Moses Muthoki, a husband and father of two, is a licensed teacher, a youth leader and a public servant. His concern with governance and ethnicity in Kenya motivated him to write a novel on tribalism. He is committed to building capacity in Kenyan youth and achieving peace among Kenyan communities. Moses is a facilitator and coordinator of youth activities in his home community.

 Mary-Anne Neal, M.Ed., is a mother of four, teacher, writer, coach, consultant and community contributor.  She has earned awards from Leadership Victoria, the Arctic Inspiration Prize and other organizations for such varied accomplishments as Indigenous Publication Project, Excellence in Written Communication, Public Speaking, and Outstanding Achievement.  Mary-Anne has facilitated workshops and delivered keynote addresses and presentations to more than five thousand people in British Columbia and other parts of the world.  She is passionate about educational leadership and communication skills. 

GROWING  UP  KIKUYU

Authors:
Mary-Anne Neal, Victoria, BC, Canada
Moses Muthoki, Nakuru, Kenya

… the condition of Africa is bound to that of the world. We all share one planet and are one humanity …

Wangari Maathai
The Challenge for Africa
2009, Pantheon (Random House)

 This chapter of Governance and Security as a Unitary Concept https://www.amazon.ca/Governance-Security-as-Unitary-Concept/dp/1897435835
describes the life of a Kikuyu boy growing up in Kenya over the past thirty years, during an era when the governance structure changed rapidly.  Lacking the primary elements that form the foundation of governance – i.e., peace, order and good government – the resulting chaos and violence in Kenya are obvious even to a child’s eye.

Raised in the town of Molo, which was a hotbed of racial tension, Moses Muthoki quickly learned that ethnic rivalries run deep.  His personal story takes place in the context of the political climate.

GROWING UP KIKUYU

Context

Africa, the cradle of humanity and the source of the world’s earliest technologies, was originally populated by many small communities of people with distinct languages, cultures and traditions.  During the late 1800s, the continent on which human life began and evolved was carved into countries by European colonists.  Since then, widespread racism, violence and power struggles have characterized the communities throughout much of Africa.  Kenya, a country of perhaps 35 million people, located on the east coast of Africa squarely over the equator, has not emerged unscathed.

Kenya itself is a multifaceted amalgam of people, wildlife and geographically unique ecosystems.  More than forty different tribes call Kenya home.  The vast majority are Christian, with pockets of Muslims and people who follow their indigenous beliefs.  Kenya shares borders with five other countries:  Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda. Many inhabitants of these countries are ethnically related to Kenya`s peoples. Uganda and Tanzania share with Kenya a history of British colonial rule.

The topography of the country varies greatly, from mountains, lakes, forests and valleys to plains, deserts, bush and coast.  The major cities – Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu  and Eldoret – are separated by large expanses of fields cultivated to grow tea, coffee and other cash crops.

Kenya’s standard of living, once relatively high compared to much of sub-Saharan Africa, has declined in recent years. About 75% of the work force is engaged in agriculture, mainly as subsistence farmers living close to the land, raising goats and chickens in small rural villages.  Much of the natural vegetation was stripped in the 1940s, when a massive invasion of settlers led to forest destruction and timber poaching in order to grow cash crops and raise domesticated animals.  Efforts to reclaim land and grow trees have been outpaced by logging and charcoal making. Despite legislation passed in 2002 declaring all forests free from human activity, the level of deforestation in the country is truly alarming.

The concept of governance as a “complex and often murky construct of people, organizations and rules” (chapter 1, page 2) supports an understanding of the process through which the people of Kenya are restructuring their country and their society.  According to the introductory chapter, peace, order and good government are the prime deliverables of any elected body.  This chapter explores these underpinnings of governance in the Kenyan context.

Peace encompasses everything from security to the well-being of the people and their quality of life including health, employment, education and access to resources.  Peace is the goal of many Kenyan people, regardless of tribe.

Order is required for stability.  It is linked to culture, tradition, statutes, codes, balance and judgment.  In Kenya, tribal suspicions have been fuelled by the government, who emphasized their differences and the inequities, especially with regard to land.  Over the past fifty years, these perceived inequities have contributed to a lack of order.

Good government means ethical leadership, including laws, policies, functionaries, statescraft and communication.   An effective bureaucracy is the foundation for a smoothly-functioning society.  All aspects of good government have been lacking in Kenya.

Of greatest significance to the topic of governance is Kenya’s political history.

A Brief History

The people of the country we now call Kenya endured more than a hundred years of British colonial rule, beginning with the exploration and mapping of their land in the 1850s.  On July 1, 1895, the British government established direct rule of “British East Africa” through the East African Protectorate, primarily as a way to open the fertile highlands to white settlers.

In 1946, the Kenya African Union (KAU) arose as an African nationalist organization that demanded access to white-owned land.  The KAU was dominated by the Kikuyu, the African group most affected by the European presence and the most politically active. In 1947 Jomo Kenyatta, former president of the moderate Kikuyu Central Association, became president of the more aggressive KAU to demand a greater political voice for Africans.

From 1952 to 1956, a terrorist movement known as the Mau Mau Uprising shocked the world.  Directed principally against the colonial government and European settlers, it was the largest and most successful such movement in Africa.  Although intended to unite all the tribes of Kenya against the Europeans, the protest was mounted almost exclusively by the Kikuyu, and it resulted in a bitter internal struggle among the Kikuyu themselves. Assassinations and killings on all sides reflected the ferocity of the movement and the ruthlessness with which the British suppressed it.  Thousands of Kenyans died.

After suppressing the Mau Mau uprising, the British provided for the election of six African members to the Legislative Council under a weighted franchise based on the level of education. The new colonial constitution of 1958 increased African representation, but African nationalists began to demand a democratic franchise on the principle of “one man, one vote.”

To support its military campaign of counter-insurgency, the colonial government also embarked on agrarian reforms that stripped white settlers of many of their former protections; for example, Kenyans were for the first time allowed to grow coffee, the major cash crop.

On December 12, 1963, Kenya achieved self-government, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first prime minister. Kenyatta denied he was a leader of the Mau Mau, but he had been convicted at trial and was sent to prison in 1953, gaining his freedom in 1961.  Kenya became a republic in 1964.  During the Kenyatta regime (1963 – 1978), land that had been settled by Europeans was reclaimed and distributed among the Kenyan people.  In many instances, land that had been the traditional territory of one tribal group was instead allocated to a different tribe.  This practice caused widespread animosity among the tribes.

During the Moi regime (1978 – 2002), Daniel arap Moi concentrated power in the hands of the Kalenjin tribe.  His governance was characterized by authoritarianism, ethnic favouritism, assassination, state repression, social inequality, graft, and brutality.  The economy was in ruins, and poverty increased exponentially.  Chaos reigned.  Worst of all, larceny and corruption drained the country of hope.

“Majimboism,” a philosophy that emerged in the 1950s, is a Kiswahili word meaning federalism or regionalism. It was intended to protect local rights, especially regarding land ownership. Today, “majimboism” is code for certain areas of the country to be reserved for specific ethnic groups, fueling the kind of ethnic cleansing that has swept the country from time to time. Majimboism has always had a strong following in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of violence, where many locals have long believed that their land was stolen by outsiders.

The December 2005 referendum pitted today’s majimboists, who campaigned for regionalism, against Kibaki, who stood for the status quo of a highly centralized government that has delivered considerable economic growth but has repeatedly displayed the problems of too much power concentrated in too few hands — corruption, aloofness, favoritism and its flip side, marginalization.

For example, in the town of Londiani in the Rift Valley, Kikuyu traders settled decades ago. In February, 2008, hundreds of Kalenjin raiders poured down from the nearby scruffy hills and burned a Kikuyu school. Kikuyus quickly took revenge, organizing into gangs armed with iron bars and table legs and hunting down Luos and Kalenjins in Kikuyu-dominated areas such as Nakuru, where Moses Muthoki now resides.

Moses’ Story

The Rift Valley stretches for six thousand miles, from northern Syria all the way south to central Mozambique.   This vast, arid trench, spanning the length of Africa and bounded on each side by forests and ridges, is visible from the moon.  Where it runs through Kenya, the Rift Valley is a province known for its abundant crops and sheep.  The mountain ranges that frame the valley were still heavily forested when I was born there in 1977.  All that has changed over the past thirty years.

Since the 1950s, the landscape of the Rift Valley has been severely modified by cultivation.  Much of the natural grassland has been ploughed and reseeded to provide better grazing for sheep, leaving less habitat for the native bush pigs, waterbuck, buffalo, elephant, pelicans and grebes.

My home town, Molo, is a community of 20,000 people located on the Mau Forest, part of the Mau Escarpment which forms the western wall of the central Rift Valley in Kenya.  One of the coldest places in Kenya, the area around Molo is perfect for growing pyrethrum, a member of the chrysanthemum family which is a principal component in some insecticides and lice remedies.

My father, Geoffrey Muthoki Mbuthia, was born in 1947, just before the Mau Mau uprising.  When the colonial government issued a Declaration of Emergency, he was forced to move with his family back to Kiambu until the Declaration was lifted in 1960.  At the age of twelve, my father moved to Molo, where his mother was a labourer on Taylor’s farm.  They lived as squatters, crowded in a village of mud huts.

My father was an exceptional student, moving through the forms quickly and earning money to raise the fees required.  Eventually, he acquired a teaching certificate, purchased a parcel of land, and constructed the first stone house ever erected by a local.

In the spirit of  Kenyanization under a program to take over land from the colonialists, local people could come together, pool money in clearly defined proportions, purchase farms from white settlers, subdivide the land equitably and draw ballots for their allotment.

My boyhood home was located on the same farm where my father had lived as a squatter’s son.  Our three-bedroom bungalow sat on two and a half acres bordering the 2300 acre Molo West indigenous forest. We had neither electricity nor running water, so we depended on a river that ran across the forest for water before my father sank a borehole in our shamba (plot of land).

From the age of seven, I spent most of my afternoons, weekends and school holidays grazing my father’s two cows around the village paths, fields and empty farms.  This was the most exciting of the family tasks shared among the five children, and I was fortunate to be responsible for it because I was the last born.  While I was herding the cattle, my elder siblings toiled in our three parcels of land, cultivating potatoes, maize, peas and pyrethrum. Every other Saturday, we all had to pick pyrethrum flowers. I hated it because each of us was allocated a particular number of rows to pick. Since I was young and slow, I was often alone, weary, hungry, sun-baked, and in tears, the others having completed their share of the work.

Whenever possible, I played and hunted hares with friends in the lush wheat and barley farms owned by the Agricultural Development Corporation.  We loved to run and jump, bare-bottomed, into the cold highland waters of the same river where we fetched water for our homes downstream.

Circumcision, practiced in different ways at around age 13, is a badge of honour in all Kenyan communities because that is when a boy becomes a man. One of my friends, Gathiru, became a hero at age nine after he plunged into the waters for a dip only to emerge bloody and shaking with a piece of wire jutting from his penis. Since Gathiru had been unexpectedly circumcised in this way, he had thus become an adult and was removed from our group.

Because both of my parents were teachers, my grandmother raised me before I began school.  I gave her a difficult time as I ventured to discover the world.  And I constantly bothered my older brothers as they did their school assignments.  Due to my naughtiness and my naturally curious nature, I began school at the age of four – two years earlier than usual.

School held its fair share of terror, as we were often beaten senseless by our teachers. When I was six years old, I was the youngest and smallest in the class, anxious and eager to learn.  I distinctly recall the incident that caused that feeling to change.

I was called to the front of the class by the cane-wielding math teacher, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson wanted me to say “30” in the Kikuyu language.  I was unable to translate arithmetic terminology to my language, so I tried my best to change my long heavy Kikuyu accent by shyly saying ‘thaaate’. Despite my best efforts, I could not manage the correct words – mirongo itatu – so Mr. Wilson’s stick came down on my bottom. For each unsuccessful attempt, Mr. Wilson brought the stick down hard on me until I could not go on.  Despite my cries, Mr. Wilson continued beating me.

From that day on, I hated school.  However, unlike other pupils who simply stopped attending school, the bigger fear of my father held me hostage at school, and I remained at Mr. Wilson’s mercy.

The Rift Valley province is a multi-ethnic region although the Kalenjin tribe calls it their ancestral home. I grew up and undertook my schooling among Kikuyu, Kisii, Luhya, Luo and Kalenjin in true friendship. We played together in the village but suffered the same abuse from the teachers at school. Langat, a Kalenjin and the prefect in my class five, was a very close friend and on several occasions he rescued me from the claws of a teacher with a straight-faced lie, in spite of my obvious misbehavior. But I was not always lucky, and I rarely went home without a beating.

Nevertheless, I survived eight years of primary school and caning to enter Molo Secondary School in 1990.  From there, I went on to Kapsabet Boys High School, located in the northern part of the province and home to the Nandi, a Kalenjin sub-tribe known for excellence in athletics.

Of 168 students in our class, only four of us were Kikuyus.  In Kapsabet, I experienced tribal stereotyping for the first time. Kikuyus were openly taunted and called chorindet, which means ‘thief’. To other tribes, especially the Kalenjin, we were not trustworthy. We were obsessed with money. We spoke differently from the Kalenjin.  These differences were all acceptable when we were boys going through school together.

During the two years prior to the 1992 general elections, public clamor for multi-party politics had been mounting intense pressure on the Kenya African National Union (KANU) single-party government. Daniel arap Moi, the president, was determined to maintain the status quo, but with the political temperatures rising unbearably from disgruntled politicians, the civil society and the international donor community, Section 2A of the constitution was repealed and ushered the country to a multi-party democratic system.

I distinctly recall a photograph in a March, 1992, edition of the Daily Nation newspaper, when I saw a photograph of a Kikuyu man with an arrow lodged in his head. That disturbing picture remains etched in my mind.

Reports of skirmishes in Molo terrified me. Thoughts about the violence distracted me from my studies, and my grades dropped dramatically.  Everyone in the province was tense, with non-Kalenjin tribes fearing for their safety. At school, we experienced a new fear — fear of the unknown.

During that time, I had little access to accurate news accounts, so I failed to understand how tribal violence was connected to land issues. The slow postal service was the only available channel of communication, and I wrote home seeking news of my family.  My brother’s reply arrived two months after he sent it, and I learned that they were even more worried about me.

When school closed for the April holiday in 1992, I had to travel from Kapsabet to Molo, a distance of over one hundred kilometres, through a region inhabited by the Kalenjins. The comparatively peaceful environment at school stood in stark contrast to the mayhem and killings in the villages we passed. There we saw vehicles with smashed windshields, houses on fire and hundreds of people huddled outside churches, schools, police stations and trading centers.

Organized groups of Kalenjin warriors armed with bows and arrows attacked Kikuyus, killing them and burning their houses. Striking at three o’clock in the morning, they looted, killed and burned houses, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

“Thank God for bringing you home safely,” my mother cried, hugging me tightly. I also cried, clinging to her.

Protests sparked around the country as tribes demanded that the government restore peace. Media reports from the state-owned news agency could not be trusted, and the population relied on the British Broadcasting Channel (BBC) radio service and other international channels.

A Parliamentary Committee report, commissioned by the government in response to public pressure, unexpectedly verified that the attacks, far from being spontaneous, had been orchestrated by individuals close to the president. The report confirmed that government had been used to transport the warriors, who had been trained and paid for their acts of destruction.

After the violence abated, thousands had no choice but to trickle back to their farms in the killing fields; many others swore never to return and sought to establish livelihoods away from the Rift Valley province.

Small urban areas hosting clash victims reeled under the strain of the sudden population expansion. The population of Molo more than tripled, and our small town was overwhelmed by thousands of displaced people trooping in on foot, lorries, bicycles and donkeys.  Prior to the clashes, sawmilling in Molo caused alarm over the possibility of deforestation.  After the unrest, jobless clash victims used the remaining fragments of forests to make charcoal. Within two years, the entire Molo West forest had been clear cut.

I completed my secondary education amid changing ethnic and social circumstances. The psycho-social consequences of the tensions cannot be quantified.  Though I said nothing, I viewed my Kalenjin classmates and teachers with suspicion because I never knew who might have participated in the violence. Too many Kenyans were left homeless, landless, destitute, orphaned, injured and abused.

My first posting as a teacher in 2005 was in Kuresoi, an area synonymous with violence. In 2006, teachers deserted their stations to escape the mayhem, and for three weeks all schools remained closed.  To this day, Kenya continues to suffer from ethnic suspicions, as evident from the atrocities in 2007.  Emotions are so deep that a disagreement among students from different communities can spark violence. Tribal differences are still vented by killing people and torching houses.

Governance

Good governance is a process that takes time to learn and grow.  For the past four decades, Kenya’s culture of ethnic favoritism, nepotism, impunity, assassination and corruption has caused great suffering.  Even basic social amenities such as paved roads, hospitals, schools, electricity and running water are lacking in many parts of the country.  Government leaders deploy militia to intimidate their rivals.  Bureaucrats use their power and authority over public resources to grab wealth for personal gain.  Bribery and corruption are rampant.  The peace, order and good government that form the foundation of governance are sadly lacking.

The values of traditional African society stand in direct opposition to the exploitation and oppression that now exist.  African tribal cultures value sacrifice, patriotism, diligence, moral obligations, and community over self.  Prior to independence, Elspeth Huxley, a Kenyan writer, said, “It is not possible to have a western-style democracy in a country divided deeply on racial, linguistic, cultural and religious lines.”  True to his prediction, traditional African values have been swept away by western influence and centralization of power.  The resulting loss of identity perpetuated the despotic neo-colonial rule.

The very antithesis of governance – i.e., power and control run amok – has created inequity, disregard for the rule of law, self-aggrandizement over service, resistance to change, violation of rights, and politics over governance.

Lacking a precedent for progressive governance, Kenya is wedged in a retrogressive quagmire.  Weak governance and institutional structures create feuding and acrimony in the quest for power.  Though they might grumble about their lot in life, the populace knows nothing other than this.

What is the answer to this situation?  We look to thoughtful citizens of the world for answers.

For Reflection

• How can Woodruff’s seven non-negotiable elements required of the democratic State be achieved in Kenya?

• Which elements of governance should Kenya focus on in order to create harmony in its populace?

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