NCIC promises action on KKK alliance

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission has vowed to act on the allegations made by Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta that the tag 'KKK'(Kikuyu-Kamba-Kalenjin)alliance was being used to tarnish them politically.

Speaking during an interview with a local media outlet on Thursday, NCIC chairman Mzalendo Kibunjia said that he had convened a special meeting to discuss the matter after receiving petitions on the tag from the two leaders.

He said the commission was concerned about the implications of the tribal tagging and promised to take measures within the confines of the law within two weeks.
"We did not want to step in at the beginning because then we would have shut Kenyans (from expressing themselves) but now looking at what is coming through the media... this is a bad idea," he noted.

"We are concerned that this idea is going in the wrong direction where we are tagging communities and almost putting one community against the other."

The KKK alliance is widely seen as more of a tribal outfit than a political alliance with many a pundit stating the impracticability of the union in the current political environment.

Kalonzo and Uhuru have openly expressed their reservations with the tribal connotations attached to the term ‘KKK’ saying it amounted to hate speech and that it portrayed them as serial tribalists.

The two had on Wednesday appealed to the Kibunjia led commission to ban the use of the term.

"This amounts to hate speech. Anybody using this tag is basically asking Kenyans to hate these fellows," Kalonzo explained.

In a letter to the NCIC, Uhuru said the continued use of the KKK tag was against national unity, cohesion and integration. He said the branding of certain leaders as KKK was divisive because it purported to bring together some communities to the exclusion of others.