When intellectuals, political pundits and politicians utter the words, 'tyranny of numbers', one gets the feeling that those using them have very little regard for the class of people catalogued as forming those numbers. In a democracy, if the numbers are correctly tallied and form the bulk of the total, then democracy is said to have stolen the day (presumably from the tyranny of a powerful minority).
Democracy demands that the majority have their way in decision-making. Anyone who has trouble with that logic is not a democrat; he wants to be accommodated. He cannot argue with the result; he can only plead that the majority take his position into consideration. That may or may not happen. That is a result a democrat has to learn to live with unless, and until it can be democratically altered.
The only reason why some politicians in Kenya call it 'tyranny' is that they are dyed-in-the-wool tribalists that never take the numbers for what they are, but imagine that certain numbers should or ought to have more weight than is due. If one considered all voters to be equal, they would not brand any one vote tyrannical. They only do so because they have a way of weighing the votes; not counting them. They are supremacists. Democracy is not for them.
We recently hosted an excellent example of someone who knows how to deal with the so-called tyranny of numbers. He decided that there was no such thing in the US and went on to win several elections including the Presidency of the United States of America twice. You know whom I am talking about; which was the tribal card that Barack Obama played?
I will enlighten you. He looked at the electorate and decided that it was one. He weighed their individual votes and saw that they were equal. He sought to garner as many of them as possible. He won. In Kenyan terms, he came from the smallest of communities. But he was an American. Not an American from the most populous State (California, Texas or New York) or the richest tribe. He simply was an American whose dream for America was shared by the majority of American voters. Would you call his victory the result of the tyranny of numbers?
Let me give you some other examples. Kenneth Kaunda's parents were both Malawians. Yet Kaunda was accepted by Zambians as their President and went on to rule for many years. He was not from a major tribe. Julius Nyerere was from a very small tribe in Tanzania. Milton Obote was from an equally small tribe. In fact, all Tanzanian Presidents so far have come from comparatively small communities.
So how did winners from small communities secure the votes of the larger communities? Did they get naturalised as fellow tribesmen? Did they trick them? Did they buy them? The answer is clearly no! What they did was something football managers often do. They picked the right players from wherever they could get them and trained them. They taught them to work together as a team. The successful ones gelled and strove to give the team their best performances. Their goal became one. They fought for it.
In the more durable political democracies, they built strong parties with a clear vision on every aspect of the political goals. These political parties created internal mechanisms which honoured the best candidates irrespective of where (within the country's borders) they came from. They adhered to democratic tenets and practices. They swore allegiance to their party philosophy and strove to safeguard it.
The Presidential candidates from these parties know they will have to court the whole country and not so-called strongholds. And when they win, they work hard to fulfill their manifestoes. Not to be tyrannical behemoths.
Nearer home, John Pombe Joseph Magufuli of Tanzania hails from the tiny village town of Chato near the southern most creeks of Lake Victoria. Which tyranny of numbers did he have?
It can be done here in Kenya. It is being done. Tribal political parties have to be eliminated. Parliament should study the issue seriously with a view to proper legislation to delegitimise regional-centric parties that only imagine life in terms of kinship numbers. Only then shall tribal leaders stop locking out political pluralism in the name of strongholds, which are actually political fiefdoms for local kingpins who have failed to secure national support. Only then shall we stop this irrational, defeatist mantra whenever legislators are too lazy or too daft to vigorously lobby for their pet projects or the national good.
