Zarina Patel - Citizenship, Identity and Belonging in Kenya: University of Nairobi & Samosa-Festival Colloquium

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Citizenship, identity and belonging in Kenya

University of Nairobi & SAMOSA-Festival Colloquium

Edited by
Zarina Patel & Zahid Rajan

Published by Daraja Press

http://darajapress.com

Samosa Festival 2017

All rights reserved.

Cover design: Catherine McDonnell

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

University of Nairobi & SAMOSA-Festival Colloquium (2016 : Nairobi, Kenya)
Citizenship, identity and belonging in Kenya : University of Nairobi; SAMOSA-Festival Colloquium / edited by Zarina Patel & Zahid Rajan.

Papers from the University of Nairobi Department of Literature and AwaaZ
SAMOSA Festival Joint Literary Colloquium held as part of the 2016
AwaaZ SAMOSA Festival held in Nairobi, Kenya, 9-27 July 2016.
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-9953474-7-2 (softcover).ISBN 978-0-9953474-8-9 (ebook)
1. Nationalism and the artsKenyaCongresses. 2. ArtsKenyaCongresses.
3. NationalismKenyaCongresses. 4. KenyansRace identityCongresses. 5. SomalisRace identityKenyaCongresses. I. Patel, Zarina, 1935-, editor II. Rajan, Zahid, 1960-, editor III. SAMOSA Festival (7th : 2016 : Nairobi, Kenya)
IV. Title.

NX180.N38C58 2017	700.452996762	C2017-902343-8
C2017-902344-6

Contents

1

Introduction

Zarina Patel and Zahid Rajan

To understand the genesis of this colloquium we need to go back to 2004 for that is the year that the first issue of AwaaZ magazine was published. AwaaZ is an Indian word meaning Voices and the magazine sought initially to voice the history of South Asian leaders who had participated in Kenyas anti-colonial struggle. After some years the magazine moved on to address minority and diversity issues in Kenya and in the region. Today, it has to date 47 issues in its stable.

The central objective of the AwaaZ editors (Zahid Rajan and Zarina Patel) has been, and still is, the building of national unity in Kenya through mutual understanding, learning and interaction. In 2005, to achieve the latter, a festival was organised in Nairobi bringing together various communities in a celebration of art, music, dance, film and debate. The festival was called SAMOSA which was both an acronym (South Asian Mosaic of Society and the Arts) as well as a popular Kenyan food which contains a variety of tasty mixes.

The 7th SAMOSA Festival, staged in July 2016, was held in the Eastleigh, Kamukunji constituency of Nairobi. This is one of the earliest settlements in the development of Nairobi originally largely South Asian but now home to diverse communities but with a preponderance of Kenyan Somalis and refugees from Somalia. SAMOSA is a grassroots festival that works with communities. By holding the festival in Eastleigh, the festival tried to dispel certain stereotypes which claim that:

• Somalis in particular, and the people of Eastleigh in general, are thieves, drug addicts and corrupt
• Somalis are terrorists
• Eastleigh is an area of the Underworld where dealing in stolen goods is the norm

In short, we wanted to dispel the myth that Eastleigh is a dangerous, no-go zone. Nothing is further from the truth. We moved about freely and met a people full of kindness, warmth, enterprise and thrift. But they are also a people deeply traumatized by the brutality of the Kenyan security forces.

A major concern for this Somali population is the issue of citizenship and their ability and right to procure, as legitimate citizens of Kenya, national identity cards. It was to address these particular concerns that, as part of the SAMOSA festival, a colloquium was organized in collaboration with the Literature Department of the University of Nairobi under the heading of Citizenship, Identity and Belonging.

Fourteen papers were presented, the contributors drawn from various Kenyan universities, as well as two authors from civil society. While the issues of refugees, statelessness and Kenyan-ness were directly addressed, some unexpected essays stressed the relevance of the colloquium topic to Death and Dying, Women Religious and to Speech and Music Forms. The keynote address was given by Prof Yash Pal Ghai, the architect of Kenyas second constitution. He focused on the sections of the constitution which deal with the issues of citizenship, identity and belonging that were designed to ensure justice equality. It was a revealing reminder of the far-sighted, inclusive and just objectives of the 2010 Constitution.

In the period leading up to the next SAMOSA Festival (it is a biannual event), the SAMOSA team plans to organize various events and projects under the banner of mini-SAMOSAS. We are planning a memorial lecture for Makhan Singh, the founder of Kenyas trade union movement. Given the growing labour unrest in Kenya and the on-going strikes by doctors and university lecturers, the subject is timely. In the pipeline too is a concert with the Indian flute and tabla as its central focus, as well as a multi-racial chess tournament. These endeavors will feed into the 8th SAMOSA to be held in 2018.

1

Constitution as a source of identity

Keynote Address

Yash Pal Ghai

The Samosa Festival, organised for some years by Zahid Rajan and Zarina Patel, brings together a large number of communities and individuals, including distinguished academicsas is the case today. The activities this year have been particularly interesting and productive, involving as they have done a number of marginalised communities, including the Somali residents of Eastleigh and their social and political leaders. There is no other avenue I know of where the arts and culture of Kenyas communities are celebrated and discussed by such mixed audiences.

The theme of this final session is Identity. It is dominated by Kenyas leading scholars of literature and arts. I have chosen to speak on the 2010 Constitution as a source of identity national, communal and individual. In a world of literary scholars, I offer a few reflections on our new constitutionwhich I immodestly call the identity of the country and hopefully of its people. The concept of a constitution as identity is relatively new. In the old days the constitution was about the structure of the power of the state. Today we realise the complexity of the state and of its people. As I read some of the wonderful and scholarly papers that are on offer, I am struck about how frequently the authors are concerned to understand the identity of the people, group or communityand even sexI should not say even sexbut also sex.

A major difference between the scholarly and the lawyers approaches that strikes me is that the scholar studies identity as it defines a community or group, while a lawyers major interest is often the shaping of identityof the nation and the people. The constitution then becomes the primary instrument of shaping identity. Some commentators, including our immediately past Chief Justice, call such a constitution a transformative constitution. This is an apt description of our present constitution.

I also notice in the scholarly work on offer the concern about the status or acceptance of a community, particularly in the papers about the Somali and other minoritiesand there I felt that a constitutional lawyer and a literary scholar have found common ground. Kenyas constitution is about identity in a number of ways. First and foremost, it is about defining our identity as a people. This is stated upfrontin the preamble-where, in the name of the people, the constitution says that we are Proud of our ethnic, cultural and religious diversity, and determined to live in peace and unity as one indivisible sovereign nation. It commits us to nurturing and protecting the wellbeing of individual, the family, communities and the nation. It goes on to recognise the aspirations of all Kenyans for a government based on the essential values of human rights, equality, freedom, democracy, social justice and the rule of law. The constitution, it reminds us, is a result of our sovereign and inalienable right to determine the form of governance of our countrywhich indeed they have exercised in the making of the constitution.

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