From autocracy to kleptocracy to dynastic oligarchy in 50 years-Kenya's
three tribes
In April Uhuru Kenyatta was inaugurated as Kenya's fourth president. He is
the son of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, who replaced the hope and
triumph of Kenya's independence with single-party rule. He is also the
chosen successor to Daniel Arap Moi, the second president, who ran Kenya as
a police state and personal ATM. We've come this far in just 50 years.
by Shailja Patel
June 2013
Moi. Is. Going. There was a time you didn't dare speak the words.
My father's voice exults over static from Nairobi to San Francisco. Kenya's
election results are rolling in. Mwai Kibaki, the presidential candidate
fielded by the rainbow coalition of opposition parties, has won 65% of the
vote. Titans of single party rule have lost their seats. An unprecedented 11
women have been elected to parliament. The era of Daniel Arap Moi and the
ruling party KANU who have plundered Kenya at will for 24 years, is over.
For Kenyans, this is the Berlin Wall coming down. This is a Florida recount
where the truth prevails. Kenyans were killed for this. People were
tortured, exiled, imprisoned, for resisting single-party rule. I never
believed I would see it end in my lifetime.
I'm glued to my monitor, shooting jubilant emails to other Kenyans in
Boston, London, New York. We are sitting up all night watching results come
in. Tears of hope and renewed pride rolling down our faces.
We are daring to dream again. To imagine going home. We are thanking all the
gods, ancestors and spirits that sustain us.
Five years later, November 2007
Jacaranda time in Nairobi. Clouds of purple extravagance, against a backdrop
of foliage, sunlight, rain, sky. Each flower a dancer in motion.
So what happened to that guy in New York, asks Waithera (
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http://mondediplo.com/2013/06/09kenya#nb1> 1)?
I ended it, I say. He was never going to leave Brooklyn. Lovely man, but one
of those New Yorkers who thinks he's a world citizen because he has nine
different ethnic restaurants in his neighbourhood. When we started dating, I
was serious about moving to New York, but then I realised it was just a
stepping-stone to coming home. Here.
And you? I say. Anyone nice in your life?
The Kikuyu men my age, she snorts, are chasing women 15 years younger. And
you know, because of who my parents are, I could only consider someone of
the same social status. All those ones are already married, and cheating on
their wives.
If you'd just consider dating a non-Kikuyu, I say. But we've had this
exchange before. I already know the answer. Poor Wai. The Curse Of Kikuyu
Female Aristocracy. Family mansion in Karen, shopping trips to London,
software consultancy career, thrice-weekly golf at Karen Country Club,
mega-inheritance, dating pool of exactly three eligible men. Big changes
ahead, I say. This election. Get with the times, love.
I hope not, says Waithera. We've had five years of 6% growth. Why change
drivers when the car is going in the right direction?
Come on Wai, I say. Kibaki's failed. Crazy poverty and inequality. Where's
our new constitution? What about those 500 bodies dumped in the forest?
Young Kikuyu men. Imagine if your brother was one. They didn't just rob us,
they robbed the next three generations!
The most important thing is stability, says Waithera. Raila Odinga is a
socialist. With a 20-year grudge against us. Already, he's building up the
sentiment against Kikuyus. If he becomes president, there will be
retaliation.
Raila Odinga is hardly a socialist, I say. I only wish. He's a member of
your club - just like Kibaki. But the ODM (Orange Democratic Movement) Party
does have more ethnic diversity, more women, more young people. To the old
guard - and to Britain and the US - that looks like socialism.
The Kenyatta family did not acquire 500,000 acres by working hard and
saving, I say. How many ethnic groups do we have in Kenya?
She is silent. The unspoken answer, Forty-Three, hangs in the air.
And how is it that Kenya has been run by a tiny handful of old men from
Central Kenya since 1963? And the rest of the country exists on scraps?
I lean forward. I hear myself get louder.
Political office is a job. You're elected, you have an assignment, you get
assessed on your performance. You get promoted if you deliver, you get fired
if you don't. And when your time is up, you f**king go.
Silence. I may have crossed a line. At least I didn't say Kikuyu Hegemony. I
grope for something to break the tension.
Wouldn't it be crazy for the US to get a Luo president before we do?
27 December 2007
A record eight million Kenyans rise as early as 4am to vote. We queue for up
to 10 hours, in the sun, without food, drink, toilets. I know a woman who
gets out of her hospital bed, pulls the drip out of her neck, crosses the
city on matatu and foot with bloodstained bandages visible - to vote. The
country speaks through the ballot. Against greed. Against corruption.
Against neo-colonialism. Against feudalism. It is the largest, best
organised non-violent mass protest in our history.
Results come in, over two days.
All three sons of Daniel Arap Moi are voted out. Go Rift Valley!
We send home 80% of the MPs from the last parliament. Minister after
powerful minister falls. All Kibaki's cronies. Men who have been in office
since 1963. Kibaki's party, PNU, is left with 78 parliamentary seats. The
opposition party ODM, led by Raila Odinga, has captured 102 seats.
It is the third day. We are waiting for the president to be announced. The
nation is keeping vigil.
I am watching on TV with friends, as tallies from the constituencies are
being announced at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.
What's that guy yelling from the back?
Opposition observer. Says the tally just announced is different from the one
he confirmed in the constituency.
Please, not after all we've been through... No, no, no, no.
What happened? The screen went dark!
Switch channels!
The anchor is reporting from outside the conference centre. There has been a
power blackout at Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The media have
been ejected by paramilitary police who are arriving in trucks... Then, all
the channels go dead, except for the government mouthpiece KBC.
I text Waithera: I feel sick. She texts back: I just want peace.
Fifteen minutes later, we watch as the chair of the electoral commission
declares Kibaki the winner. Thirty minutes later, we watch Kibaki being
sworn in on the lawns of the State House. At night, under heavy security.
30 December 2007
A church in Eldoret is burning, with 200 people inside. In 100 years, we
have never had a church or a mosque burned down in Kenya.
Spread the word: the Muslim Medical Professionals are offering free
treatment to anyone injured.
What the f**k was the US ambassador thinking, to formally congratulate
Kibaki?
He's just rescinded it. The EU said the results "lack credibility". Stupid
asshole.
The chair of the electoral commission on TV, looking tormented, sounding
confused, contradicting himself. He says there are those around Kibaki who
should never have been born. What does this mean? That the coup was driven
by Kibaki's inner circle, not Kibaki himself? That Kibaki is simply a
puppet?
The police are shooting indiscriminately at protestors in the streets.
Paramilitary police are guarding the city mortuary so the media can't count
the bodies. They ring the empty Uhuru Park and Central Park, to keep people
from gathering, while they let Nairobi's poorest areas become war zones.
A 24-hour curfew is imposed on Western Kenya, where Raila Odinga comes from.
People are trapped in their homes, without food or water. They face police
bullets if they emerge.
A friend texts me: the conditions here are horrifying. Inhuman.
Rift Valley is ablaze. The highways are blocked by armed militia. Uganda's
roads are at a standstill. All fuel deliveries from Kenya have been
grounded. We are shutting down the whole region.
January 2008
The Red Cross warns of an imminent cholera epidemic in Western Kenya, days
without electricity and water.
Containers pile up at the Port of Mombasa. Ships unable to unload cargo
leave still loaded. Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Southern Sudan, the Congo, all
dependent on Kenyan transit for fuel and vital supplies, grind to a halt.
The Urgent Action Fund needs $90,000 to set up rape crisis centres. Nairobi
Women's Hospital is now FULL. They've dealt with 19 rape cases in the last
24 hours.
It's just been announced that the police have banned all "processions". Does
that include weddings? Funerals? Are they going to put the whole country
under house arrest?
Keep putting out the analysis from the field reports - four distinct types
of violence! Protest. Police gunfire. Organised militia. Communal defence.
Another broadcast on CNN that calls this "ethnic conflict". The next line
will be "tribal warfare". Then they'll mention Rwanda. Wait for it.
Hello! Stolen election!
I work with a coalition of civil society and activist organisations that
organise under the banner Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice (KPTJ). We
insist that any resolution of the crisis must address the injustices at all
levels - historic, and current - which brought on this catastrophe. We
reject calls for "peace" and "dialogue" from the camp we label "Kenyans For
Calm" - those who really seek violent suppression of legitimate protest so
normal life can resume for the wealthy.
KPTJ traces each strand of violence to its source, holds the initiators
accountable. When we say "peace", we meant the police violence and "shoot to
kill" orders have to stop. We name the militia mobilised by individual
political actors to evict, loot, rape and terrorise in different regions of
the country, and we describe their operations.
We draw on decades of pan-African organising to mobilise support for an
African Union intervention. African solutions for African problems, we
demand. The European Union takes its lead from the African Union. A Panel of
Eminent Persons, headed by Kofi Annan, is dispatched to Kenya to broker a
mediation agreement.
When a KPTJ team of six meets the Forum of Retired African Presidents in
Nairobi, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda lights up. "Look at you," he crows. "You
are young. You are from different ethnic groups. Three of you are women.
This gives me hope!"
February 2008
The Kibaki camp bugs Kofi Annan's hotel room. How much further can they
embarrass us? The man is here to broker a mediation agreement!
Among Kibaki's many crimes, let this one not be forgotten. He made us
petition Bush to intervene in Kenya. And now we have to be grateful to Bush
for that intervention.
On 14 February, Bush sends Condoleeza Rice to Kenya. On arrival in Kenya,
she requests a meeting with KPTJ, who again send a team of three women and
three men, a cross section of Kenya's finest civil society minds, to brief
her. Immediately following her meeting with KPTJ, Rice speaks to the press,
finally aligns the US with the AU and EU, in requiring Kibaki and his
hardliners to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.
In the end, sanctions on the leaders of both parties are instrumental in
checking the state violence and the private armies. Global asset freezes,
travel bans, threats to repatriate kids studying abroad. Human lives mean
nothing. Kenya is one of many revenue streams, disposable. They will burn
this country down, but only if they still have their ranches in Australia,
their havens in Dubai, their billions stashed in London and New York.
There are 1,300 dead. There are 600,000 displaced from their homes, refugees
in their own country. It's impossible to estimate how many women have been
raped, impregnated, infected with HIV.
April 2008
KPTJ runs a full-page ad in national newspapers.
"Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga,
To prevent our country from collapsing, Kenyans accepted an imperfect
solution - a mediation agreement and a coalition government. This gave you
both a LIMITED AND TRANSITIONAL mandate for reform, reconciliation, and
reconstruction. However, we now see you both in bed together misusing the
crisis to enrich yourselves and your allies. YOUR GREED IS OBSCENE. SHAME ON
YOU BOTH. We want NO MORE THAN 24 MINISTERS. Kenya cannot support a bloated
cabinet of 48.
Signed: Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice"
We launch a cellphone text campaign:
Kenyans want a lean clean cabinet! Send. Mawaziri Majambazi! Pass it on. Our
Country Our Cabinet. No More Than 24. Lean and Clean. Greed is Obscene. No
More Than 24! No More Than 24!
We end up with a cabinet of 40, for a country of 38 million. China has a
cabinet of 40 too. For 1.3 billion people. We want members of parliament to
pay taxes. We want MP salaries cut - from $18,000 a month to $9,000 a month.
Kenyan MPs are the highest paid in the world.
Inflation has hit 21%. Maize flour, kerosene, petrol, fares, rent, milk,
sugar are beyond the means of most Kenyans.
This is the price of peace...
2009
A cartel of politicians steal Kenya's grain supply to sell abroad. They
include William Ruto, Kenya's minister of agriculture, and Raila Odinga,
former opposition leader, now the prime minister.
The trucks loaded with maize drive through villages where Kenyans are
starving. Women sell their daughters to the truckdrivers, for 20 shillings a
time, so they can feed their families for one more day.
Philo Ikonya, president of PEN Kenya, and other activists stands outside
Kenya's parliament arms aloft, wearing empty maize flour bags over their
hands like gloves. "Corruption Equals Death," they chant. Police grab them,
hustle them into a car. They rip Philo's boubou, bare her back and chest.
Inside the moving car, Richard Mugwai, deputy commanding officer of
Nairobi's central police station, rains down blows. He hit us where there
would be no obvious bruises, says Philo, like under the chin. He said he
would take us where we could never talk again.
In March, two civil society activists, Oscar King'ara and George Paul Oulu,
are shot dead on a public road, within walking distance of the president's
residence. A university student is shot dead by the police in a conflict
over one of the bodies.
In July, Kenya suffers an acute water crisis, following months of drought.
Nairobi city council turns off the water supply for the entire city of over
3 million people for three weeks. I am in Sweden. At the Tallberg Forum,
Sweden's answer to Davos, I encounter Charity Ngilu, Kenya's minister of
water. She gives a presentation on water management. Never mentioning that
taps are dry in Kenya's capital city.
The US elects a Luo president.
Kibaki declares a public holiday in Kenya the day after Obama's victory.
2010
Kenyans vote in a new constitution by a huge majority, eight years after it
was promised. It devolves state power across all regions of the country, and
dedicates legislative seats for women, minorities, youth, people with
disabilities. Resources for Kenya's 47 counties will now be managed by
county governors and county assemblies, instead of the central government
from Nairobi. It promises land reform. Under this constitution, Kenyan women
are finally full human beings, entitled to pass on their citizenship to
their children and to inherit land equally. It feels like the triumph we
were denied
2011
Remember those 1,300 killed? The half-a-million displaced and dispossessed?
The 4,000 who were injured when All The Evil happened in 2007-08?
Neither do the perps.
There will be no local justice. The Kenyan government misses every deadline
for setting up local tribunals. Six men are indicted by the International
Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity. They are alleged to
have financed, trained and mobilised militia to terrorise communities from
their homes, to burn, rape and massacre. Four will eventually go to trial.
Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's first president. William Ruto, former member
of Raila Odinga's inner circle. Francis Muthaura, Kibaki's former head of
Civil Service. And journalist Joshua arap Sang.
We have never seen the most powerful men in the country go to court for
their crimes. This cannot be unseen. It will change our national memory. It
will recode our collective DNA.
Then Kenya invades Somalia. Supposedly it is in response to the kidnapping
of two British tourists and a Frenchwoman from the Kenyan Coast. I believe
an external enemy diverts our energy and attention away from the ICC trials.
I believe it is a proxy war for the US. Until I discover from Wikileaks that
the Kenyan government has wanted to invade Somalia since 2010, and the US
actually discouraged us. There goes my final illusion about my country.
A small group of writers issue a statement of protest. Hardly anyone wants
to sign on. We are spitting into a gale.
We, the undersigned, register, in the strongest terms, our opposition to
Kenya's military incursion into Somalia. We note that several months at
minimum is required to plan a military operation that involves crossing
borders. Therefore the reasons put forward by the Kenyan government for this
operation (the kidnap of two British tourists and a French resident at the
Kenyan coast) are demonstrably false.
We will kill some Somalis and call them Al-Shabab. We will all feel very
Kenyan indeed.
They die, and we forget about 350,000 internally displaced Kenyans, stolen
World Bank monies, missing education ministry funds, the ICC-Kenya trials,
2012 elections, our new constitution.
The army will claim, as invading armies always do, that they have
courageously engaged the enemy. They kill innocent civilians.
All of us are paying, already, for this blood-thirst. We will go on paying
for years to come. We will pay with our taxes, our unbuilt schools and
hospitals, our unpaid teachers, our jobless youth, our deteriorating
security, our shattered relationship with our neighbours.
We do not need the deaths of Somalis to know who we are.
2012
Kenya captures the main Somali port, Kismayo. We are encouraged to forget
about the war. Kenyan troops settle into a long-term occupation.
The Kenyan government begins a pogrom against the Somali community in Kenya,
ordering all Somalis to "return to Dadab", the refugee tent city on the
barren Kenya-Somali border. There is a deafening silence on this from every
sector of Kenyan society. It's open season on Somalis.
We strike oil. We don't ask who owns the oil. We don't ask who owns the land
on which the oil was discovered. We don't ask who will benefit from oil
revenues.
There are internal invisible wars being waged across the country on
vulnerable communities. Land grabs. Millions of acres of land are being sold
by politicians to biofuel companies, mining companies, agribusiness
companies, urban developers. Sold out from under local communities who have
lived on them for generations. Desperate for water and soil to survive, they
turn on each other. They organise and fight back.
There are only three tribes in Kenya: the haves, the wanna-haves, the
have-them-removed.
Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto strike up an alliance to run for the
presidency. Princeling and thug, on a platform of impunity.
* * *
Nairobi is a boomtown. The hot commodity is Peace. Chagua Amani we are urged
from every direction. Choose Peace, as if you could pluck it out of the sky.
As I write this, we are in the final hour of campaigning. Two giant
competing rallies of the two leading presidential contenders have been going
for almost six hours in Nairobi - Raila Odinga's CORD alliance, where the US
flag is rampant, and Uhuru and Ruto's Jubilee Alliance.
I wonder how many still-homeless, still-uncompensated IDPs (internally
displaced persons) from 2007 are watching.
Philo Ikonya now lives in exile in Norway.
Waithera and I have not had any further contact since our text exchange,
when we witnessed Kibaki's civil coup.
Mwai Kibaki awarded himself a send-off payment of $312,500 and a hefty
retirement package, to be funded by Kenyan taxpayers.
In the midst of cacophony, this small piece of news snakes out. A national
Marine Park, 23 acres of Kenya's richest coastline, is being sold to private
investors for $1.4bn.
On Monday 4 March 2013, we vote. Again.
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Received on Mon Jun 10 2013 - 16:44:25 EDT