Kenya: Appreciating Culture is Key to Cementing a Sense of Nationhood

[Harold Schiffman]

Appreciating Culture is Key to Cementing a Sense of Nationhood


The East African Standard (Nairobi)


OPINION
16 March 2008
Posted to the web 17 March 2008

By Tom Odhiambo
Nairobi

As the country struggles with the aftermath of last year's General
Election, all efforts need to be redirected at reconciliation and
re-affirming our nationhood. Culture should probably be the most
important in exorcising the ghosts of the violence and destruction. It
should also provide us with the elements of the rituals we need to
cleanse ourselves of our past sins. Our artistes were quick to
participate in the early calls for peace. Songs, poetry and drama were
performed in different parts of the country and on national media. We
have read essays and opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines urging
Kenyans to choose peace over war, and unity over divisiveness.

This is good, but more needs to be done. Probably, a policy should be
initiated to instil a culture of tolerance and respect for others.
First, there is need for an independent Ministry of Culture. The logic
behind lumping together culture - which defines our very identity and
determines our sociality - with gender and sports does not make sense.
A ministry solely dedicated to culture will ensure our differences in
terms of tribe, religion, race, social class and geographical location
form part of the national policy on co-existence. This will contribute
towards the creation of a unified identity founded on the celebration
of diversity. It will be the engine driving the search for a national
identity that we have committed ourselves to.

Second, let us teach cultural studies in our institutions.

We need to start looking at culture as something distinct from the
anthropological categories of tribes that we inherited from the
colonial system.

Contemporary cultural studies tell us that the modern individual is a
product of many forces and agents of culture. One could be a Luo
married to a Kalenjin, and works in a company owned by a Teso. Her
pastor could be a Kikuyu, her children's teacher a Giriama, the
hairdresser an Embu and her driver a Somali.

Such an individual has no fixed allegiances to a specific culture or
tribe, although she may travel 'home' every Christmas.

Such is the nature of a Kenyan today. This is the same person who has
been branded 'tribal' by bad policies and a poor education system.

It is necessary that we 'de-tribalise' such individuals in our
language and everyday interaction. De-tribalisation is not the same as
the false call to reject one's ethnicity. It is simply an
acknowledgement that such a person is several parts (or tribes) in one
body.

Third, we need to legislate radical changes in our language policy.
For instance, why would a civil servant work in a region for 10 years
without learning the language of the locals?

But the irony is that we allow companies employing locals to assert
that "knowledge of French or German is an added advantage" for a
Kenyan who is actually to be employed locally.

Why not ask that a Government employee who has to work in a different
region also learn the local language(s)? When shall we start to
appreciate each other's mother tongues?

It would also probably be in the best interests of posterity to
re-write our history. The written and taught history of this country
has been complicit in distorting our colonial and post-colonial
realities.

Is it not a shame that the most trusted authors and specialists on our
history are foreigners?

What is taught in our high school, college and university history
syllabuses has been so mutilated that it does not even start to define
the history of Kenya.

We could begin by acknowledging that the anti-colonial struggle was
waged from many fronts - trade unions, indigenous churches, schools,
armed struggle, intellectual dissidence and sabotage in homes and
farms.

Then we could highlight the fact that some communities suffered more
than others under colonial appropriation of land and subsequent forced
extraction of labour.

We could then take bold steps to 'celebrate' all who were involved in
the struggle in any form. If we are to forge a new culture in this
country, we had better start with a re-examination and re-telling of
our history.

It is not too late to call on all institutions in the country to
inculcate a permanent state of self-enquiry and practice on how best
to attain collective nationhood. Do our teachers ever take a break
from their monotonous lessons to remind their students what makes them
Kenyans and not Ugandans?

Why is it that most of us can only recite the first stanza of the
national anthem? Are we too lazy to memorise the other stanzas or are
the words in those stanzas irrelevant? Why do we see tattered flags
flying on masts at Government institutions? Perhaps civil servants
working in those offices are too pre-occupied with their own affairs
to bother. What these behaviours betray is a lack of the culture of
'Kenyanness' and pride in our country.

We need to invite culture to the national collectivity that will lead
us into the new regime and future.

The writer is a literary and cultural scholar



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