The Regional Round-Table Discussion on the Implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) organized in the Parliament of Sierra Leone in Freetown on 18 January 2008 presented a statement on the situation in Kenya.

"We cannot stop life for the sake of two people who are not in agreement" said a twenty-three year old Kenyan woman in Nairobi. The two men in question - Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga - both claim to have been elected president in the national vote on 27 December 2007. The incumbent Kibaki was sworn into a second term of office, and Odinga publicly challenges the legitimacy of the vote count.

A rising concern with personal and environmental health in the world's richer countries is influencing lifestyles and public debate alike. One significant trend is the increase in the consumption of organically grown produce - a significant proportion of which is imported. International trade in organic food and beverages currently has a value of more than £15 billion ($30 billion) per year; the United States, Britain and Germany account for two-thirds of imports.

A month after its disputed presidential election, Kenya remains deeply divided and unstable. Politically motivated killings, hackings and gang rapes continue in the towns and in volatile country districts. The economy is faltering. The latest bigwig to attempt to mediate between the government of President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga is a former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who arrived in Nairobi on January 22nd.

When UNHCR staff arrived in the market town of Mogotio in western Kenya earlier this week they found some 500 people sleeping in the grounds of the police station without shelter, blankets or basic supplies. The UN refugee agency has found similar scenes in other parts of Rift Valley Province since violence between rival communities swept through the area after the December 30 presidential election. In recent days UNHCR has been able to reach out to the most vulnerable in the countryside as the prospect of stability returns.

Like all our compatriots, we (the Kenya Editors Guild) are concerned by the crisis facing our country. The genesis of this national tragedy is within public knowledge. As editors watching events unfold in this country, we believe the government is duty bound to expeditiously find a solution to the stand off which is costing lives, untold human suffering and damaging the prospects of a country long viewed as an island of peace and stability.

Since the December elections in Kenya an estimated 600 people have died as a result of the unrest, and another 100,000 at least have been displaced. The violence erupted after incumbent Mwai Kibaki was sworn into office in the midst of acusations that the election was rigged, led by opposition candidate Raila Odinga. International observers have called the election "flawed." In this interview Firoze Manji speaks on post election violence in Kenya as a symptom of long term debates within Kenya surrounding the constitution, and a legacy of Kenya's history under colonialism.

It was once a relatively stable African success story. Now Kenya has descended in to the sort of chaos which has often bedevilled many of its neighbours. The cause is December's disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki. African leaders continue to try to mediate. The violent aftermath of the vote has already led to hundreds of deaths. Jonathan Charles talks to John Githongo, who was once in charge of rooting out Kenyan government corruption but is now in self-imposed exile in Britain.

According to media reports, the Kenyan Police has used tear gas and live ammunition to fire on the crowds with at least 12 deaths reported in Nairobi and Kisumu. This has led to security restrictions on aid and staff movements hindering assessments and response for most of the week.

Tapera Kapuya draws parallels between Kenya's post-elections crisis and the political struggles in Zimbabwe, and stresses the need for sound democratic structures

Since its December 27th General Election, Kenya has been experiencing a wave of political conflicts that should serve as a lesson to Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy movement, as these problems are rooted in the same democratic deficit. Much of the media coverage on Kenya seems to have been consumed by a focus on the ensuing violence with very marginal efforts to investigate issues at the centre of this conflict: absence of democratic institutions and the shortfalls of ‘executive’ fundamentalism. With Zimbabwe facing a potential election in March, a look into the Kenyan scenario would be helpful in avoiding a worse repeat. This is necessary in order to build agency, around a proper constitutional reform process, whose outcome will insulate Zimbabwe from the problems those in Kenya are going through and those experienced in past elections. Since the Kenyan election, over a thousand people have since lost their lives and 250 000 more have been displaced. As in most post-colonial conflicts, much of these tensions have taken an ugly ethno-tribal character.

According to observers, the elections themselves were held in a manner that can be deemed ‘free and fair’. In the run-up to the vote, all political parties had relative space to organize and campaign. Kenya has a growing free media, and unlike Zimbabwe does not have such notorious legislations as the Public Order and Security Act or the Access to Information and Protection of Publicity Act. The Election Day itself was rather peaceful.

The opposition, Orange Democratic Movement, won majority of the parliamentary seats. The ruling party would be announced as having won the Presidential vote. Problems were then reported in the tallying of the vote, throwing the Mwai Kibaki’s victory into dispute. The Chairperson of the Kenya Electoral Commission has since acknowledged that there was manipulation of the vote.

Independent observers have suggested that the Election was too close. The US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Rannesberger, is quoted saying whoever won the Election, did so by a margin between 23 000 to 100 000 votes. And that is where part of the problem and why building Constitutional frameworks that harness the spirit of nation building lie.

Kenya like Zimbabwe, has its Lancaster House Constitution, drawn in 1963 as a settlement document when the British colonists were withdrawing from the territory to allow for Kenya’s independence. Consequently, this Constitution, now with its fair share of amendments, has not abhorred well for a transformational state, therefore allowing for dictatorship tendencies to set in. The Daniel Moi regime, would master repression under the shoulder of Constitutional righteousness. As it relates to Elections, state administration and governance, Kenya has a winner-takes-all/loser-leaves-all system. This system is what we have in Zimbabwe. What this means is that, even if one wins an election by one vote, the opinions of the section of the voters who would have lost will not find political representation or expression. It is a system that excludes ‘losers’ and, as we are learning from Kenya, this provides a base for fuelling other deep seated tensions. It questions the legitimacy of the winner as a representative of all interest groups.

As with Zimbabwe, Kenya’s Presidential parliamentary system places more power in the executive, including power to legislate. The executive has a monopoly over national resource distribution, with the legislature being reduced to a powerless club of sessional critics or patronage driven loyalists. With a Constitution that bestows enormous powers on the executive, and because there are no constitutional provisions to ensure equitable distribution of the country’s resources, perceived loss of the vote carries a heavy meaning for those who lose. In regions and amongst groups perceived to be less prioritized by the victors, this arrangement fuels anger. It means another five years of being isolated, another five years of exclusion, another five years of poverty.

The disproportionate powers the executive have compromises the others arms of government. The legislature and judiciary become overly dependent on the executive, undermining their role to provide for checks and balances. Executive accountability erodes. Corruption and its attendant defense systems set in: with regionalism and identity cleavages taking centre stage in national determination. Regions or communities without a ‘representative’ in power suffer. Democratic transformation in Kenya, as in Zimbabwe, gained its momentum in the demands for Constitutional reform, with Kibaki defeating Moi on the banner of ‘a people driven Constitution’. Kenyans are yet to see it, two Presidential terms down the line. Most of those in civil society would be absorbed into the luxurious benefits of the State and soon forget the principled demands of institutionalizing democracy, and facilitating the writing down by the people of a framework under which they want to be governed – a Constitution. The disasters are what we are seeing today: those who feel excluded and watching their vote becoming meaningless are resorting to ‘all means necessary’ to reclaim the vote from the gutters. The death toll keeps rising as neighbor turns against neighbor, and identity replaces values in deciding who is a friend or foe.

The primacy of identity politics becomes breeding ground for the most deprived tendencies. It fosters an identity based nationalism which regresses democratic values necessary for nation building. As we have seen in Kenya, the electoral loss/victory soon takes the form of one identity grouping having defeated the other and the nation dividing along ethno-tribal lines. Ethnic identity is now equated with political identity.

Is Zimbabwe the next Kenya?
A similar threat confronts Zimbabwe, risking the negation of genuine national debate on democratic transformation. Given our history, and the need to foster a common identity in our diversity, a political system and Constitutional framework which allows for this is critical. The incumbent regime has set the country back into the socio-psychology of identity in determining who can participate or not in national discourse. Our white population has been effectively wiped out from being Zimbabwean. Even in the most liberal of opposition spaces, they are regarded with suspicion and are politely censored from making public representation. Zimbabweans of Indian descend or Mixed-race have been purged from public political participation. Amongst the black population, it has begun to matter whether one is Zezuru, Karanga or Ndebele. As if this is not enough, gender, even within these clusters of divisions, has been so entrenched to qualify exclusion, with our women compatriots having to endure structural abuse to assert the mere fact that they too are citizens. Human character is secondary in the estimation of man and women. These identities inform people’s perceptions of who is excluded or included in the economic, social or political benefit – be they in the patronage of the State, or in civil society and opposition or business.

The violence that is manifest in Kenya, though based on identity, is reflective of failures in the country’s Constitution and institutions to be responsive to the crises of nation building. Many Kenyans have doubts about the validity of country’s Constitution, especially the process under which it was written. This is of relevance to Zimbabwe, where sadly, the Kenyan case history could be vengefully repeating itself.

The MDC has consistently argued that a new Constitution must be put in place before the elections. Yet it seems to be doing everything to confirm its participation in the electoral process before this key demand has been met. Gabriel Chaibva, spokesperson of one faction of the MDC, in an interview with VOA is categorical about participating in the March elections. Nelson Chamisa, the spokesperson for the other faction, suggested the same in his widely condemned rally speech where he threatens Kenyan style protests should Mugabe do what he knows best: manipulate the vote.

Despite this grandstanding and pontification about a new Constitution, the MDC – in itself a product of the Constitutional movement – does not seem to place value in the importance of a democratic, public participatory process of Constitution making. The Constitution it is fighting for in the talks is a product of ‘four wise men’, determining the permanent fate of 13million of their fellow citizens! The Constitution they are proposing has not been seen or shared by Zimbabweans. Speaking during a visit to the US end last year, leader of one of the factions, Morgan Tsvangirai is quoted in an interview suggesting that ‘we have graduated from process’, in deviation from the principles. Welshman Ncube, the Secretary General of the other faction and himself a professor at law, in his speech to Parliament in support of the widely condemned 18th Constitutional Amendment to the Constitution of Zimbabwe went to depth to explain that the principles of an ‘open, transparent and participatory manner’ in Constitution making were not a ‘fundamentalist decree’. On the 3rd of January, Morgan Tsvangirai published an opinion piece suggesting that a Transitional Constitution had been finalized, with the sticking point being that of implementation. The nation or even members of the MDC are yet to see it. Our experience has been a bitter one: reforms made in the dark, excluding national dialogue are partly the reason why we are where we are today: a reason for us to be very afraid of the Kenyan ‘demons’ visitation or better still of being ‘Kibakised’. But what is even more frightening, if it is to be believed, is the revelation by Nathaniel Manheru a columnist for government controlled Herald who wrote in last Saturday’s edition that the so called ‘transition’ constitution agreed by Zanu PF and the MDC is nothing more than the 2000 government draft that lost the referenda.

The South African Model Model countries such as South Africa do offer learning curves on national reconstruction. Emerging from its brutal past, as the rest of post-colonial Africa, South Africa underwent a process of Constitutional building that pitched public participation at the centre of Constitutional development. Public opinion and debate would take place, with its Constitutional Assembly, civil society and political parties opening the nation to dialogue with itself. What resulted was amongst other things, an electoral and political system that is modestly inclusive, guaranteeing proportional representation, and allowing all views brought to an electoral contest and receiving electoral support, to find a measure of expression.

Greater devolution of power in provinces and local municipalities has created a system of greater accountability and service delivery. There is freedom of electoral contest and democratic expression. The result has been limited violent contestation of election results and a harmonious existence of political formations and civic groups despite their competing ideologies or perspectives. Those who lose an election will still salvage their proportional representation of the vote.

The National Constitutional Assembly has advocated for a similar system of Constitution making based primarily on the principles of ‘public participation, openness and transparency’. Its 2001 draft addresses some of the key issues of proportional representation and institutions that safe-guard democracy: Electoral Commission, Human Right Commission, Gender Commission etc. The draft also argues for a strong legislature and judiciary and the effective separation of powers between the varying arms of the State. Parliament, elected through a mixed system of constituency based and party-proportional representation would elect the leader of government who would account to it. This system was drawn out of the views gathered from ordinary Zimbabweans, by both the NCA and the government’s own Constitutional Commission. The government draft presented to the referendum in 2000 ignored all these views, and was wisely rejected. In arguing that elections should be deferred until such a time as there is a Constitutional and electoral framework, the NCA aims to pre-empt the possibility of national degeneration.

The Kenyan scenario points to the things we can avoid and toward the importance of working on developing and putting in place structural systems that ensure barbarism and exclusion are not part of our politics and national life. The democracy movement must learn that short-cuts to freedom lead to spurious regimes and the entrenchment of anti-democratic practices. The MDC, carrying with it the mantle of the nation’s hope for change, must rethink its options. The current opportunism and intellectual laziness that is becoming so pervasive should be stopped and give way to the principled call for a just and free nation.

* Tapera Kapuya is with the National Constitutional Assembly. He writes in his personal capacity. He can be reached on [email][email protected]

On 12 December 2007 – Kenya’s independence day – the Kenya national museums of Kenya decided to paint all its buildings in its corporate colours. That included painting over a landmark mural, that for a year had become one of the main attractions of the museum. Painting of the mural, sponsored by Africancolours, was done by a host of renowned Kenyan artists. A heritage professional, Dr Gonda Geets, who arrived at the museum as the wall with the mural was being painted tried to no avail to stop the destruction of the mural.

John Lonsdale argues that key to the post-election crisis in Kenya lies in the changing role of the post-colonial state in relation to the country's ethnic terms of political trade

The extensive commentary on Kenya's troubles has tended to blame ancient tribal rivalry, cynical political calculation, or a combination of the two; with the corrupted electoral process seen as providing the unintended catalyst - or worse, the deliberate instigator that awakens latent tribal hostility. British imperialism has also received its expected share of criticism, for inventing the now-indigenous Kenyan practice of divide and rule (see Caroline Elkins, "What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing", Washington Post, 6 January 2008).

While all such explanations have some merit they may also mislead the unwary, since they underplay the always slippery relations between ethnicity as a universal human attribute, politicised tribalism as a contingent process, and the state - any state, colonial or otherwise - as a cockpit of variously contested but always unequal power. How, then, can a focus on such factors illuminate Kenya's continuing turmoil?

A colonial formation

In the 19th century the area that became "Kenya" was stateless. Its peoples' civility, their ethnicity, was shaped by their subsistence: farming or herding, or some mixture of both. Such ethnic groups were not teams, not "tribes". Loyalties and rivalries were smaller than that - patriarchal lineages, marriage alliances, age-groups, trading partnerships, client-clusters, and the like. Ethnic groups were constituted more by internal debate over how to achieve honour in the unequal lives of patron or client, than by solidarity against strangers. Ethnic economies indeed were as often complementary as competitive, with different specialisms. But such inter-ethnicity - which was not without its frictions - was facilitated by the absence of any central power that might arrange groups in hierarchical relations. Sustained "tribal rivalry" could not exist under such decentralised, underpopulated, conditions.

It was European rivalry that imported that modern Leviathan, the state, in the late 19th century. It was, like all states, assembled by force and driven by self-interest. Its British officials allied with African leaders too weak to be rivals; and occasionally did a little to rein in the otherwise self-destructive excesses of those potentially overmighty subjects, the white settlers. The colonial state, responsible to Westminster and at the same time nervous of India's viceroy and then (at independence) the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru - since British Indians far outnumbered white Britons in Kenya - stood to some extent athwart both Africans and settlers, trying to mediate the contradictions between them. Both settlers and Africans colonised the state and the facilities it provided. What had previously been a multi-polar mosaic of scattered nodes of socially productive energy became, within Kenya's new borders, a layered pyramid of profit and power, unequally divided between two key centres - one "white", one black - and many marginalised peripheries.

White settlers got 20% of Kenya's high-potential farmland. As these settlers failed to provide enough state revenue and blocked African opportunity, the British increasingly encouraged African farming on the other 80%. So the second economic centre became Kikuyu-land: home of 20% of the population; close to the capital, Nairobi; cool and attractive to missionaries, with more schools than elsewhere. By geographical accident, then, Kikuyu had a head start in making money (essential to advance political ambitions) and in acquiring modern managerial skill.

Most nationalisms start among those subjects who do best out of, and are most useful to, an ancien regime; their frustrations are keenest, their opportunity greatest. Yet while that may explain Kikuyu leadership of Kenya's anti-colonial nationalism, it does not account for their involvement in Mau Mau, its secretive, violent, offshoot. To that point I will return, as it is a key to understanding the present.

A social transformation

In the new circumstances, other and not-so-well-placed ethnic groups made the most of what they had. They were often driven by a local patriotism inspired by vernacular, mission-translated, Bibles that told of an enslaved people who became a tribal nation. They embarked, in combinations of hope and desperation, on chain-migrations out of pauper peripheries (not unlike the Scots or Irish in comparable circumstances) to colonise particular niches of employment: on the railway; on white farms and plantations; in domestic service; or in the police and army. Yet others came to dominate the livestock trade.

Officials and employers exploited these various tendencies and stereotyped the supposed ethnic qualities of the group concerned. The British helped to harden ethnic divisions made greater by differing potentials for social mobility. Britain did not simply divide in order to rule.

The emergence of ethnic consciousness also arose from local debates about how the genders, generations, rich and poor should relate, as older inequalities were transformed into new differentiations less sensitive to existing moral audits of honour.

Nowhere was such differentiation so sharp as among Kikuyu. Its effects became politically acute after 1945 when settler employers in the Rift Valley's "white highlands" mechanised production, and the extensive Kikuyu diaspora of tenant-workers in the region refused the worsening conditions they were offered. These "ex-squatters", failing to recover a home in their increasingly populated, and property-protective, "reserves", had to make shift in Nairobi's slums. The insistent question, "how then can I live as an honourable Kikuyu?" was what separated the militants of Mau Mau from the politically conservative, propertied, patrons - led by Jomo Kenyatta - who first inspired them.

A political competition

The horrors of the Mau Mau "emergency" war of the 1950s that ensued proved the repressive potential of a colonial state too closely allied to the settlers, its strongest clients. But the relative calmness of decolonisation in 1963 similarly proved the advantages of an outgoing state power that was not solely dependent upon its local roots - a clear contrast with Rhodesia's fiery end. The post-colonial state - rooted in a competitive society, for good historical reasons - is once more different. For the state has been the sole agency by which Africans could aspire to climb the commanding heights of the economy against racially entrenched interests - in land, commerce and finance. In recent years it has continued this role by ever more devious means, to meet external demands for "liberalisation". Access to its power matters. It is concentrated in an executive presidency, now directly elected, capable of manipulating all public institutions, including a parliament elected from single-member constituencies that either singly or in contiguous groups coincide with what have become tribal territories.

In consequence, the competition for a share in this power became governed by internal ethnic accountability and tribal rivalry. President Kenyatta and his Kikuyu elite soothed the frustrated honour of their Kikuyu poor with settlement schemes in the former "white highlands" (of which the bulk, historically, had belonged to less favoured Maasai and Kalenjin groups). His successor Daniel arap Moi, finding less room for the poor of own Kalenjin, did more to create for them an ethnic elite.

Politicians generally justify their privilege by carving ethnic benefits from state largesse. But (in Kenya as elsewhere) this extractive approach faced increasing pressures. The ferocity of competition for a share of state power rose over time - as population has grown, as the fertilising rains of the post-colonial Africanisation of opportunity long ago dried up, as the terms of trade for primary commodities turned sour. It was fairly easy for Kenyatta to ensure that all, more or less, enjoyed a turn "to eat" in the ethnic coalitions on which a parliamentary majority relied. It was more difficult for Moi. As the political stakes rose, so it became more tempting to attract and reward one's ethnic followers with officially-deniable opportunities for thuggery at the expense of those who were now tribal rivals in land, urban property, or petty trade. With every "bought" election, popular anger grew among Kenyan citizens - to an extent that they created pressure for a constitutional change which would strengthen parliament at the expense of the presidency.

A national transition?

A new president, Mwai Kibaki, was elected in 2002 to clean the Aegean stables. But in that effort he has disappointed all but his Kikuyu cronies. Now, in the presidential election of 27 December 2007, he appears to many to have broken the tacit rules of national competition - the last straw. That the opposition was, it seems, merely less successful in rigging the ballot will not make reconciliation any easier. Some of the subsequent opposition violence is politically directed. But the worst, by Kalenjin "warriors" against Kikuyu "immigrants" into the Rift Valley, may have outrun such elite-engineered tribalism to become an eerie echo of Mau Mau - in being an internal, generational, ethnic revolt against the compromises by which its own recently-manufactured Kalenjin elite came to terms with the "old wealth" of Kenyatta's Kikuyu.

There are, then, two very different dynamics currently at work in Kenya: internal ethnic dissidence and external tribal rivalry. Neither can be disarmed without rewriting the rules of political competition for the power of a rather different ("post-post-colonial") state. It would have to be less closely allied to its strongest clients, and offer its services more disinterestedly to all Kenyans. These might in consequence come to think of themselves more as citizens, less as ethnically-defined clients. It is a very great deal to ask.

Kenya faces two possible futures. On the one hand, the normal inter-ethnicity of most daily lives may have been poisoned by the recent violence, forecasting a broken state. On the other, the shock may have persuaded Kenyan elites of the old, Burkean, truth that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in the opposition's success in getting its man elected as the speaker of the new parliament.

* John Lonsdale is emeritus professor of modern African history and fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. This article was first published in OpenDemocracy

*Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

While the whole world is aware of the crisis is in Kenya, thanks to the international and local media, most of their reporting is accurate, however, there is need for an honest analysis of the situation in Kenya

The media

It is sad at this moment in time to apply outdated tactics of muzzling the people who are expressing a democratic right. In the case of Kenya, gagging the media would not help Kibaki and his cohorts, since the level of awareness and resolve among Kenyans not to return to the dark days of dictatorship is so high. The courage of the Kenyan media and journalists despite setbacks initiated by Internal security Minster (Michuki) is worth noting, but more so the way in which they reported events during the campaigns and eventful day of vote counting. However, there are problems with headlines (both local and international) that have appeared since the outbreak of post elections violence.

The ethnic dimension is appearing to be the main focus of international press and they are also reporting that it is a Kikuyu-Luo issue but that is not true. Besides the fighting in the slums in Nairobi, Nakuru and Mombasa whose inhabitants are from all backgrounds though dominated by communities from western Kenya, Killings taking pace in the Rift Valley; Coast provinces are not perpetrated by the Luos. The fact that Raila is a Luo is not a justification enough to tag a whole community, just because one of them is a leading personality in the current stalemate.

Such bias will direct attention in the wrong direction, and could be used to gang up against other communities, as has been the case in the past. There is no mention of killings taking place in Nyanza province especially in the Lake Town of Kisumu where Police has been shooting protesters at the orders of the internal Security Minister (Michuki).

Condemnation of violence should be applied across the board. Victims of the violence are from all over especially in the slums, but where it is perpetrated by the state in a selective manner, condemnation should be focused on security forces and those who give such orders) These kinds of statements misinform the world of the actual facts on the ground and hinder insights that could help get Kenya out of the situation.

Secondly reducing the current post election conflict to a Kikuyu-Luo affair is cheap analysis that is devoid of facts and reflections of what happens on the ground. Most of the current Western media analyses do not taken into account the underlying factors such as the failure of institutions of the state, such as the electoral commission of Kenya whose mediocre performance has plunged the country into bloodshed, a draconian constitutional framework that has been at the service of ethnic chauvinists and jingoist in power since 1963, the centralised power and networks that benefit from it, whose abuse and actions have led to marginalisation of certain groups from national resources, equitable public appointments, and the grand scheme involving local and international elites who exploit Kenya under the “old order”, interests/forces that want to keep the status quo and their role in the current problem.

Bias and partisan analyses are also observed in the local media especially the media owners association, Kenya broadcasting corporation, Kenyan citizens in the diaspora through various blog sites and debaters in the local Newspapers where intellectuals, opinion and church leaders have taken sides, instead of guiding the debate in a more honest way so that all Kenyans can identify where the problem lies (draconian laws, out-dated political system, poverty, inequality, corruption, unequal distribution of resources countrywide and lack of access to essential services among others). Kenyans suffer under these conditions regardless of their tribe, and that is why those who live in the slums are from all tribes, even though previously marginalized by earlier regimes such as the Luo, Luhya and other minority groups make up the majority in those dwellings.

Leadership and national interest

The question that people need to ask is why did Kibaki sought to be Kenya’s president, in 1992, 1997, and finally became one in 2002? Was it because he lacked money? Was he someone with an agenda for the “whole “ nation?

And if he had one, what was the agenda? Was that agenda realised between 2003 and 2007? Why are Kenyans having a problem with his agenda presented during the campaigns and the people around him majority of whom have been rejected in their own backyards? Why did most Kenyans have a problem with giving him another mandate? Why would someone who is a billionaire and aged 76, not want to leave a legacy that would be remembered in positive terms? What is so painful to forego that Kibaki would not want a clean election? More important to ask is why the current “elite” and morons around Kibaki are afraid of change of the current system and/or leadership to go into the hands of “lesser” communities? And lastly, why was the current regime rejected by majority of provinces and communities? Even though there are arguments that Kenya’s economy has grown at 6% over the past two years, the gap between the rich and poor has widened, with more people falling below the poverty line. The slums did not get smaller, nor did North Eastern and North-Eastern provinces get piped water from lake Victoria, the Samburus did not receive hospitals and tarmac roads, no fish industry was built along Lake Victoria and loans given to fishermen. 40 years is a long time for the Samburu, Turkana, Rendile and Somalis to wait for basic and essential services to reach them, it is a long time for Kamba people to wait for water and receive food hand outs during starvation, it is a long time before the fishermen along Lake Victoria receive funding through a fishing Board to take care of their interests in agriculture as done to coffee, tea, pyrethrum and dairy farmers; it is along time to wait for any major industry in Western Kenya; it too long time for Mijikenda to have resources from Coastal investments recycled back to alleviate their poverty, thirst for water, better schools and hospitals.

Obstacle to dialogue

In my view Kibaki is hostage to a number of factors that seems to contradict his call for putting the nation first. First and foremost are the networks of buddies and business comrades and elite form Mt Kenya who have been on the Gravy train since 2003. For what explains the refusal to find a middle ground while knowing so well that the outcome of the elections are not acceptable to everyone including their own people? The people holding Kibaki hostage are the ones Kenyans need to address in their quest for finding a peaceful solution to the current crisis. These people have a lot to loose if the man goes, thus the reason they are against recount, judicial review or re-run of presidential elections. Kenyans regardless of their ethnic background come distant in their priority of needs and actions. The opposition also has a role to play in the process and that will depend on the kind of proposal they put on table, which should be scrutinised by Kenyans since the issue at hand is about how Kenyans are governed and therefore Kibaki or Raila are just but people they expect to govern them through their mandate which includes listening to their views and respecting their will as expressed through the social contract via the vote and representative democracy.

A Government of National Unity, or a recount of ballots papers will not solve any problem. It is a well-known fact that ballot papers especially those used for tallying presidential votes were already tampered with and might mot be traced. Secondly Keep never keeps any promise. He did not keep his promise to Kenyans after he made promises upon election in 2002; he never honoured agreements with his comrades upon enthronement, he renegade on the fight against corruption, poverty and tribalism. He does not have the will to keep his promises therefore arrangements such as a government of national unity will just be a soft landing for him, it will be a process that legitimises his hold onto power at the expense of democracy and the will of Kenyans who came out to vote on the 27^th December 2007. Kibaki and his handlers, do not care about democracy, it is a word they use at their convenience. The best arbitrator in this case is the voter. All mediators coming to Kenya should not let Kenyans down by proposing frameworks that will maintain the status quo. It will be a mockery to democracy and great betrayal to the many Kenyans who have lots their lives since the 50s, to liberate the country from colonial yokes but also from the yokes of fellow Kenyans such as Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki.

The Killings

Kenyans should stop Killing each other. The culprits are few people who are out busy with self-aggrandisement at the expense of a whole nation.

Although the current killings are unacceptable since they are an outcome of a stupidity of failure by Kenyan politicians to grasp the communality interest, Kenyans and more so those who abuse the political system and state institutions and resources should know that "Kenya belongs to all who belong in it" and all should be given equal treatment. There is no justification for the minister of internal security to use outdated and counterproductive tactics of targeting specific ethnic groups with paramilitary force and orders to kill. The images on television screens, shows that most of these people could be apprehended and taken to court.

Senseless beating and shooting based on orders of a politician with colonial hangovers will exacerbate acts of revenge instead of resorting to the rule of law to settle disputes or address acts pf violence that are currently being perpetrated by some Kenyans who exploit the chaotic situation. The paramilitary police used by Michuki on the Luo (historical tactic, used by Kenyatta, in the 60s and early seventies) is selective and directed in one direction towards a group of people but that too will create more anger and feelings for revenge.

Struggles in the Rift Valley are also about past wrongs against the minority communities like Ogieks who were chased out of the forest and the places given to the central province groups. Maasai and Kalenjin whose prime land were taken by the British, and later by the elite around Kenyatta. These grievances have never been addressed and due to the complex nature of ethnic blend in those regions, Moi for instance exploited this mix to cause chaos in order to vilify the onset of multiparty in Kenya. Ethnic clashes in 1992 and 1997, produced suffering and anger which have been kept low, but now fully exploited in the face of a dashed hope for change. These people thought there could be some equity with change of government but that hope is gone, so we expect anger, but also revenge as result of past clashes that were instigated by Moi prior to 1992, and 97 elections.

Democratic test What I fear most is that if Kibaki is allowed to rule, Kenya will return to the dark ages, all the democratic gains will be lost. They will know that they can always rig elections and get away with it no matter what people do including protest, they don’t mind whether people die or not, since they will be able to get away with it.

Kibaki’s behaviour in relation to vote tallying and results in the 2007 elections makes democracy look sick in Africa. It brings to mind the question whether there are free and fair elections? Or whether franchise or high voter turn out as witnessed in Kenya can turn a regime out of office? What about the role of institutions to support such a process like an independent police, electoral commission, judiciary and a parliament that is sensitive to the needs of the country, free and non-partisan media, respect for the rule of law by all parties involved in the electoral process? Even though democracy has never been perfect although being adopted by nations and peoples, its institutionalisation depend more on local history, culture and geography and not analyses and prescription as it is applied in other contexts. In the case of Kenya, the political, economic and social systems are complex and full of nuances, combined with other forces/vested interests/pressure groups that exert more power, thus making the ordinary voter appear to be a pawn rather than a "king" maker.

Therefore if Kenya is to build on the already made gains on the democratic front, a solution to the current crisis must be found in tandem with the reality on the ground. The reality that the “presidential election was rigged” and the incumbent is hell-bent on hanging to power no mater what cost, but also the reality that the opposition is making claims which have been proved right by the electoral commission itself and the various poll observers that Kibaki did not win the elections”. Although, calling for peace or on the major players to urge their supporters to clam down is a first step, but the call for peace should not water down the main cause of the problem which is “rigged elections” which is a threat to democratic gains. Being soft on this point would embolden the antagonists especially the “winners” and based on their history of arrogance and lack of decorum in addressing national issues, they will brush aside the issue at stake and this will fuel anger which is not only expressed by the opposition, but the very people the winners want to “rule” at all cost.

Way out

Asking Raila or Kenyans to forget this and forge ahead, and wait for another 5 years by many partisan authors in various local dailies and international blogs is not sincere and honest since such calls are directed at one party and not the other two. Why are people not asking Kibaki to resign? Why not ask for recount and audit of the votes? If the Electoral commission is not honest, how sure can we be of the courts in Kenya? Kenyans know that the system is rotten thus the overwhelming vote and a clear message that they want something different. They should not be denied this difference by hiding behind discourses that keeps on mystifying the problem. If Kibaki goes on without the approval of Kenyans, he is not making it better for those already hurt in one way or the other through killings and destruction seen in the past days. These things will haunt the nation after he is long gone and people around him or groups supporting him will not escape blame and demands to be held accountable. Peace can only come when the two parties agree to talk, engage and get into a process that will heal wounds on both sides of the divide (the people, the Opposition and PNU politicians). Allowing Kibaki to go ahead and bury his head as if nothing serious has happened will only exacerbate the arrogance of the group around him as witnessed during a recent press conference and the exchange between PNU Ministers and the press. Such one sided approach and attack on the opposition will only help strengthen the status quo, the exploitation, discrimination and inequality along tribal lines, which will exacerbate problems even if calmness would return today.

What is urgently needed are; Curfew in Opposition areas to be lifted and regular police patrols with a humane face be initiated in hot spots to give people confidence in the state institutions for their safety. The general service unit has no role in the process since it is a catalyst instead of providing safety.
The Kenya Pipeline Corporation should immediately resume pumping oil to western Kenya and Uganda. Cutting this supply is not different from scorched earth policy and if someone in the government has ordered such action, which was observed already before the election days then he/she or they are fueling the crisis instead of solving it. This should apply to other services like electricity, food items among others Kenyan civil society organisations, Law Society, The Kenya National Human Rights Commission and invited institutions to help in the process of reconciliation and putting in place a framework that would bring back the credibility of the electoral process and an acceptable conclusion A re-run of presidential election supervised by a team of independent observers and representatives of the two parties (ODM and PNU) within an agreed time frame. It is now clear from ECK that they did not know who won. The ECK had put aside funds for a run off, and that money can be used to SAVE KENYA.

* Antony Otieno Ong'ayo is a Researcher in the New Politics Programme at the Transnational Institute

*Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Many people now say Kenya needs a few good men who want to serve without applause. Do we have them? Given the post-election violence in Kenya, it takes a sober, courageous person to look into the eye and the camera to say:

“I am sorry…we are sorry, we made a mistake…”

And yet, most times, these are the only words that those who have been wronged need to hear in order to return to the humane. The Kenyan situation during and after the elections warranted such words from the leaders. Instead, hollow-sounding words were spoken and we all know what followed: Loss. Death. Devastation. Shame. Greed for power, not service, did it. It destroyed the pride of the people and the humility within individuals. How can we gather the broken pieces to run a connecting thread through them? How can Kenya be whole, again? And perhaps the bigger question is, was there a ‘whole’ in the first place or it has always been splinters seemingly presented as one whole? A few African writers, in their own words, have something to say about Kenya’s elections and Africa’s political structures.

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AYI KWEI ARMAH

The sort of thing happening in Kenya happened in Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, and will happen again in Cameroon, in fact, every time there's an election under the present system. The problem is structural, not circumstantial. This is not only about elections: as long as we wish to remain within colonial political structures, the source of government legitimacy will remain what it was at the Berlin conference: force plus fraud. We shed blood during elections because we serve deities made in Berlin, and they have always needed human sacrifice. Part of the Berlin political deal was that massacres of the population were routine whenever they demanded democratic rights. If we want to end the bloodshed surrounding elections, we'll have to shift to a different organizational system. It is possible, but structurally, it cannot be Ugandan or Ghanaian or Kenyan. These are Berlin constructs, even if we pretend they are African. They are not. An African system is possible and feasible. It will cost nothing in human blood, and be less expensive to maintain than the present "state" system that drinks so much blood.

BRIAN CHIKWAVA

Politicians ought to see themselves as the midwives of people's hopes and aspirations. Sadly by far their greatest crime must be their compulsive disorder to take the new baby, throw it down the pit latrine and then stand around poking each other's faces: I declare it a boy and not a girl! No it was a girl I saw it! No it was a boy! So why did you throw it away? No I didn't, you did. Ok let’s hear it from the mother? No, I will punch her face if she gets involved in matters that are beyond her grasp! And so on and so on. Hopefully, among Kenya's political elite there is someone who is brave enough to go wade through all the crap, recover the baby, reunite it with its mother and restore faith in our politics.

CHIKA UNIGWE

In 2004, I travelled to Kenya for a writing workshop and stopped off for a few days in Kisumu to visit with my sister-in-law and her family. I loved Kisumu at first glance. I remember describing it to a friend as serene. Like the sea. It reminded me of Enugu, the city where I grew up in Nigeria. Not too big. Not too small. Just the right size. The people I saw seemed to exude the same sort of calmness the city itself gave. I felt if I could live anywhere else in the world, Kisumu would be it.

I carrried that image of Kisumu in my mind until towards the end of December 2007 when the civil unrests which followed the "landslide victory" of Kibaki began. Kisumu became unearthed from its sweet calm to inhabit front-page news all over the world. Kenyans became split, not along party lines, but along cultural groups. Neighbours began to call up hatred for each other. Everyday I switch on the radio to listen to the news, there are more people, ordinary people being killed. Police dispersing protesters with machine guns. People hiding in their homes, too scared to get out.

Like Ngugi Wa Thiongo pointed out recently, this has gone beyond the rigging of elections. That is not fixed by burning churches with people in them. It is not fixed by killing children hardly old enough to vote. This has mutated into ethnic cleansing. And if we are not careful this could escalate into something more monstrous, more odious than the genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994 and from which the nation still trills.

NURUDDIN FARAH

Total abuse of the Kenyan people's confidence in themselves; distortion of the African people's faith in their future; blind daylight robbery of our trust, our self-worth. This is criminal.

CHUMA NWOKOLO

Kenya snatched the baton of electoral violence. Today, she flees with that old dog, Tribalism, snapping at her heels. Escalating deaths, fractured lives and a gloomy déjà vu: we have seen this race for life a dozen times before. It is a case of ‘two fighting’; except that the main pugilists will not draw their own blood, they draw the blood of pawns. Presently one combatant will blink and the other will cart away the prize. Then (relative) ‘peace and stability’ will return to allow the venal dogs (far preferable to these blood-thirsty hounds) to return to their haunts at the Kenyan trough.

Yet, ethnic nations (tribes if you prefer) are not the core problem any more than can be a problem to be Kenyan/Tanzanian/Ugandan. It takes a leader of Hitler’s persuasion to convert German/Aryan/Jewish identities into issues of life and death, of genocide. Across the board in Africa it is past time to criminalize recidivist leadership with the potential for genocide. Across the continent, a new fad, the ‘Blanding of Africa’ is gaining currency: the effacement of ethnic nations (Kikuyu, Nupe…) in favour of nation-states (Mali, Sudan…). It would be another signal mistake in a long sequence. Rather than erase the ancient personalities, languages and cultures of our ethnic nations, I’d far rather erase the Kenyan, Nigerian, South African borders and spill their nations and peoples into their geographic envelope…

So much for dreams!

Yet, we do have a problem when armed zombies take to the streets, seeking innocents from other tribes. Without for one moment exculpating those monsters, we need to ask who sustains, channels, manipulates, and benefits from tribalism? Those masterminds behind the machetes are the focal enemy. It is well and good to crisis-manage Kenya by seeking which of two should rule, or how the twain may share power. But the larger issue—beyond election rigging—is: which leaders are worthy of the seat of power.

In these days of geometric escalations from tribal tension to genocide, truth is, beating the tribal drum is much more inimical to the national fabric than the crime of stuffing more ballot boxes than the other chap. The first thing a national leader does, on the day after he ‘wins’ 51% of the vote, is to make a speech wooing the 49% who campaigned and voted against him. How on earth does a ‘leader’ bring on board the survivors of people he has vicariously run through with a spear?

Leaders who have blood on their hands should simply walk away. Leaders who have pounded the tribal drum should not mount the National stage. Kenya—Africa—deserves far better.

For their part, opposition leaders, like many an incumbent, often fail the Solomon Test. (When King Solomon ordered that a disputed baby be cut in two and a bloody half given to each of the contesting mothers, one of them relinquished her claim to the baby in order to save its life. The other insisted that the baby be divided. Instantly, Solomon knew the real mother.) Too many African leaders would rather burn their countries to the ground than walk away. They would rather blow up nations with the dynamite of tribal tension than articulate the policies, and invest the truly hard work of building national consensus. We should put them out of business. It is not an act of courage to fight incumbent dictators by appealing to a tribal caucus. It is an act of moral cowardice; it says: ‘I cannot win this nation, and I have no ideas, no clue, as to how to wrest power, so I’ll just knock over the barrow.’ The tribal rhetoric is now quite passé, the hallmark of leaders bereft of ideas.

Unfortunately, once a party plays the ethnic card it becomes quite hard for others to avoid getting sucked in. Tribalism is the ultimate slippery slope, greased with tragic history. Even today, it peppers European war and politics. We need leaders with a new language, a new vision and a new toolkit for power. Kenya should stop in its track right now, turn around, and stare down that dog, Tribalism, and its sundry demons. This circuit she is running is a loop that descends into hell.

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From the writer’s perspectives, it is clear no party is going to govern peacefully anywhere in Africa in old wineskins. Sagging wineskins. It would be like characters playing parts that do not suit them in a drama. Would they go on forcefully to play or they would have to stop, question the fitness, and write their own script? This is where we are. Why in this century would we be condemning our brothers and sisters to cheap deaths? We need to re-invent ourselves and redefine where we live but first, we must put aside fat egos and lust for power before we can design and embrace an all-inclusive newness.

* Mildred K Barya is Writer-in-Residence at TrustAfrica (www.trustafrica.org)

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

George Ogola decries the simplistic western approach to covering news on Africa, as exemplified by the reporting of the Kenyan post-election crisis

They were probably the longest days of my life. Red-eyed from lack of sleep and desperate for updated information on the Kenyan elections, I meticulously watched international TV networks and spent hours surfing the net for relevant sites covering the elections. I could sense curiosity turn into anxiety then fear before an unprecedented implosion. Kenya was at war with itself.

The Economist called it ‘a very African coup’ while Raila Odinga called it ‘a civilian coup’. Both PNU and ODM claimed victory. Confusion reigned as chaos erupted. Months of excitement had turned into uncertainty for some and distress for others. But as I agonised with my people, there was a parallel drama unfolding.

When controversy over the presidential elections threatened to destroy our fragile nation-state, ‘parachute’ journalists descended on Nairobi eager to cover yet another ‘trouble spot’ in the blighted continent. As the country went to the polls, Africa collectively had no more than tickers in the major international news channels.

A week prior to the election, only Al-Jazeera had taken some trouble to tell the Kenyan story. Reuters Africa proved another notable exception. But the familiar would soon follow, vicious and unrelenting.

When protests met the announcement of the presidential results, CNN, BBC 24 and Sky News sent some of their finest to Nairobi. But the frame of reference had been pre-determined. A narrative had been established. Kenya had descended into tribal anarchy reminiscent of the Rwanda genocide.

Neighbours had turned onto each other just because they belonged to different tribes. ‘Tribal violence’ became the definitive mantra and was the basis for reports across the world.

I recall a BBC 24 news anchor asking a reporter when the results were announced whether a military coup was an immediate possibility.

Meanwhile, pundits were carefully selected. As a rule, they were middle class white folk mostly ex-diplomats previously based in Africa and ‘respected’ London-based Africanists working with the city’s many ‘Think-Tanks’. There was the occasional African interviewed on a late night show. The frames of reference could not be destabilised.

People were being targeted and killed indiscriminately by tribal mobs. The savagery both in the deed as well as coverage was taken to new heights when a Church was set ablaze in Eldoret killing more than 40 people.

International reporters flew to the town and milked the tragedy. They reconstructed the gory scenes, the savagery unbeknown to man since Rwanda. Footage of rotting corpses in maize fields and overflowing morgues were aired without reservation. The dead were denied dignity. If you were Kenyan, you cried; and I wept. But I cried for my country as well as the job I love.

The kind of coverage I saw on Sky, BBC 24, Euro News and a host other channels was not magnanimity. I was convinced it was not a desire by a section of the international media to tell the world the true story about the conflict that was slowly consuming Kenya. This was about a good story; it was about the exploitation of a people crying out for help.

It was equally about a western anthropology that figures conflict in Africa only in tribal terms; an Africa whose existence is so basic it must not be understood beyond the discourse of the tribe.

I witnessed the power of a selective morality that tends to view Africa from a paradigm of difference, a unique rationality that embraces the kind of savagery the world was witnessing.

Feature stories, commentaries and editorial pieces revelled in descriptions of gore; of eyes gorged, bodies burnt beyond recognition, of limbs severed with machetes. The description sounded more like a sport. Context and detail was ignored as the number of deaths became fodder for good stories.

Highbrow newspapers suddenly became tabloids with pictures of fleeing Kenyans, children sleeping rough and lines of women with bowls queuing for food making the cover pages. TV news anchors asked reporters on the ground how many were starving, how many more had been killed, and how many more villages had been razed.

Helicopters were more useful flying over burnt out villages to capture footage of frightened villagers than provide assistance. When many news channels heard whiff of planned protests, the question was not what it was about but how violent it would be. The threshold of death was continuously being revised, indeed rewritten.

Amid this, the obvious was deliberately being negated. Why was violence in Nairobi largely restricted to the slums of Kibera and Mathare? Was it possible that the Kenyan poor were at war with the rich and with themselves, though speaking in a voice that is anathema to a revolution? Why was violence so seductive? Why were the middle classes marooned in their suburbs, silent and invisible?

Why was the violence so vicious in the rural areas and especially in the Rift Valley? Was it really possibly that because of disputed presidential elections, Kenya would suddenly implode? Was there a historical trajectory to this conflict? No, the unambiguity of Africa as a problem continent could not be challenged at a time when it was such a good story.

The assumption that informs the continent’s interpretation is that this is a continent whose civilisation cannot be so sophisticated as to have class wars; neither can it justifiably fight for anything remotely democratic. I’m still torn between weeping for my country and an institution I still love dearly.

* Dr. George Ogola teaches at the University of Central Lancashire

*Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Former Ghanaian President, Jerry Rawlings, has said that the violence that erupted in Kenya over alleged rigging of the election by the incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki, is a protest against neo-colonialism and the imposition of leadership by the West. According to him, Kenyans do not want to go through the same kind of experience again hence their insistence on change.

Kenyans for Peace, Truth, Justice have received alarming reports from human rights monitors in Nairobi’s low-income areas, who have reported that local political leaders are mobilising gangs of youth to deter attendance to the rallies called by the Orange Democratic Movement on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

As Kenya counts the human and material cost of the political violence, hospitals are reporting an increase in reported rapes during the immediate post-election period, spurring the government and health organisations to find ways to treat these cases as well as protect the displaced from further incidents of sexual violence.

“The 2007 post election skirmishes is just a culmination of sustained tension in the community but the extent and impact of damage, looting, raping, sodomy, eviction and killing has never been witnessed before. The country was hosting three presidential candidates from three ethnic tribes Luo, Kamba and Kikuyu. Political tension and envisioned ethnic conflicts was certainly predicted as this was the most hotly contested election in the history of Kenya.

Human rights activists in Kenya have dismissed as meaningless police plans to launch an inquiry into the use of live rounds during protests against December’s controversial presidential elections. On 16 January alone, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), five people were shot dead in the western city of Kisumu during attempts by supporters of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) to stage a rally.