Nationhood: Come, let us all mobilise for the good and the just

Nairobi-based political and social commentator

In a collection of speeches published under the title, “ The Challenge of Nationhood”, Tom Mboya addresses factors that undermine Africa’s efforts at building a national character or identity.

A national character encompasses values, social and historical reference points, and an ethos that citizens have in common, no matter their ethnic or religious affiliation. What are the modes of thinking and behavior, psychology and collective memory that define “Kenya-ness”?

So many times in our history, we slip back to ethnic mobilisation and nationalism. After the assassination of Tom Mboya, there was ethic mobilisation that set one community against another. In the 1990s, there was re-emergence of ethnic nationalism and mobilisation that led to ethnic killings. In 2007/8, ethnic mobilisation led to the worst ethnic killings since independence.

The Judge Akiwumi Report confirmed that ethnic mobilisation is engineered by tribal demagogues. They thrive on ethnic divisions because it is their ticket to power and a prime position at the feeding trough.

By propagating falsehoods about the intellectual or moral superiority of their tribe, or by blaming another community for the economic problems bedeviling their community, they become champions or “kingpins” of their community. They never advance a progressive idea, or a transformative agenda or policy.

The country, starved of transformative ideas and polices, stagnates, but the tribal demagogues, now occupying prime stealing positions in government, become super wealthy. At the next election, the parasites re-emerge from a five-year feeding frenzy to play the same tribal game again.

What spooked the political class about the Gen-Z revolution was that it sought to break the tribal chain around our necks that has enabled corrupt and incompetent charlatans to appropriate national resources for themselves and their families. Vehemently opposed factions of the political class quickly closed ranks to protect a system that has made them fabulously wealthy.

After the youth revolution, there was hope that Kenyans had finally seen through the simple logic and falsehood of ethic nationalism. We have seen through this criminal falsehood. However, two recent events suggest that we make one step forward and one step backward.

After Rigathi Gachagua was impeached as deputy president, the Kikuyu community rallied around him, even though the former ruthless Kanu district officer has never contributed a single transformative idea or policy. There was re-emergence of false narratives and a sense of siege among the Kikuyu community.

Then three Somali women were brutally murdered by criminals. Many in the Somali community immediately assumed the murders were committed by non-Somalis. This led to re-emergence of a sense of siege and ethnic nationalism among the Somali community.

It later emerged that the mastermind of the murders was a person of Somali ethnicity. But even if the murders had been committed by a non-Somali, like so many others of women in the last few months, mobilisation should have been against criminals, whatever their ethnicity, and the inability of government to protect its citizens.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.