KINSHIP SYSTEM         (pt 1):

The Wanga of ancient day Mumia had a hierarchical form of government ruled by a king with a kinship system, this entailed that if the king died the oldest son – or the kings choice from one of his sons - was to take over as the leader of the community. It was believed that the ruling family was handed power by the Maker. Well, that was their tradition, so was it in other tribes that inhabited Kenya at the time like the maasai in other tribes they had a clan of elders who had numerous functions the meru, embu, kikuyu and many more used this form of leadership. Though in some of these tribes there was a sole leader he/she had to get approval from the elders before the community would fully accept them as leader…

Enter modern day Kenya and the trend hasn’t changed much from the traditional set up. Just take a look at the political elite that the electorate has been voting to power since time in memorial. Oginga-Raila and the brother, nyachae-the son, Kenyatta-Uhuru, kibaki-I hear jimmy is blossoming, out of the bud, Wamalwa-what’s the brothers name, I hear he is running for president; just to mention a few. It’s alarming that the tribe has the ability to make even the brightest and most learned among us behave dumb, blatantly put logic and reason aside and join the bandwagon. That’s why any political aspirant will seek audience with school heads, doctors and professors in the said constituency, and what do we do in turn………. Vote for the leading family to parliament over and over again. We are like sheep following the stream as it dwindles down, though it is shrinking in size, the water volume so shrunk in size rocks with gaping crevices hurting our hoofs, deposited silt slowing our movement, we are still moving down stream! When will we turn back and go upstream, together with our axes and pangas held high, to root out the eucalyptus trees that we planted around the water source and plant new trees around it? Because, I believe it is now apparent that the eucalyptus trees will eventually drive us to destruction because they are using up all the water… what are we without water?

Almost every political “leader” that is in office now had a relative in power before him/her. Mostly it was their fathers in power and when their time was over they proposed to their “people” that their sons or daughter would lead them best. I used “their people” because tribalism seems to be the backbone of the political elite. What’s the guarantee that the son or daughter will perform? I tend to think if the father didn’t perform the son or daughter is most likely to “fuata nyayo” and become worse than the previous family member in power. With new tricks to keep you pauping! There’s a cliché for that ‘same monkeys different forests’. Don’t you think it’s time to change the monkey? Our 2^nd president used the “fuata nyayo” philosophy, I don’t think I really to tell you how it worked out right? The Mount Kenya region has a cartel where unless they ‘cough’ the electorate won’t give you the time of day to air your political aspirations, very similar to the clan of elders aint it? This is so in other regions of the county as well, did anyone of you wonder why Tuju’s crew was stoned, they also did the same to kenyatta back when Oginga was the name, only that back then rotten eggs were flying not bricks and rocks…This begs the question, what’s the essential point of voting, is it to get a tribal leader or to get better representation in parliament, u know, air the problems of the people . . . mind you not the tribe! So why do we keep the kinship mentality alive for this long?

Mr. Muturi, my high school head teacher, constantly urged us to change the trend, he would often say, “their fore fathers led your fore fathers then their fathers led your fathers and just like a jigsaw puzzle piece falling into place their sons will lead you and your sons”. What we have are not political leaders but tribal leaders which means that they will do all they can to keep the kinship system in play; this often entails misappropriation of funds and resources as a get-rich-quick scheme and since the literacy levels in this country are criminal the “the richer the fool, the better the ability to lead” comes into play. Apparently handing out  kshs. 50 will sway the electorates’ vote; right now a loaf of bread is selling at kshs. 45 which would mean that you are at the very bottom of the stupidity list if you think that kshs 50 will feed you for the next five years!!

 Intelligence simply put is the ability to learn and understand to deal with new trying situations, learning may be from experience of books while the modern day defination of stupidity may be defined as lacking intelligence.Voting for the same monkey in parliament to feed him with more bananas over and over again to me is stupid, not learning from our mistakes of voting for the kinship system is no intelligent either, we may as well scrap the education system while we are at it. What’s the point of spending 24 years of your life in school if you can’t apply the very basics of what you learnt, common sense!

Chew on that ……… I remain

Ian Macharia.