At the opening of the Olympic Games in London, Jason carried the Kenyan flag. This last piece of information should not — you would think — cause controversy.
Jason Dunford is a Kenyan of European descent. He speaks Swahili. He represents Kenya in international swimming competitions.
At the opening of the Olympic Games in London, Jason carried the Kenyan flag. This last piece of information should not — you would think — cause controversy.
Yet it has, if the discussions going on in social media and elsewhere are anything to go by.
The argument of those opposed to Dunford carrying the flag is that being white, he does not quite represent Kenya’s overwhelmingly black population. This argument lacks a legal basis or true moral and logical reasoning.
The Constitution does not distinguish Kenyan citizenship according to race or creed. Therefore, Dunford — if his choice as the literal flag bearer followed laid down procedure — had every legal right, unapologetically so, to carry the Kenyan flag.
But I suppose those opposed to him carrying the flag know this. Their opposition rather is based on a supposition that is at the heart of racism and tribalism.
The supposition is that there is a “tribal biology” that predisposes members of the same ethnic group to interpret the world in the same way.
The racial equivalent of this argument is that members of the same race are undifferentiated by their class positions and national identities.
Thus, according to this argument, a Kikuyu millionaire and a Kikuyu pauper — though for all practical purposes inhabiting different cultural worlds — are natural allies.
Similarly, the enemy of the poorly educated jobless white family in Europe is their poorly educated jobless black neighbour.
This ensures that a minority retains power and privilege by compartmentalising the poor majority into tribal and racial cocoons.
Writes Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race in Europe and tribe in Africa are central to the way in which the objective interests of the worst-off are distorted.”
Tragically, it is the poor who violently defend these positions. In the 2008 inter-ethnic violence in Kenya, for instance, they slaughtered each other in the slums and on impoverished shambas (farms) in the Rift Valley to protect the interests of millionaires living in exclusive suburbs.
The hordes with machetes moving from hovel to hovel in Kibera, and the mobs burning children alive in the Rift Valley could not — and this is the point I am leading to — see the important fact that the Kanu oligarchy that took power in 1963, and which has cleverly woven this supposition into the body politic and national life of the country, has managed — according to the World Bank — to maintain one of the most unequal societies in the world.
Likewise, blinded by race, we forget that Mobutu did unspeakable damage to the Congo, and the Interahamwe in Rwanda committed indescribable atrocities against fellow Africans, while Mahatma Gandhi and Makhan Singh chose to fight with Africans against colonialism.
Yes, we are a country and a people who are sold simple lies to prevent our looking too closely at the ruling elites. Lies, for example, that our morality as a nation is threatened by schoolgirls wearing shorter skirts or that prostitution is the vilest form of moral decay.
So, while hyperventilating over those besmirching our national morality and our African values, we forget that those who hatched the multibillion shilling Goldenberg and Anglo Leasing scandals wore “proper” suits and dresses.
We forget that those who ordered and those who carried out torture of people in the purpose-built Nyayo torture chambers were not evil prostitutes and did not wear miniskirts. We forget that grand theft and torturing people are not exactly paragons of African virtue.
Therefore, instead of arguing which race or tribe should carry the flag, we should have been debating how to expand sporting opportunities for young people in the slums.
Our national focus should not be on debating how our national morality is directly proportional to the length of a schoolgirl’s skirt. As a nation, we keep looking like the man in the proverb who abandoned his burning house to chase after a rat fleeing from the flames.
Tee Ngugi is a social and political commentator based in Nairobi