Regular readers of this column will know that from my many years of observing as well as writing about Kenyan politics and politicians, I have an endless store of anecdotes which illustrate the very odd logic that guides such politics.
Some are tragic. Others are hilarious. But there are some which are simultaneously hilarious and tragic – such as the one I am about to tell you.
About four or five elections ago, back in the Daniel Moi era, a politician I knew was haunted by one simple fact in the months immediately after he had lost an election.
It was not his failure to win the seat which troubled him. Rather it was that the vote counting had revealed – in broad daylight – that he got remarkably few votes from his own “home village”.
In most rural settings, what one would refer to as his or her own “home village” will usually consist of families who are either related in some way, or at all events have long been closely associated with the candidate. So, for a public-spirited man or woman, this village will have many people who have at some point benefitted from the candidate. It might be in the payment of school fees for a bright young boy or girl from a really poor family. It may be a contribution towards medical bills.
And quite aside from the previous benefits extended to residents of that “home village”, there would be opportunities for incidental employment during the campaign itself. Strong young men may serve as “security” for the candidate. Choirs and praise singers have to be appropriately rewarded. Motorbike “boda boda” riders do not go out to provide “convoys” unless they are paid.
And all these people have to eat – naturally at the candidate's home. So, teams of local village women will take turns at some outdoor kitchen, cooking for the various groups considered essential to the campaign.
So, what does all this signify?
Well, all these groups involved directly or indirectly in the campaign, add up to quite a good number of people – hundreds of people really.
So, a candidate for a parliamentary seat should be certain that by the time all these people and their families cast their votes, the least he or she should get from the polling station at the local primary school is 500 votes, give or take.
And as such, when the candidate (like my unfortunate friend) finds that he only got some 50 votes in his own political backyard, he has every reason to wonder how it happened and if indeed he has any understanding of the voting behaviour of “his people”.
For in such a case, there are clearly hundreds of people who partook of his hospitality – and then decided to vote for someone else.
He therefore set out to try and get to the bottom of this, by summoning some of his extended family and putting to them this same question:
“I do not mind having lost the election. These things happen. And I know for sure that you at least voted for me. But what I want to know is, why did so many of the people who spent days with me on the campaign trail, not vote for me? Where did I go wrong”?
And the response was always the same: “They came to believe that you could not win. And they did not want to waste their vote. So, they voted for the likely winner.”
This anecdote illustrates the sentimental – and to some degree superstitious – attachment that many Kenyans have for “my vote”. Although many will proclaim that the candidates seeking office are all the same; all liars and crooks who do not care about the ordinary man; etc, they all the same are not willing to consider voting as an exercise in futility.
Once having taken the trouble to register to vote, they want to see their vote count for something.
And are likely to say of a perceived frontrunner, even if they have barely set eyes on him, much less enjoyed his hospitality, “Well, if so many people think he will serve us well, maybe I too should vote for him”.
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