“National bitterness” against Kikuyu ruling class has not evaporated
The third time it became clear that the Kikuyu vote alone could not steer a Kikuyu to State House was during the November 2005 Referendum on a new Constitution. The arrogant Kikuyu ruling class that had formed itself into a Mafia cartel and barricaded Kibaki, had mutilated the Bomas Draft of the Constitution, which was designed to reduce Presidential powers and also sought to create the post of Prime Minister as part of checking excessive powers of the President. For the Kikuyus who surrounded Kibaki, it was the powers of Kibaki that were under threat and all resistance to the Bomas draft of the Constitution was inspired by the urgency of ensuring that the powers of the Presidency was not tampered with because in their tiny brains, only a Kikuyu was fit to occupy State House.
It is this mutilated Constitution that was brought before Kenyans to either approve or reject. This infamous draft of the Constitution was probably the most overt project of the Kikuyu ruling class which was planning to help Kibaki retain the Presidency in December 2007. Although millions of Kikuyus were mobilized by the Mount Kenya Mafia to vote in favour of the “Mongrel Constitution,” it was defeated because almost all other ethnic groups understood the Kikuyu agenda with the mutilated draft. When the votes were counted after the Referendum, the agenda of the Kikuyu ruling class was rejected, thereby proving that the Kikuyu alone cannot vote and win any national contest despite their numerical advantage as the largest ethnic group in Kenya.
Despite these clear signals that Kenya does not belong to the Kikuyu, members of the House of Mumbi still proceeded to believe that Kibaki could win the December 2007 election using the Kikuyu vote alone. The final evidence that Kenya belongs to Kenyans came on December 27, 2007, when Kibaki failed to make it once again. In the eyes of ODM supporters, the fact that Raila won the Presidential election is almost “beyond challenge.” The reason why Kenya has a coalition government today is because the main thief has been incorporated into government together with his corrupt allies because Imperialism wants peace in Kenya. Peace is good for the Kenyan people as well but the price is injustice and a wrong candidate sitting as President. This is not good for democracy in Kenya and the world.
Another Kikuyu President will be difficult to produce in the near future because the “national bitterness” against the Kikuyu ruling class has not yet evaporated and will not evaporate easily in Kenya unless another generation of conscious Kikuyus or a new breed of Kikuyu leaders rise to integrate the Kikuyu community. The ordinary Kikuyu is paying for stupid mistakes of the Kikuyu ruling class because of mass psychology that was inculcated into the Kikuyu masses that Kenya belongs to them. Sheer ignorance and apathy of Kikuyu peasants together with low political consciousness of a huge segment of the Kikuyu worker is responsible for cementing into Kikuyu minds that Kenya can only be led by a Kikuyu. In the end, it was the same Kikuyu peasant who had settled with children in the Rift Valley who paid the price of election rigging with life and blood. In almost all urban areas in Kenya, the Kikuyu petit bourgeoisie who were driven out of economic bases they had operated on for decades paid the economic price because of the stupidity of the Kikuyu ruling class that masterminded the election rigging.
If I might give a perspective, what will happen in the next election is that if he is still alive, Raila Odinga will, most likely, stand for President with one of the highest possibilities of being elected. If he is not alive, the President will not come from Kikuyu land because the ethnic voting pattern in Kenya shall not have changed dramatically to return a Kikuyu to State House. My thesis is that a Kikuyu will only become President after three or more ethnic groups have had their kin at State House.
Fear of Kikuyu power brokers never handing over power after losing it
To paraphrase the statement, the key provinces especially Nyanza, Western and Coast, will have to produce a President if another Kikuyu is to occupy State House and this is on the lighter scale of provinces. That is, Kenyans may have to prepare for a non-Kikuyu President for the next fifteen to twenty years (or even more) unless drastic changes take place at the political level. Such a change may be in the form of introduction of ideological politics in the country that might kill the ethnic orientation of Kenyan politics to enable Kenyans to view themselves as Kenyans and not different ethnic groups, especially at the political level. Kenyans have been voting for individuals and not ideas because local politicians have been ideologically bankrupt. Within the framework of the democratic process, Kenya has been going through ethnic politics but as more and more ethnic groups seize power with no fundamental transformation of people’s lives, the focus on ethnic politics will also begin to change, especially if ideological parties begin to emerge to demonstrate and convince Kenyans that there is an alternative to ethnic politics. This is not likely to happen in the next five years.
If Kibaki had accepted defeat and handed over power peacefully, the situation could have been different and Kenya could have been in a better position to move forward in the fight against tribalism. The rigging of the election by ECK on behalf of Kibaki and his PNU gang has inflicted, in the consciousness of millions of Kenyans, the fear that handing over the Presidency to another Kikuyu may be a dangerous bet because the image left behind after the stealing of Raila’s Presidency is that a Kikuyu will never hand over power so why should a Kikuyu be voted in as President when the nation has witnessed what happened after Kibaki stole Raila’s Presidency through ECK?
My perspective is that it will take another Kikuyu generation (or many generations) to repair the psychological damage that Kibaki inflicted on Kenyans by rigging elections. Kenyans still remember how the Kenyatta government killed Tom Mboya, Argwings Kodhek, JM Kariuki and other veterans of the Colonial Revolution or how Moi’s government assassinated Dr. Robert Ouko and others who lost their lives in Moi’s torture chambers. It will never pass that as a result of rigging an election for the benefit of Kibaki’, a Kikuyu, an estimated 1,500 Kenyans lost their lives while 350,000 others became internal refugees. Under the circumstances, which Kenyan from another ethnic group will vote for a Kikuyu President in the near future, especially if the ethnic arithmetic in politics persist?
The situation is worsened by the fact that after they were caught red-handed stealing Raila’s Presidency, the Kikuyu ruling class still refused to accept that they had stolen the Presidency. Instead, they continued to display the kind of arrogance that put millions of Kenyans to sleep, so which Kenyan in his or her right state of mind will vote for another Kikuyu to take over power when a corrupt ruling class from this ethnic group has shown the country and the world what a Kikuyu ruling class is made of, arrogance, arrogance and more arrogance after stealing someone else’s property?
The myth that “Kenya belongs to the Kikuyu” must be wiped out
This is not a blanket condemnation of the Kikuyu community. Rather, it is an observation of the behaviour of the tiny Kikuyu ruling class that sent police to execute Kenyans who were protesting the stealing of Raila’s Presidency. How dirty and bloody could it have gotten? Kenyans watched with shock and awe as suspected Kikuyu police opened fire on innocent civilians exercising their freedom of association in the streets of Kisumu, Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, Kakamega and other parts of the country in the name of defending a stolen Presidency that was quickly followed by a secret swearing in of a septuagenarian Kikuyu President who was ripe for retirement. Instead of calling it a day at his Othaya home in Nyeri as millions of Kenyans had expected, Kibaki shamelessly crept back to State House after Kenyans had dispatched him to Othaya.
Who will vote for another Kikuyu President in the next election after innocent women and children were massacred and their bodies dumped at the mortuaries across the country in the name of defending a stolen Presidency?
A better way forward is for conscious leaders from the Kikuyu ethnic group to utilize the stealing of Raila Odinga’s Presidency by the Kikuyu ruling class that surrounded Kibaki to heal the ethnic wounds that were created, not with the message of reconciliation alone but with a strong message of “one Kenya, one people, one destiny, one black Africa.” As Mr. Martin Ngatia, a former Kenyan exile, said, the myth that Kenya belongs to Kikuyus must be wiped out while the myth that the country’s leadership has to come from the “House of Mumbi” must also be vanquished because Kenyans are one people and the country’s leadership should go to the best candidate elected by the Kenyan people regardless of his or her ethnic origin.
The Kikuyu community needs to be re-integrated into the Kenyan society following stupid blunders that were made by a tiny clique of Kikuyu wealth grabbers who were in control of government. A blanket condemnation of millions of Kikuyus who suffered alongside other Kenyans is naive because Kikuyus are among those who paid the price following the stealing of Raila’s Presidency by thieves working for Kibaki and PNU. Kikuyus were crippled, maimed, killed and chased out of their homes because ECK had stolen the vote on behalf of a Kikuyu whom Kenyans had sent packing. That having been said, any Kikuyu campaigning for the 2012 Presidency is out of tune with local politics.
Chapter Twenty Four: Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency and the Future of Kenya (pgs 401-407)
About the Author
Kikuyu Elite Are Doing Uhuru Kenyatta Great Injustice
By: Philip Ochieng 2011-08-24
Nothing embarrasses me more than to see an educated “Kenyan” — like Ms Cecily Mbarire — stand in front of television cameras to tell Kenyans that “we” have chosen so-and-so as “our” presidential candidate.
For the question immediately arises: Who are these “we” and these “our”? The answer — quite naturally — is: Kikuyu.
Let me say that even I wouldn’t stand in the way of a good candidate just because she or he is a Kikuyu. In fact, if I knew such a Kikuyu individual, I would campaign much more vigorously for her or him than for any of the Luo possibilities now known to me.
But why can’t Ms Mbarire — a person with above-average education — even pretend at the very democracy about which our leaders recite dithyrambs every day?
Even if your mind refused to get out of the narrowest ethnic cocoon, the question would remain salient: What elite arrogance is this?
When did she hold any dialogue with the Kikuyu populace — all the way from Nanyuki to Kerarapon — and agreed with them that Uhuru Kenyatta is the leader of “our community” — and its sole presidential candidate”?
Contempt for the Kikuyu mass
What democracy is it when a handful of “rump-fed ronyons” — as Shakespeare recognised our John Michukis and Robinson Githaes — simply wake up one morning to anoint a member?
Such self-nomination as your ethnic community’s paramount chief is the proof of your utter contempt for the Kikuyu mass.
It is also the proof of your utter contempt for this country’s political history since independence, namely, your refusal to learn lessons that can help your people — even as a community.
Of course, my education does not allow me to make bigoted and ignorant statements against a whole ethnic community — such as that “the Kikuyu” have looted our banks or grabbed our land or taken all the plum posts in the public service or killed JM Kariuki and Tom Mboya.
For the Kikuyu have done no such things.
But an elite of theirs has. And it has done it, not for the Kikuyu, but only for itself as an elite.
That is why that elite refuses to protect the Kikuyu mass against such false accusations. For, as long as it is the ethnic mass name that suffers, the elite can camouflage its criminal avarice in the anonymity of the mass.
Though I will not condemn the Kikuyu as a mass, if I were a Kikuyu leader, these false accusations against my people agonise me a great deal.
Why? Because — although the leaders of all other communities are now guilty of those very same crimes — the word has long been out that “the Kikuyu” are the Devil incarnate.
Dredging our fear of the Kikuyu
As an American journalist once put it, whenever Kenyans cry against “tribalism”, they are merely expressing a fear — profoundly embedded in the national subconscious — of the Kikuyu.
But it would be unfair for Kenyans to reject Mr Uhuru Kenyatta’s leadership simply because he carries a certain surname.
The fact remains, however, that a certain Kikuyu clique conducted itself in such a way, during the founding father’s presidency, that the clique gave the community a terrible name that endures.
It was thus that they caused Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s name to permanently embody our national fear of the Kikuyu.
That is the injustice that the Mbarires are doing to young Uhuru. By trying to impose a Kenyatta on Kenyans — especially by such undemocratic methods — they are merely dredging our fear of the Kikuyu. No, Uhuru is not worse than any of our present candidates.
But he direly needs to sell himself as a Kenyan, not as a Kikuyu. It can be done. Mr Mwai Kibaki did it in 2002.
But, if you force Mr Kibaki to endorse Uhuru’s candidature as a Kikuyu, it can only boomerang on the young man — and as badly as when he served as President Moi’s “Project”.
Lesson From Kikuyu Elite’s Political Shift .
Monday, 14 November 2011 00:12 BY WAMBUGU NGUNJIRI
Last week started with news that several Central Kenya elites are gravitating towards the Prime Minister’s camp in preparation for the 2012 presidential elections. Close on the heels of this news was the ‘counter-spin’ from rivals camps to the PM who explained that the shift by these rich Kikuyus had nothing to do with what was best for the Kikuyu community. The message was ‘Ignore these rich fellows. They are being driven by selfish interests’.
In my opinion rather than ignore what the elite Kikuyus are doing we should all learn from it. Politics is about numbers and interests and it behoves all of us to understand how this game is played if we are to benefit from it, even as spectators. If we do not we will always end up as sheep led to the political slaughterhouse.
First let me admit that the Kikuyu elite have played the political game perfectly. This is a group that is brought together by the common interests of landholdings, wealth and property, and the desire to protect and propagate these interests. They seem to have looked at what each presidential candidate has to offer, negotiated according to their specific interests, and shifted their political support, accordingly.
This is the lesson to all Kenyan voters, and especially the ‘un-elite’ Kikuyu. This is what we must do.
First we (I belong to the ‘un-elite Kikuyu group) need to determine our interests. Unlike the rich Kikuyu most of us can barely squeeze in 3 meals a day so it is not land, wealth, or industries. Our interests are more fundamental.
Our interests could be a desire for equitable re-distribution of land, which would be achieved through implementation of the clause in the new constitution that will set a limit on maximum landholdings per individual. They could be a reduction in the rich-poor gap within the community through strategic redirection of investment from macro-industries to small scale farming and/or enterprise. They could be the recognition of our Mau Mau heroes through the establishment of tourist attractions where they were born, to increase domestic and foreign tourism into those regions, with all related benefits to locals.
Or maybe our interests are the pursuit of justice for Mau Mau survivors, extra judicial killing victims, and any other disenfranchised members of our community. We might even want to understand why it is possible to offer amnesty to international criminals like Al Shabab, but not to the Kikuyu-based Mungikis. We might also be interested in an increase in government education bursaries for poor but smart children so that success does not necessarily depend on ones social background, and hopefully so that the annoying question of ‘… & who did you say your father was?’, can end!
Once we understand what our specific interests are, we must then organize into a distinct vote bloc around these interests. Votes, in this game, are the currency used in negotiation and we must distinguish our votes from those of other interest groups, especially those from within our community.
Now we are ready to get into the field and be a player in the game, but to be a real player we cannot have favorites. We must engage anyone who wants our votes, and we must be selfish as we interrogate what they each have to offer in return for our votes. This requires us to compare what one candidate is offering, with the next candidate. It also requires us to negotiate even more, as concessions, before we make a decision.
In the meanwhile the candidates are working as hard as they can to explain to us why our interests group will benefit most, from supporting them. Since they are doing this to many groups, they are also trying to balance all the interest groups, such that their acceptance of the terms of one, does not make them loose votes in the other.
Another key strategy they will use is to try and reduce our interactions with as many of their rivals as possible, so that they reduce our ability to negotiate. Some of the unscrupulous ones will even use ethnic political mobilization, and argue that if you come from the same tribe with the candidate then you share common interests and are duty bound to support them.(the best part of understanding your specific interests is that you realize there is nothing like a ‘kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, etc’ interest. Our interests tend to affect different social status individuals across tribes!)
The strategy behind all these moves by the candidates is to create a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ discussion, and then brand some of their rivals as ‘them’ and make us accept that they are part of ‘us’. Their idea is to herd us into vote baskets that they can use to ascend to public office, or to trade amongst themselves, for such offices.
We can avoid falling into their trap if we realize that the game is about mutual interest. We give ‘our votes for our interests, for your position’. As interest groups we must therefore ensure that our votes go to the candidate who best serves our interests. This is the game as per the ‘Siasa Mpya Campaign’ and you can be a part of it by writing to info@siasampya.com
Presidential Aspirant Raphael Tuju is morally accountable for the innocent people who died during the post-election violence in 2008. He had no sympathy for them and since he supported Kibaki’s stolen presidency, cannot be worthy of it now.
He should also remember that people died in Kisumu in 2005 because he ordered the presence of 3000 GSU when he and Karua held a Banana Rally to support the then fake Constitution which failed to pass.
Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju said the government is committed to taking control.
“If the tear gas doesn’t work then unfortunately they have to use live bullets,” he told CNN. “The president has been sworn in, the elections are over, the Kenyans have to accept the results, the opposition has to accept the results.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/01/01/kenya.elections/
Politics
Anxiety as Kenyans await ICC ruling
By OLIVER MATHENGE
Posted Saturday, January 7 2012 at 22:30
The three International Criminal Court judges handling the Kenyan case are scheduled to meet later this week to set the date on which to deliver the much-awaited ruling on the Ocampo Six.
The three are scheduled to hold a house-keeping meeting on January 13 at which point they will polish up any pending detail before they deliver the judgment.
Going by the timelines set out in the Rome Statute, the judges will have to deliver the ruling by January 20.
The Sunday Nation has learnt that the ruling will likely be delivered on Monday, January 16.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/A … index.html
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Orengo wants diaspora voting list made public .
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 00:13 BY SAMUEL OTIENO
Lands minister James Orengo wants the government to make public the population of eligible kenyan voters living in the diaspora to avert poll rigging. Orengo claimed that focus of rigging has been shifted to the diaspora where stringent election rules are yet to be put up. He called on the government and the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission to make the figure public before the elections.
Speaking at Wire village in Ugenya over the weekend, Orengo said there is a possibility that members of the G7 alliance are planning to rig the diaspora votes in a bid to trounce Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The Ugenya MP urged IEBC to put in place proper mechanisms for the diaspora votes to ensure proper anti-rigging factors are put in place. “It is true that the G7 will not hold and since they are going it individually to the polls as per the indication, they are hell bent on using the diaspora votes to rig out Prime Minister Raila Odinga,” said Orengo.
Kenyans in the diaspora are for the first time expected to vote after the new constitution gave them the privileges. Under the new system, Kenyans in the diaspora will assemble in various government embassies to vote for their candidate of choice. The diaspora voting has been largely criticised as that favouring those who appointed the ambassadors since the ambassadors will act as the returning officer.
What makes the latest declaration even more alarming is the dreadful possibility of a return to the Moi-era electoral practices being applied to voters in the diaspora. “Yes, it is a dreadful situation when you have ambassadors (like Moi-era DCs) serving as returning officers for diaspora voters. What is particularly disconcerting about this is the fact that the ambassadorsare presidential appointees, many of whom are politicians with vested interests,” said Rodgers Orero, a Kenyan living in the UK.
Good Apples, Rotten Oranges
Written by Vitalis Oyudo
Friday, 27 April 2007 06:35
One immediate consequence of the victory of the NARC coalition was a somewhat infantile perception, even among Kenya’s literati that the electoral victory was a moral one. We were taught that the KANU monster had been slain and that Kenyans had been freed from oppression. Those were heady highly unbwogable times. Only the very bravest masochist would now contemplate Martha Karua doing a jig on a Kisumu stage daring the world to bwogo her. Yes, such things are only possible in the deadly kiangazi of December and the New Year, more severe than ever when the nation is infected with campaign fever. So it was that the pronunciations went forth on the wires, the old man had to be defeated (he was not standing of course, but why bother with details).
Along with him, we were promised, would go the corruption and oppression that we had suffered under his government. Some rent-seekers eager to get a finger in the public broth even suggested South Africa style Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and a day of National Forgiveness. All the while we forgot that the arc bearing our liberators was captained by a man with a rather colorful past. Our redeeming father had been a loyal axe-man of the Moi government. He was ably assisted in his endeavor by among others, another long-serving Vice-President, a vociferous and self-confessing collaborating (cooperating was the preferred term) ex-Secretary General and muscle-man of Moi’s, make that two ex-Secretary Generals and a Chief Secretary. Still our cathartic fantasies demanded that we enthrone these princes of the light as our saviors from Moi’s hell.
That ignorance persists to this day, not just among the ignorant public, but even among eminent writers and commentators. A foreigner coming into Kenya would be led to believe that Moi single-handedly wrecked this country. That everything was bright and sunny before Moi, and that all his officers were mindless zombies who served Kenya at great cost to themselves, their fortunes having been accrued through diligent moon-lighting when away from the nefarious activities of the regime. Their silence during the dark days when young Kenyans were rounded up in the night and subjected to show-trials was a pained one. Their protestations against democratic rule were forced out of them at gun-point and they were compelled to abuse public office for self-enrichment on pain of death.
So it is that Kenyans who support the DP still say to each other that ODM-K is a den of thieves. Recently, Louis Otieno asked Anyang’ Nyong’o on television why Kenyans should trust ODM-K when it comprised looters from the period of KANU excess.
Labels of course can be quite sticky; some of them even indelible but the neutral observer has to wonder at the efficacy for public good of a brush that declares Billow Kerrow tarnished with the sins of KANU while bathing Mwai Kibaki in the golden tones of the liberators halo. By this tarring brush, the land allocations to William Ruto carry a far heavier curse than those of Njenga Karume. Mutula Kilonzo is an evil genius, the devil’s advocate but the people behind Kirinyaga Construction are allowed to launder their wealth through investing in public licences. Fred Gumo is declared a land grabber (remember the parking lot scandal) and threatened with court action while the President enjoys ownership of what are said to be the third largest land-holdings in the country. Nicholas Biwott is sanitized by a kiss of the fasces while the perfidy of Joseph Kamotho to the clan assures him permanent opprobrium for eating with the enemy.
More recently, those who had seen a KANU hand in all land clashes in the 1990s now look into social, historical and economic causes behind ethnic violence, in the old days we would have called them politically-instigated land clashes- Moi’s handiwork. Similarly, the raid on the Standard and its continued harassment is dressed up in appealing garb, somehow the Standard’s face deserves an encounter with the State’s jackboot, but similar action from the Moi government was greeted with hell-raising. After spending the whole of the 1990s caterwauling about the Goldenberg scandal we now decide that it was not such a big deal. Neither it seems is the Anglo-Leasing affair. George Saitoti struts the national stage and contemplates a shot at the Presidency.
Perhaps most interestingly, serious people ask Kalonzo Musyoka why he did nothing to resist the government of President Moi. The shock. The notion to pose this question is never dreamed of when facing Kibaki, or Nyachae ( who were both in very powerful government positions in the cruel 80s) or Saitoti (who is undoubtedly culpable for Goldenberg even if only as the serving Minister). The cooperation with Moi is held against Raila Odinga, but no one asks Njenga Karume why he embraced Moi’s campaign in 2002.
In this the language of power, William Ruto is declared a sycophant of Moi’s and questioned over his actions when a mere 26 year old. Central Kenya and her children are said to have suffered under the government of Moi, while the Rift Valley enjoyed unfair advantage. No one cares for facts any more it seems, it’s the good us against the evil them. Juicy apples and rotten oranges, and sod the details.
Infallible DP versus the poor mortals, does ODM-K stand a chance in the propaganda battle?
First Kibaki election rigging crisis
By the time the 1969 general elections arrived, Tom Mboya had been assassinated earlier the same year in July. He was the man most responsible for helping Kibaki easily win the Bahati seat (as it was then known).
It was obvious that the reluctant politician was not going to handle a difficult campaign such as the one he faced that year. In any case Mboya supporters were still on the ground and their wounds were still raw from the assassination of their man. And they made their presence felt in those elections by targeting people they considered to be close friends of Mboya who had failed to resign in protest from the Kenyatta government after the assassination. Kibaki was obviously one of those people.
Jael Mbogo was a parliamentary candidate in the constituency standing against Kibaki that year and she explained to a British newspaper in 2008 in great detail how she was rigged out of that parliamentary seat. The most amazing thing is that the manner in which it was done bears striking resemblance to how the presidential elections was rigged in 2007 plunging the country into chaos.
Ms Mbogo told the Observer that she was so far ahead in the early vote tallying that the BBC went ahead and announced that a young woman had defeated a government minister for the Bahati seat. It was not to be. In circumstances that are remarkably similar to what happened in December 2007, the results for Bahati were delayed for several days as GSU officers surrounded the vote counting centre. When those results were finally announced, Mwai Kibaki had won by a razor-thin margin.
Jael Mbogo who is now a civil rights activist told the Observer; ‘Kibaki stalled the result, and then robbed me of victory. Because he looks so holy, people are still asking if he really was capable of stealing this election. What I say is “Of course, he has done it before”.
Fish out of water in 2005 and 2007
During the referendum for a new constitution (doctored and fiddled with by Kibaki loyalists) in 2005 one Kumekucha informant pointed out that the president had for the first time dived into the mud-wrestling of politics and was dishing out money Moi-style from State house in a desperate effort to ensure that the referendum was won.
There are some seasoned politicians who thrive under pressure but Mwai Kibaki is not one of them. Raila Odinga led a spirited effort to defeat the “doctored” new constitution and the president found himself in the uncomfortable situation of 1969 all over again. Desperate situations call for desperate measures and so cash started flowing out of State House. This was the same president who had turned away heads of parastatals bringing him wads of cash early in his presidency. The authoritative and usually impeccable researched EastAfrican newspaper said that the parastatal heads told the baffled new president that this was what they usually did with Moi.
That was in early 2003. Now barely two years later Mwai Kibaki had quickly found it impossible to avoid bare-knuckled politics as president. It was obvious that things had turned out very differently from what he had envisaged.
It should be noted that Kibaki made every effort to shape himself into the kind of quiet president who got things done with very little politics getting in the way. One of the measures taken was the creation of the post of government spokesman which went to a Dr Alfred Mutua. This was in sharp contrast to his predecessor Moi who did not need such an office in his administration because he would comment on every small petty issue in the country at public meetings he held regularly all over the country. Many key appointments were also made at these meetings seemingly on the spur of the moment.
But even with a government spokesperson the referendum forced the president’s hand in many ways. Most of the pressure he and his advisors were feeling stemmed from the fact that losing the referendum would be a clear indication of the president’s loss of popularity and would spell doom for any re-election bid in 2007 which was just two years away. And so for this chief reason it was felt that the referendum would have to be won at all costs.
Kibaki lost and Raila won by a wide margin. Smelling blood, the latter carried the “orange victory” with him into the 2007 elections by naming his party Orange Democratic Party. In the referendum of 2005 the then ECK had selected two different symbols for the “yes” and “no” vote. Orange signified a no vote and banana stood for a yes vote. And so Raila carried the orange with him in a brilliant political campaign that stretched to the 2007 presidential elections.
In fact after that heady victory Raila and his allies were convinced that Mwai Kibaki’s government would not have the legs to last until 2007. And so the country was in an election campaign mood immediately after the referendum thus putting even more pressure on Mwai Kibaki.
There is evidence that at this stage the president started paying much more attention to his advisors. One idea from them that was implemented with enormous success was that of seeking advice from his predecessor former president Daniel arap Moi. For a man like Kibaki this was a very humbling experience but pressure was mounting and his administration looking increasingly shaky. Moi’s presence in Kibaki’s corner was almost immediately felt and one of the first things that happen was that the Kibaki administration started looking considerably more stable for the first time since he came into office in 2003.
But the 2007 elections loomed and even if his administration now seemed to have the stamina to last a full term elections were rapidly approaching and his opponents mainly Raila Odinga and Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka had been on campaign mode since the referendum vote of 2005. But even as the president made his announcement on 26 January 2007, that he intended to run for re-election later that year, the most nagging problem for his handlers was how he was going to raise cash for that campaign, more so in view of the stiff opposition he faced.
Hatutaki uongozi wa Mkikuyu tena nchini Kenya.Tumechoka na wizi wao na ufisadi. Twataka mtu kutoka kabila lingini.Wakikuyu wakae pembeni kwa miaka 100 zijazo ndio warudi tena uwongozini.
Kenya: roots of crisis
Gérard Prunier, 7 January 2008
The post-election violence in Kenya can be explained by reference to the evolution of its ethno-political mosaic since independence, says Gérard Prunier.
To many people in the world – and even to many Kenyans themselves itself – the violence which followed the elections in Kenya on 27 December 2007 has come as a surprise. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t have. The combination of economic and ethno-political factors in Kenya had created an explosive mix which was just waiting for the right – or rather “wrong” – circumstances to explode. The 2002 elections had been a lucky near-miss; this time, the favourable configuration that operated then did not repeat itself.
Kenya’s “democratic” politics
To understand the Kenyan crisis in the context of its national, regional and global situation, it is necessary to examine the regime which followed independence in 1963. Britain’s withdrawal from the country had taken place amidst a considerable fear that the Mau Mau anti-colonial insurrection of 1952-1960 might impinge upon the politics of the new state and lead to further violence. Nothing of the sort happened – partly because of the elevation to the presidency of the leader of the nationalist movement Jomo Kenyatta, who once in power swerved from radical nationalism to conservative bourgeois politics.
Kenyatta was a Kikuyu (or Gikuyu) and the enigmatic Mau Mau movement had largely been a Kikuyu phenomenon (most of the 12,000 rebels or “suspects” killed by colonial forces in a brutal campaign were Kikuyu). This had caused the British wrongly to conclude that Kenyatta was the leader of the Mau Mau. But in any case, on becoming president Kenyatta – head of the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) in an effectively one-party state – embraced extreme tribalistic politics and packed the new “Kenyan” bourgeoisie he promoted with Kikuyu and members of related tribes such as the Embu and the Meru. At the time of his death in 1978 most of the country’s wealth and power was in the hands of the organisation which grouped these three tribes: the Gikuyu-Embu-Meru Association (GEMA).
Kenya has forty-eight tribes, with three – the Kikuyu, the Luo and the Luhyia – together representing almost 65% of the population. Meanwhile, the GEMA tribes during Kenyatta’s time (1963-78) composed perhaps 30% of Kenyans, almost all concentrated in the highlands of the central province. These figures meant that in order to square the ethno-political circle in Kenya, power-brokers had to forge deals between the three big groups and somehow relate to the shifting gaggle occupying the fourth corner.
In Kenyatta’s time the deal was simple: the Kikuyu and their smaller relatives, after making an agreement with the minority tribes, ran everything. The Luo, who eventually tried to challenge this ordering, were forcefully marginalised as the prudent Luhyia looked on. After Kenyatta died in 1978, his vice-president Daniel arap Moi – who was from the Kalenjin minority tribe – inherited the mantle of power on the understanding that he would not upset the arrangement designed to keep the two other large tribes (and particularly the Luo) out of power.
But Daniel arap Moi proceeded to use his new status to cleverly divide his Kikuyu allies (amongst them the man who would be his successor as president, Mwai Kibaki), so as progressively to sideline them. By 1986, Moi had concentrated all the power – and most of its attendant economic benefits – into the hands of his Kalenjin tribe and of a handful of allies from minority groups (see Peter Kimani, “A past of power more than tribe in Kenya’s turmoil”, 2 January 2008).
But Kikuyu ascendancy had been reined in only, not destroyed. Under Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu – claiming martyr status for their sufferings during the Mau-Mau “emergency”, and relying on tacit government support – had spread beyond their traditional territorial homelands and “repossessed lands stolen by the whites” – even when these had previously belonged to other tribes. Thus Kikuyu “colonists” had fanned out all over Kenya, often creating strong rural antagonisms.
Kenyatta’s successor, Daniel arap Moi, used a consummate juggler’s skill to keep the ethno-political balance working in his favour. At the same time, the first two multi-party elections after other movements emerged to challenge Kanu (in 1992 and 1997) were occasions for carefully state-managed ethnic violence designed to achieve two objectives: keep the dangerous Kikuyu underfoot, and pit the Kalenjin’s minority allies against each other in order better to control them.
By the time of the 2002 election, however, the system had run its course: foreign donors were alienated, President Moi (having ruled for twenty-four years) was getting old, and a “democratic” opposition was gaining momentum. But if everybody agreed on the principle of ridding Kenya of its Kalenjin-based authoritarian state, the question of who and what would be the replacement remained open.
Moi had a brainwave: he thought that the best way for him to maintain his influence over politics after leaving the presidency would be to pick as the governing party candidate Kenyatta’s own son, Uhuru. This artful move, Moi calculated, would rally the Kikuyu behind a prestigious but empty symbol (Uhuru was not overly bright and his name spoke louder than his personality). But the stratagem backfired completely and the opposition united behind the veteran Kikuyu politician, Mwai Kibaki, thus creating a unique situation in which both leading candidates were Kikuyu.
In other ways, however, they were very different: one embodied the ghost of yesterday’s near-dictatorship while the other was seen as offering the hope of a democratic opening. This contrast felicitously de-ethnicised the election, turning it into a contest between the old and the new. At the time Raila Odinga, the leading Luo politician, tirelessly campaigned for Kibaki and deployed his tribal followers behind a man who – albeit a Kikuyu and a Kikuyu with a past – was seen as the candidate for change. The economic stagnation of previous years meant that many of the expectations that were invested in Kibaki were of an economic nature: Kibaki, it was hoped, would restart the economy and then proceed to share out its benefits more equally.
The Kibaki administration
Mwai Kibaki was elected president in December 2002 with over 62% of the vote. The country’s foreign backers were only too quick to salute the polls as “a triumph for democracy”. In a way they were right – the polls had been free and fair, and the candidate for change had been elected. But in another way this was a hasty form of wishful thinking because the ostensible “de-tribalisation” of the election had been due more to a series of fortuitous coincidences than to a real decline in the appeal of ethnic politics.
The key words in the campaign, however, had been “hope” and “change”, and to some extent the new Kibaki administration managed to deliver the goods. The economy did pick up and Kenya witnessed a spectacular economic recovery, largely based on Keynesian economic recipes and helped by a favourable international environment.
This can be illustrated by the annual rate of growth in 2002-07, which reveals a gradual improvement from -1.6 % in 2002 to 2.6% by 2004, 3.4 in 2005, and an estimated 5.5% in 2007. But this was only one side of the economic coin.
Social inequalities also increased; the fruits of economic growth went disproportionately to the already well-off (and, among those, to the Kikuyu well-off); and corruption reached new heights, matching some of the excesses of the Moi years. When John Githongo, the man appointed by President Kibaki to fight corruption, blew the whistle in January 2005, he had to flee to Britain in fear of his life (see Michael Holman, “Kenya: chaos and responsibility”, 3 January 2007). Githongo is himself a Kikuyu, and his denunciation of a massive series of financial scandals in which hundreds of millions of dollars had vanished was seen as a betrayal of his tribe as well as of the government he served.
Moreover, the security situation in Kenya deteriorated steadily in these years, with the ordinary people bearing the brunt of a triple process:
* a growing wave of routine crime in urban areas
* rival agrarian claims leading to pitched battles between ethnic groups fighting for land, particularly around Mount Elgon and in Kisii
* a running feud between the police and the Mungiki sect, which left over 120 people dead in May-November 2007 alone.
Mungiki is a bizarre cross between pre-Christian Kikuyu neo-traditionalism and an extortionist gang. The sect ran protection rackets on the matatu (collective taxi) routes, helping it to prosper among the poorest urban neighbourhoods and among the landless-peasant squatters in central province; it also has a tradition of hiring its muscle-boys to political candidates during election campaigns. In 2002, the Mungiki had backed the losing Uhuru Kenyatta camp. This cost it dearly in terms of political clout, and it had desperately tried to recover the lost ground by intensifying its terroristic hold on the slum population and on the matatu owners.
The accumulating result of these various processes was a feeling of deep dissatisfaction – not so much with President Kibaki as a person but with his entourage, with his robbing cronies, and with his incapacity to sympathise and do something about the plight of poor Kenyans (made all the more shocking by the level of economic growth the country was enjoying). Raila Odinga, the candidate of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), was then able to capitalise on that frustration in a way that fused various types of motivation:
* ethnic (the Kikuyu have grabbed everything and all the other tribes have lost)
* political (Kibaki betrayed his promise for change)
* social (crime and violence are out of control)
* economic (what is the point of economic growth when it does not bring any benefits to the ordinary citizen).
As the electoral campaign neared its climax in December 2007, the ODM opposition enjoyed a widespread lead in opinion polls and seemed ready to sweep Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) out of power.
The December 2007 election
The election on 27 December 2007 was both a parliamentary and a presidential one. At the legislative level, 2,548 candidates from 108 parties were vying for 210 seats; at the presidential level, three candidates – the incumbent Mwai Kibaki , ODM leader Raila Odinga and former foreign minister Kalonzo Musyoka (who had split from the ODM) – were competing.
Everybody (including himself) knew that Kalonzo Musyoka had no chance of winning and that he was simply angling for the position of a strategic post-election ally who could sell his support to a probable minority victor in need of additional backing. Kalonzo Musyoka is a Kamba, and the Kamba – although closely related to the Kikuyu – had chosen the British camp during the Mau Mau emergency. This gives them a hybrid status in the Kenyan ethno-political landscape, in which they hold the capacity to swing either with the Kikuyu or against them.
The polls were a messy business for a number of reasons. The voters’ rolls had been poorly updated or at times not updated at all. Some dead people were still on the rolls and electors who had changed residence had not been properly struck off in one place and re-registered at their new address. The rules governing the help which could be given to illiterate voters (up to 80% of the electoral body in some remote constituencies) were poorly enforced. Foreign and national observers were not always given free access to the polling stations, and later to the ballots.
But all in all, the parliamentary segment of the election proceeded smoothly. The definitive results have not at the time of writing been officially posted, but a provisional tally (based on 181 out of 210 seats) is possible. Twenty-two parties won seats, although only four can be considered as “serious” (the eighteen others have between one and three MPs, sharing twenty-eight seats between them):
* Raila Odinga’s ODM, which won ninety-two seats
* Mwai Kibaki’s PNU, which won thirty-four seats
* Kalonzo Musyoka’s splinter ODM-K, which won sixteen seats
* Uhuru Kenyatta’s Kanu, which won eleven seats.
The results speak for themselves: with 45% of the MPs, the opposition has a clear majority over the incumbent administration.
This is what makes the results of the presidential election definitely suspect. Kenya’s electoral commission (ECK) declared on 30 December that Kibaki had garnered 4,584,721 votes against 4,352,993 for his rival Raila Odinga, and immediately proceeded to inaugurate the incumbent president as the winner. This tight margin (little more than 230,000 votes, about 2.5% of those cast) is very fragile in view of the following facts.
In seventy-two of the constituencies, the figures on the ballot forms signed by the ECK returning officers and the agents of the candidates differ from the figures released by the national counting centre. At Ole Kalou constituency, for example, local ECK figures gave Mwai Kibaki 72,000 and Raila Odinga 5,000 out of 102,000 registered votes. But by the time the figures for that same constituency were released at the central level, Kibaki’s winning tally had jumped to 100,980 votes (i.e. 99% of the registered voters).
The pattern was repeated elsewhere. In Elmolo constituency, Kibaki was said by local ECK officials to have won by 50,145 votes, which then translated itself into 75,261 votes at the national level. In Kieni the discrepancy was between 54,337 (local level) and 72,054 (national tally). In various other constituencies (Lari, Kandara, Kerugoya) thousands more had “voted” in the presidential election than in the legislative one, even though the two ballots had been held concurrently .
All this points to a limited but widespread form of rigging which would not have had such catastrophic consequences had not the race been so closely contested. (After all, if several constituencies have probable rigging levels of 10,000-30,000 votes, there is no way a victory by 230,000 votes be considered solid.) On 1 January, Samuel Kivuitu – the respected chairman of the ECK – admitted : “I don’t know who won the election and I won’t know till I see the original records, which I can’t for now until the courts authorise it”.
It seems that what happened was that the Mwai Kibaki vote was artificially inflated rather than that Raila Odinga’s vote was tampered with. The evidence seems clear: even if gerrymandering had distorted the legislative vote vis-à-vis the presidential one (during the Moi years, the “enemy” Kikuyu constituencies had seen their demographic weight systematically eroded in this way), how could the pro-ODM trend at the parliamentary level turn itself into a contradictory support for the anti-ODM president? The possibility of such a split-personality vote is remote, as it requires that almost all those voting for minority parties would also have voted for Kibaki.
The bloody aftermath
The results of this manipulation have been disastrous. Almost as soon as the ECK hastily proclaimed Kibaki to be the winner, both the Nairobi slums and the western province exploded – the violence of the slum-dwellers reflecting their social frustration and the westerners’ arson-cum-machete attacks stemming from their hatred of the Kikuyu “colonists”. The political violence should thus be seen as both tribal and socio-economic; because, even if far from all Kikuyu are rich beneficiaries of the regime, many rich beneficiaries of the regime are Kikuyu. Such a situation recalls – especially for the Luo – the frustrations of the 1960s and 1970s.
The vote itself was primarily anti-establishment rather than crudely anti-Kikuyu, however: only six members of the cabinet survived the landslide, and many of the victims – including vice-president Moody Awori, planning minister Henry Obwocha, roads minister Simeon Nyachae, and tourism minister Moses Dzoro – were not Kikuyu. Even the few Luo or other westerners who were also PNU members lost their seats. Several Moi administration survivors – such as former minister Nicholas Biwott or Moi’s own son Gideon Moi – were also axed, often by nearly unknown candidates who took their seats with ease. This is one reason why the minority parties won so many seats: incumbency was a distinct liability and voters appeared ready to elect anybody who seemed ready to promote change.
It is when that trend towards long-awaited change appeared about to be blocked once more by the man who had already betrayed it after 2002 that violence exploded. The configuration of two relationships – Luo-Kikuyu, and Kikuyu with power – meant in the circumstances that it could not but be anti-Kikuyu. At the time of writing there have been at least 600 “official” deaths (as registered in hospitals and by other reliable sources); but this total is almost certainly an underestimate, especially if information from all the isolated rural areas where old scores are being settled were available.
While Luo have slaughtered Kikuyu settlers in their midst in the west, Mungiki thugs have rallied to the tribe and have been busy killing Luo in the Nairobi slums, hoping to ingratiate themselves with the big bosses of Kiambu, Nyeri and Murang’a. There are already as many as 250,000 internally-displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees (into Uganda). Factories are idle, many roads are closed, and food and humanitarian crises loom. In Uganda, Rwanda and the eastern DR Congo, the interruption of fuel supplies coming from Mombasa is threatening transport. Even Tanzania is beginning to feel the economic aftershocks of the disturbances. By a conservative estimate, the Kenyan economy is losing $30 million a day and the loss for the whole region – though anybody’s guess – must be far greater.
On 2 January 2008, President Kibaki announced that he was “ready to have a dialogue with the concerned parties”. This was a good start but, once more, the 76-year-old president seemed to be a prisoner of his past (and, perhaps, of his entourage). He stalled Desmond Tutu on the bishop’s arrival from South Africa in the effort to mediate (in contrast to Raila Odinga, who had immediately met Tutu); and when on 3 January attorney-general Amos Wako announced the creation of three committees designed to find a solution to the crisis (on peace and reconciliation, on the media aspects of the situation and on legal affairs), they were packed with burned-out politicians like Simeon Nyachae, Njenga Karume or George Saitoti, most of whom had just lost their seats in the election.
On 7 January, it is reported that Kibaki has invited Ghana’s president, John Kufuor, to re-engage in the mediation effort that was proposed as the violence first escalated; and that he has offered to create a government of national unity with the opposition which (an official statement says) “would not only unite Kenyans but would also help in the healing and reconciliation process”.
It is an artful departure from the boast of his precipitous acceptance speech of 30 December, when President Kibaki had declared: “Fellow Kenyans, you have given us a vote of confidence in the values and principles…that we began five years ago. You have chosen the leaders you wish to serve you during the next five years”.
In the circumstances, the claim was neither truthful nor realistic. It is unclear whether Mwai Kibaki’s latest manoeuvres represent a genuine shift of position or a tactical adjustment to desperate conditions. In any case, the creation of a government of national unity is now the sole, albeit painful compromise available if Kenya’s violence is to be contained and some sort of progress beyond this nightmare made. After that, a just and truthful reckoning with what has happened in Kenya must be attempted.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/kenya_roots_of_crisis