Appreciate Indians in Kenya | K24

COMMENTARY, The Daily Nation, Nairobi, Kenya.
Shame of simmering tension and rivalry in Uganda chaos – Story by JAINDI KISERO:
How so easy it is to ignite racial violence against East African Asians – the “wahindias we refer to them in casual conversation. What happened in Uganda last week was a public outrage.

A mob protesting against plans by the government to allocate part of a forest reserve to a company owned by the Mehta Group stoned two East African Asians to death as the demonstrations exploded into racial violence.

The rioters burned cars, attacked a Hindu temple and chanted “we are tired of Asians”, carrying placards saying, “one tree cut, five Asians dead”. Innocent East African Asians were forced to take refuge in police stations. It was the most vicious display of racial intolerance in East Africa since the riots which followed the 1982 military coup attempt in Kenya.

The truth of the matter is that what happened in Uganda last week could have occurred elsewhere in East Africa.
The “Asiansare a deeply resented lot in the region – viewed as the millstone around the neck of the African business class, stereotyped as corrupt, dismissed as “paper citizens”, and branded as a socially exclusive race that has refused to intermarry with Africans.
TODAY, ANY DEMAGOGUE WHO starts a campaign against this racial minority will become an instant hero.

We pay lip service to minority rights and racial inequality. In Kenya, where national debate on a new constitutional dispensation has been raging for the last four years, the rights of minority races- the “Asiansand the so-called “Kenyan Cowboys– Kenyans of European descent – have not featured prominently on the agenda.

Kenya has not had a white Member of Parliament since Mr Philip Leakey and Mr Basil Criticos. In the past, the former Parklands constituency in Nairobi served more or less as a special parliamentary seat for the “Asians”, allowing the racial minority representation in the National Assembly.

But through successive gerrymandering of the constituency by the Government, the Asians have been rendered a minority incapable of electing even a civic leader in the Nairobi City Council.
Clearly, the time has come for East Africa to reopen debate on the “Asian Questionand discuss what needs to be done to protect these racial minorities from what Stuart Mill described as “the tyranny of the majority”.

Pick your Captain Kenya Shield design on all kinds of tops, phone cases, pop sockets, bags and pillow cases here.

Our biggest problem is that we are yet to change from the mindset that equates citizenship with kinship. Despite the fact that our societies have urbanised at a rapid rate, we are yet to experience the transition from the world of kinsmen to the world of compatriots.

We must get our people to accept that the racial minorities are authentic East Africans. Unlike most of us who became citizens by biological accident, East African Asians are descendants of people who became citizens by choice. At independence, they were given three choices: either to become British, or East Africans, or to immigrate to the Indian sub-continent. By choice, they decided to be East Africans.

Have East African Asians made money by exploiting Africans? Yes, there have been cases where business cartels controlled by unscrupulous merchants pushed African businessmen out of business using restrictive practices. Also, East African Asians do not enjoy very good reputations as employers.

But to say that all East African Asians own successful businesses on account of exploiting Africans is to engage in oversimplification.

Immigrant communities tend to be naturally enterprising wherever they live.
The Jews in pre-war Germany, the Chinese in South East Asia and the Lebanese in West Africa are good examples. Even in the United Kingdom, where a good number of East African Asians immigrated to after the famous quit notices of the 1960s , they have grown into a powerful force.

When they count immigrant communities which have produced successful businessmen in the UK today, East African Asians top the list. The correlation between immigrant communities and success in business is something that can not be explained away through myths and generalisations.
In retrospect, some of the things governments did to this community in the immediate post-independent period were blatantly unjust.

In Kenya and in the name of the policy of “Africanisation”, Asians were given quit notices from their businesses and shops which were then allocated to Africans by provincial business allocation committees. An Asian would wake up one morning to hear an announcement that his business had been allocated to some politically well-connected chap.

IN THOSE DAYS, THERE WAS A trading appeals tribunal which was created by Parliament to oversee the forceful transfer of Asian businesses to Africans. Under the Trade Licensing Act of 1967, Asians were banned from doing business in rural areas and non-central areas of major towns.
Many years later, the Government realised that the quit notices had not succeeded as Africans who had acquired the businesses later sold them back to Asians.

May be it is time we started thinking of passing a Racial Equality Act or creating a Racial Equality Commission.
Mr Kisero is the managing editor of The East African