WHAT LIES BEHIND US AND WHAT LIES BEFORE US ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT LIES WITHIN US;

Kenya’s history is still fresh in the minds of those who cared to incubate it. Perhaps the most memorable one is how Kenyans united to deliver themselves, from the canines of the white lions from Manchester forest in the Kenyan jungle forty five years ago.

At the threshold of building the nation, Kenyans were frequently seduced by a monster called tribalism. Some call it negative ethnicity. This monster lured and rendered Kenyans bigotry of subscribing to tribal cocoons on matters political. This cradle annihilated our independence spirit and jeopardized our national cohesion. It baptized and consigned us into parochial politic. Over years it has arguably retarded our development growth and perpetuatively initiated tribal conflict. The 1992 tribal clashes and the 2008 post election crisis are some of the clear-cut examples of the mess this monster has driven us to.

Kenya is not the sole country in the world with numerous tribal affiliations. I am being baffled by the magnitude this diversity has taken and the extreme it has reached. Today notwithstanding the memories of where we have come from and the number of people counting loses; our unscrupulous political class is at it again. They are injudiciously campaigning for the next general elections; they are engineering malice against each other devoid of efforts to kill ethnicity.

A section of Kenyans continue to wallow in the abyss of abject poverty. Others in the name of politicians are blissfully enjoying their allowances tax free. They are unarguably either oblivious or ignorant of the prevailing circumstances. It is wrong for them to presume that they are leading us when all they are doing is literally emptying our pockets more aggressively driving us from the frying pan into the fire.

We Kenyans have a common challenge; we should stop bragging about our history [Independence] and start thinking of where we are going. We should as well stop waiting for good things before us [vision 2030] and put curb on the hindrances that stop us from getting there sooner. Thus what lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. Destiny is not a matter of chance but a matter of choice, it is not something to be waited for but something to work for.

We have a tendency of masquerading to be saints clean of tribalism in public places but replenished of the double dyed spirit in our offices and homes with our friends. This is unfortunately having a cake and eating it too, an instinct worse than that of the wild pig. What is fundamentally essential for Kenyans is to once and for all arrest the monster and hung it on the cross without trial like they did to Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. This big sacrifice will do much in rendering our country big redemption.

Our politicians who are the main architects as well as the accomplices of the big monster should stop rhetoric, shoot from the hip rather than serving from the lip. We on the double need to find cure of myopia for our politicians, a malady that is abysmal and lethal to the health of our national eyes. We cannot curb ethnicity by pointing fingers and hurling blame on each other. If we insist on doing this, we will only be postponing the day of reckoning as we have done in the past making it potentially much more devastating.

It is our responsibility too to dig the deepest grave for the monster and certainly the obligation of the political class to disown it, force it to hurtle down to the grave like the meteor that consigned the dinosaur family extinct sixty four million years ago. To ensure that it does not haunt us and baffle everyone like the proverbial phoenix, we should embrace powerful mental and moral sanctions from the cradle which will subsequently banish tribalism from our national fabric.

By Duke Mwancha.