How Kenya could move away from the politics of ethnicity

In Kenya’s first independent general election in May 1963, the two largest indigenous parties KANU, formed in May 1960, and KADU, formed a month later, both assumed an ethnic DNA.

KANU represented the populous Kikuyu and Luo tribes and KADU represented the smaller Masai, Kalenjin, Luhya and Mijikenda communities.

This was partly because colonial policy barred the formation of nationwide political movements. It only allowed the formation of district political associations.

The effect was to encourage ethnically homogeneous political associations to emerge across the country. As a result, parties have drawn their political legitimacy and capital from their respective ethnic bases since independence.

At Lancaster House – where Kenyan delegates held a series of meetings to negotiate Kenya’s independence constitution – KANU and KADU leaders wore their ethnic hats.

And in 1966 when Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga left KANU he retreated to his ethnic backyard and formed the Kenya People’s Union.

So historically speaking, political parties have never really been divorced from tribal affiliations.

But the problem runs much deeper than tribal politics. In Kenya an ethnically diverse society is responding to an imposed political configuration which, thanks to its colonial heritage, is a democratic competition for resources.

Fixing the problem

If we regard democracy as elastic rather than rigid, it allows us to recognise that it can be forced – or negotiated. Negotiated democracy can lead to stability whereas forced democracy can lead to instability and violence.

A case in point is Zimbabwe where a power-sharing deal was reached between Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change in 2008.

At the time, the deal brought the country’s political and economic crisis to an end. Other African examples of negotiated democracies include South Africa and Rwanda.

In Kenya, negotiated democracy can be reached by creating more executive positions beyond the president and deputy president to accommodate feuding tribes: mainly the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo and Luhya.

Kenya has tried this model before, and it worked. The power sharing model put in place after the 2007 election quelled the post-election violence.

The new structure, guided by the peace accord, created three new executive positions – a prime minister, and two deputy prime ministers. This created a more ethnically inclusive leadership.

Constitutionally, a power-sharing agreement may not be as simple to effect as the 2008 National Accord and Reconciliation Act.

In that case, a simple Act of Parliament was passed to create the positions of a prime minister and his two deputies. Today the government would need to call a referendum to create substantive positions.

But that should not be a deterrent. Changes like this could lead to a realignment of political parties. If representatives of a majority of Kenya’s ethnic groups were guaranteed senior positions in government, politicians would gradually move away from ethnicity as a tool for political mobilisation, and towards ideological campaigns that prioritise socioeconomic development.

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Daisy Maritim Maina is a Research Fellow at the East Africa Resilience Innovation Hub which receives research funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Canada.