No Country for Old Hatreds
Written by Kwani · January 11, 2008
BY BINYAVANGA WAINAINA
This thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.
Compared with other African nations, Kenya has had significant success with this experiment. But it has not been without its contradictions, though they had never really turned lethal until now.
Our Kenyan identity, so deliberately formed in the test tube of nationalist effort, has over the years been undermined, subtly and not so subtly, by our leaders — men who appealed to our histories and loyalties to win our votes.
You see, the burning houses and the bloody attacks here do not reflect primordial hatreds. They reflect the manipulation of identity for political gain.
So what was different about this election? What brought Kenya’s equilibrium to an end?
Five years ago, we voted for a broad and nationally representative government. Inside this vehicle were the country’s major tribes: the Luo, the Luhya, the Kikuyu, many Kalenjin — all the people now killing one another.
We wanted this arrangement to quickly introduce a new and more inclusive Constitution, deal firmly with corruption and start a process of defining the nation in terms that include everybody.
Tragically, President Mwai Kibaki instead steered a course away from the coalition and cultivated the support of his Kikuyu community. He did a good job rebuilding the civil service and managing the economy, but he did it within a framework that was not sustainable.
When it came time to conduct our most recent election, Raila Odinga had built a movement on the back of President Kibaki’s betrayal of the spirit of 2002. His political party, the Orange Democratic Movement, was the big ethnic tent similar to the one that had first brought President Kibaki to office.
On the day we cast our vote, we thought that our optimism and desire for an inclusive and broad government would prevail. Instead, three days later — after reports that votes were being “cooked” in Kikuyu strongholds, after skirmishes in the room where the results were being announced, after the news media were ejected — Mr. Kibaki was announced the winner and a haphazard swearing-in took place. And Kenya exploded.
Mr. Odinga and President Kibaki are not really ethnic leaders, but in the days since the disputed election they have stoked tribal paranoia and used it to cement electoral loyalty.
Mr. Odinga and his fellow party leaders are now determined to avenge the wrong they believe they have suffered. Sadly, this leadership now appears to believe that the violence spreading across the country might be a valuable bargaining chip.
My further suspicion is that Mr. Odinga wants to sell to Kenyans and the world a sort of Ukrainian “people’s revolution” — where protesters take to the streets and change the order of things, and are seen to be throwing happy pink petals on television, so America can say, ah, the people have spoken.
But rather than matters leading to a popular but peaceful uprising against a flawed election, we are likelier to suffer an escalation of retaliations and a descent to that special machete place that nations rarely recover from.
Yet all is not lost. Nations are built on crises like this. If there is such a thing as Kenya, it should be gathering energy right now. Two leaders can sit down, form a power-sharing agreement and put together a system to handle elections and transition. A Constitution that names and recognizes the tribal nations within our nation, that decentralizes some power and that includes us all in the process is possible.
For 40 years we have been dancing around each other, a gaseous nation circling and tightening. The moment is now to make a solid thing called Kenya.
Binyavanga Wainaina, a writer in residence at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., is the founding editor of Kwani?. This piece first appeared as an Op-Ed contribution in the New York Times, January 6th, 2008. Genocide Watch have a PDF version
I wish to differ with you on the notion that Raila was to bring about the so called 2nd liberation. Let me put forth my argument.
In 1997, Raila vied for the top seat this time riding on the moribund National democratic Party (NDP). He came third garnering 665, 725 votes mostly from Luo Nyanza. This was 10.92 % of the total votes cast against Kibaki’s 1,895,527 million votes representing 31.09 % of votes cast. The then incumbent, Mr. Moi won with some 40.12 %, 2,445,801 votes http://africanelections.tripod .com/ke.html#1992_Presidential_Election. However, commenting immediately after the announcement of these results, Raila had this to tell BBC; ”Moi has rigged the process as he did in 1992, just that this time round he will not fool anybody,” Raila Odinga, the candidate for the National Development Party, told Reuters. ”We are prepared for him, and we are ready to take him head on.” (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407EFDC1331F932A05751C1A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2). Barely 4 years later in 2002, not only did Raila recognize Moi as the president elect, but he also brockered a power sharing deal clearly showing his readiness to compromise for selfish gains. He drove his NDP party into a merger with KANU in which he was named the KANU secretary general brining to an end the long and lustrous career of Kamotho, the hitherto secretary general. He was also rewarded with a Energy Ministry docket and was expecting to be the successor of the then retiring president. Consequently, NDP was dissolved. This was well covered by BBC and a photo of jubilant Raila giving a victors thumbs up can be clearly seen on the BBC news archives (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/ 1878321.stm). Into the steady embrace of Moi, where inveigled with the goodies of the patronage system, his party was soon supporting the Moi kleptocracy, saving it from votes of no confidence by first Ugenya MP James Orengo and then a second one brought by Kisumu Rural MP Anyang’ Nyong’o. So it is that not everything is as it seems. Raila only left KANU when he realized that he was not part of the former presidents succession plan. He was to join Kibaki, Wamalwa and Ngilu (all who had lost in 1997 presidential race) who had already formed a unified political coalition front, NAK to take on KANU. So when Raila calls Kalonzo a traitor for accepting a VP post, it leaves a lot to be desired on how politicians quickly forgets their own roles in similar scripts different casts. Surely, this man gets more credit than he deserves.
So what happened to the fire-breathing, froth at the mouth democrats of yesteryear. I mean this was a STOLEN election. The way forward is for the man on the seat to STEP ASIDE and allow for an independent audit of the tally. The longer the hard stance the more bloodshed we will be seeing!
Over the last few days, I have realised what our country is worth. We have been sitting in our comfortable sitting rooms, grease-lipped with a steaming capuccino in one hand as we naively gnaw away at what the media houses graciously feed us with: pot-bellied executives shake to mergers, disgruntled politicians frog-march one another up and down five-star hotels’ foyers and many other efforts at ‘advancement’. The reality is that we are a sadly poor country and the so-called political class is seated with warming their hands for the next hand-shake. We need to do something for OUR good lest we be led to our doom. As Kenyans, we faithfully pay our taxes which are used to fund the incumbent’s re-election bid while people live in super-abject poverty.
Let no-one fool themselves that because s/he belongs to the same tribe as our ‘prominent’ politicians they will benefit. Ah-ah! As has been said elsewhere, there are only two tribes in Kenya: the rich and the poor. It’s just sad to see those of the same tribe killing each other while the ‘enemy’ wonders at his/her next acquisition!
It is true Binyavanga that a crisis like the present in Kenya can be a stepping stone to the country we all dream of: Peaceful and prosperous. However, that depends on how the impasse is treated and not on assumptions that leaders can just sit and agree on something.
This would be not be beneficial to Kenyans but to those politicians that would enter an agreement. What we need is the truth that comes by exposing our political leaders as who they are.
You will agree with me that just like in a marriage, the first days of any political leadership in office are all bliss until later on. The opposition looks for mistakes, highlights them, comes to power, it is removed by another opposition and voila the cycle.
I think Wainaina you need to strike the nail flat on the head and say that in the last 40 years Kenya has had very ugly instances of disturbance of peace, death included. It has not been joy through out. What we see now is what I can call a painful boil than the rest that we have had all over.
Calling for a power sharing agreement is as dangerous as exposing anything inflammable to a flame. Entering such a pact in Kenya would mean that we render an Electoral Commission forever irrelevant in the future. It would be an admission that elections are undoable in Kenya, which means the country will henceforth be governed under pacts.
The truth about the December 27th general election need to be established clearly and all doubts erased. There must have been a winner and a loser and that is the line to pursue. This has nothing even to do with a new election since moods have changed and nothing will prevent a loser in the re-tally referring back and saying, ‘I had won in the first election and if you don’t hear me I’m going to do wonders.”
The problem in kenya is or will be aggravated by those assumptions submitting that this is only a simple puncture that we can patch up and go on. Never that way.
Who killed who? Who incited who? Who won? Who lost? Let Kenyans first know the facts and then shall the we extract an ultimate cure to our problems, ethinicity being numero uno.
Fantasy in issues like these incubates anarchy.