Penye wazee hapaharibiki neno (where elders are nothing can go wrong) so the Kiswahili saying goes. Normally, elders play a huge role in any African society. They are conciliators: They bring warring parties to dialogue and sometimes give their communities direction on diverse and pertinent issues.
In my Kalenjin community, younger people greet elders with both hands as a sign of submissiveness. Elders are revered and treated with deference. Anything less than that is seen as defiance and being rude.
However, what are we supposed to do when we watch them display their ignorance to the whole world? Should we feel obligated to be deferential to them no matter what, even after they use tribal lenses when discussing such sensitive issues as the 2022 succession?
Instead of shepherding the country to a peaceful transition, the elders have started to regroup. Don’t tell me they are peace-loving greying citizens in their sunset years. Nope. Their main objective is to fill their stomachs, masquerading as peacemakers.
Like leeches, these busybodies are also like dogs who bark on behalf of their political masters. We have never seen them speak in one voice to avert chaos when the country is threatened by the perennial political upheavals. And when they come together, they rubbish the meeting as soon as they depart to their respective communities. Case in point is a meeting that the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin elders held six years ago.
In the meeting, whose chief agenda was clarification of an MoU between President Uhuru Kenya and Deputy President William Ruto, the Kikuyu elders had unequivocally assured their Kalenjin counterparts that the agreement would be honoured.
But on December 31, 2018, the same Kikuyu elders led by their chairperson Wachira Kiago disowned the meeting, saying they never agreed on anything with the Kalenjin Council of Elders. In fact, according to Kiago, no meeting took place and what the Kalenjin elders were referring to was a figment of their fertile imagination.
I expected Kiago to behave like a true elder and meet his Kalenjin counterparts and tell them that their stance on the matter has since been overtaken by events and is no longer tenable. It is worth noting that Kiago suffered an instant attack of amnesia after the then Jubilee vice chairman David Murathe muddied the 2022 inheritance politics by telling Ruto that he should forget about his presidential ambitions.
Elders are as tribal as politicians. They are noisy rent-seekers and play political surrogates to whoever will fatten their banks accounts. They speak from both sides of their frothy mouths and care less about this beautiful country as long as their tribe is in power.
Their thoughts are heavily bigoted and intrinsically oiled by pure greed. They lack basic tenets of democracy and patriotism. This is why, although all the 43 communities boast of councils of elders, the country is perennially threatened with tribal clashes.
Tribal elders only think of politics of the tribe. None discusses the welfare of the people. Elders from Kisii or Ukambani, for instance, can never vouch for the inherent interests of the Mijikenda or the suffering El-Molo, who have no elders to speak on their behalf.
Some Kenyans are continuously faced with acute starvation but all we hear from these fake elders is foolish political agendas. Sample this. In the said meeting, the so-called Kikuyu elders put it categorically that they will only enter into a pact with a presidential candidate who outlines what the “Kikuyu community will get in return”.
To our dangerously myopic elders (by the way, who appoints them?) it is always about “our” community.
A year ago, we witnessed a bizarre incident at Uhuru Park, Nairobi, when Kikuyu elders converged to curse media mogul SK Macharia for betraying the community by supporting opposition leader Raila Odinga.
In Meru, the many factions of Njuri Ncheke are always fighting each other over the politics of the tribe.
How I wish they put Kenya first!