By Prof Edward A. Oyugi
Prof, Anangwe has been reported in the local media as exhorting the Luhya nation to go beyond Namwamba’s call for their development of a Luhya consciousness as a basis for developing a peculiarly Luhya political platform that the putatively need for more effective bargaining for a reasonable political-economic slice of the national commonwealth.
As if this was not a backward enough chauvinistic rhetoric we normally associate with charlatans, Anangwe, the renowned political scientist, is now demanding of the the Luhya political class, first, to be herded together into a tribal cocoon – in the name of a tribal consciousness, drive a narrow agenda by trooping to Jubilee political formation on account of the likelihood of it winning the next elections and hardly on the basis of the social-developmental quality of its ideological platform.
Initially it sounded a little cheap if not a bit demeaning, coming from a university professor of political science. I have, however, since been reminded that the good Prof. is a notorious student of “government” : a quintessential throwback to the colonial obsession with the toxic nexus between public authority and the national economic gravy train.
It is therefore not surprising that Prof. Anangwe sees in bourgeois party-political maneuvers, neither a policy platforms nor a principled struggle between social classes – struggle to bring a set of ideas (about a good society) to power, but instead, a dubious sense of political harlotry that pales in comparison with byzantinian public life.
He is a bad intellectual export to a country that has pulled all the stops to give national-democratic question a chance to define the progressive agenda and destiny of its people – Tanzania.
They should deport him back to Kenya where everything goes so he can double down, advocating for the backward brand of politics in which opportunistic ethnic alliance politics is crowding out initiatives for democratic reconstruction of our society away from thieves, murderers hawkers of our future in the neo-liberal Global market.
I bet, you will hit all the pistons of tribal-hegemonic grandstanding but it is unlikely that you will get the engine of a truly democratic society running, leave alone igniting. What you are likely to succeed in doing is merely to inflame backward feelings of belonging to the retrogressive backwaters chauvinistic nationalism.
The best way to kill democracy for every section of society, be it a tribal or class character, is to jump onto the bandwagon of political formations that, for whatever reason, promises to drive their social agenda to power.
We must stand for something and not anything that smells of power. Otherwise, why did we not remain with Moi! He was powerful enough to accommodate all the Kenyan ethnic groups.
Bwana Anangwe , wake up and do not embarrass the Kenyan elite with the anachronistic ideas of a post-colonial provincial administration.
