Our politics is a peculiar habit of Kenyans

In an article titled “Moses Kuria is not a tribal chauvinist” (Daily Nation, June 21), Evans Ondari raised a very interesting point that perhaps calls for further debate.

He gave a personal account how Mr Kuria, who has been booked twice for hate speech, offered him a job and even defended him against tribal prejudices, insisting that he valued productivity more than tribe. Although this invites scepticism, it should not, as it clearly defines the Kenyan split personality where we factor tribe in politics but not in our personal and business lives.

In his business, Moses Kuria, would not allow incompetence, even from members of his tribe. If he did he would be the loser. Similarly, in our personal lives, we go for the best doctors, mechanics, carpenters, secretaries irrespective of their tribes and sometimes even celebrate people from other tribes as they share with us different world views in their cultures, history, or religion.

In other words, we celebrate diversity in our private lives, yet we exhibit the basest tribal instincts in political discourse and voting to a point that we have become the laughing stock in Africa.

I recently attended a prize-giving function at a primary school in Nakuru where the pupils, through a choral verse, decried tribalism in the country and challenged parents to declare whether they want schools and teachers for each community. What a humiliating msomo from our children! So, what makes Kenya to be this way?

In resource economics there is a theory called “tragedy of the commons”, which states that there is incentive to abuse than conserve a collectively owned resource because the use is personally beneficial while the loss is shared — even when the long term consequences of the abuse are obvious.

ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION

In Kenya, politics has for long been regarded as an avenue for the abuse and exploitation of national (collective) resources, therefore, we give it less professional value and care less about the quality of politicians so long as they belong to our tribe.

How else would one account for the intellectual quality of some of our elected leaders? I have asked many friends in business whether they would employ some of our members of Parliament in their businesses and their answer has invariably been a resounding “No!” Yet some concede that they voted for them.

“If you cannot employ him as a manager in your business, why did you vote for him to go to Parliament, where much higher professional skills are needed?” I often ask. The answers range from “its politics” to the fact that they wanted their party or presidential candidate to win.

We assume that the quality of our politics does not matter. It is this attitude that has landed us in the situation we now find ourselves in; a country with boundless potential, yet we remain forever stuck on the runaway, unable to take off because of a leadership crisis.
Our country is blessed with almost everything else except progressive politics and good leadership because our best and most gifted never make it to the helm of politics and leadership, thanks to tribalism.

Commenting on the last elections in Uganda, Sunday Nation columnist Murithi Mutiga noted that with all its imperfections, the election in Uganda was superior to Kenya’s, which he described as “most primitive” as it is always tribe-based. That is how a political analyst predicted Jubilee’s victory in 2013 — by just looking at the voter register.

That is how Kenya is wasting its potential. We produce award-winning and internationally-renowned scholars, authors, diplomats, and business innovators, but we never give them a chance to ascend to positions of leadership in our own country. For us, leaders must come from our tribes even if they are less intellectually endowed, even if they are crooks, thieves, and war lords.

Mr Njaga is a tour consultant in Nairobi. [email protected].