Yes, let’s find a new name for Harambee Stars
A few weeks ago, veteran sports writer Roy Gachuhi explained the genesis of the name of the Kenyan national football team. Harambee Stars.
It really came from the blue and hit us right in the face with an unbelievable force!
By 1976 when the name was decreed by the then chairman of the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) Kenneth Matiba, I must admit I was a toddler. I did not even suspect that the name was coined so casually and without fanfare.
Well, I must admit that I have always disliked the name Harambee Stars and I feel it is a throwback to some epoch when it had some meaning. Harambee was the national motto at the time of independence and was popularised by the first president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
It had its golden era and there are many public schools and hospitals that were built by Kenyans pooling their resources and donating towards a good end.
The trend went on for decades until it became the arena of crooked politicians showing off their loot by contributing huge amounts every weekend. The whole concept had lost its meaning and it had become a burden to the ordinary Kenyan.
The concept had metamorphosed into an ugly mutant and was choking the country. After the ascension of the National Rainbow Coalition to power in 2002, the country had had enough of Harambee. It was banned and discredited. All the time though, the national team kept the name and nobody ever thought about it.
In fact, the silly sounding name persisted like the old man upon Sinbad’s back. The name sparks neither loyalty nor pride in the breast of Kenyans and even if it is changed, we shall never suffer any loss.
Most African countries opted for animal names, the Elephants, the Indomitable Lions, the Desert Foxes, the Super Eagles et cetera.
One may suppose that the names of African countries are themselves products of colonialism. Some countries had to change their colonial names, for example Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, and Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. For a country like Kenya whose name is itself meaningless and nobody seems to know where it was derived from, naming things and places becomes very hard.
Even now, we ought to be thinking about changing the name Kenya itself. That of course is a far fetched idea but by all means removing the word Harambee from our national team should not be a very hard thing.
Some religious psychos had already brought in hair splitting arguments that the word is derived from religions they consider unsavoury. They wanted it christened. We are not advancing any such arguments but we must admit the name is no longer relevant and it is time to pull it down and forget about it.
