Lessons from the US Democratic nominations

The US Democratic Party’s nomination of California Senator Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate for the November presidential elections is a major step for the country. As the first major vice presidential candidate of African and Indian descent that the US has ever seen, the pair are making history in their bid for the nation’s highest office.

Before becoming a district attorney and then the California attorney general, Harris completed her undergraduate studies at Howard University, one of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Her ethnic identity has always accompanied her in her stellar political career, and will likely continue to inform her decision making in the future.

Growing up as the child of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, Harris is no stranger to diversity in her home and community. Living in this multi-ethnic home taught her the value of learning from others and of listening.

This is really the kind of personality that America needs in a leader right now, and in a few short months we will see if the Americans are ready to throw their weight behind such a ground-breaking candidate for vice-president.

In one of her recent speeches, Harris was quoted as saying: “Our unity is our strength and diversity is our power.”

As relevant as this is to the Democratic party and to Americans in general, it also really speaks to the atmosphere in Kenya right now.

Americans have a great deal of healing to do, especially in light of this summer’s Black Lives Matters protests. Long standing tensions reached a boiling point, and erupted in protests following the heinous killing of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

Black Americans were fed up with racial tensions and being treated like second class citizens. And many people of different ethnicities have come out in support of the black community to express solidarity and to strive towards a more harmonious and peaceful society.

While Kenya does not suffer from rampant racial injustice, we do have a protracted history of ethnic injustice. For all too long, members of certain tribes have felt that they were unable to access the same government services and opportunities as others. While the parallels are not exact, the feeling of Kenyans from some tribes matched those of African Americans.

This inequality acts as a major roadblock for any country seeking to achieve unity, prosperity, stability and economic development. While of course not a comment on Kenya, Harris’s statement that unity leads to strength, and diversity leads to power, fits perfectly for our own experience.

This is the vision that President Uhuru Kenya has had for the legacy that he hopes to pass onto the next office holder. We cannot accept the status quo of some tribes having more power than others. We only have one Kenya, and everyone who is born here deserves access to the same rights and privileges.

When the presidential task force set out to research the Building Bridges Initiative, this is what they had in mind. Kenya has been a broken society, and we are all too scarred by the mistrust and disillusionment of our past. As in America, this from time to time erupts into interethnic violence, most notably after the 2007 elections.

But it also serves as a reminder of how much potential we have, if we are only able to prevent ourselves from letting something like it happen ever again.

The BBI is a good place to begin.

Never before in Kenya’s history have so many politicians from different parties and tribes supported the same initiative. Never before have representatives of so many of our different tribes been able to agree on anything. The great difference is that the BBI is all-inclusive and has the best interests of the whole nation at heart.

Any wise leader knows that if not everyone in the nation is being nurtured and encouraged to reach their full potential, then the nation as a whole will not reach its full potential. A unified whole will always be stronger than a broken part, and it is about time we started presenting ourselves as such.

Mr Kwinga is a political scientist. skwinga@gmail.com