Nairobi — As the country struggles with the aftermath of last year's General Election, all efforts need to be redirected at reconciliation and re-affirming our nationhood.

Culture should probably be the most important in exorcising the ghosts of the violence and destruction.

It should also provide us with the elements of the rituals we need to cleanse ourselves of our past sins.

Our artistes were quick to participate in the early calls for peace. Songs, poetry and drama were performed in different parts of the country and on national media.

We have read essays and opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines urging Kenyans to choose peace over war, and unity over divisiveness.

This is good, but more needs to be done. Probably, a policy should be initiated to instil a culture of tolerance and respect for others.

First, there is need for an independent Ministry of Culture. The logic behind lumping together culture - which defines our very identity and determines our sociality - with gender and sports does not make sense.

A ministry solely dedicated to culture will ensure our differences in terms of tribe, religion, race, social class and geographical location form part of the national policy on co-existence. This will contribute towards the creation of a unified identity founded on the celebration of diversity.

It will be the engine driving the search for a national identity that we have committed ourselves to.

Second, let us teach cultural studies in our institutions.

We need to start looking at culture as something distinct from the anthropological categories of tribes that we inherited from the colonial system.

Contemporary cultural studies tell us that the modern individual is a product of many forces and agents of culture. One could be a Luo married to a Kalenjin, and works in a company owned by a Teso. Her pastor could be a Kikuyu, her children's teacher a Giriama, the hairdresser an Embu and her driver a Somali.

Such an individual has no fixed allegiances to a specific culture or tribe, although she may travel 'home' every Christmas.

Such is the nature of a Kenyan today. This is the same person who has been branded 'tribal' by bad policies and a poor education system.

It is necessary that we 'de-tribalise' such individuals in our language and everyday interaction. De-tribalisation is not the same as the false call to reject one's ethnicity. It is simply an acknowledgement that such a person is several parts (or tribes) in one body.

Third, we need to legislate radical changes in our language policy. For instance, why would a civil servant work in a region for 10 years without learning the language of the locals?

But the irony is that we allow companies employing locals to assert that "knowledge of French or German is an added advantage" for a Kenyan who is actually to be employed locally.

Why not ask that a Government employee who has to work in a different region also learn the local language(s)? When shall we start to appreciate each other's mother tongues?

It would also probably be in the best interests of posterity to re-write our history. The written and taught history of this country has been complicit in distorting our colonial and post-colonial realities.

Is it not a shame that the most trusted authors and specialists on our history are foreigners?

What is taught in our high school, college and university history syllabuses has been so mutilated that it does not even start to define the history of Kenya.

We could begin by acknowledging that the anti-colonial struggle was waged from many fronts - trade unions, indigenous churches, schools, armed struggle, intellectual dissidence and sabotage in homes and farms.

Then we could highlight the fact that some communities suffered more than others under colonial appropriation of land and subsequent forced extraction of labour.

We could then take bold steps to 'celebrate' all who were involved in the struggle in any form. If we are to forge a new culture in this country, we had better start with a re-examination and re-telling of our history.

It is not too late to call on all institutions in the country to inculcate a permanent state of self-enquiry and practice on how best to attain collective nationhood. Do our teachers ever take a break from their monotonous lessons to remind their students what makes them Kenyans and not Ugandans?

Why is it that most of us can only recite the first stanza of the national anthem? Are we too lazy to memorise the other stanzas or are the words in those stanzas irrelevant? Why do we see tattered flags flying on masts at Government institutions? Perhaps civil servants working in those offices are too pre-occupied with their own affairs to bother. What these behaviours betray is a lack of the culture of 'Kenyanness' and pride in our country.

We need to invite culture to the national collectivity that will lead us into the new regime and future.

The writer is a literary and cultural scholar