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Post by Ed on Oct 30, 2006 8:23:38 GMT 3
ODM must stop being silly about 'pumbavu'
Story by MUTHUI KARIUKI Publication Date: 10/30/2006
The Kenyatta Day celebrations this year came at a time when Kenyans are enjoying the greatest democratic space they have ever had, a resurgent economy for the first time in almost 20 years, and looking forward to the first post-Kanu general election some time next year.
Kenyans are coping. They are optimistic. They are full of a can-do spirit. And all these factors were admirably captured in the President’s address to the nation at Nyayo Stadium that Friday.
It is, therefore, most astonishing that some ODM Kenya leaders should react so negatively to some of President Kibaki’s remarks and even go so far as to gratuitously accuse him of being abusive (the wapumbavu rebuke he aimed at tribalists and other destructive elements), delusional (Raila Odinga told a very strange news conference at the Serena Hotel three hours after the President’s speech that the Head of State’s praise for the economic turnaround was based on nothing but a personal opinion).
Nothing could be further from the truth. Until last weekend, no one has ever accused Mr Kibaki of being predisposed to hurling insults. Even his ODM detractors could not come up with any other example of "abusiveness" except the pumbavu, mpubavu and wapumbavu epithets, all of which have no malevolent load whatsoever and have the same force as the English "don’t be silly."
Indeed, they are jocular and witty and are taken in that spirit by most of the President’s audiences.
Compare President Kibaki’s variations on the theme of pumbavu with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s very graphic insults delivered from the podium, including on national days, with references drawn from the human anatomy, or President Moi’s denunciation of oppositionists as vinyangarika!
President Kibaki’s use of pumbavu is in fact in the same satirical vein as one-time US Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s alliterative dismissal of leftist intellectuals back in the 1960s as "nattering nabobs of negativism." There is no malice in it, unless you choose to pretend that it is there.
In fact, if there was a political leader who was malignantly abusive on Kenyatta Day, it was Raila himself. Speaking at a controlled-environment news conference in the Hibiscus Room of the Serena Hotel where he read a prepared statement on the university lecturers’ pay dispute, Mr Odinga remarked that "politicians are not garbage collectors."
This was in response to President Kibaki’s stinging criticism of those who oppose for opposition’s sake. Mr Odinga's voice dripped with sarcasm and venom as he sought to put the greatest distance between politicians like himself and "garbage collectors," a category of people that he clearly thinks is the scum of the earth.
Has it never occurred to Tinga that, as far as the majority of garbage collectors are concerned, some categories of politicians and, or their utterances, amount to little more than uncollected garbage?
Mr Odinga made another major goof that afternoon. Describing the lecturers’ pay dispute as "a major national crisis" that the President had chosen to ignore in his address to the nation, he called for the Government to immediately give up its remaining 40 per cent stake in the public universities’ system, arguing that the institutions can now propel themselves forward as is the case in countries like Britain.
In doing this, he overlooked the fact that tens of thousands of students from poor backgrounds (including, no doubt, garbage collectors’ sons and daughters) would suffer if the State just gave up its final 40 per cent stake in higher education. University education would regress to the bad old days of locking out gifted but poor students.
Mr Odinga's news conference was a strange, thoroughly stage-managed event in which he fielded questions mainly from diehard supporters embedded in a very small audience of reporters and cameramen like former detainee and veteran journalist Paul Amina.
As far as national days go, this was a new tactic: Raila deliberately absented himself from the official celebrations, although he was in Nairobi and no doubt prevailed on other ODM luminaries to do the same, knowing very well he would still contrive to capture the headlines by holding a lone-ranger news conference at which he spoke "on behalf of ODM Kenya" and criticised the Presidential speech at length.
No one begrudges the broad opposition its freedom to be critical of any aspect of society, including the presidency. But there is such a thing as constructive criticism. Being negatively, destructively critical all the time is indeed a species of upumbavu.
Mr Kariuki is a public relations consultant based in Nairobi.
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Post by Komugor on Oct 31, 2006 9:14:59 GMT 3
Tribalists are our real ‘pumbavus'
I would prefer that President Mwai Kibaki shopped for another term to use on his driver when he appears to be doing something crazy like speeding away and leaving the Commander-In-Chief behind because he is scared of a drizzle. I would also appreciate it a lot if the President found a softer shoo away for hawkers who just don’t seem to get it when they are told that days when you did your thing on every nook and cranny of the City are long gone. And it wouldn’t hurt a bit if the President coined a more respectable word for his rivals who would rather eat, drink and sleep politics than put in their bit in the business of building the nation.
But on Kenyatta Day a week or so ago, the President was spot on. I keenly listened to President Kibaki’s speech (alright, I dozed of during most of the-great-strides-we-are-making part, lazily opened a red eye when he said something about 30 per cent jobs for women in the public service and sat with rapt attention when he started the off the cuff).
Unless I was still in slumberland, I don’t remember Kibaki calling any Opposition leader, any lazybones who litters the streets or any good-for-nothing parent who refuses to take kids school pumbavu. But he called tribalists pumbavu alright, and the President has never been so right. For once, Kibaki was calling a spade a spade. If for a moment you forgot your political leanings and your opinions on Kibaki and soberly considered it, ethnic bigotry is indeed nothing but arrant foolishness.
Just begin from the horrible heights that ethnic bigotry can reach. I remember reading something about a woman in Rwanda who killed her own child, her own flesh and blood, during the genocide in 1994. Reason? The father of the child was from the wrong side of the ethnic divide! What else can one call that kind of madness but upumbavu? Now imagine you were that innocent child who had to die at his mother’s hand.
Such blockbuster horrors like Rwanda 2004 don’t just happen out of the blue. They are the cummulative effect of such seemingly harmless stuff that our politicians keep feeding to their people every weekend when they visit the constituency. Such commonplace stories like why we should sharpen our knives to cut our deserved chunk of the cake come the next elections. Sometimes the people get so psyched in readiness for this phantom cake that when they find nothing to cut, they assume the next tribe has run away with it. The kitchen knife is turned into a battlefield sword. See how easily genocides are made?
Kenyans often argue ( and I hope to God they are right) that we are not a candidate for a Rwanda 2004. That for some reason, a full-blown civil war cannot happen here. Perhaps that is so. But what about those little flare-ups in Molo, Mt Elgon and Laikipia that are a common fare in the news every three months or so? Twelve lives lost at most. Nothing compared to Rwanda’s half a million in one month. Tell that to an orphan who cannot go to school because the family breadwinner died in some stupid ethnic clash that only twelve people died! She will tell you ethnicity is upumbavu.
If you don’t believe it, just wait until you are a victim of tribalism- which won’t probably take too long. The other day, I heard a sad tale of a road accident scene. The accident was sad enough. People were dead, dying or writhing in pain in the wreckage, crying for help. Instead of instinctively jumping to the rescue, the would-be rescuers first conducted an interview to ensure that the accident victims qualified for their help. Not a long interview. Just one question. What tribe are you? Sad? No, upumbavu is more like it.
Upumbavu not only because it claims human lives but because it retards a country’s economic, political and social progress. Consider the way we procure our national managers for instance. Every general election for the past 15 years has been nothing but a mindless game of competing ethnic sentiments and emotions. We couldn’t care less if a candidate could not run a cattle deep. All we care is, is he from the right tribe? The first choice is one of our own, the second choice, the one whom one of our own says we vote for.
Who cares what Presidential or parliamentary candidates say on campaign stumps? Who cares about party programmes? Who cares about the qualifications of the candidates? Blinded by ethnic emotions ably whipped up by the politicians we go ahead to vote for conmen and blockheads just because they pass the ethnic test. Then for the next five years we whine mismanagement, corruption and whatnot. What is one supposed to call that kind of behaviour but upumbavu?
It is like hiring a manager who has no clue what he is supposed to do and, worse, is a thief just because he comes from the right village. And instead of firing him, you suffer his incompetence and go ahead to renew the contract just because it is the right thing to do by the ethnic rules. Raw foolishness if you ask me. Unfortunately that is how we do it in Kenya. Every Government that comes to power is largely the product of some triumph of one ethnic community or (coalitions of communities) over another. It is never a triumph of superior ideals and programmes over less impressive ideals and programmes. The next elections, I am afraid, may not be different.
Upumbavu is when the “community in power” cheers on “their” Government in its pillaging spree because it is “our turn to eat”. It is when you refuse to raise a finger in opposition to governmental injustice just because the President comes from you community. It is when you close your eyes to all that is going wrong with the country because you don’t want to upset the ethnic pie. It is also upumbavu when you hate a government just because it is not being headed by one of your own. When you mindlessly oppose everything it does no matter how sensible it is. It is foolish to think that only your tribesman can do a good job while every one else is hopelessly unable.
It is not the height of wisdom to torch your neighbour’s grass touched hut just because he has talked ill of “your” Government. It is upumbavu because chances are that when you are torching your neighbour’s house, the politicians are toasting to each others’ continued good health at some Five Star hotel not caring in the least what tribe the next guy is coming from. It is foolish because ethnicity demands that you apologise- not raise hell- when “your” government runs down another public corporation that your life depended on.
Tribalism is foolishness because it dictates that your community is God’s gift to humanity yet the truth is that we are all special in our own way. It is upumbavu because it blinds us to beauty of the whole; the wonderful variety that we are. The tribalists sees his community as ordained, gifted and natural. The rest are mistakes of nature. Tribalists cannot appreciate the beauty and abilities in others. They are egoists whose bible is the book of stereotypes.
It is not upumbavu to belong to a tribe. It is in fact a blessing, something to be proud of. (But that doesn’t mean you are some freak if you are a mixture of ten or so tribes or races. If anything, you are the clearest prove yet that ethnic and racial profiling is upumbavu.) It is not foolish to help nature your culture through promotion of your language, dress, dance, rites and other cultural aspects that make you distinct. If anything you are doing a service to the Mother Nature who loves variety so much she intended us to come out so different yet so alike. But cultural puritanism that leads one to kill is sorry slavery.
Can you imagine a country or world where there is only one language, dress, colour, food, shape of nose and gift? Not many people would love that kind of scene. At best it is boring, at worst it is dangerous. It should be as hair-raising as finding yourself shipwrecked and alone in a vast uninhabited island Robinson Crusoe-like. At least that character had some savages, captives and mutineers for company.
Tribe, just like religion, becomes upumbavu when it is used to hurt others and even self. It becomes foolishness when it makes us unable to tell what our real interests- not the politicians’- are. It is upumbavu when it becomes an inward-looking obsession where victims see their own community and no one else. Did I upset you? You feel like snuffing the life out of me for talking that way? Gottcha! You are that fellow the President was talking about on Kenyatta Day: The Pumbavu.
KIPKOECH Komugor
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Post by PAN on Nov 1, 2006 7:44:56 GMT 3
Neither Raila, nor ODM are PUMBAVUs P. ANYANG' NYONG'O
As Kenyans draw close to the general and presidential elections next year, foul words are bound to be thrown on the stage of campaign politics by politicians trying to outdo their opponents on the blame game. One of the easiest accusations to smear an opponent with is that of being a tribalist.
When such accusations are made, and at times they are quite justified, there should be facts to back them up. A case for tribalism should be built with history in mind, and concrete actions and behaviour in the political arena should help to prove a case.
Mr Raila Odinga, my colleague in ODM-K, has of late received more than his fair share of this smear campaign. In fact ODM has been dismissed by Narc-K as a tribal party out to exclude one tribe from politics.
Negative use of tribal identity
As the party's secretary-general, this is an accusation I cannot ignore. As a social scientist, I would like to know the steps our party has taken to exclude one tribe from the mainstream of Kenyan politics.
Tribalism is the negative use of tribal identity to achieve gains for self in the public sphere in exclusion of others who do not belong to one's tribe. For example, it is tribalism when you form a political party that aims at promoting the interests of a tribe at the expense of other tribes.
Although Ford-K draws its membership mainly from Bungoma, it is not necessarily a tribal party since it has never been its policy to promote purely Bukusu interests in exclusion of other Kenyans.
Likewise, although SDP in the 1997 general elections got its MPs mainly from Ukambani, it was not a tribal party since its ideology appealed for the uplifting of the standard of living of ordinary Kenyans throughout the republic, and its Members of Parliament were not all Wakamba.
If one looks carefully at the political history of Mr Odinga, it would be very difficult, from a purely scientific point of view, to gather sufficient data to accuse him of tribalism.
During the dark days of political repression under the Moi regime, we teamed up to challenge this repression and to fight for democracy for all Kenyans.
I remember very clearly when I introduced young Dr Mukhisa Kituyi to Jaramogi as we launched the National Democratic Party in 1991. Kituyi was then full of praise for both Raila and Jaramogi. Although the two now belong to different political parties, it would be difficult to argue that it is tribal exclusivist politics on either part that has separated them.
When we were in Ford and then Ford-Kenya, Raila's role was that of mobilising all Kenyans to support the parties as the deputy director of elections. It would be interesting for some researcher to look into the history of the two parties and find out who the tribalist was and who made it easy for Moi to come back to power in 1993. History will, no doubt, absolves Raila.
One still remembers the by-election in Webuye in the mid-Nineties when the Ford-Kenya candidate faced an onslaught from Kanu in what was a Ford-K stronghold. It was Raila who braved all the odds and led a campaign that turned the tables on Kanu.
In mid-2002, as we were busy discussing how to bring NAK and what came to be known as LDP together, one of the ministers in the current Government of National Unity swore to me that he could never work with Kibaki. He was gung-ho on how chauvinistic Kikuyus are, and how they can never be trusted with leadership again.
When I relayed this information to Raila, he shrugged it off and said the fellow was just posturing for a position. What was important was to forge a broad coalition that would save Kenyans from the degradation of the nation under Moi.
It was no wonder that when the appropriate moment came, Raila went out of his way to make the Kibaki presidency possible.
As Kenyans urged the opposition to unite so as to throw out the Moi government, we came up with a formula that would unite the leadership in the opposition. This was done in two memoranda of understanding: one at the Hilton, which was read to the public, and the other one at the Nairobi Club which was only known to the Narc Summit.
It is easy to behave tribally
Both these documents were very important in ensuring the success of the opposition at the elections. But their importance was not supposed to end with electing a president: they were intended to be the basis on which the new government would be formed.
It is interesting to note that close confidantes of President Kibaki were later to argue that Kenyans had voted for Kibaki as an individual and not for any MoU they did not know about.
Yet simple logic shows that without the MoUs, President Kibaki would never have been elected. When Raila pointed this out as a betrayal, he was then the one accused of tribalism, and not the President.
All I am asking for is for the facts and sequences in history to be respected for what they are. Even if we are trying to advance our own careers in the political sphere, let us not do so by trying to twist or bend historical facts and give them interpretations that suit our own ambitions.
Once one is made President, it is then very easy to behave tribally or nationally. For example, if out of 50 district commissioners one appoints 45 from one's own tribe in a country of 42 tribes, then that is obviously tribalism writ large.
If in making a Cabinet of 25, the key ministries of Finance, Internal Security, Defence, and Justice and Constitutional Affairs go to one's own tribe, it only demonstrates one thing: you can only trust those from your own backyard. I would call that tribalism.
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