TRIBE ALL; THE WAY TO GO IN FIGHTING TRIBALISM

I sat in front of my desk and a few moments later a friend of mine walks up to me and pose a question that leaves me thinking seriously. Is the African life good? I think for a moment and quickly answer him that I think it is the best. He goes ahead to ask me why I think so and I tell him that according to me, it is simply because I have lived it. This fellow has been my friend for some time and the last thing that could ever cross my mind is to ask him what his tribe is. He remarks, “now that the agrarian revolution (for those who have done a little history you understand what it is) began in Africa – Egypt, why are we behind the likes of Brazil in agricultural technology?” it is a question that I will look at from two perspectives but while using Kenya as my case study.
First of all I begin by reminding all Africans in this great land of Africa what one Steve Biko of South Africa said if you have not heard or have forgotten that black is just a matter of pigmentation and that that doesn’t make you any less genius, any less beautiful our ladies and men and finally being black does not make you less of human. So the first problem might have arose by us thinking that we cannot do it and perhaps this made us sleep on our resources, it made us rigid to try whatever we have never had or never managed to make locally. It is high time we arose from the deep sleep as a country and have our priorities right. This sleeping has made us immune to corruption because we only keep asking form our comfort bed, “is our person thinking for us properly?” not caring whether he/she is stealing from us or misusing what is rightly ours. If somebody goes after our “savior” everybody will be woken up to go and fight for “mtu yetu” who by chance never shares the piece of pie with us. In simple terms I mean the citizenry needs empowerment to understand what education means and why our people should get education. With the education I have always advocated for we can solve the biggest of all vectors biting our back seriously; ethnicity.image 1
Tribalism the root of most of our problems.
Ethnicity is a word that makes its true meaning sound better as opposed to the filth if carries in our country Kenya. Tribalism is the word that lays open the real social morass that is finishing our country Kenya. I walked through Mathare a few days ago and I got a group of people all from one tribe in Kenya, I was curious to break the barriers and get within but they spoke their language which I could not understand. Not yet satisfied I asked what they were doing there and the point I could pick from the small information I got was how to make their own ascend to the top seat in the country. I could not stop but to think on how to unite our country because if we keep treading on the tribal strings and roads we treading now, then we are on a dangerous path as a country. Our leaders have perfected the tribal thing by depicting trough actions that “we must defend our own at whatever cost.” The talk that is full of deceit is that of how Wanjiku is being used by Omondi while Musyoka is cheering from sideways as Shivanda and Mogaka are busy working their own tact to get a better glimpse of the of the tag of war warming up so that they can see where at least they can put their energies so that if the war is won they can automatically become partakers of the cake. This is a very worrying analogy of how our political and social systems have been deeply buried by this thing called tribalism.
This generation is being brought up under environments that are showing that tribal lines are the way to walk no matter what may, right from our universities politics which are grounded on tribal simulations to the real formation of those very universities and soon we will start seeing tribal education perhaps.
What do we do?
Education is the first thing. With counties such as Kilifi, kwale and many more others which have low literacy levels, we can do little to convince most people that we need to look beyond our tribes if we are to reap great results in terms of economic development and healing form social maladjustment that have been caused by tribalism. Once we have boosted the education, we should increase the confidence in the people about the abilities they have after which we can tell them to conquer the tribal dogma within their DNA and soon we will start reaping great. With confidence we can easily conquer rotten attitudes against other tribes deeply rooted within the people.
Next we should embrace major reforms in our country right from our leaders. Most of the leaders have become the nursery for tribal culturing and nurturing. They open their mouths to spit tribal venom as opposed to bringing unity and they are left at large. What do I mean; real persecutions should be done for those who are seriously spreading tribal hatreds within our people. This is the way to go in fighting corruption because what we have done now and again is merely changing monkeys in the same forest and we expect anything better. That is the secret of improving our education because we have made our schools breeding grounds of tribalism when all teachers in Kisumu, Kiambu, Kisii, Mombasa, Baringo and many more places being from the locality. We need to embrace diversity, if we are to fight corruption and do huge economic strides even in our counties.
Finally let us begin to make tribe all our new song and soon we will forget of tribalism. Tribe all will use English and Kiswahili in most of their talking to ensure we have one thing that unites us if we can not look and realize that Kenya has had an equally same past only that over recent past some people started changing the course of our walk. With tribe all I will marry from Taita Taveta or even Nyeri or Kitui or Magadi and live anywhere in this country and build the nation from there with my neighbors as friends, brothers and sisters. We can do it, yes, just the confidence and a little change in attitude.

End.

Geoffrey Ndege

Geoffrey Ndege

Geoffrey Ndege is the Editor and topical contributor for the Daily Focus. He writes in the areas of Science, Manufacturing, Technology, Innovation, Governance, Management and International Emerging Issues. For featuring, promotions or support, reach out to us at info@dailyfocus.co.ke
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