Bazungu began like us - with many tribes - but over a long time those tribes disappeared- and from it emerged the british, the germans, the italians - etc.Kenya like other Africa countries are recent constructs - but I bet say 300 yrs from now - there will be a real kenyan identity. Obviously that is long time - but certainly as we develop and urbanize - to say 90% of urbanization - a new kenyan identity will emerge.But for now - we need to manage our differences - through devolution & federalism - and of course through national parties & leadership.
It appears to me - that most of our problems will slowly disappear on it's own - including corruption, poor leadership & tribalism - as long as we keep moving forward one step at a time.
I think it's fool hardy to imagine we can solve any of our problems say in one or two generations - we need to stop stressing ourselves and just buy time.
Corruption for example has been shown to disappear on it's own as the country become richer - and risk-reward matrix changes. The same way robbery with violence will disappear with time.So as long as the economy is growing - that will eventually take care of itself. Otherwise whatever measures you put now will always have limited effect - as we have seen with regard with Kenya - because the environment is totally corrupt. So by GDP growing at average of 6% regardless of graft - we are actually dealing with graft - by providing more opportunity for people to live honest life.
Tribalism - will change with increasing urbanization - the country in 100yrs will be totally unrecognizable from now - Imagine a country with say 50 cities - all of them cosmopolitan. You cannot ran such a country by mobilizing on ethnic grounds. In fact I don't see any of our tribal language surviving say 200 yrs from now - they will all go extinct - and Kiswahili & English will become our national language. Of course most of us are impatient and want to see things happen now - sorry these things takes centuries.
If we had one dominant group, say 75% of the country belonging to one group, I'd say it would be less of a problem. But when you have even the biggest groups with a share of only like 20% of the populace, the competition becomes really toxic among the population over time and if even the smallest sense of unfairness is seen to be happening whether or not it is happening, the resentment and toxicity becomes a threat to nationhood which should trump any smaller sense of belonging. We have to find solutions that directly deal with this if we are ever gonna move forward and bazungu models wont work for us because these models were never designed to solve the problems WE have but the ones bazungu had throughout the last millenium.
