Tusker Project Fame: Ethnic States, Popular Flows

Abstract

Ethnicity has come to be the dominant currency of Kenya's politics over recent years. This article explores the social meaning of ethnicity through an examination of ethnic stereotyping, as this is revealed in a variety of popular discourses. Stereotypes are forged and circulated within popular sites of cultural encounter, and they are one of the principal means through which the objectives of ethnic projects are executed. The predominance of stereotypes within everyday social discourse in Kenya makes ethnic ‘othering’ normative. The article interrogates the links between popular cultural flows that enable the formulation and dissemination of both ethnic-based and other stereotypes, for instance on masculinity. It is argued that a consideration of (en-)gendering, often entirely missing from discussions of stereotypes, enables a more nuanced reading of such practices. It is asserted that stereotypes have become a dominant mode of discoursing in Kenya today because they constitute a corpus of folklore, originated within ‘in-groups’ and deployed in various modes against ‘out-groups’. In a society where folklore reaches deep into the past few people ever stop to question the validity of folkloric interpretations that are constantly at work in the present. These issues around stereotyping and ethnicity are examined through consideration of bar-room conversations, the lyrics of popular songs, text messaging, internet chat rooms, and newspaper cartoons

Notes

1. Bhabha, Location of Culture.

2. Mutonya, ‘Mugithi Performance’, 57.

3. ‘Kaparo Warns on Dangers of “Tribal Democracy”’, Daily Nation, 14 March 2007.

4. See for instance Miller, Theories of Africans, 35; Mutonya, ‘Mugithi Performance’.

5. Dundes, From Game to War.

6. Nyairo and Ogude, ‘Specificities’, 383.

7. Ogola, ‘Christening Fiction’; Ogola, ‘Wahome Mutahi’; Wa-Mungai, ‘Big Man's Turn to Dance’.

8. See Lifestyle, Sunday Nation, 18 March 2007.Where the story ‘In the grip of alcohol: social crisis as thousands go through life glass in hand’ reports on the deleterious effects of alcohol abuse on at least 70 per cent of Kenyan families, here I am interested in social organizations, especially the folklore, that obtain from these moments of collective consumption.

9. Nyairo and Ogude, ‘Specificities’, 3.

10. The practice of showing these sports events in bar-rooms first began in up-market Nairobi establishments that could afford the high costs involved in the installation of satellite television, but it has subsequently spread to bars of all kinds and styles.

11. Sheng is an increasingly popular Kenyan urban ‘dialect’ that works by fixing particles of words from other languages onto Kiswahili stems.

12. For an analysis of the critique of this trait in the Luo music of Nairobi City Ensemble, see Nyairo and Ogude, ‘Specificities’, 389–393. In the radio show, the distinctly Luo-accented studio comedian informs Maina, a Gikuyu: ‘Do you see how Agwambo [Raila's nickname] has become the first man in Kibera to buy a car that looks like a plane? Do you imagine what he will buy when he becomes president? And you tell me to leave Kibera? To go where?’ The last question fragment indicates the widely held hope among the predominantly Luo slum population that a positive turn in Raila's fortune will automatically translate into their own prosperity. The broader struggle for political power is reduced to, and mapped within, status symbols.

13. See for instance Schatzberg, Political Economy of Kenya.

14. Mwampembwa, The End of an Error, 113.

15. The National Alliance of Kenya dislodged KANU from power in 2002 but soon after serious in-house fractures led to a faction of the politicians in NAK going off to form NARC-K.

16. Mutonya, ‘Mugithi Performance’, 59.

17. Haugerud, Culture of Politics, 30.

18. Kinuthia, ‘Slum Clearance’.

19. Oucho, Undercurrents.

20. De'Mathew sings this in the Gikuyu language: ‘Ithui no ithui twari kuu-i mutitu ona thakame tugiitwo inyui mwari o-toro, ona ithamirio tugitwarwo mwari o-mucii, nokio mwaremwo ni guthikirira muti […] Ikurundwo ma ndiregaga ruoro no ndamwirire ihii itiitagwo uthoni.’

21. The same text can also be found at Africanbulletsandhoney blog but most informants indicated that they are only aware of the cellphone message.

22. Murimi, ‘Game Export’.

23. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’.

24. Gruppen, ‘Hate-Media Chiefs Found Guilty’. See also Forges, ‘Call to Genocide’.

25. See Daily Nation, 4 April 2007, pp.1, 4 and 5, ‘Terror Zone’; and Daily Nation, 9 April 2007, pp.1–2, ‘Deadly Militiamen: The Untold Story’. See also Oucho, Undercurrents.

26. Mukinda, ‘Policeman Shot Dead’.

27. ‘Radio Station Suspended Over Reported Incitement to Violence’. Available from http://www.ifex.org/es/content/view/full/70535.

28. IFEX, ‘Moi Threatens’.

29. Haugerud, Culture of Politics.

30. Nyairo and Ogude, ‘Specificities’, 382.

31. Mutonya, ‘Mugithi Performance’, 59.

32. Dundes, From Game to War.

33. The tag ‘tribalism’ in Kenya is often a code for Gikuyu ethnicity. This is an anxious subject that often results in emotional cyber-debates, as can be seen in another blog, Africanbulletsandhoney, whose topic for 6 October 2006 was headlined ‘The Gikuyu Debate Hots UP!’

34. Nyairo, ‘Modify’ 145–147.

35. Hannerz, Soulside.

36. ‘Inside Report: J.M. Murder’, Daily Nation, 11 February 2002.

37. ‘Special Report; Fight for Land May End up in Court’, Daily Nation, 10 March 2003.

38. Thomas, ‘Pick-up Trucks’.

39. Gilmore, Carnival and Culture.

40. The story of Wangu wa Makeri is often cited by Kenyan feminists who see her as a nineteenth-century heroine in the cause of women's rights. In doing so they ignore the fact that the narrative voice is clearly masculine, and that the core point of the tale is to disparage women's leadership, not to praise it. Besides, it should be instructive that outside Kenyatta's My People of Kikuyu (1942), no other account of this tale has been reported. There is accordingly good reason to be sceptical about this text's validity as social history.

41. Other Kenyan communities have their stereotypes about ‘clans’ whose women are ‘unmarriageable’. For instance, amongst the AbaKuria, the women from Isebania, an urban centre along the Kisii-Sirare road,are said to ‘be so hungry for sex even if you marry them, they will never stop looking for it’ (Kesero Tunai, personal communication).

42. Mwaniki and Muhoro, ‘Role of Editorial Cartoons’.

43. Musila, Democrazy

44. Gathaara, Drawing the Line, 37, reports that he consulted Levi Obonyo who was then writing a doctoral dissertation on Kenyan cartoons at Temple University, but Obonyo's work has not yet been consulted at the time of completing this paper.

45. Mwampembwa, End of an Error.

46. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 46–47.

47. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 49.

48. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 77.

49. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 93.

50. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 102.

51. Mwampembwa, End of an Error, 104.

52. See Kamau, ‘Why Do Men Suffer.’

53. Gathaara, Drawing the Line, 25.

54. Haugerud, Culture of Politics.

55. Musila, Democrazy, 99.

56. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World.

57. ‘Jilted Ex-husband Speaks of his Deep Love for Bishop Wanjiru’, Sunday Nation, 14 January 2007, 8–9; ‘Bishop Tells off Man who Claims to be her Husband’, Daily Nation, 15 January 2007, 5.