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Who Are the Kikuyu? And why do
Kenya's other tribes resent them so much?
By Michela Wrong
Friday, Feb. 8, 2008
CENTRAL PROVINCE, Kenya — On the hillsides, tea is still being
picked; in the valleys, women still weed rows of beans, feet
stained ocher by the soil; and in downtown Nyeri, the matatu taxi
vans still honk by custom. The only immediate hint that something
is amiss is to be found on the veranda of the Outspan Hotel.
Despite boasting one of Africa's most stunning views—Mount Kenya
stretches serenely on the far side of the plains—the Outspan is
strangely quiet these days; most of its tourists have fled.
If Kenya is ablaze, it's almost possible to miss that fact in
Central Province. A few hours' drive west, machete-wielding youths
blockade roads, shops have been looted, and refugee camps spring
up like mushrooms. At first glance, the country's most serious
crisis since independence has barely dented the banal routines of
daily life.
There's a reason for this. Central Province is the home of
President Mwai Kibaki—his Othaya constituency lies just south of
Nyeri. While his Kikuyu kinsmen have been burned alive and lynched
across the rest of Kenya, punished for his suspected rigging of
the December elections, only a madman would dare lift a hand to a
Kikuyu on his home turf.
But that doesn't allay a crawling sense of unease. The
relationship between the Kikuyu and the rest of Kenya has been
warped, residents sense, possibly beyond repair. Nyeri's
inhabitants are haunted by a more immediate fear. Most of the
300,000 people displaced in the violence are Kikuyus. Even as
nervous Luos cluster for protection in local police stations,
hundreds of Kikuyus are returning, demanding housing, work, and
school places. "At the moment people are telling those displaced
to stick where they are, because there is great land scarcity
here," says Muthui Mwai, a Nyeri journalist. "No one wants them
back."
Land scarcity is the leitmotif of the Kikuyu, the historic source
of their anguish and the motivating force behind their success
story. Accounting for around 22 percent of Kenya's population of
38 million, the Kikuyu's mark on the East African nation has been
far greater than the figures imply, thanks to that driving hunger.
Under Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, another kinsman,
they streamed out of Central Province, settling in the Rift Valley
and on the coast. Today, they dominate the economy. Kikuyus drive
most of Kenya's matatus and its taxis, run its newspapers, and
constitute much of its civil service, their entrepreneurial reach
extending from the glitziest of hotels to the remotest roadside
duka (kiosk). They also, joke Kikuyus, account for the biggest
share of the country's criminals and prison inmates.
They hail themselves as "the Jews of Kenya," envied and hated in
equal measure for that entrepreneurial zeal. But there's a
difference: Europe's Jews never combined economic influence with
political power. The Kikuyu have done just that, providing two of
Kenya's three presidents. And their current predicament can be
traced to that double-fisted grip on the nation-state and the
resentment it stirs among their compatriots.
The Kikuyu story, legend has it, begins on a ridge north of the
town of Muranga, south of Nyeri, amid the misty valleys carved by
Mount Kenya's melting snows. To the precolonial Kikuyu, Mount
Kenya, known as Kirinyaga, was the seat of God, or Ngai. Ngai
created Gikuyu—the first man—then pointed earthward. "Build your
homestead where the fig trees grow," he said. Later, he sent Mumbi
to join him, and the couple established the 10 clans that
constitute "the house of Mumbi," as the Kikuyu are also known.
You can actually visit this Kikuyu version of the Garden of Eden.
Behind a sky-blue gate, painted with the words Mukurwe Wa
Nyagathanga—the Tree of Gathanga—lie two mud huts, one for Gikuyu
and one for Mumbi. The site looks toward Kirinyaga, but the
mountain, famously elusive, is usually shrouded in cloud.
The compound may be an officially designated historical monument,
but it looks semineglected. The skeleton of a half-built hotel,
abandoned when a shady contractor disappeared with the funds—"This,
too, is part of our culture," jokes a villager—drips water nearby.
In my many trips there, I've never stumbled on another visitor. "It's
not our way to look backward, only forward," explains my Kikuyu
driver.
The farming community that fanned out from this site had a special
affinity with the soil. "There is a great desire in the heart of
every Gikuyu man to own a piece of land on which he can build his
home," Kenyatta wrote in Facing Mount Kenya. "A man or a woman who
cannot say to his friends, come and eat, drink and enjoy the fruit
of my labour, is not considered as a worthy member of the tribe."
It was this affinity that brought the Kikuyu into conflict with
the British Empire. Initially, Britain's 19th-century explorers
showed little interest in the area that would be designated
"Kenya," training their eyes instead on the Buganda kingdom across
Lake Victoria. Central Province's fertile valleys were simply the
place to stock their caravans with fresh food before the long trip
west.
But with time, Kenya itself became the draw. Most of the land that
British settlers appropriated belonged to the nomadic Masai, not
the Kikuyu, but it was the Kikuyu who led an armed insurrection,
Mau Mau, in the 1950s. With their fast-growing population, the
Kikuyu needed room to expand. The British had removed that
possibility by farming the White Highlands. British Capt. Richard
Meinertzhagen claimed to have seen what was coming. "They are the
most intelligent of the African tribes that I have met; therefore
they will be the most progressive under European guidance and will
be the most susceptible to subversive activities," he wrote.
Mau Mau has left its scars, psychological if not physical. At
least 150,000 Kikuyus passed through British detention camps, and
more than 20,000 Mau Mau fighters died in combat. Central
Province's residents can still point out the caves where the
freedom fighters hid and sketch the location of the British
prisons and scaffolds where they were executed—in Nyeri's case, on
what is now the golf club's parking lot.
Seeking scapegoats in that turbulent past, many older inhabitants
insist today's troubles are the work of a British government that
has never forgiven the Kikuyu their revolt. Now the Brits are
supposedly the hidden hand behind Luo leader Raila Odinga's
opposition campaign. "This is not a war between Kenyans, it's a
war imported from abroad," fumes Joseph Karimi, co-author of The
Kenyatta Succession. "The British were not satisfied with the rule
of the Kikuyu, so they brought in this war. They never actually
left Kenya and they never intend to."
If the British won the fight against Mau Mau, the Kikuyu won the
peace. When Britain pulled out in 1963, it was Kenyatta, once
jailed as a Mau Mau leader, who became president, his community
that took pole position. Forced proximity with the colonial
administration and the proliferation of missionary schools in
Central Province meant the Kikuyu were better educated than other
Kenyans and best placed to benefit from independence. What's more,
they enjoyed the president's patronage. "My people have the milk
in the morning, your tribes the milk in the afternoon," Kenyatta
told non-Kikuyu ministers who complained.
The Kikuyu, outsiders feel, have been rubbing other communities'
noses in their pre-eminence ever since. "We're obnoxious, we're
thrusting, we're loud, and we're everywhere," acknowledges a
Kikuyu banker friend. "Our problem is there aren't enough of us to
dominate, yet we're too large to ignore. We are at once both
obnoxious and indispensable."
Although Kenyatta's successor, Daniel arap Moi, systematically
crushed Kikuyu aspirations while promoting his own Kalenjin, the
community still thrived economically. Hence the conviction, voiced
by snarl-toothed elders and fresh-faced undergraduates alike in
Central Province, that only the Kikuyu—the community that stood up
and defied the white invader—deserve to run the country.
I hear the familiar refrain in a hotel bar in Muranga, whose wall,
significantly, is decorated with framed photographs of Kenyatta
and Kibaki, but not of Moi. "If you did an experiment and took
five Luos, five Luhyas, five Kambas, and five Kikuyus and gave
them money to invest, you would see the result," boasts John
Kiriamiti, who publishes a Muranga newspaper. "The Kikuyu would be
far, far ahead." His business partner, Njoroge Gicheha, chimes in.
"You cannot compare a fisherman in Nyanza who simply pulls a fish
from the lake to a farmer who plants beans in Central Province and
waits six months to harvest. The fact is, we work harder than
other Kenyans."
It's this bumptious sense of entitlement that infuriates Kenya's
47 other tribes. But, with the exception of two bouts of ethnic
cleansing in the 1990s, irritation was largely held in check under
Moi, a topic of good-natured banter rather than abuse.
That changed with the 2002 elections that first put Kibaki in
power. A consensus candidate backed by a broad tribal coalition,
he swiftly reneged on promises of a new constitution devolving
power to the regions. The pledge of a prime minister's post for
Odinga, the man who probably won December's elections, was
withdrawn. As the tribal coalition disintegrated, Kenyans noticed
that key ministries were all held by members of what they dubbed "the
Mount Kenya Mafia." Far from challenging Kenyatta's system of
ethnic favoritism, Kibaki reinforced it.
While Western donors relished Kibaki's 6 percent to 7 percent
growth rates, the mood on the ground was grim. The fact that
Central Province's milk, tea, and coffee industries surged ahead
while other regions remained marginalized did not go unnoticed.
Both sides helped whip low-level ethnic resentment into today's
frenzied hatred.
Odinga raised the stakes by preaching majimboism. Majimboism means
federalism, a system many might think well-suited to
over-centralized Kenya. But to Odinga's supporters, it was a code
word for something very specific: Kikuyus with plots or businesses
in non-Kikuyu areas would be forced out and sent "home."
In Central Province, Kikuyu MPs seized on the majimboist threat to
foster a siege mentality. Rumors of a project to slaughter 1
million Kikuyus circulated like wildfire. "The amount of
fear-mongering [texts] and e-mails was stupendous," says
Kwamchetsi Makokha, a columnist for the Nation newspaper. "It
became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you set the stage where a
single community has isolated itself, what follows is a feeling of
resentment by others, of 'what's so special about you?' "
There was nothing random about the violence that exploded with the
announcement of a Kibaki win. Deciding that the Kikuyu intended to
rule Kenya indefinitely, Luos in the Western town of Kisumu looted
Kikuyu shops, while Kalenjin militias drove Kikuyus from Rift
Valley farms, settling scores dating back to Kenyatta's 1970s
settlement scheme.
A feared Kikuyu militia, the Mungiki, is now extracting vicious
revenge. But as thugs demand ID cards at roadblocks and members of
the "wrong" tribe watch homes go up in smoke, majimboism is being
put into crude practice on the ground, decades of Kikuyu
expansionism challenged and reversed.
Many analysts see the entrepreneurship that defines the Kikuyu
experience as the only hope for peace. Holding such a huge stake
in the Kenyan economy, the Kikuyu have more to lose from the
spiraling anarchy than any other group.
In Nairobi, groups of young Kikuyu professionals are calling for a
power-sharing deal between Kibaki and Odinga. But the only
individuals capable of pushing Kibaki to cede ground at talks
being mediated by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are
probably his Kikuyu businessmen buddies. While they are beginning
to feel the pinch as their hotels empty and investment portfolios
collapse, this elderly group remains hard-line in its instincts.
Here in Central Province, a region locked in belligerent denial
and memories of its insurgent past, there is little talk of
compromise and no criticism of Kibaki. Retreating ever further
into the chauvinistic bunker, some argue that the Kikuyu should
create a mini-state of their own. "We can form a government from
the Mount Kenya area, the Luhya, and some Kalenjin," James Wanyaga,
Nyeri's former mayor, told me. "We can forget about the Luos and
put our security machinery into Rift Valley, just as your people
did under colonialism. And we would get on very well."
On one thing, however, all agree: There must be no more Kikuyu
presidencies. The price of Kikuyu hegemony has already proved
greater than anyone wants to pay. "Come 2012, a Kikuyu candidate
will stand no chance at all here," says Gichema. "We don't want to
be any further isolated."
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