Elections in Kenya inspire Art-gctid77105

[liongod]

As elections approach, some Kenyans struggle to find their place in the land                                                                     By CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO         (             email the author)                   
     
    Posted      Wednesday, February 13  2013 at  16:58
 
                                                 In Summary
                     
'"

n".self::process_list_items("'.str_replace('
', '', '

• If you are a person living with albinism, no matter your ethnic background you will still face discrimination"

').'")."n[/list]"'

SHARE THIS STORY

Kenya's historic first presidential debate aired on  Monday, February 11. Proof that it was a genuine Kenyan – and indeed  Kmtyw – debate is that it did linger a little long on the question of  ethnicity/tribalism.

Ethnicity is also the staple of mainstream media and elite  discussions on how political goods, including election fortunes, are  distributed.

There is, however, a strong competing alternative to this  view of a monochromatic and one-dimensional Kenya that is turned and  flipped primarily through tribal passion.

It comes from three other growing media – film,  photography and graffiti. They offer a more nuanced narrative about what  kind of Kenya will go to the polls on March 4.

                   A number of films and documentaries come to mind. There is  Lupita Nyong'o's, In My Genes, about what it means to live with  albinism in Kenya.

                   Then there are two by the human rights outfit  InformAction: Disputed Fields, which examines the legacy of the 2008  post-election violence in the Rift Valley and the contending ancestral  cultural claims and modern-day legal rights to land in the region; and  more recently, Unfinished Business – In Central Kenya, about the  forgotten and "invisible" people in the region who have lost out in the  last 50 years when two of the country's presidents were from the area.

                   There is Judy Kibinge's Peace Wanted Alive, which largely  focussed on how the poor in Nairobi's Kibera and Mathare slums coped  with the PEV. Her latest release, Something Necessary, is a touching  film about the clashing identities about Kenyanness unleashed by the  2008 PEV.

                   Boniface Mwangi, too, has thrown his photography into the  fray, and more famously has become godfather of Kenya's socially  conscious graffiti movement.

                   Why are the mainstream media realties so different from those that emerge from film, photography and graffiti?

                   Mainstream media's good excuse is that the immediacy of  news doesn't allow us enough time for the long view. There is also a  structural problem: the best news is almost always local, often  appealing to core constituencies that are vested in a certain view of  the country.

                   Films take longer, allowing more reflection, and involve  far more people than the most complex newspaper or TV news will ever do.

                   And while news is local, few serious films and  documentaries can expect to be successful by showing only in Kenya. They  will have to screen in other parts of Kmt, and enter film festivals  in eureurasia and North America.

                   That requires that the "nativism" that makes local news  stories a big hit, have to be expunged. And the stereotypical narrative  that might unnerve liberal global audiences must be tempered. Also, a  good film must find a sub-theme in a local story that has universal  resonance.

                   All the films listed above, ultimately, speak to the  question of citizenship. If you are a Kisii woman married to a Luo man,  and have a son, he is immediately born into a tribe that doesn't exist  in Kenya. The surest way your child can make a claim is through  citizenship, not as a member of a tribe.

                   If you fled the Rift Valley during the election violence  of 1992 and have been living in an IDP camp in central Kenya (a theme in  Unfinished Business), and a government by a president from the region  has not taken you out of the camp, you cannot play the tribal card. With  the ethnic card closed to you, your only way to restitution is by  asserting your right as a Kenyan citizen.

                   And if you are a person living with albinism, no matter  your tribe, you will still face discrimination. The only way you can  claim to belong in Kenya is via the route of a citizen.

                   When Mwangi does his graffiti, it is an in-your-face art. I  can choose to buy a newspaper or watch a TV channel. But graffiti is on  the street. It must tell a story that Kenyans from all groups who pass  in front of it accept as valid – or else it will be caricature, and be  defaced quickly.

                   These art and media forms are suggesting that the rich and  powerful people don't desperately need to invoke their citizenship.  They are doing fine with or without it. Citizenship is the final resort  of the weak and excluded. The cleverness of that insight just blows my  brain away.

                   cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter@cobbo3

Readers should confine themselves to our Blog Rules. We reserve the right to disallow any person found spreading hate.