This archive report was first published on 8 October 2019.
Published on October 8, 2019, a petition by Charles Mangua to remove the word Harambee from the National Coat of Arms has been rejected by the National Assembly Justice and Legal Affairs Committee.
The committee, chaired by William Cheptumo, concluded that discarding the word would be offensive to the Hindu community living in the country. They argued that the word Harambee is a Swahili word adopted from Hindi and has been in the public domain since time immemorial.
The committee also pointed out that changing the contents of the Coat of Arms would come at a huge financial cost, with Furncon Limited estimating that it would cost the country trillions of shillings.
Mr. Mangua had claimed that the word Harambee referred to an Indian goddess with many hands, who was invoked during the construction of the railway line in Kenya after the 1830s. However, the committee rejected this claim, stating that the word Harambee is a rallying call for people to fight poverty, ignorance, and disease in the Kenyan context.
Despite critics pointing to the dismal performance of the country's national football team Harambee Stars as an example of Harambee's propensity for bad luck, the committee recommended that the House rejects the petition for the introduction of a constitutional amendment Bill to change the wording on the Coat of Arms.
