Secession talk is off the table in quest to end political disputes

Nobody will be allowed to imagine the break up of Kenya into little tribal Bantustans in the name of secession.

Foolishness, especially the variety that infects clever people into believing that they can alter the boundaries of a country like Kenya, whose goatskin map was drawn by God, must have its limits.

A quick study of history would cure such foolhardiness. Long before the Mombasa Republican Council, which predated the secession case at the High Court and the petition in the National Assembly by Homa Bay legislator Peter Kaluma, some irredentist mullahs had tried to carve off nearly a third of Kenya’s landmass and donate it to Somalia.

During the 1962 referendum in the Northern Frontier District, 62 per cent of the population favoured future unification with the Somali Republic, they were all invited to put their opinion in a pipe and smoke it.

BOYCOTT

Their sentiments inspired the boycott of national elections in 1963, a skyrocketing rise in civil disobedience and an increase in killings that would turn Kenya’s north into a war zone.

The Shifta War between 1963 and 1967, even though financed and supported by the Soviet Union and the Somali government, served up only defeat and humiliation.

Pulverised into submission by targeted massacres here and routine torture there, the residents of the former NFD areas are today model citizens who support their government through enthusiastic consumption of development in the form of good roads, hospitals and electricity burning bright right into their manyattas.

Government knows what is best. Had these unpatriotic people not been subdued as soon as they raised their heads, they would all today be part of the failed clan republics of Somaliland, Puntland and the Greater Somalia.

DEMOCRACY

Similarly, those refusing to celebrate Kenya’s maturing democracy today, its fidelity to the Constitution and the law will be ruled through a state of emergency, complete with a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The police and the military ought to be given free rein to shoot first and ask questions later.

People who want to flee from the temple of justice, the hearth of human rights and the citadel of good governance in order to practice meaningless rituals must be discouraged through the force and law.

Their retreat into the primitivism of ethnic grievance, away from modern medicine and the standard gauge railway, must be forcefully reminded that secessionists in Eritrea and South Sudan worked decades only to attract the vicissitudes of bloodshed and poverty. One would rather sleep soundly, a slave on a full belly. Self-determination on an empty stomach is an insult to humanity.

Those refusing to be proud of their country should be whipped, hosed and tear-gassed into happiness. Or they should be shot.

CEASEFIRE

A firm hand will have them begging for an armistice, a ceasefire, anything but the full force of government upon them.

No one should be let to create a little air-locked country where people are unable to breathe.

Many of those imagining a life away from Kenya out of anger at their failure to access and use government for their benefit own nothing, and bring nothing to the table.

Their refusal to play their part in serving the nation would only create another sore node of poverty and pestilence in a sea of prosperity.

DIVIDED

Already, Kenya is one of the smallest countries in the world and cannot afford to be divided up any further lest it disappears under a microscope.

Breaking up Kenya when responsible people are working to federate it into the East African Community, and collapsing borders to unite Africa under one government, is not only backward but also politically naive.

No expense should be spared to maintain Kenya’s integrity and ensure that if there is misery, it is equally distributed all round.

The writer is a Programme Advisor, Journalists for Justice. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of JFJ. [email protected]