Real winners and losers in election chaos

The real winners and losers are not the politicians but those who live in the poorest communities. FILE PHOTO | ROBERTO SCHMIDT | AFP

Election campaign season was the only time we ate rice in my childhood in Nairobi. My mother would come back to our home in Kibera carrying a small portion of rice, a handout from a politician. My siblings and I would gather, waiting for the moment when the water would boil. In Kibera, we always knew when our neighbours had food. Soon, the faces of other children began to appear in our doorway, their eyes big and hope-filled. My mum always invited them to eat with us, and that angered me.  Each extra mouth reduced the food I would get, and I glared as each newcomer passed by our doorway. I was always curious.

REAL WINNERS

“Where did the rice come from?” I would ask her, and she would say from someone campaigning to be a councillor or MP, the name unimportant, her vote equally unassured. My mother would then serve the rice, equally divided among my siblings and the other children, and as she would warn: “Empty containers make a lot of noise.”  

Looking back, I think my mother always intrinsically understood who the real winners and losers are in the Kenyan game of politics. She struggled every day of her working life to raise her eight children. So yes, when an opportunity arose for a free cup of rice, she took it. But she would bring the rice home and share it with our neighbours, Luos like us, Kikuyus, Kambas--- her allegiance never to the politicians but to the people with whom we lived.  In Kibera, neighbours are often the only safety nets.  Neighbours offer a borrowed cup of maize meal or sugar.  They form our own neighbourhood protection circles.  They watch over children as they walk to school and back home, and frequent the small shops of Kibera’s industrious economy.  Without my neighbours, Luos, Kikuyus, Kamba, Luhyas, and Nubians, I wouldn’t have made it to where I am today.  And I am not alone. 

BROKEN PROMISES

Yet, every five years we forget this simple truth: our communities are far more fundamental to our survival than the oft-broken promises of politicians. I implore my fellow Kenyans, and especially my Kibera brothers and sisters, not  to cut off our noses to spite our faces.  We will soon hold an election that we all hope will be credible and just. But this election will come and go, and we will go back to our lives and our struggles, and the political class will return to theirs, including their joint business ventures.  No matter how many bowls of rice they offer, their struggles are different from yours. 

In our communities in Mathare and Mukuru and Bangladesh-Mombasa, we need one another.  We laugh together.  We borrow from one another and share.  We go to schools together.  It is our children who lose from violence. It is our schools that close, our homes that burn, our businesses that are razed. Our politicians do not live in our communities.  Their survival is not interlinked with ours. Politicians play to win or lose, but when violence erupts, who are the losers really?  As the saying goes, when two bulls fight the grass suffers. They move on with their lives, and our communities are left in pieces. 

My mother  knew the truth.  The real winners and losers are not the politicians but those who live in the poorest communities.  We hope the institutions established to defend citizens will do what is right and the electoral body will also do what is just. Let’s celebrate the fruits of our new Constitution.  Let’s exercise our democratic right to vote. At the end of the day, let us also return to our communities in peace, knowing that tomorrow is a new day to build together. 

 

Mr Odede is the co-founder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco). He is also the New York Times bestselling author of Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss and Hope in an African Slum. [email protected]