Kenya post-election tension explains why we must focus on social sciences

Dr Okodan Akwap is a lecturer at Kampala International University.

A recent editorial in Sunday Monitor noted: ‘A fairly transparent system has served Kenyans well under very difficult situations; it will serve us well in the future under similar circumstances.’ Yes, we admire Kenya on many fronts. Its middle- income economy is by far the largest in East Africa. Kenya’s rail, road and maritime networks are superior to ours. More Kenyans have access to electricity than we do. To top it all, Kenya is a coastal State, making the cost of doing business considerably lower than in Uganda.


Even their devolution architecture has indeed attempted to decentralise the distribution of resources to the 47 counties. Our decentralisation experiment remains in name only. President Museveni has publicly acknowledged the thievery that goes on in our numerous districts.


Still, to admire Kenya’s ‘transparent system’ of election is to lock our eyes on the surface. Deep down though, Kenyans are divided down the middle on the basis of two groups seemingly locked in mortal combat: The “in group” led by Uhuru Kenyatta and the Kikuyu, and the “out group” led by Raila Odinga and the Luo. The just concluded election confirmed the dominance of the Kikuyu factor in Kenya’s politics: Mzee Jomo Kenyatta ruled for 15 years, Mwai Kibaki ruled for 10 and Uhuru Kenyatta is similarly set for 10.


It must be noted that even Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, who succeeded Jomo Kenyatta and ruled for 24 years nearly missed that opportunity. Influential members of the “in group” had pushed to change the constitution to remove a clause that allowed Moi, then vice-president, to automatically succeed Kenyatta, in an acting capacity, in the event of the president’s sudden death. Kenyatta did die suddenly in 1978.


In short, for all of Kenya’s 54 years of independence, the presidency has been a Kikuyu-Kalenjin affair. The Luos, led by Raila and his late father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (after he fell out with Kenyatta), have tried and tried, but they have failed to change the status quo.


In Uganda, there was grumbling about the dominance of northerners in the presidency. We had Milton Obote for about eight years. Idi Amin followed with about eight years. Obote (II) was there again for another five years and Tito Okello just half a year. Now westerners have dominated for 31 years and counting.
The similarity between Uganda and Kenya is in the lack of a lasting sense of “we-ness” in both societies. What can we do to change the status quo?


We need to know the political, economic, social and cultural contexts of how and why our people behave the way they do and make the decisions they make.
Perhaps a time has come for us to focus on the social sciences, which have been found to be related directly to the behaviour of human beings.


A prioritisation of the behavioural science approach to politics, therefore, may just be the push we so sorely need to integrate knowledge gained from different social science subject disciplines to manage our societies better.
All of us need to have some basic knowledge of subjects such as economics, political science, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history (what happened in our past explains our present and future), mass communication, management and law.


Strong and just societies are not built solely through hardware – mainly infrastructure. President Museveni should stop overrating the value of roads. Adolf Hitler, remember, built the best roads in Europe. He built the “car of the people” (Volkswagen), which every German could afford. But by brutally murdering six million Jews, one wishes he never built any road at all.


What does count more is software – the way citizens interact with one another, their sense of inclusion and the way they use politics as a vehicle for national unity. For the sake of East African integration, we must get going on social sciences. It is now or never.

Dr Okodan is a lecturer at Kampala International University.
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