Selfishness, tribalism are our enemies

Opinion is sharply divided on whether it is incompetence of our leadership at the national and other levels or a laid back citizenry reluctant to anchor their rights, at the heart of Kenya’s governance problems and institutional decay.

Strangely, the more Kenyans condemn failed leadership and its culprits, the more the problem thrives.

It is obvious, given the grave incompetence and nearly criminal ways top politicians have managed Kenya since independence, that the cancer is deeply rooted.

Kenyans could understand why the British colonial government, before 1963, liberally employed dictatorship, brutality, political repression and “apartheid” against natives, but they are at a great loss why our successive post-independence governments and leaders of other local organisations replicate governance mistakes and crimes perfected by the colonists.

Bad governance, corruption, insecurity, undermining the Constitution at will, failure to enforce the rule of law, negative ethnicity, political exclusion, politicisation of security agencies and the electoral body plus inequitable distribution of national resources are Kenya’s biggest headache. They have virtually turned ours into a quarreling nation.

Perhaps instead of residing in permanent lamentations and mourning as we seem to be doing, Kenyans should open their eyes wide and focus on the role of selfishness and tribalism in our tribulations.

Though I single out national political leadership as the most afflicted by selfishness and tribalism, it is evident that the two vices are responsible for the mess and rot in devolved government units, churches, mosques, temples, cooperative societies, women groups, self-help groups, political parties and women chamas.

These two vices are squarely responsible for the sad state of our political leadership and have denied us the opportunity to build one united nation state of a united people.

Governance maladies

When the late Tanzanian President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere once castigated Kenya as “nchi ya mabepari” (a country controlled by economic vampires) and that it was a “man-eat-man society” he had in mind the negative habits of our leadership which had put Kenya on the path to socio-economic inequalities and negative ethnicity.

Nobody can effectively explain how selfishness emerged and took control of all our top political leaders. Selfishness by our leaders is the root cause of our governance maladies since independence.

It is still hard to find reasons why selfish politicians have so dominated the terrain and permanently vanquished honest, virtuous competitors for power. Kenya is desperately yearning to get its first ever “philosopher President” blessed with honesty, patriotism and good plans for the country’s harmony, peace and prosperity.

Selfishness by leaders drive them into corruption and grabbing public of resources, political oppression to torment and destroy opponents and into converting top positions into sources of exclusive personal and family benefit and enjoyment instead of serving.

Unfortunately, after the selfish leaders notice growing concerns and opposition from citizens, they invent and reload tribalism for self-preservation.

This tribalism comes with attendant problems including ethnicisation of public appointments, political mobilisation along tribal lines, formation of tribal political alliances to retain or grab power and such other negative practices.

If Kenyans got strategic and identified selfish leaders for isolation and discarding and pick out leaders of virtue and patriotism, they will kill many birds with one stone and rescue this country from political, social and economic decay.

As former President Moi used to put it: “Politics is life! Siasa mbaya, maisha mbaya.” If we have to change Kenya, we must fix the politics first.

The way to go about it best is by suffocating selfish leaders out of circulation and introducing a new socio-political order where virtue rules.

Our current problems ranging from insecurity, high cost of living, runaway corruption, non-implementation of the Constitution, ethnic suspicions and tension, ethnic imbalances in government jobs, dysfunctional internal security set up, are direct products of selfishness by top leaders and its automatic consequence, tribalism.

This sad state of affairs has dehumanised the mwananchi nearly reducing many to savages. Why would a citizen kill or maim in the name of tribe and politics?

The recent Mpeketoni (Lamu) massacre, the 2008 post-election violence, the 1991/2 and 1997 pre-election evictions and land clashes, IDP camps littered in some parts of the country, perennial famine and its devastating consequences in northern Kenya, widespread road carnage, ballooning drug abuse and teenage suicides plus proliferation of criminal gangs, among others are the ugly end results of bad governance and socio-political decay visited on Kenyans by selfish leaders.