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So @RookieKE asked me to try and give a historical perspective of this Luo-Kikuyu animosity that has held KE hostage for 50+years.
The Q was triggered by what Dr. @marvinsrm went through at work today. Start here , then come back to this thread.
Most explorations of this question will start in 1969, with the murders of Mboya, Argwings Kodhek, and the Russia Hospital massacre.
That, and the oathing that followed and escalated, then the banning of the KPU, and everything else. But that's the middle of the story.
Why it's hard to understand at first is that unlike Kikuyu-Kalenjin interactions which were escalated by displacements, Kikuyu-Luo ones...
...were created in urban areas (because there was little to no precolonial and early colonial interaction) and politics...
Then, when you get to the 1950s and people from GEMA are hounded out of Nairobi, other communities are brought in to fill the space.
Our colonial masters, in their diabolical wisdom, had divided us as nations into herds with different "strengths and weaknesses."
They escalated this in the '50s to kill any intra-community support for the Mau Mau. There's one specific event that might illustrate this.
Feb 15 1956: 11 prisoners escaped from Mageta Island on Lake Victoria. All of them were Kikuyu, jailed for Mau Mau related activities.
They killed a fisherman and stole his boat. The official story, however, was that they mutilated his body and used it for oathing rituals.
After they landed in Usenge, the story spread even further. Cops killed three of them, then a mob killed one in Alego, and two more in Sakwa
The other five escaped, and their story seems to have remained untold. My theory, they were hidden in Luoland and most likely survived.
Officially though, such assistance didn't sit well with colonials. The divide and rule rule demands constant acrimony, which they perfected.
They wanted the Mau Mau to remain a mostly Kikuyu story, despite the fact that ethnicity didn't really matter when it came to grievances.
Argwings-Kodhek sacrificed his license to practise law, and alot of his personal money, defending Mau Mau suspects across Central Kenya.
But by the time we get to the '60s, the emerging elite realises that they need to retain the colonial approach to divide and rule.
Mboya, as a Suba man (born in Thika) is brilliant at it. So is Jaramogi. And so is Kenyatta and his men.
They retained these, and used them, especially in urban areas where the dynamic shift in the '50s hadn't been rectified.
When you look at the electoral results of those early elections, you can see the modern 'tribal' patterns at play.
You can also see, at the national level, ironically, Kikuyu elites sneering at everyone else "for not fighting for wiyathi." As if they had.
Then, Kenyatta I gets a stroke in 1968 and the (mostly) Kikuyu elites around him realise his time is done. They kill off Mboya and Kodhek.
(I forgot to mention that we often forget that one of the Kapenguria Six was Achieng' Oneko from Uyoma. He was more Mau Mau than Kenyatta I)
Mboya is a young, charismatic leader from a minority community with an international profile. He was perfect, so he was killed.
That's six months after Argwings-Kodhek is killed in a staged accident.
Then Russia Hospital follows.
Then Russia Hospital follows.
As Kisumu is burying its own after the massacre, on the Kikuyu side Kenyatta is invoking an oath that reminded the Kikuyu of the '50s.
He's not just forcing it, people have to contribute money to it. They are being herded from as far as Elburgon and Molo to Ichaweri.
It's war, is the message. Those that refuse, like John G Gatu (read Fan to Flame btw) are either kidnapped or their spouses are kidnapped.
To know just how traumatising that oath was, it took Rev. Gatu's wife decades to tell him she had been kidnapped and forced to take it.
With the cutting down of Luoland's (here used broadly) young promising sons, only Jaramogi remains, but he's vanquished.
In the colonialist's eyes, and the governments after, the Luo are strong but rebellious while the Kikuyu are enterprising but thieving.
They did this even at the top level. For example British intel told Kenyatta that Jaramogi was behind the 1964 mutiny at Lanet Barracks.
If you have never read about the 1964 Lanet Mutiny, and its reasons and implications, start here web.artsci.wustl.edu/tparsons/tpars…
Note that in the next two attempted coups, 1971 and 1982, majority of the plotters are Luo. This is because of several reasons.
At the top, of course, is that their chances of promotion in the military are perhaps the lowest because well, of politics.
Moi has every intention of escalating status quo, as he shows when he jails RAO and his father, and further subjugates the Luo.
Typical of his style, he picks a few pointmen in Luoland and Kikuyuland but fans the animosity even more...
He also encourages the Kalenjin-Kikuyu front, especially in the '90s, because it keeps him in power.
My point here is, if you are under 40 it is likely your parents lived through most of these events, they internalised them.
To date I still can't get my old man to properly talk about 1969 and the oathing. He was in his 20s.
We have internalised a form of hate that has nothing to do with us, that we know little about, and we are okay being ignorant about.
Most of the things you'll hear both sides say of each other would fit perfectly in 1956, in a colonial propaganda manual.
Make no mistake, there are no two sides among the elite. It is a game they play and benefit from, much like their colonial predecessors.
If someone @marvinsrm has treated can spit on him simply because of where the lottery of life placed him, how is this a sane society?
If one side of the electorate can ignore police brutality and murders simply because its "them", then how is this a society at all?
This is just one dynamic btw, of how fractured we are. The '60s, when we should have been healing, was when we fucked up.
We escalated differences of the colonial era, added new ones (the Somali war of secession) and unnecessarily fought each other.
Just like we are now, we chose the semblance of stability over the long-term benefits of justice and equality.
Most of the leaders who benefitted from this are now dead, by murder or disease or old age, and here we are, suffering through it still.
To end this thread, this year has shown that we still don't know how fucked up things are.
In another 50 years, perhaps we will.
In another 50 years, perhaps we will.
