African Press International (API)

Tribalism is so successful in Kenya that people are now publicly defending tribal statistics and tribalism. Columnist Phillip Ochineg’ has recently done it (Sunday Nation, 12 July 2009). As Ochieng’ says, it is true that tribe is objective, and tribalism subjective. But it is obvious that tribalism cannot exist without real or imagined tribes. And it is here tribal statistics come into play.

The statistics are largely invented rather than true. They often represent tribes that do not exist and divide real tribes into smaller ones. Decennially, they trigger off identity crisis in some categories of Kenyans. And being instruments of state tribalism, they further tribalism, the implacable demon torturing Kenya. Besides, the highly dubious figures are another deadly arena of tribal rivalries. Let me give an example.

In his book, Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya, Professor John O. Oucho, a tribal political demographer, tells us that the African population of Kenya consists of 42 tribes. But how did he get the figure 42? In Table 3 in the book, he lists 42 tribes. But the Basuba are a tribe in the table. There is also a group called

“other Kenyans“. Who knows whether that group includes tribes or people without tribes or, if it is a group of tribes, how many tribes they are?

In a note to the table, Professor Oucho says that

“the Luhya and Kalenjins “consist of several sub-groups, some of whom resent the group name”. If the state asks the sub-groups that resent the group name what their tribe is, the state will surely get more names than Luhya and Kalenjins. The state is in other words arbitrarily and unjustly classifying people according to tribe.

So, the tribes in Kenya are computed at 42!

Professor Oucho

’s table is, with all the due respect, nothing more than a compendium of lies. Which is not surprising at all, for his sources are Kenya Population Census reports, compiled by Kenya’s Central Bureau of Statistics. By the statistics office’s own admission, the census figures have been manipulated for political reasons.

The population of Nyanza Province, for example, has been zealously and consistently under-counted, while the population of Western Province and the Rift Valley has been over-counted with equal zeal and consistency. It turns out that tribal statistics are just other instruments of tribalisation, exclusion, denigration and other perversions and transgressions of the institution of tribalism. Tribal statistics are strategic fictions for rule, control, domination, oppression and exploitation, and the state and its elites are inevitably keen on manipulating and polluting them. Even a scrupulously scientific hand, like Professor Oucho

’s, cannot lift them an inch out of their uselessness and toxicity.

Everyone

’s favourite official lie with respect to tribe is that there are 42 tribes in Kenya. Before I discovered the fact that it is impossible to know the number of tribes in Kenya, I also believed the lie. The tribal figures social analysts, tribal demographers, etc., use, with the intended catastrophic consequences, are lethal lies that lend tribes, which are in fact mostly popular tales that have enslaved our minds, realism of which they are totally devoid.

If it is true that the state wants figures for the purposes of planning and resource allocation, etc., then population distribution by province and district is more than enough information. It is in the provinces, districts, divisions, locations, sub-locations, villages and streets where people live. And when it is allocating resources, the state does not earmark them for particular communities. The resources are given to a division, location, etc.; regardless its tribal composition. For example, developmental resources distributed to

“Luo Nyanza” benefit not only Luos, but also Asians, Somalis, Luhya, etc., who live there. And anyway, if the state insists that it must use tribal statistics in its practice of tribalism, it does not have to force Kenyans to tell it the tribes to which they believe they belong. Our provincial administrative units fairly correspond to our tribal boundaries. So, using the population data on the provinces, the state can easily compute the figures it needs for its tribalism.

And the tribal statistics may even cause who have married into other tribes unnecessary personal identity crisis every ten years. What tribe do Luos like Marjorie Oludhe MacGoye, just to give an example, tell the state is theirs?

Tribal statistics are just part of popular knowledge for keeping tribes and tribalism alive in order that we may be ruled, dominated, controlled and exploited without a murmur. We do not need them. And we should set ourselves free from them. We should refuse to reveal our tribal memberships to the state.