Tribalism has always been a controversial
topic of discussion. It is now a very thorny subject matter given the fact that
the country is preparing to go to general elections. Going by the political
environment in the country, it is unfortunate that our politics are tribal
based rather than issue based. Politicians have aligned themselves to parties
that have their tribesmen and women. Many people argue that the mindset of
tribalism is being propagated by the older generation and that the youth are
considered not do tribal. However, going by the comments made in various social
media networks, this statement is far from the actual situation; the youth are
even more tribal than the older generation.
From the foregoing,
will tribalism ever end? I may not know what
your take is but I think tribalism will not end, at least not anytime soon. In
point of fact, tribalism emanates from a concept that has been with us since
time in memorial; discrimination. Discrimination is a notion that exists in
every society from Kenya to Australia, Papua New Guinea to Bolivia you will
indeed find elements of discrimination. So in a nut shell, tribalism is a form
of discrimination just like racism or nepotism. Discrimination cannot end maybe
in an ideal world.
Others have argued that
we won’t have tribalism if we had one tribe or few tribes like two. Take the
case of Somalia. Somalia as we know it has not known peace since 1990. Somalia
has only one tribe-the Somali. The country has been at war ever since it is
divided along clans that make up the Somali tribe. It all began with different
clans claiming power citing discrimination by the ‘clan’ in power.
On the hand we have
Rwanda which has only two tribes-Hutu and Tutsi. They fought each other in 1994
resulting to the world’s worst genocide. Now, Nigeria, the most populous
country in Africa has over 100 tribes has conflicts which has not erupted from
tribal rivalry but from religious differences which is also currently behind
the woes in Mali.
So it will always come
down to something to discriminate one person from the other. Tribalism cannot
be stamped out completely but can be reduced as it is a form of discrimination.
It is imperative that we desist from discriminating other people regardless of
the parameter of inequity because there is strength and unity in diversity.
