Commentary (Tom Mshindi) - The middle-class has failed to steer Kenya out of crisis

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The middle-class has failed to steer Kenya out of crisis

Story by TOM MSHINDI
Publication Date: 2/2/2008

A profound calamity for Kenya in face of its catastrophic slide into what is essentially a civil war is the utter sense of despair among the one group of people on whose shoulder lies the responsibility to pull Kenya from the pit it has spinned into – the middle class across the country.

It may have started off as an election quarrel over whether or not the PNU alliance of President Kibaki stole the December 27 election with the active connivance of the now discredited Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). This, of course is hotly disputed with the counter-claim that Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) lost the election fair and square but was all along planning not to accept the result.

But the quarrel has rapidly transformed itself into a monster of a tribal conflict that has brought out the most barbaric and atavistic survival responses associated to man.

The killing, looting, burning and destruction has occurred as accusations have flown from one camp to the other; and as analysis, background and possible solutions have spewed forth from experts of every hue and shade. Many of these have emphasised the fact that the election dispute is really a spark that lit a smouldering ember into a tribal conflagration now consuming the country.

Not as prominently articulated is the other fact that the challenge to douse the inflamed passions is the hobbled impotence of those intellectually and socially best equipped and prepared to tackle the challenge – the educated, propertied and significantly detribalised Kenyan middle class.

It is not an excuse that their helplessness is a function of both the social and political system they have grown up in. They have wittingly allowed themselves to be rendered irrelevant in the political equation and surrender the stage to the players that have over time made tribe the key lever to manipulate politics.

President Kibaki and his close allies and advisers in government have grown up and identified themselves as the elites that ride on Kikuyu nationalism every time there is a competitive issue to be decided nationally, like an election. The Luo-Kikuyu alliance has twice worked – at independence and in 2002 because both the colonialist and President Moi in 2002 presented a formidable challenge that called for the temporary submersion of narrow tribal interest. The alliances did not last because of rows over the sharing of the political largesse.

Of course leaders from the other communities were not blind to the reality of leveraging tribe, but as none would alone be as dominant as either the Luo and Kikuyu, is why President Moi organised the Kamatusa communities into a formidable political wedge. This he further strengthened by activating a constellation of fiefdoms that he controlled through tribal “kings” like the Kamba’s Mulu Mutisya, Kalenjin’s Ezekiel Bargentuny, the coastal’s Shariff Nassir, and the Kisii’s Simeon Nyachae.

This is the ideology on which Kibaki, Odinga and most of the current crop of leaders have been nurtured. While they may recognise that it is a dangerous ideology on which to try to construct a nation, especially in a resource scarce context like Kenya’s, the lure to lunge for power by leveraging tribe has been more powerful than the imperative to pursue the more painful and less assured path of building a foundation of nationhood by appealing to the commonality of taste, ideology, aspirations, fears, wants and ambitions that unites the middle class among all communities.

But it is also true that this class is the most unconscious of their historical role as instigators of change. They have been lulled by a false sense of security they have enjoyed sheltered in their homes and clubs where invariably, they whine about everything that is wrong with the system and its leaders and yet remain content to do nothing about it. Politics to this group of people has been dirty and cheap. The current fury and destruction of the people is to a significant as a result of the middle class failing to step in early enough and try to right the wrongs in the Constitution, distribution of resources and general governance.

The crisis will escalate if this class does not proactively realise that whatever agreement comes out of the Kofi Annan-mediated talks will last only as long they move to take control of the centres of power and directly influence the way public affairs are run and the way the practice and use of power is communicated to the people. I am not talking age here; I am talking mind and ideology. Younger people that still believe that tribe is the only way one can attain and keep power are more dangerous than the independence-age politicians.

Kenya is crying out for its sons and daughters from all tribes that have been liberated – even if only partially - from the shackles of tribe through an education and lifestyle that reduces tribe to merely the identity tag that it is, not an asset that creates exclusive clubs not even of tribes, but of looting elites within the larger tribes.