In the period just before the 2017 general election, Prof Yash Pal Ghai, writing in the ‘Katiba Corner’ page of the Weekend Star, made an interesting point.
At some point in a long discourse on the upcoming election and all that went with it, Prof Ghai, arguably the most eminent legal scholar yet produced by this country, posed this question:
If indeed Kenya’s reputation as a country riven by deep and unforgiving tribal enmities had any basis in fact, then why was it that the top leaders who in so many ways were a totem of their tribal interests, found it so easy to change sides with every election?
He did not go into any further details. He did not need to.
Anyone who has even the slightest grasp of Kenyan political history will know for example that the Kikuyu and the Luo were considered to be the most irreconcilable of political rivals, all the way back from the late 1960s.
Yet in the 2002 general election, Raila Odinga who had by then already become the undisputed political overlord of the Luo, had no difficulty getting the Luo to vote as a bloc for the leading Kikuyu politician of the day, Mwai Kibaki, who then went on to be president.
Likewise, following the 2008 post-election violence, in which hundreds of lives were lost and hundreds of thousands displaced mostly in the Upper Rift Valley, it seemed only logical that voters from the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin communities would find it impossible to team up in any kind of political pact, at least for a generation or two.
But come the very next general election in 2013, what we witnessed was these two communities forming a political alliance that saw Uhuru Kenyatta elected as president with William Ruto becoming his deputy as provided for under the 2010 Constitution.
This is the remarkable fluidity that Prof Ghai was referring to.
It was therefore no surprise, earlier this week, to see Raila Odinga as a presumed presidential candidate for the 2022 general election, victoriously touring the greater Meru region, accompanied by Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi.
Watching as they were met with rapturous crowds at every stop, I wondered how many young Kenyans knew that – even though in recent elections the two have invariably been on opposing sides – 30 years ago the two men were among the most influential of the so-called ‘Young Turks’ who played a key role (at great personal sacrifice) to help bring about ‘The Second Liberation’, which restored multiparty democracy to Kenya.
Kiraitu was back then a notable idealist who refused to run for his parliamentary seat on one of the parties associated with the Central Kenya voting bloc, and instead took his chances with Ford Kenya, which was viewed by many as a “Luo political party”. He managed a surprise victory but was to later demonstrate remarkable flexibility in being one of the very few politicians who can boast of never having lost an election in his political career.
Not just that but he has at various times been an MP, a senator, and now a governor. The only positions he has not run for is MCA and President. And he has always won – and each time, on a different political party ticket.
There is a great deal of comfort to be found in studying such patterns in the careers of the prominent political leaders of our time.
The patterns seem to suggest that ours is not the deep and abiding political hatreds that have been revealed in certain neighbouring countries. Our tribalism is not profound and fundamental in nature.
Rather it is tactical and instrumental – the great majority of us are easily misled by political leaders to turn against each other, in a belief that having ‘our team’ lose the election will in some way be a major and personal disaster.
So provided our top leaders can exercise restraint and avoid the easy pickings of appeals to tribal chauvinism, we should have a very peaceful election in 2022.
