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Insight Into the Root Causes of Ethnic Rivalry in Kenya

The Nation (Nairobi)
BOOK REVIEW
December 19, 2004
Posted to the web December 20, 2004

By John O. Oucho
Nairobi
John O. Oucho, Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya.
(Leiden: Koninkl_jke Brill, 2002), xxi +238 pp. (Price $50 paperback).
Reviewed by: HANNINGTON OCHWADA
To comprehend the origins of the modern-day wave of ethnic chauvinism and
conflict in Kenya, it is imperative to explain the events that ushered in
political independence in 1963 and their implications for governance, in
general.
The new nation was haunted by the spectre of tribalism readily evident in the
political actions and pronouncements of a segment of the country's political
leadership of the time. Tribalism dogged the founders of independent Kenya in
an attempt to create a new culture where wananchi embraced each other as
compatriots in the task of nation-building.
Some political leaders in Mzee Jomo Kenyatta's government did not shed the old
habit of rewarding their own villagers and tribesmen with favours in the
government the way it was done during colonialism. Thus, they reverted to the
worst kind of nativism of rallying tribalists to their side in the politics of
plunder that came to characterise the immediate post- independence period.
Abusing public office
Political leaders controlled political power, abusing public office left, right
and centre for self-aggrandisement. They amassed enormous wealth. In this
regard, various studies on the governance of the first and second republics,
including Prof Colin Leys's Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of
Neo-Colonialism, Prof Peter Anyang' Nyong'o's The State and Society in Kenya:
The Disintegration of the Nationalist Coalitions and the Rise of Presidential
Authoritarianism 1963-1978 published in African Affairs; Prof David William
Cohen and Prof E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo's The Risks of Knowledge: Investigation
into the Death of the Hon Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya 1990 (2004); and
budding but prolific historian at Kenyatta University Godwin R. Murunga's The
State, Its Reform and the Question of Legitimacy in Kenya published in
Identity, Culture and Politics: An Afro Asian Dialogue Vol. 5, No. 1 (2004)
have forcefully underscored the importance of political patronage as an open
form of corruption. In short, these scholars have pointed out the centrality of
considering culture as a paradigm for analysing political relations in Kenya.
The efforts of Kenyans to create a truly national culture were rubbished by the
socio-political and economic nepotism of tribal-oriented leaders in the sharing
of the so-called national cake, better described as kula matunda ya uhuru.
Underlying the concept of matunda ya uhuru was the idea about who should have
the bigger share of the national cake.
Issues pertaining to "eating the national cake" are well captured in
Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya. Prof Oucho argues that the seeds of
recurrent and persistent ethnic conflict in Kenya are a product of the mistakes
founding fathers made on the eve of independence when they made administrative
and ethnic boundaries coterminous.
Juxtaposing the dual relationship of factors influencing Kenya's ethnocentrisms
and demographic distribution, Prof Oucho explains Kenya's economic performance
and the implications for social relations. He invites the reader to consider
the country's social, demographic and cultural history as appropriate lenses of
comprehending ethnic conflicts. In this regard, Prof Oucho joins a handful of
other scholars who have considered cultural history as a perfect tool for
analysing the intermittent conflicts in Kenya. But while the author takes the
reader through the history of ethnic conflict, he does not come out directly to
link ethnocentrism to the malaise of corruption that has been the nation's
undoing for as long as it has been independent.
That most Kenyan scholars writing on the political economy of Kenya have turned
a blind eye on the place of ethnicity as a conceptual framework for
understanding corruption cannot be gainsaid. In fact, they have explained the
intermittent conflicts merely as part of the broader class struggles even when
vile ethnocentrisms have been expressed in outright oathing activities such as
those that were perpetrated during the ethnic clashes of the 1990s. Could one
be correct to argue that some of the Kenyan scholars who have largely ignored
the place of ethnicity in their analyses have implicitly supported the
leadership of certain people regardless of how corrupt they have been?
To answer the above question, one does not need to look far to find examples in
previous and current administration of intelligentsia who were hired by their
own tribesmen to serve in lucrative positions in government. Or does the
concept of hire change depending on who is in power at any given time? The
beauty of Prof Oucho's book is that it makes no pretensions about the place of
ethnicity in the political governance of Kenya. The author aptly dissects the
Kenyan body politic and ethnicity for all to see the negative implications it
has for socio-political and economic relations.
Prof Oucho demonstrates that cultural issues are important to diagnosing ethnic
conflicts in Kenya. He has provided examples from various parts of Africa,
including Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Africa as
evidence to suggest why we should consider the imperative of cultural and class
inter-connections in generating conflicts in Africa. According to him, the new
Kenyan leadership took their positions in the race towards dividing the
national cake, an exercise that turned out to benefit some ethnic groups and
excluded others who did not patronise the state. Thus, the first and second
republics in Kenya failed to create multi-cultural and multi-ethnic districts
but instead created districts that emphasised tribal loyalties and sharpened
tribal cleavages that have seriously complicated ethnic relations.
While Kenyatta's administration rewarded members of the Kikuyu community with
large chunks of land in the Rift Valley and Coast provinces, the matter was
aggravated by Daniel arap Moi when he created political districts in the 1990s
as a political strategy of governance meant to pacify disenchanted ethnic
groups. The flipside of this argument is that Moi allowed certain people to
help themselves to public land in various locations, including forest reserve
areas.
Past mistakes are not repeated
What the study under review invites us to do is to ask what the third republic
of President Mwai Kibaki is doing to ensure that the past mistakes are not
repeated. In retrospect, the exclusive claim of the Kalenjin nationality "over
the Rift Valley stems from the independent Kenya government recognition, indeed
perpetuation, of coterminous administrative units and ethnic boundaries."
If class antagonisms have taken the form of ethnic antagonisms it is because
the political leadership in Kenya negatively politicised ethnicity to meet
narrow interests on individual politicians.
Whereas Prof Oucho analyses the negative aspects of ethnicity, he points out
the positive side as well. He argues that the positive conflict existed when
certain ethnic groups such Kikuyu and Luo on one hand forged a working
relationship. The Luhyia and other groups forged their own working relations in
a bid to capture political power.
But the extent to which one may consider such relations as positive begs the
question, because when certain ethnic groups such as Luo and Kikuyu became
urbanised, others who were less rooted in towns and did not have access
opportunities to advance themselves resented them.
Moreover, even within the same groups of affiliates such Kikuyu and Luo, there
was grumbling over the sharing of the national cake. Little wonder, then, that
there is a symbiotic relationship between ethnicity and class in the national
political arena, realities national leaders must grapple with to ensure steady
development.
More important, in the text is the fact that demographic distribution and
availability of land in Kenya have been central to skirmishes and ethnic
conflicts. Prof. Oucho argues that the reason for this is because in Kenya land
serves as marker that distinguishes the poor from the wealthy - to own some
land, no matter how unproductive it may be, is enough proof of one's progress.
The craze to own land in Kenya has led to sub-division of land into
agriculturally unviable pieces of land. Certainly, this well argued book is
useful for college and university courses in the social and human sciences.

   

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