Why national ethos is the most important of the ‘bridges’ agenda
What you need to know:
Though top on the BBI agenda and a hugely important matter, national ethos hardly ever features in national discourse.
Ethoses define, identify, and assign behavioural and aspirational values to a people.
Ethoses are models and ways of life into which children are socialised and to which the collective belongs.
May I revisit the nine issues the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) alias March 9 Handshake and its 14-person task force are grappling with, namely ethnic antagonism, lack of national ethos, inclusivity, devolution, divisive elections, security and safety, corruption, shared prosperity and responsibility.
Though top on the BBI agenda and a hugely important matter, national ethos hardly ever features in national discourse. An ethos is a character, set of beliefs or principles common to a people. Ethoses define, identify, and assign behavioural and aspirational values to a people.
CIVILISED BEHAVIOUR
No one community or nation wants to be identified, for example, as charlatans. It follows that an ethos is exemplary and promotes excellence and the pursuit of excellence by one and all for the good and standing of the collective.
Therefore an ethos is not innate but is taught, made widely known, practised, praised, repeated and continually improved. Ethoses are models and ways of life into which children are socialised and to which the collective belongs.
Children should grow up witnessing hard work being rewarded; knowing playing by the rules signifies civilised behaviour; that crime does not pay; that justice rides the long road but she eventually arrives; and a hard won reputation, if abused, will fly away in a plane and return on a mkokoteni.
COMMON BOND
Indeed, Kenya’s national anthem demands certain values of us which would form our ethos: May we dwell in unity, peace and liberty; justice be our shield and defender; service be our earnest endeavour; firm we stand to defend (Kenya); and, in common bond united build this our nation together.
Because an ethos is aspirational, plenty cannot be found within Kenya’s borders if we do not work hard for it and together as one. So, what does it mean when 55 years after independence President Kenyatta and his foe-turned-ally, Raila Odinga realise that Kenya lacks a national ethos?
That it is damning indictment of independent Kenya’s past leadership, beginning with founding President Kenyatta, the President’s father, and his Vice-President Oginga Odinga, Mr Odinga’s father, to the continuing leadership led by President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga.
FAILED POLICIES
My argument is that Kenya lacks a national ethos because of the failed politics and policies of the persons who have led the country since independence. The other eight areas in which BBI is engaged should similarly be analysed through this prism of failed politics, policies and priorities.
Founding President Julius Nyerere united Tanzanians; taught them that the resources of the country belonged to all; and that one Tanzanian was for all and all for one. Kenyans regard mali ya umma (public resources) as existing to be plundered by those in authority and with access.
It is why when in the 1970s as Dar and Nairobi bitterly bickered over a disintegrating East African Community, the former would call the latter a man-eat-man society and Attorney-General Charles Njonjo, an opponent of regional integration, would brand Tanzania a man-eat-nothing society.
DIVISIVE STRATEGIES
Kenya’s elections are neither divisive nor violent. It is the strategies of politicians that are divisive before the ballots and violent after. Mr Odinga’s 2007 strategy pitted the rest of the country (41) against the Kikuyu (One) and in 2013 and 2017 the President and Deputy William Ruto returned the ethnic mobilisation favour in electioneering and government.
Politicians, not the electorate, see elections as a zero sum game. Politicians acting as tribal chieftains, not the voting public, preach the it’s-our-turn-to-eat gospel. Politicians, not tribes, are now justifying corruption in the counties as eating by “our own where previously others in Nairobi ate our share”.
It is politics that concentrated decision-making over national resources at the centre and created and marginalised peripheries by skewing the distribution of the resources. Politics created the devolved units of the 1960s and politics killed them by starving them of funds.
FIX POLITICS
Politics is now defining inclusivity as the expansion of the executive rather than the creation of policies geared to reducing poverty; promoting equality of opportunities; increasing access to resources, employment, basic services and, crucially, entrenching public participation in decision-making. Our curse is our politics which has corrupted and polluted what would have been our national ethos and policy priorities. Why is the Constitution not among the BBI agenda yet it is crucial to political re-engineering?
What needs fixing first is the politics. The 14-person committee should tell its principals that. And it should tell them that shutting other players out of BBI is political, exclusivist and divisive.
