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One of the daunting questions that emerged after tribal conflict engulfed Kenya following its disputed December election was what should be done with African tribes.
What made the collapse of the Kenyan experiment more devastating was that Kenya was amongst the few African countries that seriously used elements of social engineering to minimize the relevance of tribe. By adopting a national language, Swahili; by creating the Harambee philosophy, the Kenyans lived for so long as that ideal nation state where brotherhood had superseded the differences in tongue.
But last December, it all proved to be mere illusion. In a flicking of a switch, tribe regained its preeminence and brothers returned to their primordial dispositions.
The late President of Mozambique, Samora Michael once said that “for the nation to live the tribe must die.”
I used to be sympathetic to such views until I discovered that the tribe preceded the nation. And that the tribes are essentially nation states that have been demeaned, subjugated and marked for extinction.
An African nation is a transitional geographical manifestation many of which have no character whereas a tribe is a way of life. An African nation does not define who an African is as vivid as the tribe does. While the legitimacy of the African nation state is in question, the tribal consciousness in its members has no parallel.
Most African nations have no language, no culture, and no values of their own. What goes for the culture, the language and the values of many of African nations are those it borrowed from its tribes and its colonial masters.
Many have made the case for deemphasizing the tribe. They have argued for melting of the tribes and the formation of a national identity for all. They say replace tribe with place of birth; local tongues with foreign languages and; traditional rituals with foreign catechisms.
But what will you do with merit and hard work when those phenomenons have the habit of popping up people from certain tribes? Will you replace merit with affirmative action or with federal character? How do you stop the politicization of tribe? How do you teach the art of bargaining without the predisposition to rely on the most immovable of all bases- tribe?
Those who make the argument for the killing of the tribes point to Madagascar as an example of a nation state created out of many tribes. Sometimes, they take their analogy further up by referencing the United States .
The problem with such idealistic viewpoint is that neither Madagascar nor the United States are inhabited by tribes in the way African nations are. For most part, the majority of the people who occupy those lands were former tribes men and women who left their tribal lands, be it France, Germany, England, Mexico, India, China etc to come and live in the new world.
The relationship of a German tribesman who left Europe for America cannot be compared to that of a Kikuyu in Kenya . By leaving the homeland, tribesmen shed off tones of history, regalia of their heritage, and vicissitude of their home. The act of packing up to move mentally prepared them to go into a different relationship with others in the new world.
Even then, the result of the American experiment has shown that the melting pot did not actually happen. What got formed was a salad bar, where each tribe shares a spot at the table.
A serious look at the genesis of most African conflicts indicates that at the root of the tensions, tussles, and tribulations is the question of what to do with the super tribes of Africa – these are tribes who may not be the largest, may not be the most powerful, may not be the most dominant, may not have the longest history, and may not be the wealthiest, but yet, whose relationship with the nation state they found themselves in following colonization had more or less defined the nation. Amongst these super tribes are the Shona in Zimbabwe, the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Ashanti in Ghana, the Xhosa in South Africa, the Luba in Congo, the Amhara in Ethiopia, the Igbo in Nigeria, the Tutsi in Rwanda/Burundi and the Wolof in Senegal.
Mimicking the words of William Shakespeare, to kill the African tribes or not to kill is not the question. How to kill and how not to kill, is the essence of the question.
Quieting Africa , getting it governable and accountable to its people cannot happen until Africans answer the question of how to kill and how not to kill the tribes.
Because the tribe is more than marks, more than dances, more than dresses, if the tribes were to die, the nations would lose its colors, totems, and voices. But for the members of each tribe, when the tribe dies, they lose the greatest attribute of their humanity - their way of life.
Consequently, the best way to kill the African tribes is to make them nations again -nations that can live on their own or nations that can negotiate with other nations and form bigger nations.
Let the competition begin. Let excellence explode. Let us take away the tribe- the last alibi of the scoundrel.
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Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo is the author of Children of A Retired God
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Posted by Robot| 17.02.2008 08:11