Patience
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Joined: 13 Mar 2007
{Posts: 261 }
Location: Canada
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 Posted: Mon 25 Jun 2007 23:05 Post subject: Kenya's struggle with race/ethinicity |
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http://allafrica.com/stories/200706250946.html
| Quote: | East Africa: When Will Kenyans Ever See Themselves As East Africans?
The Nation (Nairobi)
OPINION
25 June 2007
Posted to the web 25 June 2007
Rasna Warah
Nairobi
WHEN PEOPLE are asked by foreigners to define who they are, the responses are as varied as they are enlightening. "I am a Kenyan Asian," is the standard response of people of my generation.
The more politically-correct will tell them they are "Asian African" or "part of the South Asian Diaspora".
The responses get even more detailed and complicated when a fellow Kenyan asks people like me the same question. The responses can range from, "I am a Punjabi Muslim" to "I am a Patel".
The multiple labels that a small community attaches to itself are a reflection of what informs identity in Kenya. In her recently-published novel, From Jhelum to Tana, Neera Kapur-Dromsom, a Kenyan of Indian origin who now lives in France, explains why she wrote a book that traces her family's history in Kenya and how she finally came to resolve the issue of her own identity:
"Torn between three cultures, problems of identity have haunted me for a long time," she writes. "Perhaps, now I can say: beyond the limits of geography, where space and time know no barriers, there my identity has been cast - in my state of mind."
This state of mind has been easier to achieve in neighbouring Tanzania where the visionary Julius Nyerere enforced policies that made citizenship rather than ethnicity the basis of national identity.
Tanzanians have no clue what we Kenyans are on about when we keep footnoting our conversations about national identity with elaborate explanations about our racial or ethnic heritage.
That is why there were virtually no eyebrows raised in Tanzania when President Kikwete appointed a woman of Asian origin to head the powerful Ministry of Finance.
Unfortunately, because ethnicity and race in Kenya are so tied to people's political and economic fortunes, they have become a hindrance to integration. Our racial and ethnic background is so vital to how we see our present and our future, that it has become virtually impossible to disassociate it from politics.
That is why, as Dr Willy Mutunga points out in an essay in the recently-published State of East Africa 2007 report, even a Kikuyu peasant living in abject poverty will feel "a warm glow of satisfaction at the thought that her/his community is in power".
Ethnic affiliation provides a false comfort to the dispossessed since as Mutunga points out, there are essentially only two tribes in Kenya - the rich and the poor.
IF A COUNTRY SUCH AS KENYA HAS yet to create a sense of national identity among its many tribes and races, how will it fare when it becomes part of the wider East African federation in 2010? Will it be possible for us to make the mental leap from ethnic identity to regional identity?
It is hard to tell, considering that all countries within the region, with the exception of Tanzania, have been through ethnic conflicts in varying degrees, ranging from genocide in Rwanda to the ethnic conflicts in Kenya, Uganda and Burundi.
But there are signs of hope. For instance, even before the Heads of State of the countries that form the East African Community gave their nod to a union, the region's musicians had already started to create an East African culture through musical genres such as Bongo Flava, Kenyan Hip Hop and the more recent Taarap, which, as the name suggests, is a fusion of Taraab and Rap music.
East African TV, the conveyor of this new culture, says Aidan Eyakuze, the editor of the State of East Africa report, has done more to unite Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania than any member of the East African Legislative Assembly.
Ugandan musicians are now singing in Kiswahili - a language they shunned for years because of its association with repressive military regimes. (Recently, I even saw a Tanzanian Asian Bhangra artist singing Kiswahili lyrics interspersed with Punjabi.)
But the most significant signs of integration are happening on the economic front. While politicians dilly-dally on the legalities of a political union, individuals and businesses have already gone ahead and formed lasting liaisons with neighbouring countries.
Top Kenyan businesses and industries are setting up shop in Dar es Salaam and are now among the biggest foreign investors in Tanzania.
Cross-border business is also booming in the mobile phone industry. Recently, when a mobile phone company allowed customers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to talk to each other at the price of a local call, it gained 700,000 new subscribers in Kenya and Uganda alone - and the numbers are growing.
This, according to Charles Onyango-Obbo, could be a crude measure of the number of "East Africanistas" in the region.
The irony is that we might become East African before we become truly Kenyan. Whatever the case, if the success of the mobile phone companies in the region is anything to go by, all I can say to my fellow East Africans is, "Keep on talking."
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