Ethnic divisions behind the 2007 bloodletting still disfigure Kenya’s politics. The young generation – and a vibrant economy and civil society – point to a new way
• Murithi Mutiga is senior Kenya analyst for the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention organisation
A billboard worker gets a leg up from Kenya’s President Kenyatta (left), pictured with the deputy president, William Ruto, in an election poster in the town of Mai Mahiu. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters
Friday 4 August 2017 14.40 BST
Kenya’s presidential and local elections, scheduled for next Tuesday, are being closely watched in the region and beyond for good reason. The country is one of Africa’s most open societies, and an important commercial centre. It has flourishing, independent media, and numerous foreign investors, including global tech giants, have set up shop in what is one of the continent’s leading hubs of technological innovation. But it also has a history of election-related violence – so many people are on edge as next Tuesday’s elections approach.
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That history, as one commentator wisely remarked, explains why Kenyans prepare for elections in the same way others prepare for war or natural disasters. Voters are anxious to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2007, when a disputed presidential poll resulted in weeks of bloodletting. More than 1,000 people are believed to have been killed, with hundreds of thousands uprooted from their homes, amid ethnic conflict. While the following election in 2013 passed off relatively peacefully, memories of 2007 linger.
Evidence of anxiety abounds. Supermarkets have been packed with shoppers stocking up on food and emergency supplies, while the main bus station in Nairobi is crammed with residents leaving the capital for more ethnically homogeneous rural areas perceived as safer. The shocking killing last weekend of Chris Msando, the official in charge of an electronic system designed to curb election-day cheating, has exacerbated tensions. Major observer groups have sent in heavyweights – including John Kerry, a former American secretary of state, and Thabo Mbeki and John Mahama, former presidents respectively of South Africa and Ghana – hoping to lean on political actors to behave responsibly.
What lies behind the tension is that elections in Kenya are quasi-existential affairs for ethnic elites that stand to benefit enormously from control of the public purse. That politicians still run on political platforms based mainly on ethnic identity doesn’t help. In this case, the presidential election is a two-way race between scions of the country’s most prominent political families. The 55-year-old incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta – son of the nation’s first president – will seek to defend his seat against the opposition leader, 72-year-old Raila Odinga: the son of Kenya’s first vice-president. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group, while Odinga is Luo, a major community whose members chafe at years of exclusion, primarily at the hands of Kikuyu elites.
‘Global tech giants have set up shop in what is one of Africa’s leading hubs of technological innovation.’ A Nairobi street scene Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Partly in an attempt to lessen the stakes of the election and dilute the all-or-nothing nature of past presidential contests – and thus reduce risks of a repeat of a 2007-style crisis – Kenyans endorsed a new constitution in 2010 that significantly reshaped the structure of the state. Power and resources were distributed more evenly, notably by guaranteeing that at least 15% of all national revenue would be allocated to 47 governorates controlled by elected assemblies and governors.
The 2017 presidential elections will undoubtedly be intensely contested – not least because Kenyatta will be seeking to avoid becoming the first Kenyan president not to secure re-election, while this is expected to be Odinga’s last serious bid for the presidency – but the constitutional devolution of power could lower the heat.
But there is a flipside. Along with the presidential contest, elections are taking place for local governorships. The new constitutional devolution means that governors will enjoy considerable power and budgets – possibly making these local elections more fraught and prone to violence.
Added to this are the considerable institutional problems of preparing for the elections – a task all the more vexing given that the commission charged with running them was installed only six months ago.
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Ultimately, at the heart of Kenya’s challenge lies a profoundly ethnicised form of politics on which the political class thrives. It is a political culture with deep historical roots. When the British colonised Kenya, divide-and-rule tactics became a de facto policy aimed at preventing a broad-based nationalist movement. By law, political parties had to be based on districts that were essentially ethnically homogeneous. After independence, the Kenyan political elites found in this system – and its ethnic divisions – a convenient way to entrench their power.
Many have called for a change of course. When Barack Obama visited Kenya in 2015 – a “son of the soil” – he said, to rapturous applause, that a political system based on ethnic identity represents a “failure of the imagination” and is “doomed to tear a country apart”.
Kenya boasts the region’s most sophisticated and diversified economy. Yet its politics remain divisive and riven with conflict. The nation’s vibrant civil society, its increasingly well-connected and well-educated young people, and the lively independent media must find ways to mobilise and pressure Kenya’s politicians to abandon the us-v-them fearmongering, if elections are to stop being periods of high anxiety.
• Murithi Mutiga is senior Kenya analyst for the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention organisation
Source – The Guardian