We just held the general elections and for a free country, our future seems to still be entangled with British colonialism fatigue years after the said independence. And as a second-generation child of colonized Kenya, please hear me out.
Since the Kenyan flag replaced the Union Jack -the official flag that symbolized we were part of the British Empire- we bought the idea that we were now the Republic of Kenya but the white man just found a better way of disguising in the parliament walls of a black man's land.
I shared a bit of my patriotical agony and I would like to add on where we are at as a nation.
When they announced that the former deputy president was the president-elect on Monday, the margin by which he surpassed the former Prime Ministers' votes said a lot about this heavily divided playing field.
William Ruto is a leader of the Nandi community, a tribe that holds as many votes as those of the outgoing Kikuyu-speaking Uhuru Kenyatta. Though he has 'risen' among his political allies through what he terms as 'hustling', which the majority of his opposers refer to it as corruption and land grabbing.
By the elite Kenyan standards, he doesn't belong in the office he just got voted into and by law, he is unfit to rule over this land but my country's people are still driven by the tribalism perspective even in a ballot box. And so his Nandi community joined hands again with the Kikuyu community to keep the former Prime Minister from leadership for the fifth time in a row.
Fifth you say?
Yes. Fifth. Raila Odinga is losing this fight for the fifth time and the people he represents are angry and bitter for they feel like this country owes that man and they are right. He has fought for us in ways no one else could have but because the majority of the Nandi and Kikuyu communities look down on the minorities he represents, the presidency role keeps bouncing off of him.
The British engineered this back in 1960 to 1963 and anchored imperialism on the Kikuyu but then included the second largest tribe plus the third as a scapegoat.
Though the tension is yet to escalate to violence, Raila's strongholds are trying to keep it together and the entire country has felt the pinch of revisiting its trauma by running on a frozen state. We have lived in fear of our ugly shades resurfacing and nothing can be more crippling.
Rushing home before dark as no one wants to be caught up in any chaotic mess while enduring the anxiety it comes with, economic loss as most businesses remain closed and the general exhaustion of having to watch a group of powerful idiots trying to turn us against each other and mostly managing to!
wambuku w.
