- I have opined numerously before that to lead is to labour. Leadership is hard work. It is painful work. It is a thankless job.
- Leadership is to love people who hate you and to appreciate people who may have no regard for you.
Image: COURTESY
As I look at the political goings-on, I can’t help but think how many do not understand the true weight of leadership.
I have opined numerously before that to lead is to labour. Leadership is hard work. It is painful work. It is a thankless job.
Leadership is to love people who hate you and to appreciate people who may have no regard for you.
It is to embrace foes that you are suspicious about and to hang on a thread of trust, often swayed by winds of mistrust which are blown by friends around you as the leader.
Leadership is to take insults from anyone and everyone and to be lied about without defence.
This is a tough call, but whoever opts to lead must bear the weight of it on their shoulders.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has been going on with his rallies and takes offence that those who did not necessarily vote for the Kenya Kwanza party are now right in the centre.
He infers to the fact that they have edged out the real people who got the government.
I feel his unease because politics is predicated on the notion that the winner has their way entirely.
But that same politics leaves a window for the minority to have at least a say.
And this is where politics sometimes varies or takes a departure from leadership.
Because leadership embraces foes and gives a fair chance to even those who did not vote for us.
It presumes that political contests are only to ensure that we push through our ideologies.
However, politics believes that those who did not participate in the victory should be confined to some Siberia where they will sit and for several years ahead regret their action of not voting ‘right’.
They are to be banished for good and kept to wait for their time.
One may say that there is a thin line between leadership and politically convenient inclusion, which then erodes the essence of leadership, but I firmly believe that our ethnocentrism is our bane.
We can only truly move the country forward if we look beyond our ethnicities and find good in others even when they do not align with our ethnic goals.
We have to do it even as we grapple with the fear of betrayal.
That’s what leadership is.
While serving in government, I saw firsthand how most leaders across the three arms of government were obsessed with handpicking tribesmen for their bodyguards and even inner circle staff because deep within, they have grand deficits of trust based on tribe.
To this extent, they are mostly culprits of the same malady that Hon. Gachagua suffers and seems to perpetuate.
I still remember how strange it was for most people that when I was a CAS my Chief of Staff was Kisii; my Technical Advisor was Kuria; my driver was Luo; my bodyguards were Kamba and Maasai; my messenger was Sabaot; my tea girl was Kalenjin and my secretaries were Meru and Kikuyu.
And yes, I chose them this way; an influence from former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga whose Chief of Staff Duncan Okello was not only my cousin but a solid mentor who opened my eyes to these baby steps towards curing our negative ethnicity.
Make no mistake, we are all born in homes and belong to communities and tribes.
And we must wear our ethnic badges with great pride and honour.
But if our badges or tribe become scornful and seek to demean others, then we had rather cast those badges in fire and raze them to the ground.
Our beauty lies in the blend of our cultures, not in the elevation of one ethnicity above another.
This must be the lesson we hand down to our children.
The pride and pomposity of the Luo are admirable, but their beauty will be accentuated by the enterprise spirit of the Abagusii and coloured by the resilience of the Kamba.
We must teach them that the courage of the Maasai and the ‘taratibu’ of the Digo and Giriama all build the thread of this beautiful fabric of Kenya.
Indeed, to truly move the country forward, we must daily surrender tribe on the altar of nationhood and reach out for the good in all of us regardless of our ethnic extract.
And so bwana DP, allow the newbies in government to lend their weight.
They may not have been there during the hunt but may bring great culinary skills in serving and eating that will make the meat enjoyable for all.
Because sometimes those who hunt may fight for the meat and burn it entirely, making it totally impossible to eat and far worse than if they had not gone hunting after all.
Make no mistake about this analogy, leadership is not about eating. It is about service.
It is about preserving and utilizing the resources well to benefit every Kenyan.
It is about building a better country each day; better than we inherited and better than we left yesterday.
To lead is to live and let live. The burden of leadership is weighty but necessary.
David Osiany, HSC is a former Chief Administrative Secretary for the Ministry of Industry, Trade & Investment in Kenya.