Our constitution is very generous on rights; you can live, work and die anywhere in Kenya. However, it does not proffer an explicit right to offer yourself for elective office anywhere in Kenya. It is assumed that is a birthright subsumed as an inherent freedom.
But the political reality is different, tribe and geography place some areas under the exclusive dominance of singular tribes. In mobilising support there, politicians play ethnic bias as if it were the natural order of things. In urban Kenya, however, the execution of this primitive sense of ordained ethnic entitlement encounters difficulties.
Thriving urban communities tend to lose tribal identities or conversely coalesce around them. But urbanisation in Kenya has rejected this norm and the village lives in the city. Urban areas have enclaves where members of specific tribes live, socialise and even work. Nairobi is a typical example.
Only crafty politicians have waded through the tribal mix for electoral survival in Nairobi. The Kikuyu mastered the art of herding their majority brethren in the city into electoral dominance early enough. After the last non-Kikuyu mayor, Isaac Lugonzo, left office in 1971, the community dominated Nairobi politics until the introduction of multipartyism, when Mayor Joe Aketch took over in 2002.
The Kikuyu have lost political Nairobi for 10 years. It is this background that defines the latest spat amongst aspirants. You have a section nostalgic for Kikuyu dominance and that does not shy away from saying Nairobi has “owners” and outsiders should not be “imposed”. This ilk forgets it is responsible for 200,000 imported voters.
Another strand argues that to acquire dominance, the Kikuyu need to “buy off” disgruntled Luhya from Cord. Someone has sold the theory that the Luhya voter is as cheap as some of their MPs who have gravitated to Jubilee. In this scheme, Luhya are caricatured condescendingly as malleable to empty promises. So token Nairobi seats will be “allocated” to them. Stone broke ‘Luhya leaders’ are all over hawking their preferred candidates.
A third faction ostensibly wants to field a surrogate Luhya for governor. This is the most abject of them all, working in cahoots with equally despicable brides from the Luhya community. For a community that would never let go of what is assumed to be family silver, to offer surrender is contemptible because of the inherent lie they are selling.
If I were of Luhya progeny like CS Water Eugene Wamalwa or former Speaker Kenneth Marende, I would flee from any Jubilee chaperon insisting on making me Nairobi governor. Wamalwa knows the script well since he was last left stranded under the G7 formation. He was witness to his benefactor Musalia Mudavadi’s political abandonment.
Like Mudavadi, Wamalwa’s new sponsors want him wasted. Someone wants him out of Trans Nzoia, where he would be an irritant. He must be removed to the wilderness that is Nairobi and abandoned. Like Mudavadi in 2013, he will be told when it is too late his candidature is untenable because the Kikuyu ‘base’ has threatened to vote Cord.
Strategically, assuming he is also angling for a Jubilee ticket, Marende has been brought in as a hedge. The design is the Luhya vote, assumed to be the second largest in the city after the Kikuyu, and which has been threatening to coalesce around one of their own, must be scuttled. To where I do not know, but the community will be derided once again as a confused ‘swing’ vote.