Gkalelu-yia! Tribal Batching is the New Science

Political Scientist Mutahi Ngunyi has broken new frontiers. He has made blocking Kenyans into tribal bundles fashionable. And he has a brutish name for it – the tyranny of numbers.

So now we have a new science, we just need some disciples to establish and spread it. I proffer that Kenya has two main population nexi (plural for nexus?). We have the well established GEMA of the aGikuyu, aEmbu, and the aMeru. Former President Moi, the late former vice-president George Saitoti and former power-man Nicholas Biwott made a push to create a union of the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu, called the Kamatusa, but failed at it.

But Mutahi just had to revisit the forsaken caves and reawaken their resident demons. Now I am also thinking aloud. And I am wondering – between the two main population clusters of western and central Kenya, which is more populated? GEMA rises with 7 million Kikuyus, and just over 3 million of the others. If we add the Akamba of the south-east, we have 3 million more people, giving a total metropolitan population of just about fifteen million.

In the western pentagon, we have the Maasai of TransMara, numbering over half a million; the Abagusii and Abakuria, at just over one and a half million; the Luo and Suba, at four and a half million, the Kalenjin of Bomet, Kericho, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet and Uasin Gishu, exceeding four and a half million in number; the Luhya nation at five and a half million; the Sabaot and the Turkana, nearing a million together. This communion, in an area equal to the Central Kenya hinterland, we have a total of nearly twenty million affiliated people.

The Gusii, Kalenjin, Luo and Luhya politicians can start shouting Hallelujah! Or, GkaleLuyia! for that matter.  Note the (G-Kale-Lu-yia, in place for each of these mega nations).

On this basis, Western Kenya has a comparative gross population advantage of five million Kenyans. And it has five important cities – Kisii, Kisumu, Kericho, Eldoret, Kitale, Kakamega, and Bungoma. The western region is Kenya’s bread-basket, has extensive network value for the East African region, and with adequate infrastructural investments, has the highest potential for economic return. Add to this the freshwater, hydrocarbons and wind-power potential of Turkana area, and we immediately notice whose numbers are tyrannical.

I am sure the ‘scientist’ in Mutahi Ngunyi is not advising the GEMA nation to insist on an attritional numbers game, because they would lose irredeemably. If the people of Western Kenya acted as unconcernedly about the rest of Kenya as the GEMA leadership always has, and united in self-interest against the rest of the nation, the greatest losses would happen among the wealthier GEMAns.

Poorer people in the west have less to lose, and paradoxically, their suffering would actually yield increases in population. Conversely, in Central, the birth-rates are declining, and their homelands are agriculturally unviable, strangely xenophobic even to their own kinsfolk, uninhabitable and insecure. In a vicious numbers game, GEMA would never see the presidency again. If the country votes for GEMA leaders, it is because the Western half works for national unity.

The GEMA pole has never been interested in national inclusion, but the bitter truth is, a pure zero-sum game would hurt Central Kenya more than everywhere else.