20100717
allafrica

Nairobi — I have been inundated with hate mail since I stated that tribal associations - like Gema - were anti-Kenya. I have considered the rants I have received, and have no apologies to make.

My detractors should know that I was even generous. What I should have written - which I now do - is that Kenya should ban all tribal groupings because they foster tribal apartheid and retard the project of nation-building.

Tribal cabals

We must detribalise Kenya, or risk the demonic violence that gripped the country in 2008. We must deny tribal cabals legal personality because they exclude and discriminate against "outsiders" on the basis of the most primitive and primeval ground - ethnicity.

Let me give you a brief history of tribal organisations so that you can appreciate why they are dangerous to democracy. Ethnic-based organisations have a long history in Kenya.

Some of them, like the Luo Union, go back to 1946. Others were the Kalenjin Association, the New Akamba Union, the Abagusii Association, and the Abaluhya Association.

Became moribund

Many were formed in the colonial period because the British confined African political activity to tribal districts. Most of them became moribund after independence.

Virtually all of them had no political clout until the formation of Gema in 1971. Gema brought together the Kikuyu, Meru and the Embu. The Kamba did not join Gema preferring to remain in the older Nau.

Main mission

Gema was different from the prior ethno-cultural organisations. Ostensibly, its main mission was to improve the social, cultural and economic lot of the Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu. It set up welfare and sporting programmes.

But senior Gema officials were key leaders in the Kenyatta administration. Gema's leadership was "a who was who" in the king's court - Julius Gikonyo Kiano, Mwai Kibaki, Jeremiah Nyagah, Jackson Angaine, and other Kanu leading lights. Mzee Kenyatta was himself Gema's patron.

The State, Kanu and Gema were virtually indistinguishable. Gema was the state. There was justified fear that President Kenyatta, the renowned pan-Africanist, had become a Kikuyu chauvinist under Gema's tutelage.

This symbiotic relationship between Gema and the Kenyatta state became a public relations nightmare.

Mzee Kenyatta asked that political leaders resign their positions in Gema.

They were replaced by prominent businessmen and senior professionals with close ties to the Kenyatta state - Njenga Karume, Duncan Ndegwa and Dixon Kihika Kimani.

This subterfuge lowered Gema's political profile but did not ease its chokehold on the inner sanctum of power. No one was fooled by the ploy.

Much of the antipathy towards the Kikuyu elite in Kenya today can be traced to the arrogance of the Gema cabal at the height of the Kenyatta regime. They evoked fear, jealousy, and loathing in other tribal elites. When Daniel arap Moi took power in 1978, they referred to him as a "passing cloud".

Sweeping ban

It was no wonder that in 1980, Mr Moi banned all ethnic organisations. But every keen observer knew that the sweeping ban was really targeted at Gema. Since Mr Moi could not ban Gema alone, he banned every tribal organisation to seem fair.

He knew - rightly - that he could not consolidate power with the Gema business, bureaucratic, and political elite organised like an anvil against him.

But Mr Moi kept Mulu Mutisya, the chair of the defunct Nau, close to him to play the Kamba against the Kikuyu. Mr Moi said that he banned tribal organisations because they were a threat to "national integration".

But the truth is that he wanted to scatter his opponents so that only he - and he alone - could use tribalism to divide and rule.

Mr Moi had the argument against tribal organisations right. But his motives and politics were completely wrong. He was like the hypocritical sinner who goes to church to fool his neighbours.

That was classic Moi. Preach water and drink wine. The larger point here is the cancer that tribalism - fuelled by tribal organisations - had become.

Kenya is still paying for Gema's capture of the state under Mzee Kenyatta and Mr Moi's overreaction to Gema.

If Mzee Kenyatta had followed Mwalimu Nyerere's example in Tanzania - purging tribal consciousness from the state and society - Kenya would not have nearly collapsed in 2008.

I know some chauvinists want to hide behind the freedoms of association and speech to perpetuate naked tribalism.

Some, like Koigi wa Wamwere, even want to justify tribalism under the cover of so-called "positive ethnicity".

Let us not abuse democracy to undermine the very principles on which it is built - inclusivity, respect for difference, anti-discrimination and equal protection.

A society with a tormented tribal history like Kenya cannot build a democratic polity by winking at blatant tribal organisations. I am not asking Kenyans of Kikuyu, Luo, or Kamba descent to denounce their ethno-cultural identities.

Primary loyalties

But I am asking them to transfer their primary loyalties from their "tribes" to a new Kenyan national identity. Let's forge a national psyche.

We have paid dearly for the sins of our founding fathers. Democracies with hateful ethnic and racial histories like South Africa and Germany rightly limit certain expressions of tribal and racial organisation. Kenya should follow suit.

Makau Mutua is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.