambo” has a mind of his own, and is well able to fight his battles without my assistance — and he has done so all these years without any input from me.
I would love to be able to speak my mind anywhere and any time without having to look over my shoulder at who else is in the vicinity, lest I am instantly branded the enemy.
It has come to such a pass that you can barely comment on a national issue without expecting an abusive tirade from one quarter or another. Disagreement is fair enough and easy to live with, but only if it is based on an honest analysis of the issue at hand.
There is a reason the good Lord made us in all colours, tongues and shapes. The tribe becomes a pain in the backside only when it is reduced to a knee-jerk reaction to any issue, personality and circumstance. It will be the death of Kenya.
It becomes a weapon of mass destruction when it is used to summon the forces of evil, as in the massacres of the mid-90s all the way to the 2007/2008 post-election violence.
And now that we are coming to another critical point in our history, the temptation might just prove too hard to resist. Lord have mercy on Kenya.
