Kenya needs a village hero against ethnic hate campaign
What you need to know:
- Many Kenyans still have a problem seeing through elite games designed to present personal problems as threats to entire ethnic communities.
- But this overreliance on ethnic nationalism as a tool for political mobilisation may sooner or later backfire.
The Uhuru administration looks set to rekindle its diplomatic war against the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the Assembly of State Parties meeting in December pencilled for escalation of hostilities.
Last week the Jubilee coalition troops appeared to be sounding the war cry at a press conference in Nairobi where close to 50 MPs sensationally claimed there was an international plot to stop President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto from winning re-election in 2017.
The two are facing crimes against humanity charges at the ICC arising from their alleged role in the post-election violence six years ago.
The trigger for the new round of the Jubilee salvo is the recent decision by the judges to rebuke the government for reportedly leaking confidential information related to the President’s case.
Claims of an international conspiracy against Kenya aren’t new and the people making them are no doubt entitled to their opinions.
But people familiar with the local politics know that such claims almost always carry some clever undertones of ethnic nationalism, signalling trouble for a section of Kenyans.
With the Jubilee MPs having named the Opposition as part of the said conspiracy in their statement last week I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if an artificial tension were to suddenly engulf the country or hate leaflets were to be dropped in some part of the country in the coming weeks.
Politicians know they can get away with such blackmail because many Kenyans still have a problem seeing through elite games designed to present personal problems as threats to entire ethnic communities.
But this overreliance on ethnic nationalism as a tool for political mobilisation may sooner or later backfire.
As they say, you can fool some people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.
FRENCH VILLAGE
History is replete with cases of internal uprising against demagoguery. In David & Goliath, Malcom Gladwell references the heroism of Le Chambon, the little village in southern France which defied the orders of their puppet government to give away their Jewish neighbours for deportation to concentration camps at the height of the Nazi campaign in 1940.
Inspired by André Trocmé, the pacifist local pastor of the Protestant church, a group of students underlined the village’s resistance in a letter to the regime’s visiting minister.
It read: “We feel obliged to tell you that there are among us a certain number of Jews. But, we make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. It is contrary to the Gospel teaching. If our comrades, whose only fault is to be born in another religion, received the order to let themselves be deported, or even examined, they would disobey the order received, and we would try to hide them as best we could. We have Jews. You’re not getting them.”
Fresh from the October 20 Mashujaa (Heroes) Day celebrations, Kenya needs its Le Chambon.
Otieno Otieno is chief sub-editor, Business Daily. [email protected]. @otienootieno
