Another African Country

Published: 04/01/2008

Another African country, another rigged election, killings and mayhem: the usual stuff, many Londoners will think as Kenya convulses and self destructs. Their pity has run dry. Who cares? We do, those of us lucky enough to know and love East Africa.

These territories are among the most beautiful natural spaces in the world and its peoples have had too many rotten rulers - colonial and indigenous- for a century and a half. I was born in Uganda; my father's family were Kenyan and my mother's clan had settled in Tanganyika, as it was once.

Watching the news about the Kenyan mob setting fire to a church with my Scots friend, a teacher, I said: "The poor people inside must be Kikuyu, it's always tribal." She was aghast: "You can't say that! That's the typical western view of Africa, tribes slaughter each other because that's what they do." We had a noisy argument. But I do believe ethnic politics drives the volatility and self destructiveness on that continent - and elsewhere too.

As an undergraduate at Makerere University in Kampala in the early seventies, I found it outrageous that the Asian students sat at their own table in the dining room and then my African mates explained that black cultural groups all sat separately too, only that Apartheid wasn't so visible. When Idi Amin sent in his soldiers to rape and arrest students, they were particular about the names and tribes of the victims they picked.


Corruption, poverty, dictatorships, nepotism, foreign exploitation and endemic sexism poison civil society and democracy. So too cursed tribal loyalty - potent and easily aroused. Rwanda and Bosnia back then, Pakistan and Kenya today show how ancestral instincts can be summoned and misused by venal politicians.

Thus Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki is a Kikuyu, as was independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, while his challenger, Raila Odinga is a Luo, the second largest tribe. Meanwhile it is all happening again at present in Uganda too. Only in Tanzania do most citizens think of themselves as nationals.
Ethnic identification was stamped out after independence by the semi-Maoist leader Julius Nyerere, who then forged a nation with ruthless determination.

Enforced patriotism will not work today but without shared nationhood, Kenyans and Ugandans are forever damned. The Assistant Bishop of Kampala, Rev Zac Niringiye, called this week for more cross-cultural marriages and
warned: "Unless we get rid of tribalism we are heading nowhere." An honest voice which will doubtless go unheeded.

Published in Evening Standard