[News] Drama of the popular struggle for democracy in Kenya
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jan 4 15:26:32 EST 2008
Drama of the popular struggle for democracy in Kenya
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45210
Horace Campbell (2008-01-03)
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, Britains 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 Odingas 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 Kibakis 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 NGOs 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
* Please send comments to
<mailto:editor at pambazuka.org>editor at pambazuka.org
or comment online at <http://www.pambazuka.org>www.pambazuka.org
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20080104/62fcfaac/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list