Gitau Warigi
27 April 2008
opinion
Nairobi — Historical injustices" is a term that is now very much in vogue, even though those bandying it about do not sound like they know much history beyond the ramblings they hear in bar-rooms and political meetings.
First of all, Kenya did not exist as a political entity until 1920, when the decree to create a colony was passed in London. The Rift Valley as a province with boundaries did not exist, but all the communities who are there now were there even then.
The notion that Kenya's problems - land, tribalism, whatever - began in 1963 is a convenient, if silly, fiction. The colony was first and foremost created for the profit of Britain and its settlers, but the fact that some indigenous groups managed to make considerable headway out of this situation irrespective of the odds is something that long pre-dates independence.
IT IS TRUE THE KENYATTA GOVERNment perpetuated these disparities or at best papered over them. The Nyayo Regime claimed it was carrying out a "correction", but the only change we got was a different lot keen on the till.
As a country, we have become obsessed with the idea of equity, and rightly so. The problem is that you hardly hear any comprehensible road-map for it. Some think evicting people from their land will bring them equity. An overwhelming majority believe monopolising State jobs and resources is the answer. Maybe.
Still, if those ethnic beneficiaries of the Nyayo Regime in the Rift Valley failed to close the gap with the community of the previous power wielders despite frantically playing catch-up for 24 long years, they must be having other limitations they are not telling us of.
On its own, mere access to power does not translate to prosperity, except for an elite. If it did, the Asian community in Kenya would be at the bottom of the pile.
Since we do not like calling a spade a spade, or more likely we are not sure how the spade looks like, we prefer to point fingers, in a generalised way, at our "post-independence leadership" to explain our confused national identity.
Two particular favourites get cited as examples of the direction we should have taken: South Africa and Tanzania. But those who point there do so either out of ignorance or wishful thinking.
Apartheid may be legally gone, but the apartheid state remains quite intact a decade after "liberation". Economic power remains firmly with the whites, despite the creation of token black millionaires of the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa through the Black Economic Empowerment programme. Land imbalance in South Africa is actually worse than in Zimbabwe. The Xhosa monopoly of power, principally vis-a-vis the Zulu, has created ethnic tensions we Kenyans are all too familiar with.
If anything, we tend to romanticise Tanzania's post-independence path even more. True indeed, our neighbour has made real sacrifices in forging a sense of nationhood. Unfortunately, the glorification tends to ignore the painful price Tanzanians have had to pay for killing initiative in favour of uniformity. No one in Tanzania will admit that Ujamaa has for all practical purposes crumbled. I like to equate Mwalimu Julius Nyerere with Mao Zedong: widely adored in their homelands but rarely followed any more.
Worse, Tanzania's union with Zanzibar is in trouble and not even the heavy hand of the Chama cha Mapinduzi can forestall the eventual break-up, which could possibly get violent.
I was in Tanzania recently when there was an outbreak of tribal violence in the Mwanza region that the official media did its usual best to cover up. In this former socialist paradise, I was amused to hear a tirade by some well-educated chap about how Chaggas do not want to marry from other communities.
UGANDA'S PRESIDENT YOWERI MUseveni is surely right when he says that we got our independence so that we could solve our own problems rather than keep blaming the past. But we will not go far if we read our history in a lopsided way, or through a political lens. History can be a very double-edged thing. It is good we now want to dredge it up. Some of those talking of "historical injustices" will not like the results very much.
A decade or so ago, an attempt to make public some official British documents relating to the decolonisation period caused a mighty uproar within the Kenyan leadership of the time, and for good reason. Very nasty skeletons would have been exposed.
For instance, have some of us ever asked ourselves how Kadu came to exist? Who were the "Capricorn" group of settler leaders and what did they want? Who gave advice and funding to which group and for what purpose?
Many such questions are not being asked simply because we have a weak leadership that cannot come to grips with anything.
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