President Uhuru Kenyatta signs the Security (Amendment) Act 2014 Bill at State House, Nairobi. PHOTO | PSCU
A young man whom I follow on Twitter announced last week that
his close relative had told him that it was his duty as a Kikuyu to
support Kenya’s new anti-terrorism laws. The young man wondered ....what
tribal affiliation had to do with support for oppressive laws. Does
patriotism now translate into blind loyalty towards a tribal chief?
Where can Kenya’s 40-plus other tribes find refuge? Have they been
declared disloyal and unpatriotic simply because of their genetic
make-up?
Or
perhaps these other tribes have never ever been part of this entity
called Kenya. In a recent article published in the Mail & Guardian,
Christine Mungai describes the sense of abandonment and alienation that
forced her middle class friend from “an opposition stronghold” to
liquidate his assets and think of migrating from Nairobi (where he has
spent all his life) to his “home village” (where he has never lived).
His
feelings, says Mungai, reinforce what Kenya observers have been saying
for years — that the Kenyan State is a fragile entity with unresolved
group grievances and which those in power can conjure up at will, and
make disappear just as quickly.
“For those outside
elite circles, the very concept of Kenya is a shadow, a whiff, an odour
in the air, but with no real form or substance,” says Mungai.
The
Jubilee Government will no doubt argue that it is an inclusive
government whose leading proponents are in fact neither from the
President’s nor the Deputy President’s tribe. So how does one explain
the sense of alienation experienced by the Nairobian?
Hussein
Bulhan, a trauma specialist who works in Hargeisa, explains how the
Somali elite exploited the notion of clan, or tribe, to pursue their
personal ambitions to the detriment of the Somali people, and how clan
loyalty has distorted politics and society in Somalia. In his book,
Politics of Cain, Bulhan shows how oppressive colonial laws combined
with the traditional pastoral ethos of clan loyalty, nepotism, and
looting created what he calls an “auto-colonial state” that is
inherently prone to instability, conflict, and crisis.
In
such a scenario, the politics of the ruling elite is characterised by
thrill-seeking, pathological glibness, anti-social pursuit of power, and
absence of guilt.
He writes: “The Somali elite who
engage in this type of politics are socialised into two drastically
different cultures — traditional and colonial — both of which they had
internalised but only partially and selectively use aspects of to serve
their interest. Lacking, therefore, coherent values and consistent moral
structure, they egotistically behave as they wish, avoiding punishment
or obtaining rewards by whatever means available to them, regardless of
the consequences of their behaviour for others.”
THREAT OF VIOLENCE
The
threat of violence by the State or by rival clans/tribes has kept
millions of Somalis and other Africans in a perpetual state of terror.
Kenya’s
new anti-terrorism laws, which may have been well-intentioned when they
were drafted, have not only re-introduced the kind of fear and paranoia
experienced during Moi’s rule, but have made it virtually impossible
for ordinary citizens to question the State’s policies and practices.
Some
provisions, such as imposing hefty penalties on those who aid or abet
terrorists (which, hopefully, will lead to the sacking of corrupt
immigration and police officers) are much needed, but others, like
criminalising people who “adopt or promote an extreme belief system for
the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance
political, religious or social change” are so broad that they could even
apply to evangelical Christian churches or to the State itself, which
has been forcibly evicting and inflicting violence on entire communities
in the coastal, north-eastern, and Rift Valley regions for decades.
Some
sources have told the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea that
not only are the Interim Jubaland Administration and the Kenyan forces
in Somalia reaping profits from the illegal sale of charcoal from the
port of Kismayu, but that Al-Shabaab is also making huge profits by
controlling the charcoal supply chains and production sites.
If
these reports are indeed true, then both the Kenyan forces and the
Interim Jubaland Administration should be charged with aiding and
abetting terrorists under Kenya’s new anti-terrorism laws.
rasna.warah@gmail.com
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