Fwd: Re: The Republic of Winam

Dan,

Yours is quite an interesting and informative response. You should forward it to all the e-mail addresses for more discussions. Your caution is quite in order. I have received some cautionary questions from some concerned Luos as well, underlining some of the issues you have raised.

For example, some critics have suggested that instead of fighting for secession, we should fight for a devolved system of government within the Kenyan state that would take care of our needs. In otherwords, fight for the national cake from within instead of venturing out into the unknown.

It has also been pointed out that a Luo state may not be viable because it would be too small and it would be landlocked.

It has also been pointed out that Luo clan politics may destabilize a future Luo state. Internecine clan conflicts in Somali have been raised as a cautionay example.

It has also been claimed that the Luo are not very easy to rule, as, in the words of, was it Oloo Aringo or Odongo Omamo, who, confronted by a particularly garrulous Luo crowd, exclaimed in despair that: "telo tek ndi, lakini telo ne ja-Luo to tek ma iwuoro."

It as also been pointed out that Luo investments in other parts of Kenya would be jeopardized by a secesionist movement in Luoland.

Another obstacle often mentioned by critics is that the Kenyan state would not let us secede anyway. There would therefore be violence and too many people would die in the process.

These are legitimate questions worth serious thought. I have indeed given serious thought to these questions for many years. One thing that is inconstestable is that the right to independence and sovereignity is a God-given right. It is a right that should not be trifled with. It is an inelianable right that has seen many agitations from the deep past to the present across the world. We see it today in Quebec, Casamance, Chechnya, Kashmir, and many other places.

When the Luo come to the decision to secede, they should be seen as simply exercising that inelianable right that they are entitled to, the same way that the Slovaks were entitled to theirs when they petitioned for secession from Czechoslavakia, just to give one example. Many communities in various parts of the world have actually gone ahead and exercised that right and have seceded succesfully right before our eyes.

The question that always bothers me is this: How comes people never raise the kinds of objections I mentioned above when others seek to secede, but raise them when people like us seek to secede? I smell double-standards here.

How comes when the people of the former Yugoslavia are breaking apart, they are not urged to hang in there, to democratize their state, and to try to live in peace with one another, the way we are told when we seek to secede? How comes the people of the former Soviet Union were not urged to simply democratize their state instead of splitting it apart?

Even right now in Iraq, wracked by ethnic and religious conflicits, there are people proposing the break-up of that beleaguered state into three separate states -- Kurdish, Sunni, and Shite, yet the same people demur when it is our turn to ask for the same solution to our problems. Why?

Southern Sudan was left fighting for nearly forty years before the world finally acceded to putting secession on the table as a solution to the perenial conflicts between the north and the south. Why? Why did it take the world forty years to come around to seeing secesion as a solution to the Sudanese conflict, but only four years in Iraq, and less than that in the former Soviet Union, or the former Yugoslavia?

These are questions we should think about as well. Having said all these, let me focus on a few issues. I truly believe that a Luo state is not just desirable, it is possible and viable. We have a lot of resources. We have good fertile land; we have rivers and a lake; we have minerals; and we have incredibly versatile human resource. We can make!

We will not be the first nation-state to be small or landlocked. There are many states that are small [Rwanda, Burundi, Gambia, etc] and that are landlocked [Uganda, Chad, Central African Republic, Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, Niger, etc] in Africa. They are doing just fine.

Other states in Africa are doubly small and landlocked. In fact Lesotho and Swaziland are small and completely surrounded by one country -- South Africa, but they are doing just fine. We too shall just survive.

The key secret to a successful Luo secession will be in the strategy, in how we go about it. I personally prefer a peaceful, constitutional, negotiated process of secession. I believe that we can peacefully and candidly explain to Kenyans why we would be better off if each of us went separate ways.

For example, it shoud not be too difficult for any open-mined person to see how perennial ethnic suspicions and conflicts are doing more harm to us than good.

During every election, we have ended up nominating mediocre presidential candidates in the name of compromises while rejecting more qualified candidates because of ethnic differences. These compromise candidates have often turned out to be very conservative and reactionary. In the process, who loses? Us, all of us. We can avoid that by going our separate ways.

Secondly, we must promise to protect each other's citizens, their properties and investments. In the event of a successful petition for secession, we should promise to protect the investments of various ethnic communities in our territory, and expect the Kenyan state to provide the same to our Luo citizens who choose to live in Kenya, on a quid pro quo basis.

I believe in a peaceful process of secession. Many countries have seceded peacefully. Secession needs not be violent, though sometimes it does. But with care and tact, we can secede peacefully and establish a truly viable Republic of Winam.

Meshack Owino.