Business Daily (Nairobi)
George Ogola
15 October 2007
opinion
Nairobi — Globalisation and the subsequent movement of labour across the world have precipitated the deconstruction of the nation-state in the 21st century. But contrary to imaginations of the borderless 'nation,' it has meant a retreat into the most un-globalised of identities.
This reality especially manifests at election time when political power is contested. Election politics continues to dominate the current media agenda in the UK, Kenya and Australia. These three countries may be culturally disparate and geographically miles apart, but recent developments point to a rather unusual similarity.
In England, Labour and the Conservatives have been at war over the future of the country. Two weeks ago, David Cameron's political career was on a cliff hanger. Everyone including his aides had him out for the count.
Opinion polls had Brown on a double digit lead, the Labour conference had just been held and the PM's speech showed every indication that he was eating into Middle England, the Tory heartland.
Brown spoke passionately about the family, crime and about immigration, curiously moving Right where once Labour was Left. In Blackpool where the Conservatives later held their conference, Cameron had it all to do.
The former Eton boy went on stage without a written script and wowed the audience with a speech that lasted an hour, eloquently slaughtering Labour and Brown, explaining his policies, which, until then, had been lacking in detail before finally calling Labour's bluff and challenging Brown to call for a general election.
Two days later, Brown bottled it, beating a hasty retreat unable to contain the 'Cameron bounce' as the Conservative leader matched him in the opinion polls.
The two speeches that mapped out the future of Britain within a space of just one week were different yet profoundly similar; they both enunciated a remarkable resurgence of nationalism in British politics.
Brown and Cameron were and are still fighting over the soul of Britain, both calling on a Britishness whose definition now remains especially elusive in a 21st Century Britain.
Brown had talked about creating 'British jobs for British people,' surprisingly ignoring the EU position. Cameron wanted an election to let 'Britain decide'. Our cities, our streets, our jobs hinted not at a multicultural Britishness but at a past identity whose presence is beginning to define the election agenda in a hugely confusing new political dispensation.
At election time, a return to some traditional notion of difference tends to become expedient to political leaders. Interestingly, it is as much prominent in the First World as it is in the Third World. This is where our politics now tend to meet.
The only difference is that in the Developing World, our tribes tend to become our nations. Tribal nationalism thus reigns supreme. In Kenya, we have heard politicians explaining to voters why they need to vote for one of their own.
Recently, Kiraitu Murungi led other politicians from the larger central Kenya asking their constituents to vote for the incumbent primarily because he hails from the Mt Kenya region.
Prior to the ODM presidential nominations, politicians in Western Kenya reminded voters from the province that 'our' time to rule had come. In Nyanza and Ukambani, the mantra was repeated with aplomb in justifying the candidatures of both Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka.
A justification was provided to recede into insular tribal identities because of an imagined or real threat of competition from outside. It is a time when neighbours are suddenly told they are in fact different. This is the new arena for today's election politics.
Indeed, the new politician is an interesting study in contradiction. On the one hand he is keen to be seen to be alive to the exigencies of integration, of inclusiveness and nationhood, but equally quick to exploit voter fears about the 'outsider'.
In Australia, the exploitation of this fear appears to have reached extreme levels. Australia's immigration minister Kevin Andrews recently placed a moratorium on African refugees accusing them of failing to integrate into the Australian society.
He has banned the resettlement of African refugees in the country until 2009. He also accused the youth from the settled African immigrants, mostly refugees from Darfur of an upsurge in crime in the country.
The Australian Human Rights Commissioner Graham Innes claimed that there was in fact no evidence that youth from Sudanese families were violent and causing problems where they had been settled than any other youth from other groups. The cities mentioned by the Immigration minister also refuted the claims.
Yet the timing of Andrews' policy change could not have been more telling. Australia goes to the polls in late November and as always, immigration tops the national news agenda.
It is at such times as that conservative and right wing politicians in the country attempt to manufacture an Australian nationhood, a country whose very existence is due to massive immigration. John Howard, the country's PM trails Labour by significant points in opinion polls.
He has in the past recklessly exploited the immigration agenda at election time. In 2001, while trailing his rival prior to the elections, he touched a raw nerve but nonetheless succeeded in tapping into the country's fears about immigrants by ordering the military to block boats carrying asylum seekers headed to Australia.
The military were ordered to send the refugees to nearby Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Later known as the Pacific solution, Howard made critics and enemies but also won the votes he needed to return as PM.
Pauline Hanson of the United Australia Party, a bigot who hides under the euphemism of being right wing is keen on similar support and has now accused African refugees of gang crime and an upsurge in diseases such as HIV and even leprosy.
She dismissed the Sudanese refugees as a people who were 'incompatible' with the Australian way of life and culture. In a world where the battle for political power is now being fought on the plane of fear and not policy, the Australian scenario brings into sharp relief the extent to which voters can be manipulated.
With a rise of career politicians lacking in firm ideological convictions, the battleground at election time is now being focused on emotional blackmail.
We might call it tribalism in Kenya. Elsewhere it is the same disease but goes by other names. It is muzzled under euphemisms such as integration and immigration. We all know it is bare prejudice based on a manufactured difference.
Ogola is a journalism lecturer at University of Central Lancashire, UK.
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