What has your tribe done for you?

Do you know what your tribe has done for you? I mean other than a culture, an identity, a language, food, sense of style, traditions and music, what has your tribe done for you lately? Don't knock tribe: I may be a Kenyan, but in my heart of hearts—the two of them I have discovered anyway—I will always be Kamba, Luo, Indian and Lawyer—and yes, Lawyer is a tribe, so get off my back about it. How does it work? Pretty easily. My tribe gives me things—identities, if you must—and it does things for me, but beyond that it is not responsible for what I do.

I saw a remarkable thread on Twitter about the cost of corruption. What made it remarkable was the assumption that just because political and other kinds of leaders exploit all the things that make a tribal identity a vital part of our lives for corrupt ends, it is okay to dismiss tribal identities are useless in the twenty-first century. How else do we socialise our children if not in the values and mores of their ancestors as interpreted by their tribes—respect, truth, loyalty, trust, love? That part of my heritage that is both Kamba and Indian that loves saffron, a sartorial sensibility that ignores the dull Milanese, London and New York palates, and enjoys a conspiratorial approach to folk tales is just as important to me as the Luo and Lawyer heritage that prizes a pedantic approach to English, Swahili and Latin and embraces the sharp uniform of the legal eagle on the make: dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, black super-polished brogues.

Someone invented "negative ethnicity" after "tribalism" failed to gain purchase and it became fashionable to blame "negative ethnicity" for the problems caused by our leaders. Our leaders are not responsible for the problems they cause. We are not responsible for blindly following them down dark alleys. Blame it all on "negative ethnicity" and appoint commissions to investigate it, enact statutes to ban it, and empower prosecutors to jail those who engage in it.

Do you really think that when they remind me of how the "d" in "duka" somehow always acquires a Kamban "n" before it that I find it objectionable?  Do you really think I find it hateful when they speak with a mixture of awe and fear about the famed witchdoctors of my native Kitui? I am proud of the reputation that my lake-side roots have of pride in and haughty arrogance of achievement, especially if that achievement comes via a hard-to-crack profession like law, medicine, architecture or engineering. Say what you will of the Indian (Asian) reputation for thrift and asset management, but tell me again, Do you love living in poverty? No, my friends. Our tribal identities are never, can never be negative. They are who we are.

What I resent mightily is the exploitation of my tribal identity for the benefit of an elite. When a leader lazily calls on my tribal loyalties and fealties, not for the benefit of my fellow tribal sisters and brothers but for his own alone, I am offended. I have absolutely no reason to pay him any mind; I have been to a school or two so I am able to resist his base calls on my identities. But more often than not, there is a large cohort of my fellowman that is barely lettered, incapable of seeing behind the sophisticated manipulation of their identities, for the benefit of one or two. It is in these abject betrayals that the illogical question is asked, What has your tribe done for you? forgetting the awful truth, My tribe has done a lot for me. My tribe is not guilty of anything. One of my tribesmen has attempted to selfishly exploit it for his own personal gain and if I have anything to do with it, I will see him ostracised and shunned for all eternity and his ways rejected by the right-thinking among us.