The UnaAfrican African

What is African? What isn't? What defines who we are? Our identity? From our archives is an article by Stephen Wanyama on why he finds little identity with Africa. The comments that follow are a lively debate.

Read here .

Ethnicity abounds: Kenya’s identity crisis

But race is an issue I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now…’ Barack Obama, speech titled ‘A More Perfect Union’, 18 March 2008

When Barack Obama addressed America on the issue of race in March 2008, he could very well have been talking to Kenyans on the issue of ethnicity. For as he issued his penetrative analysis of the race question in the USA, the land of his father was awash with blood as a contested election result led to national conflict, ultimately costing close to 1,200 lives, displacing close to 350,000 others, and wrecking the lives and livelihoods of millions. The ethnic hue of the conflict was so strong that it led some to mistakenly suggest that what was happening in the country was either genocide or ethnic cleansing.

In sync with Obama’s ‘racial stalemate’ in the USA, Kenya has long been prisoner to an ethnic stalemate. A vast majority of analysts agree that had he run for the presidency in Kenya, Obama would have lost on account of being Luo, the ethnicity of his father. Some, however, have even observed that he is not Luo enough, indicating he may not even have garnered a local ethnic constituency; a current, sorry, prerequisite to engaging in presidential politics in Kenya.

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Voting patterns and ethnicity in Kenya

A new report brings intriguing data about voting patterns in Kenya. To no one's surprise, elections in God's own country are mostly an exercise in ethnic head-counting. But not always.

There are other factors that pull at the electorate, and at least in the minds of the respondents, evidence of an aspiration towards elections as a referendum on the performance of the incumbent rather than a mindless affirmation of ethnic affiliation. The importance of ethnicity it seems is dependent on the voter's self-ascribed identity, with "ethnics" more often employing feelings of group identity and "non-ethnics" more often making rational calculations of self and group interest.

Read and Discuss here.

Identity and Violence (with apologies to Amartya Sen)

In Kenya, violence abounds, as do analyses of its causes and consequences. An efficient way of dividing opinion on the matter is to ask four questions: Was the violence planned? Was it 'ethnic'? Was there ethnic cleansing? Was it 'political'?

We aren't short of people who will answer no to all save the last for boring political reasons; we needn't worry about them. But others, for presumably non-political reasons, will do likewise. 'Unless names are invidiously named', as Timothy Williamson once said, 'sermons like this... tend to cause less offence than they should, because everyone imagines that they are aimed at other people'. Maina Kiai, Tavia Nyong'o, here's looking at you.

Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

Not willing to give up on tribe

I am not yet willing to give up on the concept of tribe. I am unwilling to grant that colonizers were right in their claims that tribe was a limited concept that had no place in the modern world. I am unwilling to accept their definitions that my history and heritage are small and uninteresting, lacking in depth and complexity, beauty and joy.

Read more from Keguro Macharia here.

My Gikuyu Journal

"No other (ethnic)nation in Kenya is washing its dirty linen in public, why are all of you emerging young Kikuyu writers doing it?" the email correspondence began. I offered to respond in a well argued essay in public. My correspondent would have none of it. "...I hope you see why that would be similar to the whole 2005-2007 ‘outing of Kikuyu culture and issues'.

Read more from Njoroge Matathia here.