[NYTr] Drama of the popular struggle for democracy in Kenya

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Pambazuka News - Jan 3, 2008
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45210

Drama of the popular struggle for democracy in Kenya

by Horace Campbell

National elections were held in Kenya on December 27, 2007; the results
of the Presidential election were announced three days later. Within
minutes of the announcement that Mwai Kibaki had emerged as the winner,
there were spontaneous acts of opposition to the government in all
parts of the country. The opposition was especially intense among the
jobless youths who had voted overwhelmingly for change. A ruling clique
that had stolen billions of dollars in a period of five years had
stolen the elections. This was the verdict of the poor. However, this
verdict was obscured by ethnic alienation and the constant refrain by
local and foreign intellectuals that the crisis and killings emanated
from deep ‘tribal’ hostilities. This tribal narrative was intensified
after the burning and killings of innocent civilians in a church, in
Eldoret, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. But while these killings
had all of the hallmarks of the genocidal violence of Rwanda and
Burundi, more importantly, they heightened the need for Kenyan society
to step back from the brink of all out war. Violence and killings
provided a feedback loop that threatened to engulf even the political
leaders of the society.

This analysis argues that the calls for peace and reconciliation by the
political and religious leaders will remain hollow until there are
efforts to break from the recursive processes of looting, extra
judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low respect
for African lives.

This short commentary on the elections and the aftermath seeks to
introduce a unified emancipatory approach: liberating humanity from the
mechanical, competitive, and individualistic constraints of western
philosophy, and re-unifying Kenyans with each other, the Earth, and
spirituality. This analysis draws from fractal theory and seeks to
place Africans as human beings at the center of the analysis. Fractal
theory is founded on aspects of the African knowledge system and breaks
the old tribal narratives that refer to Africans as sub humans needing
Civilization, Christianity and Commerce.

Those who condemn the post-election violence in Kenya have failed to
condemn the traditions of killings and economic terrorism in Kenya. It
should be stated clearly that using African women as guinea pigs for
western pharmaceuticals is just as outrageous as burning innocent women
and children in churches. Rape and violation of women, and exploitation
of the poor and of jobless youth have been overlooked by the
commentators who focus on one component of the matrix of exploitation
in Kenya -- ethnicity.

In tandem with much of the current discourse on fractal theory, this
commentary is addressed to progressive intellectuals from Kenya and
calls for a revolutionary paradigmatic transformation- one that is
intrinsic to African knowledge systems and can be witnessed in practice
in the everyday activities of African life. Revolutionary
transformations are necessary to break from the processes that have
been unleashed in Kenya and East Africa since British colonialism and
the British Gulag. This break requires revolutionary ideas in Kenya,
along with revolutionary leaders and new forms of political
organization. Thus far, neo-liberal capitalism and neo-liberal
democratic organizations, along with the focus on party organization
have created leaders who organize for political power. These leaders
are not even concerned about forming lasting political parties. Far
more profound transformations are required in Kenya, beyond the winning
of elections. However, until new ideas and new leaders emerge, the
current struggles will serve to educate the poor on the limitations of
the old politics and ethnic alliances that privilege sections of the
Kenyan capitalist class.

The analysis is presented as a drama of three acts. The first act was
played out in the form of the election campaign. The second act
involved the drama after the announcement of the results and the
violent reactions from all sections of the society. The third act of
this drama continues to unfold with the call for a fractal analysis
that will place revolutionary transformation as the central question on
the political agenda in Kenya and East Africa.

Act One – The Struggles over the election and the campaign for the
Presidency.

The Scene: Kenya had been the epi- center of imperial domination in
East Africa from the period of British colonialism. Caroline Elkins in
the book, Britain’s Gulag, has documented for posterity the extreme
violence and murders bequeathed to the Kenyan political culture by the
British government. At independence in December 1963, Britain handed
over power to people who, in essence, agreed to act as junior partners
with British capitalism in Eastern and Central Africa. This partnership
included an acceptance by the ruling class in Kenya of the western
European forms of land ownership that stated that Africans had to be
modernized from their “tribal” and “backward” ways. For forty years,
Kenya was presented as a success story where a parasitic middle class
and a thriving Nairobi Stock Exchange (composed of foreign capital)
sought to prove that capitalism could take root in Africa.

Act 1 Scene Two of this drama took the form of a campaign for the tenth
Parliament of Kenya. The drama of the struggle for change in Kenya was
played out before the world in the form of an electoral struggle that
gripped the society for many months. At the end of Scene Two one of the
principal props of this drama – the local media - reported that the
results were like a “blood bath.” The headline screamed “ energized
voters sweep out Vice President, Cabinet Ministers and seasoned
politicians as wind of change blows across the country.” But the
newspapers were not yet aware of the implications of using language
like “blood bath” in their headlines. Every one awaited the final
results of the news of who would be President. The results were being
delayed while the votes were being cooked. As news of the parliamentary
routing of the incumbent President and his allies in the Party of
National Unity (PNU) splashed on the streets, on the screens and on
text messages while the principal actors and actresses of the drama,
the people of Kenya, sought spontaneous actions to ensure that they
were not silenced by the power brokers who had placed themselves at the
head of the movement for change. These central actors and actresses
(wananchi) had enthusiastically participated in the election campaign
articulating their demand for peace, reconstruction and transformation
of Kenyan society.

By the time of the third scene of this drama, those from the den of
thieves around the incumbent Mwai Kibaki sought to silence the media.
In order for this scene to be played out without an audience,
international observers and the media (both national and international)
were ejected from Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) election center
at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The Chairperson of the
ECK went to a small room and announced the results of the elections
naming Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the election. Three days later, the
same chairperson of the ECK said in the media that he was not sure if
Kibaki won the elections.

Earlier in the drama Raila Odinga’s team of regional barons and
aspiring capitalists argued that the true results of the elections
showed that Raila Odinga had been chosen by the majority of the main
players to be the leading man on the Kenyan stage. How was it possible
for his Movement to win over one hundred seats in the Parliament (when
Kibaki’s den of thieves had won less than thirty parliamentary seats)
and still lose the Presidency? Local and foreign observers cried foul.
The elections had been rigged. Ballot boxes had been stuffed. Results
were being announced that did not correspond to the votes from the
constituencies. The integrity of the process was flawed. These voices
were soon drowned out by the might and power of those with strategic
control over the military and media sections of the performance.
Neo-liberal politics include rigging, so that the international
observers used ‘measured’ language of “irregularities,” “anomalies” and
“weighty issues” to conceal the reality of outright theft. Raila Odinga
termed the process a “civilian coup.” But international capital became
confused, because, after all the precedent of election rigging in
Florida,U.S.A in 2000 had given the green light to electoral fraud
internationally.

The Swearing in of President Kibaki

Act One Scene Three of this drama was performed within the guarded
confines of State House where parastatal executives, mostly defeated
cabinet members and a small section of the media were invited. In this
scene, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as the Third President of the Republic
of Kenya. The stage and setting of this scene was markedly different
from the previous swearing in at the Uhuru Park (in Nairobi) where an
enthusiastic audience had cheered on the President on December 30,
2002. The 2007 swearing in scene had to be played out without the
audience because the principal actors and actresses did not endorse
this new act. Minutes after the announcement of the victory of Kibaki,
there were spontaneous demonstrations all over the country, especially
the urban areas. Popular outrage at the theft of the elections brought
violence and the killings of innocent civilians in Kakamega, Kisumu,
Mombassa, Nairobi, Nakuru and other centers. The police killed innocent
demonstrators as the foreign media portrayed the demonstrations in
ethnic terms. The gendered, class and ethnic dimensions of the
opposition to Kibaki began to be played out in the poor communities
that were called slums, but the media focused on one dimension, the
ethnic alienation of the poor and exploited.

Hundreds of dead brought home the reality that the elections and vote
counting were simply one site of struggle in the quest to break the old
politics of exploitation and dehumanization in Kenya. However, because
so much of the old politics of exploitation had been masked by the
politicization of ethnicity, poor members of the Kikuyu nationality
were targeted in some communities, with the killings in Eldoret
bringing home the long traditions of ethnic cleaning that had been
going on in this region during the Moi regime. The same media neglected
to report that poor Kalenjin also torched the home of former President
Arap Moi.

Would there be a break from this recursive process of killing of the
poor? Odinga and members of the Pentagon condemned the killings of
members of a particular ethnic group but the anger was too deep for the
youths to listen. Unfortunately, the ODM did not have structures to
properly mobilize the youths away from looting.

Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic Movement

In order to avert the possible war that could emanate from this new act
of the drama there was the need for fresh if not revolutionary ideas to
harness the pent up energies of the people for change. The
radicalization of Kenyan politics had merged with the anti-
globalization forces internationally to the point where in 2007 Kenya
hosted the World Social Forum. The radical demands of the Bamako appeal
of the Africa Social Forum (for profound social, economic and gender
transformations in Africa) could not be carried forward by the old Non
Governmental Organization elements allied with international NGO’s from
Western Europe. What the World Social Forum had demonstrated was the
reality that new revolutionary ideas with new revolutionary forms of
organization were needed to realize the goals and aspirations and
appeal of the Africa social forum. Raila Odinga and his group of
regional ethnic barons had tapped into the radical sentiments of the
youth all across the ethnic divisions. Calling his team, the Pentagon,
Odinga mobilized the popular discourses about youth, women and disabled
to speak about ‘poverty eradication’ and “corruption.”

Absent from the platform of the Orange Democratic Movement was a clear
program for reconstruction and transformation. Raila Odinga had been a
major political actor on the Kenyan stage for four decades. He had
participated in every major political party and formation since his
father, Odinga Odinga had emerged as the opponent of the Kenyan form of
neo-colonialism. The 2007 elections exposed the reality that there were
no real political parties in Kenya. Leaders on all sides were not
interested in building a lasting movement for change. They were
interested in parties as electoral vehicles to capture state power.
There were more than 300 parties registered in Kenya and over 117
participated in the elections in December 2007.

Local and international writers who earlier had been voices for the
poor enthusiastically supported the enactment of the first scene of the
drama (the election and voting). Some of these writers moaned and
groaned that the script had been changed when those who controlled the
state machinery unleashed violence against the poor. In order to
unleash state violence against the poor, the Minister of Internal
Affairs banned the broadcast of live images. The state also toyed with
the idea of banning SMS messaging in Kenya. But Kenyans simply tuned in
to the international media to confirm what they knew, that the
recursive processes of killings and revenge were spiraling out of
control.

Without enacting an official state of emergency (in the fear of further
hurting the tourist industry) the majority of poor Kenyans lived under
curfew-like conditions as the military, the police, and General Service
Units were deployed all over the country and new forms of censorship
were implemented. The political leadership that stole the elections had
to be careful with the use of the police, military and the intelligence
services in so far as the divisions within the security forces
challenged the authority of those who stole the elections. Raila Odinga
sought to tap into this division of the coercive forces by calling a
demonstration of a million Kenyans to oppose the stolen election
results.

The International media and international capital

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other cultural voices of
imperial power were from the outset one of the props of this drama. The
British were particularly active because the interests of British
capitalism were very much an important part of narrative of the drama.
During Act 1 scenes two and three, this foreign prop had been
condemning the “irregularities’” and “anomalies” of the drama and
carried the press statements of the International Observers of the
European Union and the Commonwealth. The head of the European Union
observer mission issued a statement declaring that, “the Presidential
poll lacks credibility and an independent audit should be instituted to
rectify things.”

This clear statement led the US government to reverse its earlier
recognition of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the Presidential elections.
There had been concern in Washington over the future of Kenya in so far
as the US authorities sought to mobilize Kenyans in the war against
terrorism. During the period of Kibaki, Kenyan citizens were shipped
out of the country to be tried as terrorists under the US policy of
kidnapping, called rendition. The ODM signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Islamic community during the election campaign
and members of the ODM condemned the rendering of Kenyan citizens by
the government. It was argued that if these citizens acted contrary to
Kenyan law, they should be tried under Kenyan law.

The propaganda war had been virulent and since Raila Odinga held the
moral and political high ground, sections of the international media
began to retreat from endorsement of the electoral coup. However, the
occupation of the moral high ground was shaky. Would the government and
opposition be more concerned with the lives of the poor than with
political power?

In the face of the absence of resolute moral leadership to condemn
these killings, the international media had a field day portraying the
struggles for democracy in Kenya as primitive “tribal” violence.

Act Two – Stalemate and brinkmanship in politics

Raila Odinga and his team called the Pentagon had entered the drama
seeking to play on the terms of those who had seized power from the
time of colonialism. The very naming of his team as the ‘Pentagon’ had
shown an insensitivity to the international revulsion against military
symbols. The five leaders of the Pentagon were, (i) Vice Presidential
running mate M Mudavadi, (ii) Charity Ngilu, (iii) William Ruto, (iv)
Bilal Najib and (v) Joseph Nyagah. These regional ethnic barons had
emerged from multiple political formations and many had family and
business linkages with capitalists inside and outside of the
government. During the campaign these regional leaders had campaigned
on a pledge to devolve power from central government. The poor believed
this would bring power closer to the village and communities so that
health care facilities, water supply systems, road and pathways in the
villages, education, sanitation and other services could be delivered
so that the conditions of exploitation are ameliorated. These localized
services were interpreted by various local communities as job creation
avenues for the jobless youths. For the regional barons, the devolution
debate was carried out to ensure easier access to the treasury. The
word ‘majimbo’ re- emerged in the political vocabulary of Kenya to
reignite the memory of the alliance between the ‘home guards’ and
settlers at the dawn of independence.

Youths all across Kenya had transcended the ethnic identification and
wanted real change in the quality of life in the society.

Entering the drama without a real party and without a real organ to
bring the majority of the actors and actresses to the center of the
drama, it was easy for the team around Mwai Kibaki to stall so that the
spontaneous anger would peter out. Would the Orange Democratic
Revolution learn the lessons of popular power in the streets of the
Ukraine Orange Revolution and shake the old power with new bases of
alternative power? This provided the setting for the central aspect of
the drama, the stand off between the forces of orange and the forces of
the defeated power. Kibaki came across as an imprisoned leader,
surrounded by politicians and financiers who argued that Kibaki must
enter any negotiation from a position of strength. Odinga countered
that negotiations could only begin when Kibaki accepted that the
elections had been stolen. The hardening of positions ratcheted up the
tensions in the country as regionally countries such as Uganda, Rwanda
and the Southern Sudan began to feel the effects of the shutdown of the
transportation system in Kenya.

Mwai Kibaki and the neo-liberal regime in Kenya

Mwai Kibaki had been associated with the ruling class in Kenya for over
fifty years. Starting his career as a representative of Shell Oil
Company in Kampala, Uganda, Kibaki moved from an academic position at
Makerere University to the top echelons of the independent government
of Kenya after independence. In the book, The Reds and the Blacks,
William Atwood, then-US ambassador, had identified Kibaki as one of the
steady ‘reformers” who would guarantee the interests of foreign
capital. Kibaki emerged as a stable force in the ruling circles serving
both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi as Minister of Finance. It was
under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi that the forms of theft by the
ruling elements in Kenya were refined. Extra judicial killings and
accidental deaths of prominent trade union leaders and politicians were
papered over by the foreign press that labeled Kenya a ‘stable’
democracy.

Arap Moi and international capital.

After the death of Kenyatta in 1978, Daniel Arap Moi moved decisively
to cement an alliance of foreign capitalists and local political
careerists to loot the society and spread divisions and ethnic hatred
among the poor and oppressed. British capitalism had been the dominant
force in Kenya with British companies such as Unilever, Finlays, GSK,
Vodafone, Barclays and Standard Bank becoming leading names on the
Nairobi Stock Exchange. Britain had made a deal with the independence
leaders and awarded a small sum to enhance this new class of African
yeoman farmers to join the British settlers in the exploitation of
Kenya and indeed, East Africa. Molo, in the Rift Valley (one of the
constituencies at the center of the row over the rigged elections),
represented one of the places where Kikuyu settlers had been relocated
after independence.

Moi during his Presidency remained at the center of the alliance
between British capitalists, Asian capitalists and Kikuyu entrepreneurs
from Central Province. By the time of the electoral defeat of Moi in
December 2002, the Moi family and cronies in the ruling party, Kenya
African National Union (KANU) had become junior capitalists in the game
of exploitation. It was under the leadership of Moi that imperialism
used Kenya as a base to subvert African independence. A report
commissioned by the Kibaki administration, (called the Kroll Report),
had named Moi and his sons as billionaires with assets in banks in
Britain, Switzerland, South Africa, Namibia, the Cayman Islands and
Brunei. The 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll
alleged that relatives and associates of former President Moi siphoned
off more than £1bn of government money. This documentation placed the
Mois on a par with Africa's other great politicians-cum-looters such as
Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and
Nigeria's Sani Abacha. The Kroll report of the levels of theft when
presented to the Kibaki government was never acted on. The alliance
between Moi and Kibaki forces became clearer during the election
campaign when Moi and his sons fiercely campaigned for the re –election
of President Kibaki. The sons of Moi were decisively defeated in the
elections.

The documentation of the level of theft by Moi was exposed before the
public in what to became known as the Goldenberg scandal. This scandal
brought to the fore the alliance between Moi, KANU and Asian
capitalists in Kenya. These capitalists had looted the country with
such impunity that Kamlesh Mdami Pattni (an Asian capitalist named in
the Goldenberg scandal) took over one party Kenda to contest the 2007
elections.

Prior to the 1992 multi-party struggles, Kibaki had sought to distance
himself from this group of capitalists. These were the capitalists
involved in settler agriculture, manufacturing, transport, services,
old forms of banking, insurance, real estate, construction and
engineering and the health and education sectors. These capitalists
from inside and outside the political arena provided cover for looters
all across Eastern Africa. In the Kenyan economy money from oil in the
Sudan (especially Southern Sudan), commercial interests in Somalia,
gold and diamond dealers from Rwanda, Burundi and the Eastern Congo
circulated with the resources from the exploited Kenyan working poor so
that in the past ten years there has been a growth of the Kenyan
economy. Felicia Kabunga, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal
on Rwanda (ICRT) for crimes of genocide in Rwanda was the kind of
looter and money spinner who found safe haven among the money
launderers in Kenya.

Kibaki and the rise of new capitalists.


Although Mwai Kbaki had campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket in
2002, his tenure as President of Kenya was marked by an explosion of
new schemes for accumulation. The rise of the telecommunications,
information technology and banking sectors boomed with new enterprises
such as Equity Bank and a number of communications companies
(Safaricom, Flashcom, Telecom etc) rivaling the old capitalists. The
floating of new shares n the form on an Initial Public Offer (IPO) for
the Company, Safarcom, became a central question in the election
campaign in so far as those who got access to the shares at the time of
the issuing of the IPO became instant millionaires.

The Kibaki government was in the main dominated by elements who formed
a company called MEGA (a regrouping of the old Gema Gikuyu, Embu, Meru
Association), and through Transcentury Corporation had elevated
themselves to be the among the leading capitalists in Kenya. This group
presented a program called Vision 2030 where Kenya would become the
leading capitalist country in Africa, becoming the Singapore of Africa.
Control of the governmental apparatus was crucial for Vision 2030.

Space does not allow for an elaboration of the individuals of this
capitalist clique and their place in the interpenetrating directorates
of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. What is significant is that the names of
the capitalists and politicians of Trancentury figured in the scandal
of corruption that rocked the government of Mai Kibaki. This was termed
the Anglo-leasing scandal which involved awarding huge government
contracts to bogus companies. One insider, John Githongo, exposed the
scandal and repaired to Britain.

No money from the Anglo leasing scandal had been recovered before the
elections and although European and US governments made noises about
corruption there were no moves to repatriate the stolen wealth back to
Kenya. These scandals were very much a part of the election campaign.
Three of the four ministers who resigned after the Anglo Leasing
scandal was exposed had been reinstated by Kibaki. These ministers along
with twenty other ministers lost their parliamentary seats in the
December 2007 elections.

The poor of Kenya had used the ballot to send a message to the
capitalists in Kenya but those who stole billions of dollars from the
Kenyan Treasury were not above stealing an election.

The real test in Kenyan politics was whether the team called the
Pentagon was serious about changing the political culture of theft,
looting and storing billions of dollars in foreign banks. The people of
Kenya had voted for change. Was the Orange Democratic Movement a
movement for change or a movement for political power? This was the
outstanding question as the cast and the writers got ready for Act
three of the drama of the struggle for democracy.

Act 3. A Revolutionary situation without revolutionary ideas and real
revolutionaries.

Because the drama is being played out it is not possible to make a
presentation of the last act of this drama. This is the act where the
peoples of Kenya are torn between two traditions. These are the
traditions of the freedom fighters for independence and the traditions
of violence, looting and the low respect for African life. The youths
of Kenya have been brought up in the period of the aftermath of the end
of apartheid and the defeat of Mobutism. These youths have risen above
the politicization of ethnicity and along with progressive women want
to end the rape and violation of women. These youths have been heard to
say that Kenya is in the midst of a liberation war.

While the consciousness of the youth may be high with the thought of a
long term struggle, there are very few revolutionary leaders and a
poverty of revolutionary ideas in Kenya. If anything, the poorer youths
are being mobilized into counter-revolutionary violence where poor and
oppressed people burn and kill each other. This was the lesson of the
killings, burning and massacre in the Rift Valley.
Counter-revolutionary violence of the Rwanda genocidal form lay just
below the surface and the same politicians who gave refuge to
genocidaires from Rwanda are not above fomenting genocidal violence
among the poor. The media images of marauding youths with pangas
provide the necessary imagery to represent to the world another version
of African savagery. This same media will not prominently carry the
news that poor peasants from the home area of Danieal Arap Moi burnt
his house to the ground. The prospect of real class warfare in Kenya
frightens both the government and the opposition so there is a delicate
effort to manage the crisis so that the forms of capital accumulation
can return to the business pages rather than the front pages.

Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic movement are now caught between
the aspirations of the regional capitalists of the ‘Pentagon’ and the
demand for real change across Kenya. The post election mayhem is a
clear demonstration that the ODM did not sufficiently engage their
followers on new ideas transcending ethnicity and patriarchy. This
demand for democratic change in Kenya will require new forms of
organization beyond electoral politics and new ideas about the value of
African lives. This requires a break with the European ideation systems
that promote capitalism as democracy and genocide as progress.


[Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse
University.]


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