Musyoka morphs into a ‘lazy radical’

By DR. GEORGE OGOLA
Published April 27, 2010

Not too long ago Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka celebrated his silver jubilee since becoming a Member of Parliament (MP). It was no mean feat considering only two other sitting MPs, President Mwai Kibaki and Industrialisation Minister Henry Kosgey have represented their constituencies for more years.

But there was more to this milestone. Musyoka’s story has also been the story of the Kenyan politician. Through his life, we note the complexity but also the simplicity of our politics. He is the embodiment of the tensions between the past and present, contradictions, which, like other politicians, he still struggles to grapple with.

Musyoka was not born into privilege but was very much a beneficiary of political patronage. Still, he grew to become his own man. Broadly, he can be categorised as belonging to the country’s moderate politicians. He has never been on either of the extreme ends of our political spectrum. It is, however, a political hue with an unfortunate history of failure. Men of Musyoka’s shade in Kenya have over the years walked the corridors of power but never quite conquered them. It would appear that it is for this reason that the Mwingi North MP has in recent times adopted a rather abrasive, some would say, radical side, particularly when confronting his foes, real and imagined.

While his turf wars with his erstwhile political nemesis Charity Ngilu are not unusual, his fight with Prime Minister Raila Odinga is now of considerable interest, as it points to a remarkable rebranding of Musyoka the moderate into Musyoka the pseudo radical. Pseudo because it is a script he does not read very well. Musyoka’s feud with Odinga is understandable, considering their rather complicated political history. However, the VP seems to be taking the war beyond Odinga and that is where brand Musyoka is losing that moderate hue; that has endeared him to even some of his most reluctant supporters.

Not long ago after Ngilu and Odinga set pitch in Musyoka’s ‘home’ turf ‘inspecting development projects’, which is always the Kenyan euphemism for staking political claim on a territory, the VP quickly organised his own public rally where he made some rather unnecessary remarks. His broadsides were targeted at his political enemies, but then he went further to enjoin a whole ethnic community in this new political war of attrition with Odinga. While telling off Ngilu and Odinga, Musyoka claimed he would go as far as ‘saving the Luos from Odinga’s bondage’.

That claim was not only politically tactless, it was also intellectually lazy. One would have expected better from a trained lawyer and one with 25 years experience in the August House. The sociology of ethnicity in general, and the significance of the Odinga name in the Luo social and political imaginary require a more nuanced discussion. A rhetorical barb at a political rally does not begin to unpack the complex history that attends that presumed Luo bondage to a name. It is a sociology that is far more complex than Musyoka would want us to believe.

There are several political names across Kenya’s ethnic groups that have been historically validated to the extent that they assume certain mythological status. Even then, attachment to such names is not based on some form of irrational collective psychosis. It can be explained on very complex political evolutions of those communities.

Ethnic-based voting or ‘followings’ in Kenya, as elsewhere, for instance, do in fact have various cultural, social and political explanations. These are trends that can be located within the tensions around ethnic and political citizenships. In Kenya, these tensions have dominated the practice of the country’s politics since independence.

As the scholar Stephen Ndegwa argues, the reason many Kenyans fall back on ethnic identities is because the state fails to balance the rights and obligations related to national citizenship. No other social formations, it would seem, balances these two issues adequately, hence providing ethnic republican citizenship with the kind of political legitimacy the nation-state fails to confer. The political affirmation of the ethnic and the attachment to certain historically validated political names do therefore have an explanatory basis, and whoever attempts to explain them as irrational is either ignorant or simply too lazy to think beyond the political podium.

However, our tortured political history shows us quite clearly, the perils of having a population who have an ambivalent relationship with the nation-state. Strong ethnic republican citizenship within a nation state can be problematic, even disastrous, and the 2007 post-election crisis is a case in point. We must therefore strive to strengthen the state and its institutions and to have it balance the rights and obligations associated with national citizenship. Even so, this does not mean we disavow ethnic identities or artificially delete them from national discourse. Ethnic formations are extremely powerful social structures, and have been part of our political and social configurations for several decades. On their own, they are not anathema to either nationhood or to the nation-state.

The struggle in Kenya remains, and one, which one would hope, will inform Musyoka’s next silver jubilee, to help strengthen the state so it can offer that which it cedes the ethnic ‘nations’. The nation-state will not become the pre-eminent political community through some artificial introduction of a new political discourse that is used by politicians when convenient and dropped when they seem to think their political bases are being ‘invaded’.

Meanwhile, Musyoka the pseudo radical will certainly need to rethink his political strategy if he has an eye on the big prize. By all means take the war to Odinga. But it is wrong and politically suicidal to begin to belittle whole communities because of one man. The arrogance and recklessness with which Musyoka is now engaging his political enemies as he morphs into a ‘new’ man may instead do his brand more harm than good.

One would also hope that the time spent in the August House should make politicians more perceptive, particularly in their understanding of our politics.


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Dr. George Ogola teaches at the University of Central Lancashire. Reach him at GOOgola@uclan.ac.uk