SOURCE : allAfrica
ANALYSIS
BY NANJALA NYABOLA
There's one huge theme
that cuts across all Kenyan politics and it's not ethnicity and it's not land.
On 22 February, readers of The Star newspaper were
treated to the front-page headline which screamed: "Gideon Moi is
uncircumcised, says DP Ruto".
This story was sparked by an observation about Gideon
Moi's foreskin that Deputy President William Ruto allegedly made at a political
event in support of his favoured candidate for the hotly-contested Kericho
by-election.
There has been some debate as to what exactly Ruto meant
as he spoke in Kalenjin, and whether it was a comment about circumcision or a
euphemism to refer to Moi as a young pretender. But either way, one thing is
clear: We have finally reached a point at which we can no longer pretend Kenyan
politics is anything more than a never-ending dick-measuring contest.
The received wisdom about politics in Kenya has always
been that the biggest problems facing the country are land and ethnicity.
Politicians deploy these concerns to mobilise voting blocks. And in both
academia and journalism, these two ideas generally form the bedrock of how the
country is analysed and what solutions are proposed.
However, this understanding of Kenya's politics is based
on a flawed premise which sees the problems of elite men as the problems of the
country as a whole. They are not. In fact, these two "major"
struggles are, at heart, primarily contests of patriarchy - of mimi ni ndume
('I am a bull') politics in which men butt heads for local or national
supremacy.
A
cock and bull story
The history and politics of Kenya look fundamentally
different when the central referent object of the analysis is a woman. Consider
ethnicity. Volumes have been written about the impact of ethnicity, including
full length texts on how identities are constructed, mobilised and deployed.
But what rarely gets noticed is how deeply patriarchal both the practice and
analysis of ethnicity are.
For instance, the argument that the animus between
Kenya's ethnic groups is insurmountable overlooks the fact that, for millennia,
women have been married off between ethnic groups. The only reason their ethnic
identities are erased is that most communities in Kenya are patrilineal. One
only has to look at the two leading political families - the Kenyattas and the
Odingas - to see this truth in motion. This phenomenon also speaks to the fact
that ethnicity is in no way essential or rigid, but rather a highly malleable
concept that is easily exploited in pursuit of various political goals.
Similarly, the idea that land is the most important
problem in Kenya overlooks the fact that women constitute just over half the
country's population yet are constrained by custom from owning land. Very few
communities will allow women to independently purchase or inherit land with no
obstacles, and the legal struggles over property laws are symptomatic of the
lengths men will go to in order to keep it this way.
Consider, for example, the status of women's property
laws in marriage. The initial draft of the 2013 Matrimonial Property bill contemplated
an automatic 50-50 split of property in the event of divorce. But during the
debate, it was re-tabled with amendments that required "proof of
contribution". This is one of the many ways in which women's rights in
marriage are trampled on, because it is difficult to prove to a legal standard
the monetary value of non-financial labour that women put into marriages. For
instance, what's the monetary value of the many times a wife had sex although
she didn't want to because it made her husband feel better on his way to work?
The final version
of the bill (opposed by 28 of the 34 female legislators) also restricted
matrimonial property to "movable and immovable property jointly owned by
both spouses". This means that if the man registers the household bank
account under only his name, it is protected from any divorce proceedings. Or
if the husband inherits land and does not add his wife's name to the deeds, a
woman cannot legally claim it as part of marital assets.
How can the biggest problem in Kenya be land when the
majority of the population is not free to own it?
Giving the patriarchy the shaft
At the same time, statistics on domestic violence in
Kenya are telling. In a 2014 demographic and health survey, 23.8% of women
between the ages of 15 and 19 reported having suffered physical or sexual
violence at the hands of a partner. This number rises to a startling 42.6% for
women between 40 and 49. Moreover, these numbers hold pretty much steady across
all kinds of other factors - across ethnic groups, wealth disparities, urban
vs. rural.
In fact, domestic violence is arguably the only truly
national issue in Kenya that cuts across all other divides. But because it is a
problem that primarily affects women, not only is it not on the national
political agenda but even political analysts don't give it the attention it
deserves.
It is not enough to just observe that Kenya's politics is
elitist. We must also contend with the fact that it is overwhelmingly
patriarchal. All of Kenya's largest ethnic groups are crippled by toxic,
violent masculinities that poison the national dialogue and crowd out
constructive discourse on anything else.
Speak
to Kenyan women in the public sphere and they will tell you that it is Kikuyu
men that express the most toxic attitudes towards the candidacy of Martha Karua
or Wangari Maathai. That it is Somali men who pressure Somali women not to run
in favour of other men in the clan. And that it is Kamba, Luhya, Luo or
Kalenjin men who beat their sisters and daughters who offer to run for office.
What are presented as the main problems of Kenya are
really just contestation between groups of elite men measuring in the public
sphere what should really be left to the country club dressing room.
Men are the biggest obstacles to the political
advancement of women in their own communities, but women can be part of the
problem too. When a woman criticises the private morality of a female political
figure, she is upholding a patriarchal system that subjects women in public to
higher moral standards than men. When we propagate mimi ni ndume politics by
refusing to acknowledge or celebrate the contributions of women in politics, we
are reifying the argument that women are "flower girls" who do no
substantive work. When we encourage women politicians to kowtow to big men
instead of building alternative centres of power, we reinforce the system. When
we uncritically accept men as "natural leaders" without interrogating
their motives or intentions, we bolster the patriarchy.
To avoid the seemingly inevitable descent into perdition
in the coming 2017 election, Kenya needs a new politics - right down to the
ways in which we think about who is fighting whom, and for what. It is high
time we axe Kenya's big dick politics. Or, in the words of Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, in order to save Kenya, we should all - men and women - be feminists.
Nanjala Nyabola is a Kenyan writer, humanitarian advocate
and political analyst, currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. Follow her on twitter
at @Nanjala1.
