Is ethnic cultism becoming the new normal in Kenya?

Fellow Kenyans, allow me the indulgence to submit that courtesy of our political leaders, we are hurtling at Grand Prix speed towards the little-known bailiwick of ethnic cultism.

To understand how grave ethnic cultism is, we must distinguish it from tribalism and ethnocentrism. The empirical definition of tribalism limits it to entrenching favouritism based on ethnic identity.

This would not make tribalism such evil were it not for the fact that the favouritism comes at the expense of other ethnicities. Ethnocentrism, on the other hand, may be understood as tribal fanaticism in which members of an ethnic group express real or fallacious superiority over other ethnicities.

Ethnic cultism, however, is the sum total of tribal jingoism, extremism, zealotry and bellicose fanaticism all rolled into one very muddled whole.  

THE STATESIDE CABALS 

In sociology, the cabal theory contends that prompted by extraneous circumstances, a group of people will conjure to transform its existential status quo from conventional participants in a political process into a mysterious confederacy that charismatically sells its own confabulated sense of injustice as one on the entire populace. Subsequently, it invites the people to become participants in a bid to irreparably poison the socio-political and economic environment.

The main contention of the cabal theory is that such a group tends to rely on the perversely insidious influence of its leader to spiral the emotions of the populace to a point that makes governing them nearly impossible.

The cabal theory concludes that once this is achieved, the group of conspirators will then reincarnate itself as the legitimate leadership, while simultaneously presenting the incumbents as the actual conspirators hell-bent on disenfranchising the citizenry.

Sociologists warn that the inherent danger of such cabals is their tendency to mutate into socially and politically lethal enclaves.

In 1953, for example, none other than famed literati Wole Soyinka formed The Pirate Cofraternity’ at the University of Ibadan, ostensibly to neuter colonialism on campus. Those familiar with the history of Nigerian student activism will attest to the reality that it was Wole Soyinka’s PC that bred such outlandish campus-based enclaves as The Vikings (a recondite cabal of violence), The Buccaneers (an epitome of the unscrupulous) and The Daughters of Jezebel (the utterly infamous occult of mischief).

ETHNIC CULTISM

On April 26, 2016, The Star newspaper carried an interesting commentary by one Justus Javan Ochieng whose communicative fulcrum balanced on Musalia Mudavadi’s critical assessment of why Raila Odinga’s political strategies always come a cropper.

Mudavadi was reported to have summed it up thus: “Unfortunately ODM is built on old Kanu tenets of personality cultism. Fascination with cultism forbids exhaling. Loyalty is expressed by keeping everyone cooped up like chickens in a pen feeding on doses of lies.”

Cultism sprouts and thrives in society when a people feel collectively deprived. Cultic leaders use their charisma and flamboyance to amplify this feeling of deprivation by inculcating a sense of degenerative victimhood into the collective psyche of the populace especially in relation to a supposedly more privileged and better-endowed segment of the national populace.

They are cleverly aware that economic deprivation is such a global constant that even in the US, there are those who wallow in abject poverty. So they harp on psychological deprivation where their followers are made to feel that they are being discriminated against and exploited for a fault they are never to blame for while others revel in splendour.  

World history is littered with unpleasant narrations of how some personalities have been able to achieve complete mental pulverisation of fellow human beings by liquefying their whole existence to the point of total psychological and behavioural submission.

This is how any attempt to glean rationality from a well-rounded professor of letters or an achieving corporate icon vis-à-vis their loyal following of such a personality is instead met with bellicose and belligerent reactions.

Whenever the saner minded sons or daughters of that region dare to question, they are dismissively labelled quislings or vipers and they suddenly become hired renegades out to derail the tribal cause.

When Charles Manson formed a cultist organisation The Family in 1969, he borrowed from the popular Beatles song Helter Skelter to convince his followers that the Apocalypse was looming and they had to trigger it. This is how his followers blindly partook in the so-called Tate murders in California.

When Manson’s followers were arrested by the police, they remained defiant claiming that Manson had interpreted the Book of Revelations for them and that they had to commit the murders or else they would collectively suffer the wrath of an unfolding Armageddon.

In Kenya today, the narrative by both sides of the political divide is that the other portends the advent of an all-consuming apocalypse. Replace the Book of Revelations with the Kenyan Constitution and we get a perfect match of cultic advocacy.  

In 1974, Marshall Applewhite and his companion Bonnie Trusdale, the later day cultists of the Heaven’s Gate infamy, convinced fallible followers to subscribe to the lofty and pertinacious ideals associated with Human Individual Metamorphosis.

The followers were told of some unidentified flying object that was to land in the harsh Colorado Desert with good life-improving tidings. When he formed the Heaven’s Gate cult, Applewhite presented himself as the human embodiment of Christ the Saviour who had been entrusted with the custody of the keys to the pearly gates of heaven. In Kenya, Canaan and Tsunami have become Google sensations as awed ethnic followers seek their meanings and applicatory relevancies.

One of the lesser-known cultists was Victor Houteff. He founded the Branch Davidians by rebelling against the doctrines of the Seventh Day Adventists. Houteff authored  The Shepherd’s Rod book that caused a major rift in the hitherto stable SDA movement.

He proffered to his followers the belief that hidden in Chapter Five of the Book of Revelations was secret information that needed interpretation by himself and a cabal of five others to trigger the downfall of the Kingdom of Babylon and to establish a new Kingdom of David (hence the name Davidian).

This is exactly how Kenyans leaders (ably abetted by Kenyan lawyers) are using the Constitution to radicalise and weaponise the minds of followers with the promise of delivery to the beautiful shores of yonder.

The Constitution is today being repackaged as the magic wand that will deliver us from our torturous present. Already, any voices against constitutional change are being allocated such titles as schismatic heretics with veins of blue blood.

THE SUPREMO ULTIMO 

In the highly captivating book Supremo Ultimo by Bernado Neri Farina, an experienced Spanish journalist, presents the story of General Alfred Stroessner, a military man who served as President of Paraguay from 1954-89. Farina’s well-versed expose touches on cult leadership.

The typical cult leader thrives on illusionary mysticism and overrated machismo that is sometimes adoringly elevated to Gordian-Knot enigma status. This soon gets into the cult leader’s head and he will nonchalantly arrogate to himself the power to determine the course of his followers' lives. 

This is how in 1994 Joseph DiMambrio, the murderous founder of the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Temple managed to convince his followers that he had spare keys to paradise and that he had been given divine control of the solar equinox of March 20 that year to align the sun to the anticipated coming of Christ in a blaze of solar glory.

This is also how the notoriously self-centred David Koresh, the leader of the Texan Davidian Cult, sold his doomsday gospel of sex and death to mesmerised followers, who would even offer their wives and daughters for Koresh’s sexual pleasure in the belief that his seed was hallowed as he was Christ-incarnate.

We all know how that ended [in gunfire and flames]. Here in Kenya, we often see memes on social media expressing such views as ‘If Baba says your wife is pregnant, start buying pampers’ or ‘If Baba says its Christmas, roll out the chapatti dough’ in reference to Raila Odinga.'

Lately, there has been curious sprouting of equally mischievous memes featuring ‘Uthamaki’ and ‘Kamwana’. Others are now openly declaring that watermelon is not a very bad fruit because it is actually ‘grown by my people’.  

In 1987, Shoko Asahara, a Japanese started the ‘Aum Shinri Kyo’ movement and misrepresented himself as the modern-day ambassador of Christ. Relying on the ominous 16th Century writings of Nostradamus, Shoko predicted the advent of major disasters as a prelude to his triumph over fate and evil.

The unique parallel between the Shinri Kyo (Japanese words for ‘Simple Truth’) and the Kenyan opposition (or whatever skeleton that is left of it) is that in both instances, the followers are made to believe that government, as it exists, is evil and out to annihilate them unless they resist.

Similarly, the holders of power sell the gospel that an opposition incumbency is akin to doom and very perilous for business. But curiously, when the two icons come together and shake hands, both sides of the ethnic divide cheer on as if the long-overdue redemption has cleansed the hitherto existential toxicity. Anyone with the temerity to question the much-publicised steely handgrip is seen as a merchant of adulterated fuel being pumped into the tank of the progress limousine.

In sum, proponents of ethnic cultism focus their energies on generating orgiastic fanaticism in total disregard of the law and the Constitution. Leaders of this kind, thrive on well-oiled oratory that could convince us to pay for the oxygen we breathe.

They are able to paint a picture of victimhood better than Leonardo Da Vinci could ever have coloured the Mona Lisa. The spillover effect of ethnic cultism is worsened by a legion-like following that venomously disparages any dissenting voices, especially in the age of social media savagery.

The adherents of ethnic cultism steadfastly and egregiously negate any existing or emergent dissonance to their fixated and entrenched cognitive orientations. Anyone who dares to embark on an exponential persuasion that contradicts theirs is rapidly turned into briquette, as I well expect may happen to me after penning this article.