Makau Mutua, professor of law and Mukamba from Kitui Country, I take pride and love reading your punchy and educative articles. My tribesman, you’ve got what it takes to say it all impressively. But this is so until in your last article when your intellect betrayed you. For, what qualification did you use in your recently published article, Magufuli embodies his nation’s quality of virtue, in this newspaper that justifies you dare cry, “Kenyans really don’t exist. The people in Kenya belong to ethnic groups – they aren’t a nation.”? In your obsession with Magufuli, unlike Kenya, Tanzania is a nation. Uganda? Rwanda? The Kenyan nation could sue you for such atrocious defamation. Professor, Kenya is merely a sick nation but not a nonexistent and dead nation.
Otherwise, in Africa what you call nation is relative in quality. First, I must stand in defence of Kenyans categorically by stressing that Kenya is a nation occupying a definite geographical location in Africa. Period. The quality of Kenya as a nation is what should make you cry. Literary speaking, Kenya was made a nation by the British colonial kleptomania. The German missionary Dr Kraft used the Akamba name of Mount Kenya, “Kinyaa” to sell the territory to Europe.
Which state in Africa that doesn’t qualify belonging to ethnic groups? Not Tanzania. Ask the Nyamwezi people about that. Literally speaking, all African postcolonial nations are federal states of tribes. However, the Tanzania of Magufuli is barely following the Nyerere nyayo. Nyerere did a tremendous job in cohering the Tanzanian tribes into a common political purpose of development.
However, what your professorship doesn’t recognize is that Nyerere took over a nation that had been given a development ideology substantially by the German colonial government when Tanzania was a German colony. Germany did whatever was necessary in dismantling changanya ethnic enclaves. That explains why it was called Tanganyika. Nyerere picked up the German threads and continued to form a united community by selling to the nation the ideology of Ujamaa socialism. In other words, Tanzania kicked off with an ideology in which Magufuli is politically breathing.
Where was Kenya? For seventy years, the British Empire ambitiously used tribal enclaves to colonize Kenya. During that time there was not a single move whatsoever to unite the tribes. The exception was in the formation of armed forces when the employed people felt they belonged to the Kenyan Colony nation. The British did everything possible entrench ethnicity or tribalism.
Today, in order for to know how powerful that tribalism is, if you are a Luo try to buy land in the heart of Kikuyuland or Kambaland and see what an unwanted foreigner you would be considered.
Unlike Nyerere, when Jomo Kenyatta got power from the British, he inherited a shadow or phantom federal states of Kikuyus, Kambas, Luos, Maasai, Taitas and the rest. Instead of using the original Kanu ideology of restoration of human dignity upholding cultural values which would have helped him construct a meaningful and workable federal state, Jomo Kenyatta followed the British nyayo of governance. During the course of his leadership, as history bears witness, Kenyatta came out as a President without ideology and as an architect of tribalism in which the earliest worm caught the worm and the dog with powerful fangs calls the shots at door of the national storehouse.
While Kenyatta followed the British nyayo, Moi followed Kenyatta’s nyayo, Kibaki followed Moi’s nyayo and Uhuri is following Kibaki nyayo. That’s where we are while Magufuli is following Nyerere’s nyayo.
There is the saying that he who feeds you can beat your mother while you watch. Change this metaphor in Kenya to say those who have been feeding the nation with leadership have been beating our Integrity-Mother as we watched.
All prisoners in the same camp come to realization that they have a common fate. The political mutilation exercised by our leaders since independence has made the present nation learn from hardship that their leaders, not the nation, have been wrong. For if the livestock destroy peoples’ shamba the blame should not be put on the livestock but on shepherd. The nation was carried on the back and any child on the mother’s back does not dictate to where the mother should step.
In spite of Kenyans being governed by non-ideological structure, take a trip overseas as a Kenyan and meet other Kenyans to see how proud they are of being called Kenyans. Elder Professor Mutua you know this too well because you live out there. Only when you land at the airport you recognize that, for survival, when you go to Rome you must behave like Romans.
I personally dealt extensively on where the political rain started beating Kenya. That is presented in my forthcoming major work, Kenya’s Political Pathways. It is a fictional critical review of Kenya’s 50 years of self-rule since 1963. Incidentally after completing the book I approached several local publishers to have the book published. However, upon briefing them regarding the contents, one of them cried warningly, “Maillu, Weeee!” Another one said, “Oh my God, you’d the gusts doing that; wish you good luck?” The last one told me directly, “Professor, we can’t touch that hot stuff!” I was left on my own to publish it.
Professor Mutua, you know too well about it, that Kenyans are experiencing a powerful national sense of political purpose. Neither Kenyatta nor Moi nor Kibaki nor Uhutru is the nation. The national spirit is deeply rooted. The people are not devoid of ideological thinking. They know where they want to go and how to go there. Their problem is only one. Lack of ideologically armed leader to get them there. Elder Mutua, could you be the long awaited Moses?
Do you remember when Kibaki took over power with the lie promise of zero tolerance on corruption what happened? The nation was so hopefully charged for the job. They had finally got a new positive political lease. Even mobs arrested police people who engaged in crimes and frogged them to police stations. But soon they got the shock of their life that, instead of the criminal police man being charged, he was eventually released. They lost hope of visionary political restoration.