SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2014

MUTIGA: Othaya fish scramble a powerful civics lesson on folly of ethnically driven politics

PHOTO | FILE Othaya MP Mary Wambui at a past press briefing. A recent footage from Othaya showing residents scrambling for fish in an event organised by the MP offered some timely comic relief and a break from the din of politics that dominates the airwaves on normal days.

PHOTO | FILE Othaya MP Mary Wambui at a past press briefing. A recent footage from Othaya showing residents scrambling for fish in an event organised by the MP offered some timely comic relief and a break from the din of politics that dominates the airwaves on normal days. 

In Summary

  • The predominant reaction was: How could this happen in Nyeri, supposedly one of the richest counties in the country and in the constituency which has been represented for decades by former President Mwai Kibaki?
  • In Kenya, the myth of boundless Kikuyu prosperity is one of the dominant features of the political scene.
  • The community leaders had genuine grievances about environmental concerns and the possible disruption of fishing routes, which I reported.
By Murithi Mutiga
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The footage from Othaya showing residents scrambling for fish in midweek offered some timely comic relief and a break from the din of politics that dominates the airwaves on normal days.

The predominant reaction was: How could this happen in Nyeri, supposedly one of the richest counties in the country and in the constituency which has been represented for decades by former President Mwai Kibaki?

The fact that those questions were being asked shows how strongly the country's politics is shaped by popular myths.

There is no "rich" or "poor" community in Kenya. There are only rich individuals and sometimes families who take different paths to wealth.

It is an obvious point, but it bears repeating. There are no entire ethnic groups that benefit from the presidency.

The low-hanging fruits of power, such as lucrative tenders and opportunities to act as go-betweens for investors, go not to the wananchi in Gatundu or Baringo but to a narrow slice of elites allied to those in power.

The scramble for fish in Othaya, including the sight of men in suits stuffing raw fish in their pockets, was a dramatic civics lesson that should go some way towards challenging the stereotypes that inform politics in Kenya.

Of course, it is not easy to debunk myths because they are sometimes very strongly held.

At a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia a few years ago a waitress told me she had heard that when civil servants leave work at 5 pm in Kenya, they are given five vouchers so that they can have a couple of beers before proceeding home.

I asked who had told her that. She said the tale was narrated by an Ethiopian who had worked for a few months in Nairobi.

Public sector wages are much lower in Ethiopia than in Kenya. And to answer the puzzle of where Kenyans possibly found the money to guzzle huge quantities of beer every day, the guy had concocted that story which the lady earnestly believed.

In Kenya, the myth of boundless Kikuyu prosperity is one of the dominant features of the political scene.

SIMILAR FATE

The problem is that no attempt is made to distinguish between the benefits the elite draw from power and the general fate of the ordinary mwananchi who is in exactly the same situation as another peasant in any other part of the country.

This reality was brought home to me one time when I was sent to Lamu to cover a dispute between an Australian oil firm and local community leaders.

The community leaders had genuine grievances about environmental concerns and the possible disruption of fishing routes, which I reported.

On the other hand, the Australian company credibly countered that a demand for more jobs in the firm that was conducting deep-sea drilling could not be met because there were few Kenyans, let alone, residents of Lamu, who had the training to take part in the exercise.

The memory that stuck with me, though, was when one community elder pulled me and the photographer aside and said that the real story was that the Australians had already struck oil.

What they were doing was constructing an underground pipeline so that the oil would end up being the property of "watu wa bara kule Central".

Of course, these may have been the wild musings of one old man. But they spoke of a deeper myth which informs Kenyan political behaviour: That when a member of a community clinches the presidency, the whole ethnic group will benefit. This is the logic that drives voters from, especially, the big five ethnic communities to vote almost to the last man for "one of their own".

It is the thinking that informs the fact that no member of smaller communities from the Coast, North- Eastern or the smaller pastoral communities can mount a credible challenge for the presidency.

If wananchi could shake off this logic and unite across ethnic lines, they would be in a better position to press the elites to offer cleaner and more effective government.

With the masses disunited, the politicians can happily continue to divide and rule.

The Othaya fish scramble was a powerful reminder of the folly of ethnically driven politics.

The writer, an editor with the Sunday Nation, is a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics. mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com