Negative Ethnicity- “A divided Nation”

He couldn’t brush off the feeling, was he anxious, scared or just paranoid? Honestly I can’t tell, but one thing I am sure of, is that his stomach felt like it turned upside down. Even with several people around him, he felt lost and lonely. Throughout the seemingly heartful conversation in the matatu, he couldn’t understand a thing a part from occasionally hearing the names of famous politicians and specific ethnic communities mentioned. Judging from the current state of affairs in our dear country Kenya, he was determined on hiding his ethnic background due to the fear of being negatively profiled or ‘worse’. When he had to pick a phone call, he was left with two choices; pick but speak in Swahili or English (not foolproof due to his strong ascent), or just ignore the call all together to avoid unnecessary attention. The second option was the best, in fact pretending to be asleep throughout the entire journey was an innovative idea- just in case one of the passengers tried to engage in a conversation with him.
How did we reach here? A situation where you are insecure in your own country! An era where it is not an option to freely express yourself with ease! A country where most citizens are afraid to travel, stay or speak their ethnic languages in parts of the country they are not ‘affiliated’ to! A state where your character and behavior is judged and determined by ethnical stereotyping! A time where your chances of successes are correlated to your ethical background! A society where some cultural practices are considered superior to others! A nation where intelligences, wisdom and knowledge can be link to certain ethnic communities’ rite of passage! A democracy where some people are more equal than others! This is a broken nation where love, peace and unity are just experienced in writings not in real life. Last time I remember, this was Kenya but it’s hard to tell now! So as we always put it, where did the rain start beating us?

Elections has been a good platform for Kenyans to hide on unleashing their tribal rivalry. They hide under political parties and their ideologies to practice negative ethnicity. I find this to be so sickening, because even my educated brother and sister from both the Agikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya… mention others, are in the fore front in doing this. You will of course notice through their twitter and Facebook posts. They are also confident enough to even do it in public, where they will openly discriminate, insult, catalysis conflict at times be part of the conflict. This is clearly the elite in our society. Education has impacted no value in them.

Negative ethnicity informs and guides our politics, religions, business, thinking and what we talk either on social media or on our everyday interactions. I am just here yearning and advocating for the time that Kenyans will be ethnically sober and STOP embracing the demon of negative ethnicity.

My apologies, my bad. I forgot to define the term negative ethnicity, this is the hate of people based on ethnical or tribal difference. It is the rejection of humanity and leadership from other ethnic groups. Its purpose is not self-preservation but rather discrimination and demonization of others.

Negative ethnicity is the most potent weapon of mass self-destruction in Africa. Just in the past 4 months in Kenya, it has claimed a significant number of lives. This because of utterly hatred that it comes with it. Kenyans regard tribal differences as enemies and traitors. 

It is recorded that since Independence of African states, Negative ethnicity has killed over 10.8 million people. Ethnic genocide killed approximately 1 million people in Rwanda, 2 million in Sudan, 2 million in Biafran war in Nigeria, over 2.5 million in Democratic of Congo, 20,000 in South Africa, 100,000 in Algeria, over 1 million in Somalia 200,000 in Burundi, 1 million in Angola, 800,000 in Uganda, 150,000 in Liberia, 50,000 in Sierra Leone and over 1300 in Kenya. Comparatively, atomic bomb killed 100,000 people in Hiroshima and 40,000 in Nagasaki.

I was surprised the other day when I read a post of a friend on Social media, that this ethnical violence are stage managed, and it is not reality.  Is this what I should refer as denial of the practice? Are we waiting for the Kenyan case to explode as it did in 2008 South Sudan case or even the 1994 Rwandan genocide? Just the other week when I was on my field work, I came across a group of Young men, they seem to be at their 30s, they were condemning one of the Kenyan tribe and even swore to kill them. I was so frightened, scared and disappointed, this is the extent of the hatred Kenya has based on ethnic difference. 

Un-knowingly this is how negative ethnicity escalates to ethnic wars. It first wins hearts and minds of the people becoming the ideology of the communities, politics, parties and elections. Second, it works closely with the Machiavellian principle of “the end justifies the means”: If negative ethnicity will give you job, power, land, money, tender or even business, why not practice it. Third, negative ethnicity reserves all positions of leadership to only their tribal alienation. Under the notion that all good leaders come from their tribe and all the other bad leaders come from the other ethnic group. Fourth, it takes government captive and uses it to unleash ethnic mayhem. Once the government has embraced it, it only destroy and never develop the people and the country. Fifth is that, negative ethnicity is a key protector of corruption, which in turn uses resources for self-perpetuation. 

Our differences should not be a source of discrimination and intolerance but a source of strength, beauty and pride. We need to curb ethnicity, no generation needs this. Mamur Mustapha puts it, “we’ve rigged the entire system of living in harmony with nature against ourselves. We raise our children and inculcate various “isms” into them. They in turn perpetuate it by passing the same (if not more) onto their’s. We raise slaves, not independent thinker.”

Author: Beline Nyangi

Beline is an International Relations Professional. She holds an MSc. degree in Conflict and Governance from University of Amsterdam. She has competence and interest in social policy research advisory and implementation in the areas of peace and security, transitional justice, human rights, refugee rights, immigration and social justice. She enjoys traveling, drinking "dawa", good books and rich and thoughtful conversation. View all posts by Beline Nyangi