I’m always interested to hear what the current crop of Kenyan intellectuals are saying and came across a series of Youtube videos of Binyavanga Wainaina. For the original, go to his website here. In this video, he talks about a mysterious ’they’ in countries like Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria who are in a “battle to perpetually remind their own civil citizenry of the possibility of setting themselves on a path to prosperity”.
And around the 3:54 mark, Binyavanga says he can’t understand why Kenyan civil organizations (trade unions, coffee, tea and teachers cooperatives etc.) didn’t use their professional organizations for any meaningful reaction to the election debacle. He says that these people have had their ‘wills broken’ which is why no one did a thing.
I wonder where Binyavanga has been all this time and why he didn’t separate his inner African from this Western mode of analysis?
The reason the members of those trade unions, cooperatives and larger ‘civil society’ didn’t do a thing is because their membership isn’t uni-tribal/non-tribal but made up of the regular wananchi who are for all intents and purposes, tribal minded, and they voted and will always vote along tribal lines. And if they didn’t, immediately the violence began, they more than likely coalesced into tribal groupings… for their ‘defense’. Which of course rendered any possibility of national discourse, healing or repair moot.
This is not rocket science.
At the 1:26 mark, Binyavanga says that during the 2007 Elections, “the political class paid ‘broke‘ and ‘hopeless‘ young men to kill people of other ethnicities” all over the country.
Give me a break.
As if those ‘broke’ and ‘hopeless’ young men were robots and incapable of self-reflection. Those young men are individuals, and as much as they may try to hide behind ‘poverty’ and the mob mentality, they are responsible more than those nitwit politicians for the bloodshed and mayhem. Because they could have said no when they were asked to kill.
It’s like we’re supposed to believe that poor and hopeless Africans have no stake in this. That they should take no responsibility for what happened and are just the innocent victims of the mistakes of an anonymous ‘they’ who should be propelling Binyavanga’s civil society on a “path of prosperity”.
God help Kenya.
You’re being too harsh on Mr. Binyavanga, whom I don’t personally know. You sound like you don’t live in Kenya. And you’re in denial. Yes, so many young people were paid to terrorize others, yes, they were manipulated, and yes, they should pay for their crimes. But what happened, happened–Binyavanga is simply reflecting on WHAT HAPPENED.
Thanks for your comment.
My point is that those young people weren’t manipulated. They chose to do the killing. Nobody was manipulated, and that’s the problem with Kenya. We always have these excuses instead of getting to the root of the problem.
Why kill?
Couldn’t they have manipulated and chosen to do the killing?
Hmm. I take your point kaasa. Though something to ponder. our teachers unions – and in particular the primary teacher’s union – managed to build itself at the worst time in our history, the 1990s – build banks and saving schemes that were national and not ethnic/parochial. I believe that our educated classes are essentially tribalist – for this is how you get ahead in Kenya. The question for me was, though, at the point when you see everything about to vanish, at what point do people organize and act…maybe no point at all…
Our trade unions did not mysteriously become “tribal” – they were broken by Kenyatta and Moi deliberately. They were willfully tribalised – and they even fought the process – by our political classes.
I do not know what an “inner African” is. Does it come at birth? How is it different from an “outer african” Does an “inner african” have natural rhythm and an innate understanding of tribe? If so, you are right…I missed that gene.
As for the manipulations. I make no claim for the innocence of the killers. They must be charged. But I reserve my deepest antipathy for those who sought to pay and play hate games for personal political gain. This is not new. Every country in the world has it’s fissures which explode when xenophobia is fueled. Not the bible, the koran, the declaration of human rights, or any such has yet answered your question: why kill.
So I am not sure how you will triumph over all that to find this “root” of the problem and fix it. There is no answer except: people kills, and always have, and that is partly why we try to organize ourselves and build all manner of complicated laws and religions and armies and polices, and ethics and laws, and votes.
“they voted and will always vote along tribal lines” – I think you will find many examples that do not follow this base and essentialist view. Just check back to your history.
Finally. The most tribalist and violent people in Kenya are our elites. They are brokers – seeking to keep their population ignorant and dependent on them. Even the term “kalenjin” – comes from a group of 13 Alliance High School students in the 1950s. And our friend Biwott edited Kalenjin magazine – which was funded by the British to create sense of Kalenjin unity as a bulwark against the Mau Mau threat. There was an active recruitment then, and that helped create a new class of elites, who govern to this day, that amorphous creature called Kalenjin. Tribalism is not just a thing inside the ignorant hearts of wananchi…it is a political project that is in the very DNA of Kenya, and the elites who founded it, and continue to rule it. And they wield all the power and money that we have to perpetuate their warlordism. And not the “mwananchi” – it is they who have created a state of tribal dukes and tribal warlords, who are most of Kenya’s economy and politics.
As for “mob mentality” – you maybe underestimate the wananchi you speak about. In the Rift Valley, what happened was planned, organised and military. Thousands of young men, spilling out of circumcision school, where they are today, and have been for generations, taught to fight, kill, make arrows and have a primary and deep loyalty to a thing that is not Kenya. We hear that a youngish ODM politician we all know was elected “elder of the Kalenjins” to replace Moi two years before the elections. Remember where the term “Kalenjin” comes from. If you add to this, that the elder system has been replaced by politicians – you have the will, the skill and the motive. Thousands of young men training every December, and been indoctrinated into a cultural ceremony that is very old, and in 2007 served to turn them into soldiers for a political movement. They were fed, given resources, pickups, advance intelligence, food, ideological motivation. The same happens in a different way with Mungiki.
This is what happened during oathing in 68-72 – where Gikuyus were asked to swear loyalty to kenyatta – of course those who did were huge beneficiaries of land, deals, assets…and those who did not – well, we all know where they are now.
This is what happened in Kisiiland last year, and for the past twenty years really, under the rule of that man called Nyachae whose personal economy may be as big as the rest of his tribe put together.
Do not doubt the power of the warlords over the lives of the rest.
Like you I am somewhat despairing of the future. But – I will continue to resist easy answers, essentialist analyzes, and too much hoplessness – which can be vain. It is easy to just say, give it up, I am abroad and they are all fools…all that does is make you feel better…
I am a Nakuru boy – a product of a Rift valley municipal nursery school, a municipal primary school, and a public school system in Kenya. I may despair, but I must remember that I was well taken care of by that place called Kenya. My parents worked very hard to make small things work. I have a long list of teachers, nurses, so many many people without whom I would be nowhere. They came from many tribes. I refuse to carry the easy vanity that I am so hot – and the rest are not, and so, Kenya is all over for me.
It is not.
- I recently returned to Vancouver after being back in Kenya for a couple of years off and on. I had been working in Malawi for a number of years and in Botswana as well. So I’m not casting aspersions from afar debe tupu style. We need this type of debate. We need to hash this thru because too often, we blame ‘them’, the amorphous ‘elites’ etc. and get caught up in utopian unrealistic scenarios of how Kenya should be when in reality, it’s tribal to the marrow. I think that any right-minded Kenyan should be asking themselves how they can be able to maneuver thru this and live comfortably, because it will never change. For me, I realised I can’t, hence my seeking greener pastures in Central Africa. And because I have family that will remain in Kenya, it is imperative that I call out the madness when I see it, for the sake of my family that will remain behind. That’s my job.
- Members of my paternal family lost everything in the ‘92 Clashes and again in 2007. Only this time, they lost their lives as well. My being in Kenya till about a month ago was a mop-up affair, sorting stuff out with my Dad and Mom who watched the last of his family perish right outside Nakuru where you (Binyavanga) grew up and maybe still live.
- Your “inner African” is the one who was born and grew up in Kenya. The one who went to Mangu High and ought to have remembered that elections in Kenya (and their aftermath) occur along tribal lines. The one who said rightly that tribalism “…is a political project that is in the very DNA of Kenya.”
- I may have grown up for the most part away from Kenya but in no way do I look down on Kenyans as being lesser than me. My story is just different, but I am a child of that country who refuses to let it kill me.
I do thank you all for your comments.
Ghana is nice. I have many fantasies about Ghana.
Sigh.
My auntie lives there.
Tukiharibu that is where I will go.
Pole sana, By the way on your losses. Wish your family the best. I had family in Molo but they left after 92. So many people I know lost so much…
Great Binya, except I think we ought to stop blaming Moi and Kenyatta for everything what happened under their governments. Yes, they are certainly partly responsible, but there were accomplices who should not find themselves exculpated. The failure to hold greater numbers to account is the fount of ummmmm, impunity -hate to use the word now. So we can kick the boss out and everyone, including the thieving billionaires under him, can present himself as a reformer, see Kibaki, or Raila.
We do not behave too differently in our private arrangements, we are corrupt and inefficient.
Like you I refuse to accept that there is nothing to hope for in this country, I would go so far as to say I know too many young people making it against the odds and with little or no advantage in their favour. One of my taxi men for example bought a cab off of his own sweat and savings, or the lady who does my nails who started her own business or the countless boda boda people in Western Kenya.
I really hate the term African, I refuse to be called one myself believing it to be a racist term. I find I cannot agree to use it when I want to say African Football, and then complain when Matthew Paris speaks of Christianity’s effect on Africa. This African Culture, African Spirit, African Philosophy thingy may have began as an insulting slur by Westerners, today it is the tongues of black folk that spreads it around the globe.
I would also like to be a lot more careful about the political violence and the Rift Valley. The whole of the ODM and a large part of Kenyan Civil Society, say Muthoni Wanyeki and Barack Muluka and James Orengo among others, provided intellectual and moral justification for the violence. Even in Central Province and in CKW I saw many people trying to justify what happened and to support it. We cannot blame the elites. If we tell the people that the Kikuyu came and took their land in the Rift Valley because they had state power to back them up, then we cannot expect them to sit back and ignore this. They will try to correct it. When Orengo said that we need to reassess the Bill of Rights, he was supplying fuel to this rage, interestingly he is not being held to account, not even by the rights organisations.
I keep coming back to this, and this is why I believe Kriegler was so much more useful than Waki. The recourse to blaming the state, to blaming some politicians is so very easy, lazy and convenient. Moi is bad, Kibaki is bad, etc, but I know loads of totally educated people, far away from any politician who are as ugly and angry as any warrior in the Rift Valley. All they did not have was the capacity to lob a head off.
Introspection is called for, urgently, and we must all of us pledge not to sit idly by and do nothing next time, we must not supply excuses for the violence.
At a funeral yesterday, Orengo among others lamented the mass murder of Kikuyu youth by the government. Martha Karua refused to take this line. As she said, we are collectively responsible.
Well mine didn’t leave after ‘92 (despite a rape, a house burnt to the ground and one killing). They stayed and now they are all dead. Thank you.
Kaasa,
Deeply sorry to hear about your fam. Pole sana.
Binyavanga Wainaina is one of those leftist kikuyu apologists. Always talking about the past .Yes we have to glance at the past but we can not continue looking at the future through the prism of the past. Even before the elections I had battled Wainaina on the way he was looking at the political situation in Kenya.I always find it strange that people like Binyavanga are quick to point out kikuyu faults but are silent when maize and oil is being looted
Muigwathania,
Thank you for your comment. If Binyavanga is a leftist Kikuyu apologist and you’re not, then that’s good, because you compliment one another (and I don’t mean that in a negative sense). And it doesn’t mean I agree with him either.
The problem with this tribal thing is that people are expected to think/believe in a uniform way just because they happen to be from the same tribe. And that’s wrong, any way you slice it.
If Binyavanga reminds you of what ‘mistakes’ members of your tribe have committed, I’m sure there’s someone else that consistently praises your tribe and all the things ‘it’ has done ‘right’.
In life, there has to be a lone ranger, whether you agree with her/him or not. It keeps you on your toes. It reminds you that someone is watching your every move. And that can only make you a better person (or a slicker criminal
)… Your tribe ‘needs’ people like Binyavanga and it ‘needs’ people like you. Or maybe it just needs to stop being a tribe… 
People in Kenya should to be allowed to think differently. People need to know that their intellectual space is sacred.
Pole, Kaasa. A relative of mine was chased off his land in Molo in 2008. His family has owned the piece since 1968. The looters took everything–even the doors and windows, but, inexplicably, they didn’t burn down the house. He has returned to the land–though now he doesn’t think of it as his permanent home.
“The Ker” says, “We do not behave too differently in our private arrangements, we are corrupt and inefficient.” I agree. To illustrate: I wanted a stamped copy of my marriage certificate. A high-level public official in the DC’s office demanded Ksh4,000 from me (we lived in a rich country at that time, and the official had heard about our travel plans and assumed we were moneyed, which we weren’t). Long story short: I acquiesced.
Thanks danielwaweru and HNG.
‘The Ker’ hit it on the head. Best analysis…
Kaasa I agree with you we need different views .But i think what Kenya needs is not to those who praise all the time and not those who critic all the time .
I have always held the view that people vote the way they do because of a lark of choice . Many Kikuyus/Luos voted the way they did because they had to make a choice between a bad option of their own(tribe) or another bad option.
I respect his views and i have told him that .But the apologies and revisiting the past as an excuse for everything that goes wrong is tired . Can we move on !Americans elected Obama and moved on . You never hear them talking about Nixon and Quincy Adams.They deal with the reality they have .
We dont have to re-write History to create History
kaasa give us all a break. You abandon Kenya then u claim to still be advising us on how to improve? Why do you care, you’ve disowned the place after all. Worry about Central African issues. We’ll be fine.
KenyaLuv,
Stick around, you might learn something new. Watch out for my upcoming blogpost
on ‘Migrating’. There might be a gem in it…
@kenyaluv
NO WE WILL NOT BE FINE you lie like a kenyan carpet, cheap and thinly laid.].
first, if you would like a news flash on where society in kenya is headed, get your head out of your age group and come down to ours… i am 25, already my 28 year old cousin has a friend who is not waiting around for the next general ellectio, she is leaving as soon as she gets the chance, the country is currently turning into a modern day zimbabwe but without the whole, not working thing (sorry for using zimbabwe as an example and if you feel offended i apologise)
brain drain is happening for the simple reason that food costs money and we need to move further and further afield just to find more ways to support our families… as a full lecturer with a masters here i would earn barely enough to push my family from one day to the next. an assistant lecturer abroad with just an undergraduate degree, will earn 1.5-2 times the amount i am earning…. no i’m not talking about the uk, or the US, i’m talking about abroad being malawi…for crying out loud, the security is shot, the taxes are high when 80% of our population live below the poverty line…look at nairobi on any day, just becxause we have traffic jam doesn’t mean we all drive…some of us are the drivers trying to hustle for our daily bread, so out of some sense of pride you want me to believe that it is better for me to be lyoyal to my country when my country treates me like crap??? refer to kaasa’s article please don’t call me a feminist, and more underwear issues, are we any better than those women who think that for some reason their misplaced loyalty is owed to their husbands. what do we owe our loyalty to this country for? identity?, soil, earth that someof us can’t even afford to be buried in? what the heck…
i have seen how this country and its people have treated my parents, my grand parents, my friends and i was priviledged enough to have been cushioned from the blow partially by my parents but eventually got hit… when a fellow country man will purposefully infect you with hiv, not through sex (i’m straight and still a virgin funny enough) but because he wanted to mug you, to steal from you something that wasn’t his by right, something that i had worked for…fine there is no perfect country, but when people out of the malice of their hearts decide they will be evil, they will abuse power, they will sit in plush offices, increasing their salaries and allowances, (minus tax mind you) and i am supposed to sit here, me who appointed them, me who voted them in, me who hired them to that job and i am supposed to beg them to do their jobs, it has to stop somewhere and if it stops when i leave this country then so be it, but i will not say that we are managing,. we aren’t managing, heck a supermarket chose goods over lives and is getting away with it, THAT is our heritage of splendor, you defend it… I’ll continue making my plans to leave as soon as i can…
so Kaasa, that article on migrating
@straightnarrow2009
LOL!
Glad i could be of some form of happiness
but seriously, i honestly wish our bosses treated us the same way we treated our politicians…
when we are going to ask for something it shouldn’t be
“mheshimiwa, sir, can you please fix our roads and build us schools”
it should be”Mr soand so, what did you do with the money i paid for taxes, where are the schools and why is the road in this condition” reason, they still are our employees.
@straightnarrow2009,
Please check out HNG’s blog here:
http://kemediawatch.blogspot.com/
interesting conversation:
my big question is who are this ‘elites’ i keep hearing about elites this and elite that – just because someone is a politician does that make him an elite?and how does one join this elite group?
For me and thats just my opinion, our system,our cultures most decisions are made for – you might say that people are individualistic but i think even those people have to affiliate to a group to achieve this individualistic goals. let look at a few examples – the youth fund, i as an individual cannot benefit individually i have to find a group of people
who i can then use to get those funds, same with the womens fund, same with political parties – i have to join whatever party and sing the tune in order to be able to express or represent
even the relationship with the state is hardly one on one from the time you start going to school to the day you get an ID the state is constantly trying to put you in a group to determine how it will relate to you. unfortunately for us te most common the easiest affiliation is regional and tribal.
civil society is not an exception, im thinking about the bomas draft and it seemed to me at every turn there was an attempt to group people and provide rights or ’share’
resources- very little emphasis on the individual. instead we have the ‘youth’, those from ‘marginalized areas’ the ‘disabled’ even words like ‘historical grievances’ are loaded
the question is where is the individual, in all this – is the individual so dis empowered ?
Personally I don’t think they are capable of self-reflection the way we understand it because their core assumptions and way of seeing the world has been conditioned in them since youth to be a tribal one.
Its only after reading your post that I realized how difficult it would be to actually condition these tribal ways of viewing the world out, because in looking at my cousins and friends, I realize that its one of the cornerstones of how they see the place called Kenya and react to it.
The political class is different because they seem to not always see things through tribal lines ( especially when money is involved) and are much more willing to act in favor of a collective good i.e. to advance each other’s corrupt and greedy desires.
If the poor could look at each other the same way the policos and MPs do, my hypothesis is they would move forward a lot quicker than with their current views of each other.
I was drawn to these words.. “Binyavanga Wainaina isnt making any sense”…I actually thought he did a good job in trying to explain in a simple way many complex issues about Kenya, civil societies, international media etc….so I agree with HNG…I think its important for all of us to continue having varied views about our home…
As for Wainaina…I think well of you… Muigwithania.. Joe..I enjoy reading your blog…Wainaina I think Joe is making an important observation which I agree with…certainly not based on anything you said here…I think its important to remember that we all have emotions that influence how we interpret events…I do,.. however… think that you have to be careful not to project your personal issues on a whole tribe even if its your own and…even if it makes you more acceptable to others..
Kaasa..many poles…am sorry our people violated you and your family…I wish you peace and healing..