Re: Re: The Republic of Winam

Dear All,

I've spent much of this afternoon browsing through Meshack's first thread on Luo state, Tony Blairs plea to both Scottish and English people opposed to United Kingdom, and Okumu's response, and again back to Meshack's support for what he calls 'Winam State'.

At the bottom of all these calls are genuine social, economic and political concerns. In the UK, the Scottish and other minority Britons feel short-changed; there is a feeling, growing over the years that they could be better off in their own state, speaking their own language, enjoying a culture running back hundreds of years and of course charting an economic and political destiny of benefit only to Scotland. But is this really a selfless call or just some bluff?

Let me hasten to say that the Luo people have genuine grievances against certain communities who feel that they should be forever subjugated to them.

However, my submission is that there is a growing culture of ethnic suspicion and rebellion within nation blocks around the world. I have argued elsewhere that even among the Luo, there is unease between peoples of different clans, and between personalities and if this is not addressed, we may be heading nowhere with separation. Atieno Odhiambo(2005) in 'Discourses of development in Luoland' thinks it is an inherent malaise in our nation which is self-destructive. We tend to fear venturing into the unknown, hence the feeling that if it has never been done, then nobody should do it. Hence the betrayal, and back-stabbing that we see in politics. Much about this later. Let us look at the Scottish-English question.

Whereas similar fears and concerns may be at play here, it is not entirely fair to draw a comparison between the socio-political situation in the UK and Kenya. Apart from the fact that the monarchy is everlastingly English, Scotland is for all intents and purposes an independent country.

Secondly, Scotland's economy which is very vibrant, benefits mainly the scottish people( apart from taxes to the exchequer). Intermarriage among the British people, and the English language( there is a strong scottish accent though) has ensured some form of Britishness among most(sic) people here. Democracy, which has come a long way, and the rule of the law, has ensured equality and fairness in most sectors,which no one can deny. Obviuosly, there is always a feeling that one can be much better-off if he was deciding his own political destiny.

A recent referendum called to ask the Scottish people to choose their own independent parliament was defeated by majority. Of course there was the feeling that an independent legislature in a Union was equal to no independence. It is clear from the referendum results that people felt that it was a win-win situation, so why change the status-quo? There are are far more socio-political gains in the Union than there would be if they separated.

As Tony Blair put it: the Union has been good to both the Scottish and the English; separation would be a retreat into an old-fashioned view of the world. This old-fashioned view of the world is that the world only looks beautiful from our point of view.This kind of world was perfected by two American Anthropologist-linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. In the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the world view is determined by our culture, which is given clarity by our language.

Hence separation and seccession has gained currency around the world, but it may be more problematic than people are prepared to accept.Anderson(1991) lit the bon-fire of ethnic states when he argued that modern Nations( colonial states) are just imagined communities. It is true that putting communities with alien cultures within a common boundary has broughta lot of misery to our people, but my thesis is that leadership or lack of it has been our greatest enemy.

I'm for strong leaders, not necessarily dictators, but I would not hesitate to applaud the leadership in Cuba, Libya, Uganda and some countries in South America. In fact, I think Raila Odinga would be an ideal person to take us across the Red Sea and the Mediterrenean, to the new Kenya. We must fight for it, because nobody is going to give it freely.

Nation-states may not be the immediate answer to our current predicament, but an option of the last resort. If it were, then we wouldn't have situations like Somalia, Burundi or even Iraq. It ihas become fashionable to blame the chaos in these countries to superior western countries, but the question which begs asking is how these leaders could allow themselves to be used by the super powers to cause misery to their own people?

The answer to that question is that they were compromised because of their greed; the world needs selfless leaders. Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King both lived ahead of their time.

Daniel Onyango