usually a language since its borders were drawn arbitrarily in Europe .
The result was that many communities in Kenya find that their kith and kin are residents of different countries which creates confusion on allegiance . Is one ’ s allegiance primarily to those that you understand or to an imagined geopolitical entity .
For a long time if one visited the northern part of Kenya the inhabitants there would ask you to greet Kenyans when you went back to where you were visiting from because they did not comprehend that they were in Kenya .
At independence there was a very strong push to create a federation of Kenyan communities as opposed to attempting to create one homogeneous country and the idea was opposed as Kenya needed to evolve into a single entity .
But the illusion of a Kenyan political entity has persisted as Kenyans do not exhibit a patriotic attachment to Kenya as a country and this was exacerbated by ethnic politicians who tended to punish communities that did not vote for them .
Perhaps that should have been the route taken at independence as Kenyans would have acknowledged from the start that the inherited colonial boundary was not a natural boundary and promoting Kenyan ethos was going to be a hard sell .
The lack of a compelling reason to create a cohesive entity saw the country divide into ethnic enclaves that led to a tribal hegemony which was later aptly captured by a political commentator as the tyranny of numbers .
The political dominance of the populous ethnic groupings alienated and marginalized many groups in Kenya and this made it impossible to foster a patriotic allegiance to the country and unfortunately created the very unfortunate ‘ it is our time to eat ’ culture .
When the new constitution proposed devolution as a way to rectify the real marginalization of many communities it was adopted for a purely political agenda without any consideration to sustainability and contribution to the national kitty .
So , a country that should never have had more than fifteen counties , based on sustainability ended up with forty-seven counties which has ballooned the national recurrent budget at the expense of crucial development spending .
To put this in a stark economic contrast to illustrate the ridiculousness of the Kenyan model which was copied from the United States , the state of California whose GDP is seven times that of Kenya has one governor and Kenya has forty-seven .
The Kenyan government is now a giant employment agency for a country that is grossly overrepresented and employing a horde of greedy , unproductive , self-serving politicians who spend their time bickering to remain relevant .
Kenya settled for a political convenience at the expense of economic reality and the country is stuck in a financial quagmire of sustaining an economy on borrowed funds . This is committing political suicide and Kenya finds itself in a no-win situation . The counties , as presently constituted , militate against national cohesion . Nairobi county is the only county not headed by a tribal kingpin . If the suppression of tribal enclaves is a necessary condition for national identity , then Kenya ’ s experiment has failed dismally .
It is however in the management of the economy that Kenya has faced its biggest challenge as Kenyan leaders have always prioritized the tribal considerations over the national ones since the need to survive politically is paramount .
The need to form untidy coalitions that are based on deliverable votes rather than on ideology or a development agenda has consigned Kenya to a five-year cycle of hitting the reset button as politicians need to make different promises .
The totally unproductive political behavior of trashing all that a previous regime has done has relegated Kenya to short term planning cycle and inability of politicians to see the big picture as they focus solely on re-election .
This habit has also allowed incumbents to pass the buck and attempt to blame previous regimes as the root cause of the financial stress that the country is experiencing and to deflect attention from the shortcomings of the present administration .
The unfortunate but apt remark that the Kenya government has shareholders meaning those that voted for the government is a sad reminder that those in government see the country as areas of influence not as a country .
This tunnel approach of rewarding only those who are deemed as politically correct points again to the fractious nature of Kenyan politics and emphasizes that in Kenya you are not rewarded for ability and competence but loyalty .
The development of a country is an execution of a long-term plan which works as a relay to the desired outcome . This cannot work in a country that does not respect competence and one that has overpoliticized the civil service .
Kenya has already abandoned the forward looking and comprehensive Vision 2030 as politicians trip themselves trying to prove to a gullible electorate that their administration is superior to the one that preceded it .
This is a tragic reality for Kenyans as we have abandoned a well laid out plan by a visionary Kenyan leader , but since the vision is not protected from political considerations and interference any loud mouth can derail it .
Why have Kenyans chosen a self-deceptive route that is anchored on the demagoguery of an individual rather than a national outlook that taps into the potential of every Kenyan in contributing to the progress of the country ?
We are not aware of any country that has ever taxed its citizenry to prosperity , the opposite is the norm , where you reduce taxes with the express intension of creating demand for goods and services and the free-market economy spurs growth .
We have chosen to use a strategy that beggars the citizenry but given our history , perhaps we have just entered another phase of slavery by another name , hustling , only this time the colonizer is a fellow African who is silently serving the same white masters .
The cover piece was pieced together by the Marketing Africa editorial crew . For feedback or any more discourse please drop us a line at : Info @ marketingafrica . co . ke .