Spare Gachagua the barbs; all Kenyans are dyed-in-the-wool tribalists

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua addresses a past rally. [File, Standard]

Nothing beats the cheek of chief architects and proponents of Luhya unity, among others, taking offence at Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s call for the unity of the Mt Kenya region. Suddenly, Gachagua has become a tribalist and they, patriots. 

The reality is that from Njuri Ncheke, Miji Kenda, Myoot to the Luhya, Somalia, Teso and Luo councils of elders, and others in between, we all practice tribalism. This has never been a problem.

It is dishonest, an act of hypocrisy, to demonise Gachagua over something so innocent that even our much touted progressive Constitution 2010 embraces under the Bill of Rights.

To contextualise, the most basic definition of a tribalist is an individual who advocates or practices strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group, which begs the question of where the harm in that lies. Why should it offend the sensibilities of quasi leaders to a point they get worked up to imagine impeaching Gachagua is the magical solution to all our problems?

Our social set-up makes us all tribalists. There are pronounced tribal connotations in the names given to us at birth, the naming of our regions and institutions, the practice of our diverse cultures, rights of passage, demarcation of county borders, electoral laws that govern where one can contest and many other things that mark us as separate and distinct from others. We cannot pretend to be anything else.

The Constitution recognises culture as ‘the foundation of the nation and as the cumulative civilisation of the Kenyan people’. Culture cannot exist independent of tribes and, no matter the pretense for political expediency, every single Kenyan belongs to a tribe to which they owe their first loyalty.

Gachagua belongs to the Kikuyu and has every right to identify with that social grouping. Such association and recourse to one's culture and language are protected in the Constitution. That, however, has never detracted him from discharging his duties as deputy president. The ‘truthful man’ has been all over Kenya.

Aside from our tribe-based cultures, the only known national cultures in Kenya are practiced by the political class, categorised as the cultures of corruption, cronyism, nepotism, impunity and ideological demagoguery. We are a nation on auto pilot, lost in the socio-economic desert where we can only watch the dust of former colleague peers like Singapore as they zoom off into the lush greenery beyond.

Interestingly, belligerent MPs dancing to a tune only they hear can tell us to the last cent what Gachagua allegedly acquired dishonestly in the last two years, but they cannot pin down a single individual in the many dangerous schemes that leave footprints, including the mercury-laden sugar scam, the substandard cooking oil scams, Adani deal, and many other such. Our collective leadership, unfortunately, is itself a scam.

Gachagua’s constant reference to 'mrima' should not be taken literally. It is allegorical, a subtle reminder to President William Ruto that he owes his presidency to the mountain region that stood solidly behind the duo in 2022, galvanised into unity by boogeyman Raila. Post the elections, it became apparent to keen observers that there were attempts to divide the region using rookie politicians prone to impetuosity.

It was a clever scheme poorly executed and Gachagua is being fought for refusing to countenance it. Instead, he should be applauded for taking a stand and resolutely standing by it despite the storms buffeting him.

Gachagua should soldier on. We cannot measure his time by the clocks of Josephat Karanja or George Saitoti. If anything, Ruto broke the jinx of the vice presidency hence schemes to intimidate Gachagua should be resisted for being archaic. 

An independent and assertive judiciary exists to ensure fair play. Borne of long practice, stuck in time circa the 1970s and 1980s, the Executive has repeatedly tried to lean on the Judiciary, but with little success.