Post by Ed on Dec 29, 2005 1:01:47 GMT 3
Tribalism and politicians are the country’s worst enemies
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Koigi wa Wamwere*
The more I hear the Agikuyu have separated themselves from the rest of Kenyans, the more I remember threats of yesteryear that they must be cut to size and made to lie flat like an envelope as many, unfortunately, have done.
Idle threats? Maybe, but where there is smoke there is fire.
The other day, someone pulled me aside and half whispered: "You people (the Agikuyu) are down. Stop resisting or we now kick you. And by the way tell those indecisive churches of yours to expand space. They could be taking many of you in soon." "What?" I asked. "You realise you could be talking genocide?" "Precisely." He admitted curtly and walked away.
I was shocked. Have we become so antagonistic that somebody can think of genocide as a means of having our way or forcing admission? Undoubtedly, I thought. But why play with the fire of tribalism? Have we become the child who puts his finger in the fire because mother or father has said, "don’t" and tribalism must therefore burn us to appreciate it?
Why have we become moths dying to burn in the fire?
I can think of two things only. Attractive as tribalism is as an ideology of rallying people against a common enemy, we do not know this monster has no friend or ally and only marauds our country to antagonise, burn, murder, destroy and never save anybody. Secondly, have we forgotten the history of our ethnic clashes, or do some long for them because they taught the ethnic enemy a lesson and have we not also failed to look elsewhere to know the full horrors of tribalism and its genocide?
Unless we are suicidal and courting collective doom, we must all watch Hotel Rwanda, a film of how ethnic hate conceived genocide and how genocide consumed a million people in Rwanda in just three months in 1994. Indeed, if our KBC TV, Nation TV, KTN, Family TV and Citizen TV are patriotic and truly care for Kenya, they should screen this film for all Kenyans to see. To teach our children what future they will have if they start hating their neighbours from other communities.
The Ministry of Education should sponsor this film to be shown in all our schools and institutions of learning. We will have given our children nothing if we give them all the education money can buy without exposing them to the dangers of ethnic hate, bias and prejudice. It is criminal negligence to let our children embrace tribalism which is tantamount to wiring them with a weapon of mass destruction that will blow up their perceived enemies, the country and themselves into smithereens.
To cure a disease, you must know what it is, how it attacks and with what you must eradicate it. What then is tribalism?
One side of the coin of tribalism is a disease of ethnic self love that is also hate of others from different communities. It makes you feel superior to people from other communities and gives you a strong urge to dominate, conquer, rob or enslave those you consider inferior.
The other side of the coin of tribalism is self-hate that makes you feel inferior urging you to submit and allow yourself to be robbed and enslaved by those you consider superior, ironically, in the name of survival.
There is aggressive and submissive tribalism. When two or several aggressive ethnic hatreds meet, they clash and there is war.
When a community with aggressive tribalism beats another it is at war with, the same tribalism that urged the beaten community to attack now urges it to surrender and transforms its aggression into submission. By the way, aggressive tribalism need not be in government or the submissive one in the opposition. Both reside more in the mind than in physical institutions.Tribalism is aggressive until it is conquered.
To be aggressive and conquer, it must however demonise and view its victims as scapegoats for all its problems. And because blaming others for your problems is easy, its appeal is enormous. It absolves those who demonise and attack others of all responsibility to do anything for their betterment.
To eat, they don’t have to work, only conquer.
To get a job, they don’t have to pass exams, only hate and conquer the employed of other communities. To have a house, they don’t have to pay rent or build one, just conquer and occupy one of their enemy’s.
To own land, they don’t have to buy, just conquer and take that of their victim.
This is what fanned genocide in Rwanda and makes tribalism so attractive to our idle and unemployed youth. Tribal conquest could make them instant millionaires and landowners. "Conquer ye the kingdom of other communities and all others will be added unto you" is the gospel of tribalism.
A leader who mobilizes his community with tribalism is a free rider.
He bears no blame for anything. All problems are blamed on others. Nor is he or she required to do anything to solve problems.
After conquest, his troops will take everything from their enemies – beautiful women, houses, jobs, land and even slaves.
Tribalism mobilises exactly how colonial racism mobilised poor whites against colonial peoples by promising them land and heaven after conquest, which we saw them get.
Because tribalism is hate of others or self, we are embarrassed to confess it and publicly condemn it when we don’t mean a word we say.
Among our kin and in privacy of our hearts, however, tribalism is our secret lover with whom we co-habit passionately. If we know tribalism is evil, why do we still court it?
Again, tribalism is irresistible because it always comes to us, never as an enemy that can hurt us, but as a friend, an ally, a protector, a savior and a vanquisher of our ethnic enemies.
As you read this, big fires of ethnic hate burn in many hearts and minds. And everyday we inflame these fires with propaganda that the Cabinet should be a council of tribal chiefs; every tribal chief must be a minister in the Cabinet; that a ministry, its jobs and resources belong not to all Kenyans but to the community of the minister and must be managed for its exclusive benefit.
Equally, political parties belong to communities and exist to scramble for state jobs and other resources for them against others.
That our government only belongs to the community of the President and other communities must of necessity belong to the opposition until they install one of their own into the highest office.
This is the tribalism that has killed merit at work, induced the corruption of eating in the civil service, diminished presidency and disallowed it to settle for real work, embedded ethnic discrimination in government employment, sedated the colossus of government to the slumber from which it solves problems only for a few while creating obstacles and frustrations for most.
Meant to unite our people against dictatorship, coalition government has become a hornet’s nest of tribal wars and divided our people more than ever before. Without a doubt, tribalism is our worst disease and politicians who fan it, worst enemies of Kenya.
The sooner we are rid of both the better.
Otherwise, we are doomed to perish.
*The writer is Assistant Minister for Information and Communications
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Koigi wa Wamwere*
The more I hear the Agikuyu have separated themselves from the rest of Kenyans, the more I remember threats of yesteryear that they must be cut to size and made to lie flat like an envelope as many, unfortunately, have done.
Idle threats? Maybe, but where there is smoke there is fire.
The other day, someone pulled me aside and half whispered: "You people (the Agikuyu) are down. Stop resisting or we now kick you. And by the way tell those indecisive churches of yours to expand space. They could be taking many of you in soon." "What?" I asked. "You realise you could be talking genocide?" "Precisely." He admitted curtly and walked away.
I was shocked. Have we become so antagonistic that somebody can think of genocide as a means of having our way or forcing admission? Undoubtedly, I thought. But why play with the fire of tribalism? Have we become the child who puts his finger in the fire because mother or father has said, "don’t" and tribalism must therefore burn us to appreciate it?
Why have we become moths dying to burn in the fire?
I can think of two things only. Attractive as tribalism is as an ideology of rallying people against a common enemy, we do not know this monster has no friend or ally and only marauds our country to antagonise, burn, murder, destroy and never save anybody. Secondly, have we forgotten the history of our ethnic clashes, or do some long for them because they taught the ethnic enemy a lesson and have we not also failed to look elsewhere to know the full horrors of tribalism and its genocide?
Unless we are suicidal and courting collective doom, we must all watch Hotel Rwanda, a film of how ethnic hate conceived genocide and how genocide consumed a million people in Rwanda in just three months in 1994. Indeed, if our KBC TV, Nation TV, KTN, Family TV and Citizen TV are patriotic and truly care for Kenya, they should screen this film for all Kenyans to see. To teach our children what future they will have if they start hating their neighbours from other communities.
The Ministry of Education should sponsor this film to be shown in all our schools and institutions of learning. We will have given our children nothing if we give them all the education money can buy without exposing them to the dangers of ethnic hate, bias and prejudice. It is criminal negligence to let our children embrace tribalism which is tantamount to wiring them with a weapon of mass destruction that will blow up their perceived enemies, the country and themselves into smithereens.
To cure a disease, you must know what it is, how it attacks and with what you must eradicate it. What then is tribalism?
One side of the coin of tribalism is a disease of ethnic self love that is also hate of others from different communities. It makes you feel superior to people from other communities and gives you a strong urge to dominate, conquer, rob or enslave those you consider inferior.
The other side of the coin of tribalism is self-hate that makes you feel inferior urging you to submit and allow yourself to be robbed and enslaved by those you consider superior, ironically, in the name of survival.
There is aggressive and submissive tribalism. When two or several aggressive ethnic hatreds meet, they clash and there is war.
When a community with aggressive tribalism beats another it is at war with, the same tribalism that urged the beaten community to attack now urges it to surrender and transforms its aggression into submission. By the way, aggressive tribalism need not be in government or the submissive one in the opposition. Both reside more in the mind than in physical institutions.Tribalism is aggressive until it is conquered.
To be aggressive and conquer, it must however demonise and view its victims as scapegoats for all its problems. And because blaming others for your problems is easy, its appeal is enormous. It absolves those who demonise and attack others of all responsibility to do anything for their betterment.
To eat, they don’t have to work, only conquer.
To get a job, they don’t have to pass exams, only hate and conquer the employed of other communities. To have a house, they don’t have to pay rent or build one, just conquer and occupy one of their enemy’s.
To own land, they don’t have to buy, just conquer and take that of their victim.
This is what fanned genocide in Rwanda and makes tribalism so attractive to our idle and unemployed youth. Tribal conquest could make them instant millionaires and landowners. "Conquer ye the kingdom of other communities and all others will be added unto you" is the gospel of tribalism.
A leader who mobilizes his community with tribalism is a free rider.
He bears no blame for anything. All problems are blamed on others. Nor is he or she required to do anything to solve problems.
After conquest, his troops will take everything from their enemies – beautiful women, houses, jobs, land and even slaves.
Tribalism mobilises exactly how colonial racism mobilised poor whites against colonial peoples by promising them land and heaven after conquest, which we saw them get.
Because tribalism is hate of others or self, we are embarrassed to confess it and publicly condemn it when we don’t mean a word we say.
Among our kin and in privacy of our hearts, however, tribalism is our secret lover with whom we co-habit passionately. If we know tribalism is evil, why do we still court it?
Again, tribalism is irresistible because it always comes to us, never as an enemy that can hurt us, but as a friend, an ally, a protector, a savior and a vanquisher of our ethnic enemies.
As you read this, big fires of ethnic hate burn in many hearts and minds. And everyday we inflame these fires with propaganda that the Cabinet should be a council of tribal chiefs; every tribal chief must be a minister in the Cabinet; that a ministry, its jobs and resources belong not to all Kenyans but to the community of the minister and must be managed for its exclusive benefit.
Equally, political parties belong to communities and exist to scramble for state jobs and other resources for them against others.
That our government only belongs to the community of the President and other communities must of necessity belong to the opposition until they install one of their own into the highest office.
This is the tribalism that has killed merit at work, induced the corruption of eating in the civil service, diminished presidency and disallowed it to settle for real work, embedded ethnic discrimination in government employment, sedated the colossus of government to the slumber from which it solves problems only for a few while creating obstacles and frustrations for most.
Meant to unite our people against dictatorship, coalition government has become a hornet’s nest of tribal wars and divided our people more than ever before. Without a doubt, tribalism is our worst disease and politicians who fan it, worst enemies of Kenya.
The sooner we are rid of both the better.
Otherwise, we are doomed to perish.
*The writer is Assistant Minister for Information and Communications