Ours is an affiliation of convenience-By this I mean our nationhood. Our state-hood. When the partition of the African continent was carried out by the European powers, they did not care who was separated with whom and who was bunched with whom, as long as the lines put the necessary resources on their sphere of influence, traditional enemies were bundled together while cousins were separated by a simple line later on referred to as the international border. The large, expansive Cushite peoples were split into Somalis in Somalia and Somalis in Kenya, Somalis in Ethiopia, etc. The Teso were split into the two nations later on known as Kenya and Uganda. Mt Kilimanjaro was offered as a gift to a Germanic monarchy by the British one and by so doing, the Wa Chaga and other peoples like the Wa Pare were split into two foreigners with their Kenyan counterparts.
We have always had our ethnic identities since time immemorial and we will always do. There is nothing we can do about this and the soonest we learn to appreciate the benefits-and there are many that come with it,- the better. Diversity has been embraced positively all over the world and fruits are visible to all who care to see. It has also, unfortunately, been abused in nearly equal measure and again, the bitter fruits can be seen all over the globe. Our biggest enemy is negative ethnicity. Negative ethnicity feeds and breeds on itself. It forces peoples into a rut, a vicious cycle that is very hard to get out. It promises benefits and at the same time denies benefits and the victims are put in a perpetual carrot-in front-of-donkey situation. It creates lords and serfs. It is immoral.
Sadly part of the reasons- and they really are not reasons but excuses-for ethnic reasoning which leads to negative ethnicity is the endemic corruption that we have all perpetuated. We have become immune to the pangs of corruption as long as it is being practiced by 'our brothers' or 'our people'. As long as 'it is our turn to eat', then it is not corruption. We even use corruption to try and keep 'others' out of power and when others effectively lock us out of power we start shouting that they are the most corrupt. We only see corruption when practiced by 'others' and we brand them and their ethnic group en masse, as corrupt.
This rut that we all have been driven into becomes most obvious every five years when we hold our general elections. Our systems have been set up such that one has to be nominated in ones local region to run for any seat. If one misses the support of the local community, then it's an uphill task to get nominated therefore one starts by convincing the local masses who are usually ignorant of national issues that their chance of ever getting the 'fruits of governance' is by electing him/her. Usually the targeted population is the most marginalised and under-informed, usually living in abject poverty and misery. These are the gullible citizens who form the grassroots support base. These are the fodder that fuel the fires of 'euphoria' that the politicians rely on to get elected, the same troops that may be used to create a voting block by eliminating any opposition by either ethnic cleansing, or simply intimidation of voters or competitors. This sadly leads to our general elections looking like an ethnic census and methinks they will for a long time to come. What we need to do is to use what structures we have in our constitution to neutralize any negative effect this may bring about by instilling the philosophy of winner-not-take-all after our elections. Our elections should not be zero-sum affair between ethnic groups. We already have some entrenched in the constitution and we ought to give them a sober evaluation and re-evaluation while crafting other useful ones, working on our constitution to serve the majority of citizens rather than the small political class.
It may be true today that the government is more 'of all peoples, by all peoples and for all peoples' than has ever been in our history of self governance. It is not perfect as has been brought to light by the acts of the 11th parliament, some commissions of the reformed judiciary, and to some extent too by some acts of the executive-both national and county. Some might be wished away as 'teething' problems but some are fundamental flaws-unforeseen, I hope, and need to be dealt with with the urgency of now. We should not sit back and let entrench a corrupted contract of governance. The masses need to be educated and re-educated on ways and needs to engage government everyday of the five years and not merely to sit back in complicity waiting for the next general election. All those that voted for the government and those that did not are together in affiliation of chance. It is our shared responsibility to check our agencies of governance because in the final analysis, when all the dust has settled, it is them against us. It is their turn to eat and it is still our turn to be eaten. Sote tukae macho.
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