"Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) may sound like a guerrilla group by name and could have scared the authorities into proscribing it, but by declaring it an illegal group, the Government has unwittingly driven the group underground and made it into a militant outfit that it is now accusing of violence.
Had this Government been more tactful and responsive to their initial demands for dialogue, MRC would have been nothing more than an advocacy group.
And there is little doubt that MRC has legitimate grievances: all Coast leaders are agreed on this. The bit about ‘Pwani si Kenya’ (Coast is not Kenya) is an outcome of frustration by its members of the indifference and utter disregard of their existence by the authorities.
Historically, there is little doubt that the Sultan of Zanzibar literally leased, or better still mortgaged, the coastal strip to the British who passed it on to the Kenya Government after independence, on certain terms. It is the latter regime’s breach of terms, and historical injustices, which has sowed the seed of discontent.
The Coast is utterly marginalised and deprived. For instance, Kilifi and Kwale have the highest national poverty indices. It has one of the lowest enrolment in education, and just about the highest illiteracy rates.
The major coastal ethnic groups have the lowest numbers in public service jobs, even in key public institutions based in the region. Infrastructure is so dilapidated that even in major towns like Mombasa, residents and visitors alike lament about poor roads, and lack of water and electricity among other challenges.
Residents live like squatters in their land without titles, while non-residents obtain titles and often drive them out.
Yet, this region has Mombasa port that serves the entire East Africa and which generates nearly 80 per cent of all our revenues. Coast also is the magical Kenya that attracts over a million tourists annually, our largest source of foreign exchange.
It produces our non-traditional exports such as fish, livestock, cashew nuts, bixa, titanium and many more. It is culturally rich, and the land and its people are beautiful, and cool.
It is fine for the Government to reiterate that Coast is, and will remain, part of Kenya. But it is wrong for it to bury its head in the sand about the group’s demand for dialogue.
We cannot gag a people from exercising their fundamental freedoms to demand for economic and social rights. MRC is not Mungiki. It is an idea whose time has come. Many more groups will soon advocate for their rights, and seek to be freed from discrimination and deprivation.
In 2003, several delegates from Northern Kenya (NFD) sought to include the right to self-determination in our Constitution in order to allow those regions not happy with the union called Kenya to leave. It did not see the light of the day. In the 1962 Lancaster conference, delegates from NFD refused to sign up, citing among other things future discrimination by the African government.
They returned home and declined to participate in the 1963 elections, choosing instead to secede, a decision that led to the Shifta war.
Decades later, the region’s fears are real. Northern Kenya is marginalised, and the residents discriminated on matters of identity and employment. MRC should advocate for their region’s rights but should not fall into the state’s trap of stereotyping it as a terror group.
Should the Court annul the State’s decision to illegalise it, MRC needs to educate its masses and Kenyans too about its grievances and rally support to its cause.
Whilst it may be prudent for the State to attempt to nip it in the bud, MRC’s vision will be a reality if all Kenyans shared in our collective duty to promote equitable development and respect for fundamental rights of all Kenyans. This alone will endear us all to this nation.
Courtesy of Standard Digital.
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