Last week I explained how the first ever general election in Kenya – in 1964 – saw the Kikuyu and Luo in one party, Kanu; and much of the rest of the country (and specifically the Rift Valley, Coast and Western provinces) in the rival Kadu.
The 'big three' of those days were President Jomo Kenyatta (Kikuyu); and VP Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and Kanu Secretary-General Tom Mboya (both Luos).
Kadu actually had, potentially, the greater overall political support, as its demand for strong regional government under the “majimbo” system, appealed greatly to all those who belonged to the “smaller tribes” of those days. Nonetheless it was Kanu - being far better organized - which won that election.
Understanding why these “small tribe” leaders formed Kadu, to oppose Kanu in the 1964 General Election, requires an appreciation of the fact that politics is, essentially, a struggle over resources and economic opportunity.
With the advantage of time and distance, it is obvious now that what the “smaller tribes” really feared was that they would be, effectively, “recolonized” by the Kikuyu and the Luo. That the two “big tribes” would promptly “grab everything” just as the colonialists had done; and leave the rest of the Kenyan tribes “empty handed”.
Nor was this just a false perception. The years following independence were to reveal that there was a distinct advantage in belonging to these two tribes.
Almost all the colonial-era big farms which were not subdivided into smaller plots for “settlement programmes” ended up in the hands of the Kikuyu elite. And of course the Kikuyus got the lions share of even those smaller plots.
But Luos, who had neither suffered much land confiscation under the colonialists, nor had any obsession with owning vast tracts of land, also got something just as valuable.
Most of the opportunities for college education in foreign countries – the “airlift” scholarships – which were controlled by Odinga (for those going to Russia and Eastern Europe) and Mboya (for those going to the US) were awarded to Luos – with the Kikuyus following closely.
So that by the late 1960s, entire top segments of the Kenyan civil service, as well as the emerging parastatal sector, could easily be staffed by newly-minted technocrats from just those two communities.
So with most of the "big farms" in the post-colonial era in the hands of the Kikuyu elite; and the “big jobs” formerly reserved for British administrators, mostly taken over by Kikuyu and Luos; who can say that there wasn’t an incipient “recolonization” of the smaller tribes by these two big tribes?
But the Luo-Kikuyu political partnership did not last very long. First, with the merging of Kanu and Kadu in the mid-1960s, the political support of the Luos was no longer that crucial.
Thereafter, with the falling out between Kenyatta and Odinga in 1966; and the assassination of Mboya in 1969; the Luos who found themselves in the political wilderness, while former Kadu leaders (like one Daniel arap Moi) were absorbed into the Kanu mainstream.
We can draw two conclusions from that 1960s experiment in two-tribe hegemony.
First, there is much more to politics than raw numbers and manipulation of voter registration and turnout. There is an entire psychological dimension which cannot be captured by simplistic mathematics of the kind which gained fame in the last election as the ‘tyranny of numbers” supposedly obtained by the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin voting blocs i.e. the Jubilee Coalition.
One such psychological factor, is that soon after a political alliance succeeds at the polls, it turns inwards and cannibalizes itself. And there is always some destructive friction between the new president, and his acknowledged kingmaker.
Then, political gimmickry of any kind rarely works twice.You cannot hope to fool all the people, all the time. And there is nothing like a humiliating defeat to focus the opposition group's mind on what must be done to turn the tables on the reigning political alliance - to orchestrate their own engineered hysteria; and to bring their supporters out in record numbers.
For if indeed it is at the registration of voters that elections are won or lost, then the Jubilee coalition - as currently constituted - simply does not have the numbers to repeat this year’s performance in 2017.
Uhuru has no choice but to find a way to win over two or three of the opposition's regional voting blocs, if he is to avoid a humiliating defeat, come the next General Election.
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