Kenya’s tribalism isn’t back—it’s being socially engineered for the elections.
Every five years, like clockwork, the country is sprayed with the same accelerant: “us” versus “them.” And suddenly we’re back to dissecting surnames. Let’s stop pretending this is organic. Kenya’s tribal flames aren’t flickering back on their own. They’re being fanned deliberately, professionally, and with the precision of people who know they’re running out of road ahead of the 2027 elections.
Raila Odinga’s passing, on October 15, was a national event, marked by state honours and a week of mourning. The facts are not in dispute. Nor is the grief. The numbers of Kenyans who turned up to pay their last respects to Raila, and the tragedy of stampedes amid that grief, are documented. That is our real country: mixed crowds, mixed languages, yet one mood. But the narrative machine loves a fight more than it loves facts.
So when Uhuru Kenyatta, a former president and for years a de facto Mt Kenya kingpin, joined the nation in mourning, it was treated as an individual act of decency. When Mutahi Kahiga, a besieged governor on the absolute lower rung of regional (let alone national) relevance, made irresponsible remarks, it was instantly packaged as the voice of an entire community. How does that work?
In an industry addicted to engagement, tribal bait is performance-enhancing content. The moment the clip landed, the “interpretation” work had already been done for you.
Most dangerous actors
We need to be clear about this though: Kenya’s tribalism isn’t back—it’s being socially engineered for the elections. The most dangerous actors in our politics right now are the shadowy figures in a do-or-die season who will do anything to avoid dying politically. Their calculus is basic. If the national mood is unity and sobriety, they have a problem. If the national mood is fear and division, they have a base. So they manufacture grievance, assign it to an entire tribe, and force the rest of us into defensive identity postures. And they do it on a clock—because 2027 isn’t far away.
We’ve seen this choreography before. In 2007, it was “41 against 1.” In 2013, ICC narratives were fed through ethnic grievance mills. In 2017, “our turn to eat” became a governance philosophy. In 2022, unity was a prop, not a project. The pattern is quite impressively stable actually: on the eve of accountability, stoke the old fires. Raise the costs of cross-ethnic solidarity. Make collaboration feel like betrayal. Feed the lie that politics is a tribal census, not a delivery contract.
Meanwhile, the country you and I actually live in looks nothing like that script. We share plots. We carpool from the same estates. We take our kids to the same schools and complain about the same fees. We buy cement from a Kikuyu, hire a Luo tiler, a Kamba electrician, and a Luhya mason, then send M-Pesa to a Somali wholesaler for supplies. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder at funerals and football games. We only remember to act tribal every five years. Coincidence?
Let’s name the playbook in plain language: A “leader” says something incendiary where cameras can find it, it is the provocation stage. Operatives clip, subtitle, and seed it to high-reach accounts, this is where the packaging happens. The amplify stage is where this information meets you, minding your business, like an endless hum that just won’t stop. Bots, paid pages, and friendly pundits create an illusion of consensus. Then Panels are booked. “Analysts” appear. The public is sorted into camps and peak polarity is achieved. It’s all a ruse, a distraction.
Honour Raila's legacy
If you are tired, you’re right to be. This is not just immoral; it’s deeply unproductive. Our real fights are staring us in the face: the price of unga and fuel, broken county hospitals, unconstitutional, vague bills threatening our freedoms, a tax policy that punishes hustle while protecting elite rackets, and a graduate unemployment crisis tearing families apart. None of those problems care about your surname. But every minute we spend in engineered ethnic brawls is a minute that corruption gets to breathe.
So what now? We build a fire-break. We stop sharing incendiary clips and starve the arsonists of oxygen. We learn to ask, before forwarding, who shot this, who subtitled it, who bought the ads, who benefits from the heat. We refuse to platform recklessness. We demand institutions with teeth — not just NCIC pressers, but prosecutions that bite and judgments that stick. We put our money where our values are and fund independent media that values rigour over rage. We organise politics around delivery, not ancestry, and we force leaders to defend records with data, not with flags and hymns. And, crucially, we register and vote like shareholders conducting a performance review, not like tribes tallying head counts.
We should also honour Raila’s legacy by refusing the bait. Whether you loved him or opposed him, you cannot deny he stretched Kenya’s imagination of what a united, just politics could look like — often at great personal cost. Reducing that journey to a headline about who “benefits” from his absence is not just small; it’s a betrayal of the very idea that this country can be bigger than its fissures.
Let’s make a national promise: Not this time. Not again. When they light matches, we pour water. When they weaponise grief, we answer with dignity. And when they finally show up asking for votes with the old hymns and new lies, we hand them a clean audit: you didn’t build, you divided, and you’re fired.
Kenya deserves leaders who grow the pie, not pyromaniacs who live off the smoke. We’ve mourned enough, paid enough, waited enough. Kenya is ready to move — as one republic, many languages, one project: progress. The tribal engineers have had their season. In 2027, we close the factory, permanently.
