THE FORMATION OF TRIBAL POLITICAL ALLIANCES IN KENYA IS A TIME BOMB THAT COULD EXPLODE AT ANYTIME, MAKING THE COUNTRY’S FUTURE BLEAK.

Commentary By Leo Odera Omolo in KISUMU City.

As a student of political history, I am writing this piece of article for the purpose of enlightening our younger generation of politicians about the danger and implications involving the formation of mushrooms of tribal political alliances in this country for political expediency.

The recent modern history of politics in Africa tells us that these alliances have never succeeded in creating conditions conducive for good governance and better life for the people. Instead, such systems have brought untold sufferings that have visited many African countries.

I have been keenly following the public pronouncements and utterances of our younger generation of politicians, and I developed particular interest in the much highlighted  proposed amorphous political alliance between the three KKK, simply meaning the Kalenjin, Kikuyu and Kamba alliance, allegedly being advocated by the likes of Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, and which is said to be the brainchild of the Vice President, Hon Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka.

For this reason, I would like to take my readers into a short drive in history of the dreadful tribal political alliance, in which the leaders of the young independent nation of Uganda, our immediate neighbor to the west, blundered into, thereby plunging the citizens of that country into four decades of untold suffering, as the result of political turmoils and upheavals that followed.

The current political maneuvers by our over-ambitious young politicians could set Kenya on the same distasteful course like Uganda.

During the height of the struggle for independence, there emerged two major competing political parties in Uganda. One was the Democratic Party of Uganda {DP} led by a young British trained lawyer in the name of Mr. Bedecto Kiwanuka.

The second largest political movement in that country was the Uganda People’s Congress {UPC}, led by one Apollo Milton Obote.

Kiwanuka was a Muganda from the Buganda Kingdom, and a member of Catholic Church. His DP party drew most of its followings and supporters from the Ugandan Catholics, with a paltry following within his home turf of Buganda, which is predominantly Protestants, and are also the largest Bantus group.

Obote’UPC party had a strong presence in the North, which is predominantly the people of Nilotics descendants. Obote belonged to the Langi, a sub-tribe of the larger Lwo ethnic groups, who are cousins of the Kenyan Luos of the Nyanza Porovince.

In the first general election of 1959, KIwanuka’s DP garnered more seats in the Uganda’s Colonial Legislative Council, beating the Obote’s UPC hands down, together with other smaller and splinter groups of numerous political parties.

Kiwanuka was called upon by the then Governor of Uganda Sir, Walter F.Coutts to form the responsible government, as its chief Minister or Prime Minister, as the head of the winning party. Obote, and his minority UPC, was consigned to the opposition benches in the Legco.
At the independence round-table constitutional conference, under the British Colonial Secretary, Reginald Maudling, all the tribal kingdoms were retained  and granted semi autonomous power and thus retained their status quo.

Inside Buganda, Kabaka Mutesa 11 {or King Freddie} and Kiwanuka, had deeply routed differences based on religious and political ideologies. In Buganda’s Parliament leadership, one of Kabaka’s die-hard loyalist, Katikiro Michael Kintu was not comfortable with Kiwanuka, and the fear persisted that if Kiwanuka became the first President of Uganda, the Buganda Kingdom might have ceased to exist.

Obote, who had just returned to Uganda, after politicking around the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he was under the pupillage of the late Tom Mboya, with whom they formed the defunct Nairobi People’s Convention Party {PCP}. PCP had earlier in 1957 propelled Mboya to an easy victory in Kenya’s Colonial Legislative Council in March 1957. Obote got the wind of the discontent in Buganda, and set in motion his plan to capitalize on the spoils.

Covertly using his friend David Ochieng, a close friend of Kabaka Mutesa 11, as a mole in Buganda, they sold an idea to the Kabaka which proposed for the formation of a Baganda tribally oriented popular political movement called ”Kabaka Yeka” {Kabaka Only}. And with the election, that ushered in the moment.

Heavily funded with the taxpayers money from the Buganda kingdom, UPC/Kabaka Yeka alliance swept the elections, consigning Benedicto Kiwanuka and his brigades into Opposition benches in Parliament, as a leader of now the minority party .

Kabaka Mutesa 11 made yet another political blunder, when he accepted the position of a ceremonial President of the Republic of Uganda, with Obote retaining Premiership with executive power. The UPC/Kabaka Yeka alliance was then long dead and headed for political limbo.

The amorphous alliance went through a lot of uneasiness during the period of time between 1962 and 1965. But the matter boiled up in MAY 1966.

The Uganda capital, Kampala is situated right in the middle of Buganda Kingdom, and when the disagreement on matters of principle between the moderate Kabaka Mutesa, and the radical Milton Obote, reached the highest peak, Kabaka Mutesa 11 issued the Prime Minister, Miltoin Obote with an ultimatum to remove his government out of Buganda within two weeks. Obote responded by dismissing the Kabaka as the Head of State, abrogated and scrapped the constitution, and assumed all the executive powers.

There were harsh exchanges of notes, prompting Obote to dispatch  a contingent of heavily armed Ugandan soldiers, under Obote’s trusted soldier in the name of Idi Amin Dada, to Mengo, the seat of Buganda kingdom. The soldiers stormed the Bulange, Lukiko and the Kabaka’s palace, causing the death of undisclosed number of soldiers on both sides. The incursion forced Kabaka Mutesa to escape from his palace using a backyard security tunnel, after which he managed to cross the border into neighboring Rwanda, from where he boarded a flight to the UK for exile in Britain, where he remained up to his death.

Five year later, as the result of deeply rooted animosities between Obote and the Bagandas, members of the community poured into the Kampala streets and danced for days and nights, celebrating the bloody military coup that toppled Obote government and brought Idi Amin to power.

There are many other examples of unworkable tribal alliances in Africa. Like the one of Congolese leaders President Joseph Kasavubu and the Prime Minister Patrick Lumumba in 1960. This was also followed by another similar problematic one in Algeria, between the early nationalist Yusuf Ben Kherda and Ahmed Ben Bella In 1973 .

Back here at home, we had the short-lived alliance between the late President Jomo Kenyatta and the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, under the umbrella of KANU, which existed between 1961 and 1965. The alliance was meant to cut the over ambitious Tom Mboya to size, and it did work temporarily, but the tides changed when Kenyatta later turned the heat on jaramogi and using Mboya, a fellow Luo and an excellent master of political maneuvering skills, in ousting Jaramogi from the KANU government in 1966.

Not too long ago, we had the MOU signed in 2002 between President Mwai Kibakj and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga, which was later disowned and dismissed by Kibaki’s political cronies and surrogates as a mere paper. This failed MOU, I believe was the source of the post-election violence of 2008 and which came about as the result of the disputed Presidential election, when most people realized Kibaki can not be trusted to honor anything.

The post-election violence, which erupted immediately soon after the December 2007 general elections claimed the lives of close to 1,300 Kenyans, who were still in their active productive life and caused the displacement of close to 350,000 Intrnally Displaced People {IDP}, some of who are still living in IDP camps to- date.

Taking all the above reasons into account, we have good reasons to discard the proponent of tribal political alliances, because these could be the recipe of chaos and another mayhem in this country.

Our youthful politicians should usher in the spirit of true nationalism in the spirit of our founding fathers, who worked together and managed to overcome the much mightier colonialists in the war for the liberation of this country, and as such we should look for better ways forward, which is devoid of tribal political undertones.

Any adult Kenyan who is over the age of 18 is free to stand and contest either parliamentary or presidential seat. He or she has the democratic right to seek any political office, irrespective of his or her tribal background, religion, colour and creed.

It is high time we have presidential candidates from minority communities such as the El-Molo, Rendile of the North, Tesos of the Western Province, Sabaot of Mt. Elgon, the Kuria of Southern Nyanza, the Taitas and the Tavetas of the Coast, instead of forming political marriage of convenience by unpopular presidential hopefuls, for simple reason of undercutting one popular aspirant in the name of Raila Amolo Odinga.. My fellow Kenyans, this is ungodly and the practice must come to an immediate end, if at all we want to preserve this nation of ours as one family ,one people in the name of Kenya.

All the aspirants should be free to compete for public offices freely, and at leveled grounds, which are devoid of dirty tricks and political machinations and manipulations.

Ends