From divide-and-rule to woke: Fear politics faces new voters

In his Swahili play Visiki, Khaemba Ongeti dramatises how politicians weaponise cultural identity to win votes. In the play, which was a set book when many of us sat our final secondary school examinations, two politicians retreat to their respective backyards to mobilise support ahead of an election. They soon realise they have little to show their people by way of development.

Faced with that uncomfortable reality, they devise a familiar political strategy, known in modern Kenyan parlance as ‘selling fear’. One convinces supporters that another community poses an existential threat to their future. The other responds in kind, persuading her followers that they have no hope unless they prevent their perceived rivals from ascending to power. It is a simple yet devastating lesson in how fear, rather than ideas, becomes political currency.

Visiki belongs to a long tradition of set books that capture the realities of political life and alert ordinary people to the dangers posed by those seeking either to acquire or retain power. Incumbents often portray outsiders as enemies, creating imaginary threats around which supporters are expected to rally. Those pursuing power, meanwhile, cultivate ethnic strongholds so they can emerge as indispensable regional ‘kingpins’, hoping such leverage will secure them a seat at the high table, where politicians have become notorious for helping themselves generously to what has come to be known as the national cake.

I need not dwell on how this tired yet remarkably resilient script continues to unfold. As Scripture reminds us, those who have eyes can see. Country code 254 is once again edging towards another election season.

The script predates colonialism, although colonial administrators refined it into an instrument of empire. When Frederick John Dealtry Lugard travelled through what is now Kenya in 1890 on his way to Uganda, and when Sir Arthur Hardinge became the first Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, the British encountered closely knit societies that proved difficult to penetrate and transform into dependable sources of labour, raw materials and markets for British manufactured goods.

To establish a foothold, colonial agents exploited existing rivalries. They presented themselves as protectors against neighbouring communities with whom occasional conflicts over pasture, livestock and other resources arose. Their fire-spitting weapons impressed local leaders, while diplomacy and carefully cultivated alliances won confidence.

Hardinge’s alliance with the Maasai leader Oloibon Lenana during the succession dispute following Batian’s death became one of the most consequential examples. Across the country, similar alliances enabled colonial authority to entrench itself before turning those same societies into subjects of empire. Once firmly established, the imperial project unfolded broadly along the lines agreed at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. Colonial administrations introduced taxes, compelled African communities into the cash economy and reorganised indigenous systems of governance. Resistance was frequently overcome by setting one community against another.

Divide and rule became one of the principal instruments through which colonial authority asserted itself. Its after-effects have lingered long after independence, contributing, among other tragedies, to the 1994 Rwanda genocide and, closer to home, Kenya’s 2007–2008 post-election violence.

It is therefore hardly surprising that African literature has repeatedly returned to this theme. Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah examines the fractures colonialism introduced into African societies. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood explore the betrayals of the postcolonial elite.

Yet while successive generations of African politicians have continued to deploy these antediluvian tactics to win or retain office, the strategy is becoming increasingly counterproductive for two reasons.

First, even where it succeeds electorally, it leaves deep social wounds that take years, sometimes generations, to heal. It weakens the already fragile bonds among the diverse cultural nationalities cobbled together into modern African states during the Berlin partition.

Second, and more importantly, the electorate has changed profoundly while many politicians have not. Thirty years ago, large sections of African populations were rural, less formally educated and dependent largely on state broadcasters and political rallies for information. Constitutional arrangements also gave ruling elites an almost vice-like grip on power.

Today’s Kenya presents a fundamentally different landscape. The average voter is younger, better educated and immersed in an unprecedented information ecosystem. Many encountered socially and politically conscious literature through school set books such as Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City, Ken Walibora’s Kidagaa Kimemwozea, Adipo Sidang’s A Parliament of Owls and Assumpta K. Matei’s Chozi la Heri. These works encourage learners to interrogate power, corruption, justice, leadership and citizenship rather than accept political narratives uncritically.

Then came the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. Unlike earlier constitutions, which political elites amended with relative ease whenever expediency demanded, the new constitutional order introduced stronger safeguards. The Supreme Court’s treatment of the Basic Structure Doctrine during the Building Bridges Initiative litigation underscored that some foundational constitutional principles cannot simply be altered at the whim of the political class.

Equally significant, the generation that entered school after the introduction of Free Primary Education in 2003 learnt civic education, constitutionalism and citizenship as part of its schooling. Combined with literature, digital technology and the information revolution, that education has produced a markedly different citizen from the one politicians addressed three decades ago.

Perhaps that is why the old politics of fear increasingly appears out of step with the society it seeks to govern.