[fse-esf] kenya updates

[Christophe Aguiton]

 IT IS THE KENYAN PEOPLE WHO HAVE LOST THE ELECTION
> Firoze Manji
>
> Kenya is entering a protracted crisis. No one really knows who
> actually won the presidential elections. Given the overwhelming number
> of parliamentary seats won by the ODM adn the dismissal of some 20
> former ministers who lost their seats, it seems likely that the
> presidential results probably followed suit. But it is no longer
> really a matter of who won or lost. For one thing is certain: it is
> the Kenyan people who have lost in these elections.
>
> That the elections results were rigged – of that there is little
> doubt. The hasty inauguration, the blanket banning on the broadcast
> media, the dispersal of security forces to deal with expected protests
> – all these have given the post election period the flavour of a coup
> d'etat. What was not expected was the speed with which the whole thing
> would unravel. The declaration of the members of the Electoral
> Commission that the results were indeed rigged only added to the
> growing realisation that a coup had indeed taken place.
>
> People across the country took to the streets to protest and were met
> with disproportionate use of force by the police and GSU. Emotions ran
> high. And there is evidence that politicians from all sides used the
> occasion to instigate violent attacks against their opponents
> constituencies. There have been rapes, forced circumcision and forced
> female genital mutilation. The western media has been quick to
> describe these as 'ethnic clashes' – but then they appear only to be
> able to see tribes whenever there are conflicts in Africa. What is
> ignored by them is that the security forces have been responsible for
> the majority of killings.
>
> What we have in Kenya is a political crisis that could, descend into
> civil war if the political crisis is not resolved soon. And therein
> lies the problem.
>
> There is no coherent political direction from the ODM. First Raila
> Odinga declares he's the 'people's president' (shades of Blair's
> 'people's princess' speech – the first time as tragedy, the second
> time as farce, some might say – and says he is going to arrange to be
> inaugurated. What happened?
>
> Then he says that he is not willing to meet with Kibaki, then says he
> will meet provided there is an international mediator. He says he will
> form his own government, and then takes that no further.
>
> Then he calls for a million person march into Nairobi, and when faced
> with a banning order and massive police attacks, backs down and calls
> for another demonstration the following day.
>
> But what is this demonstration seeking to achieve? Such events are
> usually a means of showing the size of popular support: but ODM has
> already demonstrated its popular support in the stolen elections.
> There are no coherent political demands for this event that would
> bring the support of the many who, though they may not have voted for
> ODM, would feel that they would nevertheless want to express their
> support. There is no real strategy for enabling PNU's own political
> base to be won over.
>
> The election results were rigged, sure. But the failure to demand that
> an independent judicial inquiry be established to investigate only
> leads to suspicions that even the ODM were not keen to have the
> results investigated. It is now probably too late to conduct a
> satisfactory investigation since original records may have been
> tampered with – which might explain the Attorney General's sudden
> willingness announced today to allow the ECK records to be inspected
> without recourse to use of the courts.
>
> The mass demonstrations could have been used to call for such an
> investigation and to protest against the media ban imposed by Kibaki
> and to challenge constitutionality of the ban. Instead, it served no
> purpose other than what some see as an infantile response to the theft
> of the elections.
>
> Why has there been no public appeal to the armed forces and police –
> whose families have no doubt suffered in the violent upheavals – to
> refuse to fire on citizens, or to defend and protect citizens from the
> violence that has been unleashe?. Kibaki can retain power only through
> the use of force – and so long as the armed forces and the police
> remain loyal, he will be able to retain his hold on power.
>
> ODM has failed to challenge the existing government by encouraging all
> sections of society to create a viable alternative to the present
> government.
>
> But the real tragedy of Kenya is that the political conflict is not
> about alternative political programmes that could address the long
> standing grievances of the majority over landlessness, low wages,
> unemployment, lack of shelter, inadequate incomes, homelessness, etc.
> It is not about such heady aspirations.
>
> No, it boils down to a fight over who has access to the honey pot that
> is the state. For those in control of the state machinery are free to
> fill their pockets. So the battle lines are reduced to which group of
> people are going to be chosen to fill their pockets – and citizens are
> left to decide perhaps that a few crumbs might fall off the table in
> their direction.
>
> And the electorate – the mass of citizens who have borne the brunt of
> the recent violence and decades of prolonged disenfranchisement from
> accessing the fruits of independence – are reduced to being just being
> fodder for the pigs fighting over the trough.
>
> The Kibaki regime seems unlikely to concede any space – for to do so
> would confirm the suspicions of election theft. And the longer that
> the current impasse continues, the more likely it is that people will
> seek to vent their anger and frustration in senseless violence –
> energy that could so easily be turned towards organising to building a
> new world.
>
> So what is going to be the way forward? Will there be an independent
> inquiry into the election results? Into the violence that has taken
> place? Will the contending parties agree to the formation of an
> interim government that would oversee the re-run of the elections?
>
> Whatever happens, the present crisis has demonstrated that there is a
> serious lack of any formations that can articulate a coherent
> political programme for social transformation. Politics will remain
> forever about who gets access to the trough so long as there is no
> alternative.
>
> This issue of Pambazuka News is dedicated to those who have paid with
> their lives in this period of crisis.
>
> * Firoze Manji is co-editor of Pambazuka News and executive director
> of Fahamu.
>
> * Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at
> http://www.pambazuka.org
> ******
>
> DRAMA OF THE POPULAR STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN KENYA
> Horace Campbell
>
> National elections were held in Kenya on December 27, 2007; the
> results of the Presidential election were announced three days later.
> Within minutes of the announcement that Mwai Kibaki had emerged as the
> winner, there were spontaneous acts of opposition to the government in
> all parts of the country. The opposition was especially intense among
> the jobless youths who had voted overwhelmingly for change. A ruling
> clique that had stolen billions of dollars in a period of five years
> had stolen the elections. This was the verdict of the poor. However,
> this verdict was obscured by ethnic alienation and the constant
> refrain by local and foreign intellectuals that the crisis and
> killings emanated from deep 'tribal' hostilities. This tribal
> narrative was intensified after the burning and killings of innocent
> civilians in a church, in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya.
> But while these killings had all of the hallmarks of the genocidal
> violence of Rwanda and Burundi, more importantly, they heightened the
> need for Kenyan society to step back from the brink of all out war.
> Violence and killings provided a feedback loop that threatened to
> engulf even the political leaders of the society.
>
> This analysis argues that the calls for peace and reconciliation by
> the political and religious leaders will remain hollow until there are
> efforts to break from the recursive processes of looting, extra
> judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low
> respect for African lives.
>
> This short commentary on the elections and the aftermath seeks to
> introduce a unified emancipatory approach: liberating humanity from
> the mechanical, competitive, and individualistic constraints of
> western philosophy, and re-unifying Kenyans with each other, the
> Earth, and spirituality. This analysis draws from fractal theory and
> seeks to place Africans as human beings at the center of the analysis.
> Fractal theory is founded on aspects of the African knowledge system
> and breaks the old tribal narratives that refer to Africans as sub
> humans needing Civilization, Christianity and Commerce.
> Those who condemn the post-election violence in Kenya have failed to
> condemn the traditions of killings and economic terrorism in Kenya. It
> should be stated clearly that using African women as guinea pigs for
> western pharmaceuticals is just as outrageous as burning innocent
> women and children in churches. Rape and violation of women, and
> exploitation of the poor and of jobless youth have been overlooked by
> the commentators who focus on one component of the matrix of
> exploitation in Kenya -- ethnicity.
>
> In tandem with much of the current discourse on fractal theory, this
> commentary is addressed to progressive intellectuals from Kenya and
> calls for a revolutionary paradigmatic transformation- one that is
> intrinsic to African knowledge systems and can be witnessed in
> practice in the everyday activities of African life. Revolutionary
> transformations are necessary to break from the processes that have
> been unleashed in Kenya and East Africa since British colonialism and
> the British Gulag. This break requires revolutionary ideas in Kenya,
> along with revolutionary leaders and new forms of political
> organization. Thus far, neo-liberal capitalism and neo-liberal
> democratic organizations, along with the focus on party organization
> have created leaders who organize for political power. These leaders
> are not even concerned about forming lasting political parties. Far
> more profound transformations are required in Kenya, beyond the
> winning of elections. However, until new ideas and new leaders emerge,
> the current struggles will serve to educate the poor on the
> limitations of the old politics and ethnic alliances that privilege
> sections of the Kenyan capitalist class.
>
> The analysis is presented as a drama of three acts. The first act was
> played out in the form of the election campaign. The second act
> involved the drama after the announcement of the results and the
> violent reactions from all sections of the society. The third act of
> this drama continues to unfold with the call for a fractal analysis
> that will place revolutionary transformation as the central question
> on the political agenda in Kenya and East Africa.
>
> Act One – The Struggles over the election and the campaign for the
> Presidency.
>
> The Scene: Kenya had been the epi- center of imperial domination in
> East Africa from the period of British colonialism. Caroline Elkins in
> the book, Britain's Gulag, has documented for posterity the extreme
> violence and murders bequeathed to the Kenyan political culture by the
> British government. At independence in December 1963, Britain handed
> over power to people who, in essence, agreed to act as junior partners
> with British capitalism in Eastern and Central Africa. This
> partnership included an acceptance by the ruling class in Kenya of the
> western European forms of land ownership that stated that Africans had
> to be modernized from their "tribal" and "backward" ways. For forty
> years, Kenya was presented as a success story where a parasitic middle
> class and a thriving Nairobi Stock Exchange (composed of foreign
> capital) sought to prove that capitalism could take root in Africa.
>
> Act 1 Scene Two of this drama took the form of a campaign for the
> tenth Parliament of Kenya. The drama of the struggle for change in
> Kenya was played out before the world in the form of an electoral
> struggle that gripped the society for many months. At the end of Scene
> Two one of the principal props of this drama – the local media -
> reported that the results were like a "blood bath." The headline
> screamed " energized voters sweep out Vice President, Cabinet
> Ministers and seasoned politicians as wind of change blows across the
> country." But the newspapers were not yet aware of the implications of
> using language like "blood bath" in their headlines. Every one awaited
> the final results of the news of who would be President. The results
> were being delayed while the votes were being cooked. As news of the
> parliamentary routing of the incumbent President and his allies in the
> Party of National Unity (PNU) splashed on the streets, on the screens
> and on text messages while the principal actors and actresses of the
> drama, the people of Kenya, sought spontaneous actions to ensure that
> they were not silenced by the power brokers who had placed themselves
> at the head of the movement for change. These central actors and
> actresses (wananchi) had enthusiastically participated in the election
> campaign articulating their demand for peace, reconstruction and
> transformation of Kenyan society.
>
> By the time of the third scene of this drama, those from the den of
> thieves around the incumbent Mwai Kibaki sought to silence the media.
> In order for this scene to be played out without an audience,
> international observers and the media (both national and
> international) were ejected from Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK)
> election center at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The
> Chairperson of the ECK went to a small room and announced the results
> of the elections naming Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the election.
> Three days later, the same chairperson of the ECK said in the media
> that he was not sure if Kibaki won the elections.
>
> Earlier in the drama Raila Odinga's team of regional barons and
> aspiring capitalists argued that the true results of the elections
> showed that Raila Odinga had been chosen by the majority of the main
> players to be the leading man on the Kenyan stage. How was it possible
> for his Movement to win over one hundred seats in the Parliament (when
> Kibaki's den of thieves had won less than thirty parliamentary seats)
> and still lose the Presidency? Local and foreign observers cried foul.
> The elections had been rigged. Ballot boxes had been stuffed. Results
> were being announced that did not correspond to the votes from the
> constituencies. The integrity of the process was flawed. These voices
> were soon drowned out by the might and power of those with strategic
> control over the military and media sections of the performance.
> Neo-liberal politics include rigging, so that the international
> observers used 'measured' language of "irregularities," "anomalies"
> and "weighty issues" to conceal the reality of outright theft. Raila
> Odinga termed the process a "civilian coup." But international capital
> became confused, because, after all the precedent of election rigging
> in Florida,U.S.A in 2000 had given the green light to electoral fraud
> internationally.
>
> The Swearing in of President Kibaki
>
> Act One Scene Three of this drama was performed within the guarded
> confines of State House where parastatal executives, mostly defeated
> cabinet members and a small section of the media were invited. In this
> scene, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as the Third President of the Republic
> of Kenya. The stage and setting of this scene was markedly different
> from the previous swearing in at the Uhuru Park (in Nairobi) where an
> enthusiastic audience had cheered on the President on December 30,
> 2002. The 2007 swearing in scene had to be played out without the
> audience because the principal actors and actresses did not endorse
> this new act. Minutes after the announcement of the victory of Kibaki,
> there were spontaneous demonstrations all over the country, especially
> the urban areas. Popular outrage at the theft of the elections brought
> violence and the killings of innocent civilians in Kakamega, Kisumu,
> Mombassa, Nairobi, Nakuru and other centers. The police killed
> innocent demonstrators as the foreign media portrayed the
> demonstrations in ethnic terms. The gendered, class and ethnic
> dimensions of the opposition to Kibaki began to be played out in the
> poor communities that were called slums, but the media focused on one
> dimension, the ethnic alienation of the poor and exploited.
>
> Hundreds of dead brought home the reality that the elections and vote
> counting were simply one site of struggle in the quest to break the
> old politics of exploitation and dehumanization in Kenya. However,
> because so much of the old politics of exploitation had been masked by
> the politicization of ethnicity, poor members of the Kikuyu
> nationality were targeted in some communities, with the killings in
> Eldoret bringing home the long traditions of ethnic cleaning that had
> been going on in this region during the Moi regime. The same media
> neglected to report that poor Kalenjin also torched the home of former
> President Arap Moi.
>
> Would there be a break from this recursive process of killing of the
> poor?
> Odinga and members of the Pentagon condemned the killings of members
> of a particular ethnic group but the anger was too deep for the youths
> to listen. Unfortunately, the ODM did not have structures to properly
> mobilize the youths away from looting.
>
> Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic Movement
>
> In order to avert the possible war that could emanate from this new
> act of the drama there was the need for fresh if not revolutionary
> ideas to harness the pent up energies of the people for change. The
> radicalization of Kenyan politics had merged with the anti-
> globalization forces internationally to the point where in 2007 Kenya
> hosted the World Social Forum. The radical demands of the Bamako
> appeal of the Africa Social Forum (for profound social, economic and
> gender transformations in Africa) could not be carried forward by the
> old Non Governmental Organization elements allied with international
> NGO's from Western Europe. What the World Social Forum had
> demonstrated was the reality that new revolutionary ideas with new
> revolutionary forms of organization were needed to realize the goals
> and aspirations and appeal of the Africa social forum. Raila Odinga
> and his group of regional ethnic barons had tapped into the radical
> sentiments of the youth all across the ethnic divisions. Calling his
> team, the Pentagon, Odinga mobilized the popular discourses about
> youth, women and disabled to speak about 'poverty eradication' and
> "corruption."
>
> Absent from the platform of the Orange Democratic Movement was a clear
> program for reconstruction and transformation. Raila Odinga had been a
> major political actor on the Kenyan stage for four decades. He had
> participated in every major political party and formation since his
> father, Odinga Odinga had emerged as the opponent of the Kenyan form
> of neo-colonialism. The 2007 elections exposed the reality that there
> were no real political parties in Kenya. Leaders on all sides were not
> interested in building a lasting movement for change. They were
> interested in parties as electoral vehicles to capture state power.
> There were more than 300 parties registered in Kenya and over 117
> participated in the elections in December 2007.
>
> Local and international writers who earlier had been voices for the
> poor enthusiastically supported the enactment of the first scene of
> the drama (the election and voting). Some of these writers moaned and
> groaned that the script had been changed when those who controlled the
> state machinery unleashed violence against the poor. In order to
> unleash state violence against the poor, the Minister of Internal
> Affairs banned the broadcast of live images. The state also toyed with
> the idea of banning SMS messaging in Kenya. But
> Kenyans simply tuned in to the international media to confirm what
> they knew, that the recursive processes of killings and revenge were
> spiraling out of control.
>
> Without enacting an official state of emergency (in the fear of
> further hurting the tourist industry) the majority of poor Kenyans
> lived under curfew-like conditions as the military, the police, and
> General Service Units were deployed all over the country and new forms
> of censorship were implemented. The political leadership that stole
> the elections had to be careful with the use of the police, military
> and the intelligence services in so far as the divisions within the
> security forces challenged the authority of those who stole the
> elections. Raila Odinga sought to tap into this division of the
> coercive forces by calling a demonstration of a million Kenyans to
> oppose the stolen election results.
>
> The International media and international capital
>
> The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other cultural voices
> of imperial power were from the outset one of the props of this drama.
> The British were particularly active because the interests of British
> capitalism were very much an important part of narrative of the drama.
> During Act 1 scenes two and three, this foreign prop had been
> condemning the "irregularities'" and "anomalies" of the drama and
> carried the press statements of the International Observers of the
> European Union and the Commonwealth. The head of the European Union
> observer mission issued a statement declaring that, "the Presidential
> poll lacks credibility and an independent audit should be instituted
> to rectify things."
>
> This clear statement led the US government to reverse its earlier
> recognition of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the Presidential
> elections. There had been concern in Washington over the future of
> Kenya in so far as the US authorities sought to mobilize Kenyans in
> the war against terrorism. During the period of Kibaki, Kenyan
> citizens were shipped out of the country to be tried as terrorists
> under the US policy of kidnapping, called rendition. The ODM signed a
> memorandum of understanding with the Islamic community during the
> election campaign and members of the ODM condemned the rendering of
> Kenyan citizens by the government. It was argued that if these
> citizens acted contrary to Kenyan law, they should be tried under
> Kenyan law.
>
> The propaganda war had been virulent and since Raila Odinga held the
> moral and political high ground, sections of the international media
> began to retreat from endorsement of the electoral coup. However, the
> occupation of the moral high ground was shaky. Would the government
> and opposition be more concerned with the lives of the poor than with
> political power?
>
> In the face of the absence of resolute moral leadership to condemn
> these killings, the international media had a field day portraying the
> struggles for democracy in Kenya as primitive "tribal" violence.
>
> Act Two – Stalemate and brinkmanship in politics
>
> Raila Odinga and his team called the Pentagon had entered the drama
> seeking to play on the terms of those who had seized power from the
> time of colonialism. The very naming of his team as the 'Pentagon' had
> shown an insensitivity to the international revulsion against military
> symbols. The five leaders of the Pentagon were, (i) Vice Presidential
> running mate M Mudavadi, (ii) Charity Ngilu, (iii) William Ruto, (iv)
> Bilal Najib and (v) Joseph Nyagah. These regional ethnic barons had
> emerged from multiple political formations and many had family and
> business linkages with capitalists inside and outside of the
> government. During the campaign these regional leaders had campaigned
> on a pledge to devolve power from central government. The poor
> believed this would bring power closer to the village and communities
> so that health care facilities, water supply systems, road and
> pathways in the villages, education, sanitation and other services
> could be delivered so that the conditions of exploitation are
> ameliorated. These localized services were interpreted by various
> local communities as job creation avenues for the jobless youths. For
> the regional barons, the devolution debate was carried out to ensure
> easier access to the treasury. The word 'majimbo' re- emerged in the
> political vocabulary of Kenya to reignite the memory of the alliance
> between the 'home guards' and settlers at the dawn of independence.
>
> Youths all across Kenya had transcended the ethnic identification and
> wanted real change in the quality of life in the society.
>
> Entering the drama without a real party and without a real organ to
> bring the majority of the actors and actresses to the center of the
> drama, it was easy for the team around Mwai Kibaki to stall so that
> the spontaneous anger would peter out. Would the Orange Democratic
> Revolution learn the lessons of popular power in the streets of the
> Ukraine Orange Revolution and shake the old power with new bases of
> alternative power? This provided the setting for the central aspect of
> the drama, the stand off between the forces of orange and the forces
> of the defeated power. Kibaki came across as an imprisoned leader,
> surrounded by politicians and financiers who argued that Kibaki must
> enter any negotiation from a position of strength. Odinga countered
> that negotiations could only begin when Kibaki accepted that the
> elections had been stolen. The hardening of positions ratcheted up the
> tensions in the country as regionally countries such as Uganda, Rwanda
> and the Southern Sudan began to feel the effects of the shutdown of
> the transportation system in Kenya.
>
> Mwai Kibaki and the neo-liberal regime in Kenya
>
> Mwai Kibaki had been associated with the ruling class in Kenya for
> over fifty years. Starting his career as a representative of Shell Oil
> Company in Kampala, Uganda, Kibaki moved from an academic position at
> Makerere University to the top echelons of the independent government
> of Kenya after independence. In the book, The Reds and the Blacks,
> William Atwood, then-US ambassador, had identified Kibaki as one of
> the steady 'reformers" who would guarantee the interests of foreign
> capital. Kibaki emerged as a stable force in the ruling circles
> serving both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi as Minister of Finance.
> It was under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi that the forms of
> theft by the ruling elements in Kenya were refined. Extra judicial
> killings and accidental deaths of prominent trade union leaders and
> politicians were papered over by the foreign press that labeled Kenya
> a 'stable' democracy.
>
> Arap Moi and international capital.
>
> After the death of Kenyatta in 1978, Daniel Arap Moi moved decisively
> to cement an alliance of foreign capitalists and local political
> careerists to loot the society and spread divisions and ethnic hatred
> among the poor and oppressed. British capitalism had been the dominant
> force in Kenya with British companies such as Unilever, Finlays, GSK,
> Vodafone, Barclays and Standard Bank becoming leading names on the
> Nairobi Stock Exchange. Britain had made a deal with the independence
> leaders and awarded a small sum to enhance this new class of African
> yeoman farmers to join the British settlers in the exploitation of
> Kenya and indeed, East Africa. Molo, in the Rift Valley (one of the
> constituencies at the center of the row over the rigged elections),
> represented one of the places where Kikuyu settlers had been relocated
> after independence.
>
> Moi during his Presidency remained at the center of the alliance
> between British capitalists, Asian capitalists and Kikuyu
> entrepreneurs from Central Province. By the time of the electoral
> defeat of Moi in December 2002, the Moi family and cronies in the
> ruling party, Kenya African National Union (KANU) had become junior
> capitalists in the game of exploitation. It was under the leadership
> of Moi that imperialism used Kenya as a base to subvert African
> independence. A report commissioned by the Kibaki administration,
> (called the Kroll Report), had named Moi and his sons as billionaires
> with assets in banks in Britain, Switzerland, South Africa, Namibia,
> the Cayman Islands and Brunei. The 110-page report by the
> international risk consultancy Kroll alleged that relatives and
> associates of former President Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of
> government money. This documentation placed the Mois on a par with
> Africa's other great politicians-cum-looters such as Mobutu Sese Seko
> of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.
> The Kroll report of the levels of theft when presented to the Kibaki
> government was never acted on. The alliance between Moi and Kibaki
> forces became clearer during the election campaign when Moi and his
> sons fiercely campaigned for the re –election of President Kibaki. The
> sons of Moi were decisively defeated in the elections.
>
> The documentation of the level of theft by Moi was exposed before the
> public in what to became known as the Goldenberg scandal. This scandal
> brought to the fore the alliance between Moi, KANU and Asian
> capitalists in Kenya. These capitalists had looted the country with
> such impunity that Kamlesh Mdami Pattni (an Asian capitalist named in
> the Goldenberg scandal) took over one party Kenda to contest the 2007
> elections.
>
> Prior to the 1992 multi-party struggles, Kibaki had sought to distance
> himself from this group of capitalists. These were the capitalists
> involved in settler agriculture, manufacturing, transport, services,
> old forms of banking, insurance, real estate, construction and
> engineering and the health and education sectors. These capitalists
> from inside and outside the political arena provided cover for looters
> all across Eastern Africa. In the Kenyan economy money from oil in the
> Sudan (especially Southern Sudan), commercial interests in Somalia,
> gold and diamond dealers from Rwanda, Burundi and the Eastern Congo
> circulated with the resources from the exploited Kenyan working poor
> so that in the past ten years there has been a growth of the Kenyan
> economy. Felicia Kabunga, wanted by the International Criminal
> Tribunal on Rwanda (ICRT) for crimes of genocide in Rwanda was the
> kind of looter and money spinner who found safe haven among the money
> launderers in Kenya.
>
> Kibaki and the rise of new capitalists.
>
>
> Although Mwai Kbaki had campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket in
> 2002, his tenure as President of Kenya was marked by an explosion of
> new schemes for accumulation. The rise of the telecommunications,
> information technology and banking sectors boomed with new enterprises
> such as Equity Bank and a number of communications companies
> (Safaricom, Flashcom, Telecom etc) rivaling the old capitalists. The
> floating of new shares n the form on an Initial Public Offer (IPO) for
> the Company, Safarcom, became a central question in the election
> campaign in so far as those who got access to the shares at the time
> of the issuing of the IPO became instant millionaires.
>
> The Kibaki government was in the main dominated by elements who formed
> a company called MEGA (a regrouping of the old Gema Gikuyu, Embu, Meru
> Association), and through Transcentury Corporation had elevated
> themselves to be the among the leading capitalists in Kenya. This
> group presented a program called Vision 2030 where Kenya would become
> the leading capitalist country in Africa, becoming the Singapore of
> Africa. Control of the governmental apparatus was crucial for Vision
> 2030.
>
> Space does not allow for an elaboration of the individuals of this
> capitalist clique and their place in the interpenetrating directorates
> of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. What is significant is that the names
> of the capitalists and politicians of Trancentury figured in the
> scandal of corruption that rocked the government of Mai Kibaki. This
> was termed the Anglo-leasing scandal which involved awarding huge
> government contracts to bogus companies. One insider, John Githongo,
> exposed the scandal and repaired to Britain.
>
> No money from the Anglo leasing scandal had been recovered before the
> elections and although European and US governments made noises about
> corruption there were no moves to repatriate the stolen wealth back to
> Kenya. These scandals were very much a part of the election campaign.
> Three of the four ministers who resigned after the Anglo Leasing
> scandal was exposed had been reinstated by Kibaki. These ministers
> along with twenty other ministers lost their parliamentary seats in
> the December 2007 elections.
> The poor of Kenya had used the ballot to send a message to the
> capitalists in Kenya but those who stole billions of dollars from the
> Kenyan Treasury were not above stealing an election.
>
> The real test in Kenyan politics was whether the team called the
> Pentagon was serious about changing the political culture of theft,
> looting and storing billions of dollars in foreign banks. The people
> of Kenya had voted for change. Was the Orange Democratic Movement a
> movement for change or a movement for political power? This was the
> outstanding question as the cast and the writers got ready for Act
> three of the drama of the struggle for democracy.
>
> Act 3. A Revolutionary situation without revolutionary ideas and real
> revolutionaries.
>
> Because the drama is being played out it is not possible to make a
> presentation of the last act of this drama. This is the act where the
> peoples of Kenya are torn between two traditions. These are the
> traditions of the freedom fighters for independence and the traditions
> of violence, looting and the low respect for African life. The youths
> of Kenya have been brought up in the period of the aftermath of the
> end of apartheid and the defeat of Mobutism. These youths have risen
> above the politicization of ethnicity and along with progressive women
> want to end the rape and violation of women. These youths have been
> heard to say that Kenya is in the midst of a liberation war.
>
> While the consciousness of the youth may be high with the thought of a
> long term struggle, there are very few revolutionary leaders and a
> poverty of revolutionary ideas in Kenya. If anything, the poorer
> youths are being mobilized into counter-revolutionary violence where
> poor and oppressed people burn and kill each other. This was the
> lesson of the killings, burning and massacre in the Rift Valley.
> Counter-revolutionary violence of the Rwanda genocidal form lay just
> below the surface and the same politicians who gave refuge to
> genocidaires from Rwanda are not above fomenting genocidal violence
> among the poor. The media images of marauding youths with pangas
> provide the necessary imagery to represent to the world another
> version of African savagery. This same media will not prominently
> carry the news that poor peasants from the home area of Danieal Arap
> Moi burnt his house to the ground. The prospect of real class warfare
> in Kenya frightens both the government and the opposition so there is
> a delicate effort to manage the crisis so that the forms of capital
> accumulation can return to the business pages rather than the front
> pages.
>
> Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic movement are now caught between
> the aspirations of the regional capitalists of the 'Pentagon' and the
> demand for real change across Kenya. The post election mayhem is a
> clear demonstration that the ODM did not sufficiently engage their
> followers on new ideas transcending ethnicity and patriarchy. This
> demand for democratic change in Kenya will require new forms of
> organization beyond electoral politics and new ideas about the value
> of African lives. This requires a break with the European ideation
> systems that promote capitalism as democracy and genocide as progress.
>
> * Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse
> University
>
> * Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at
> http://www.pambazuka.org
>
> ***
>
> KIBAKI MUST BACK DOWN
> Victoria Brittain
>
> Desmond Tutu was absolutely right to fly into Kenya and throw his
> moral authority behind efforts to resolve the dramatic crisis that
> other outsiders are misjudging so badly. British foreign secretary
> David Miliband, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, secretary
> general of the Commonwealth Don McKinnon and President John Kufuor of
> Ghana, president of the African Union (AU), all missed the chance to
> denounce the rapid swearing-in of a man who did not win the
> presidential election.
>
> This lit the touchpaper for the appalling violence of the last few
> days. All of these powerful people knew from the European and other
> observers on the ground how grotesque and open was the ballot rigging
> which allowed Mwai Kibaki to claim victory. The parliamentary
> elections in which President Kibaki's party was trounced, getting a
> mere one third of the seats obtained by Raila Odinga's Orange
> Democratic Movement (ODM), and with 20 cabinet ministers losing their
> seats, underlined the true balance of democratic forces in the
> country.
>
> Tutu knows mass anger as a response to political humiliation. Kenyans
> in the street will listen to him as South Africans did, and still do
> when he speaks fearlessly to the powerful at home as well as abroad.
> Perhaps Kibaki, who has rebuffed the overtures from the AU and insists
> that Kenya's problem is an internal one, will meet the Archbishop. If
> so, he will hear hard truths, but also, perhaps, a face-saving way to
> step back from the folly encouraged by his close advisers who dared
> not face his defeat and the political reckoning that would come with
> it.
>
> It is a myth that Kenya has been a haven of stability in East Africa
> for decades, just as it was a myth that Ivory Coast was in the west -
> until it exploded. Kenya has been a key strategic ally for the west
> since independence, and the kleptocratic and repressive governments of
> Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki have been supported unconditionally for that
> reason.
>
> Since the launch of the "war on terror" in late 2001, the importance
> of Kenya to the Americans has increased even further. The west chose
> not to see a country where more than half the population of 31 million
> live on $2 a day, where unemployment is rising, landlessness is
> chronic and increasing. The tourist paradise for European
> holidaymakers had become a bitter, lawless and cynical place for its
> own citizens.
>
> Raila Odinga made a political alliance with Kibaki in 2002,
> calculating that together they could attack corruption, bring down an
> elite which had been above the law for too long, and give ordinary
> Kenyans the modest prosperity that had eluded too many of them since
> independence. (Kibaki too had been in the wilderness during the Moi
> years.)
>
> But Kibaki was captured by the old elite once he came into power, and
> since 2005 Odinga has built a new nationalist alliance across the
> country, which owes as much to his own drive, as to the old magic of
> his father's name - Oginga Odinga. In the years after independence,
> when Kenyatta became a key British ally and froze Odinga out, as a
> socialist, and as a Luo from the poor west of Kenya, Odinga's was the
> name with which the Kenyan masses most identified. In the 21st century
> the freeze won't work on the son. The election has to be rerun with a
> credible independent electoral commission. Odinga's offer of
> negotiations under international auspices must be accepted by Kibaki.
>
> *Victoria Brittain, a former associate foreign editor of the Guardian,
> is a journalist and a research associate at the London School of
> Economics.
>
> *Please send comments to editor at pambazuka or comment online at
> http://www.pambazuka.org
>
> ***
>
> Kenya rally halted after day of battles
>
> Nicolo Gnecchi and Andrew Cawthorne | Nairobi, Kenya
>
>
>
> 03 January 2008 03:06
>
> The Attorney General on Thursday called for an independent probe into
> Kenya's election after a day of battles in Nairobi between police and
> demonstrators disputing the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.
>
> The opposition called off a rally in a central park, saying it wanted
> to save lives, after a day of fighting during which police fired live
> rounds in the air and smoke billowed over the city slums.
>
> But it scheduled another public meeting for next Tuesday.
>
> Piling the pressure on Kibaki, Attorney General Amos Wako said in a
> statement: "It is necessary ... that a proper tally of the valid
> certificates returned and confirmed should be undertaken immediately
> on a priority basis by an agreed and independent person or body."
>
> After stocks took a hit on Wednesday, the Nairobi Stock Exchange
> closed on Thursday due to the mayhem. The shilling, which slumped 5%
> in the previous session, bounced 1,3% against the dollar before
> trading was suspended on Thursday.
>
> Tea and coffee auctions were postponed.
>
> From dawn, riot police were out in force as the city slowly
> transformed into an all-out battleground.
>
> "This is dictatorship now," protester Julius Akech shouted, in the
> latest bout of unrest in a week of tribal and political violence in
> which more than 300 Kenyans have been killed.
>
> Opposition leaders defied police and set off from their headquarters
> for the rally against Kibaki's continued hold on power in Kenya, East
> Africa's biggest economy and an ally of the West in its efforts to
> counter al-Qaeda.
>
> Thousands poured out of the pro-opposition Kibera slum and other
> shantytowns after dawn to head for Nairobi's Uhuru Park, or Freedom
> Park in Swahili, for the planned million-strong rally that Kibaki's
> government has banned.
>
> When they were stopped by riot police, some protesters -- wearing
> white scarves, waving leaves and singing the national anthem -- sat in
> streets, blocking traffic.
>
> As tempers rose, protesters burned cars and buildings.
>
> Police used tear gas and water cannons. They fired in the air when, in
> one case, the crowd kneeled, shouting "Kill us all."
>
> The daily violence has shocked world leaders and choked supplies of
> fuel and other goods to a swathe of central Africa.
>
> Pro-Kibaki legislators called for opposition leader Raila Odinga and
> others to be charged by the International Criminal Court for "ethnic
> cleansing and genocide".
>
> The opposition has said that a police order to shoot during protests
> by its supporters was "bordering on genocide".
>
> There have been international calls for reconciliation in a nation
> that had become known as a vibrant democracy and peacemaker in Africa,
> rather than a trouble spot.
>
> "This is a country that has been held up as a model of stability. This
> picture has been shattered," said South Africa's Nobel peace laureate,
> Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in Kenya to try and start mediation.
>
> "I don't think there is anybody who would be unmoved by the pictures
> that are coming out -- of people who burned to death in a church. This
> is not the Kenya that we know."
>
> 'Civilian coup'
> Odinga called Kibaki a "thief" who had carried out "a civilian coup".
> He said, however, he would accept international mediation and proposed
> setting up an interim power-sharing government to prepare for a re-run
> of the vote.
>
> "The people will not take this vote-rigging by the government lying
> down," he said before meeting Tutu.
>
> Supporters set up barricades on roads around the opposition's "Orange
> House" headquarters. As opposition leaders left for the rally, some
> police smiled, let them pass and shook fists in a show of solidarity.
>
> In rural areas, the unrest has touched off deep ethnic tensions. In an
> area where about 30 members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe were killed in a
> church set on fire by a mob, young men with machetes manned roadblocks
> and hunted for their enemies.
>
> Protesters began to overwhelm police as they tried to enter the centre
> of Kisumu, an opposition stronghold in western Kenya already ravaged
> by riots and looting.
>
> The turmoil was likely to hurt tourism, Kenya's biggest earner worth
> about $800-million a year.
>
> Kikuyus, long dominant in politics and business, were targeted in
> initial clashes but revenge killings -- including some by the Kikuyu
> militant gang Mungiki -- are on the rise.
>
> The government said "well-organised acts of genocide and ethnic
> cleansing were well planned, financed and rehearsed" by Odinga's
> Orange Democratic Movement ahead of last week's vote.
>
> Observers said the vote fell short of democratic standards.
>
> Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni became the first African leader to
> send congratulations to Kibaki. But at the same time, Kampala closed
> its borders to business due to the violence.
>
> Hundreds of refugees, however, were allowed to cross into Uganda,
> taking shelter in schools and churches. The irony is not lost on
> Kenyans, used to taking in refugees from conflict zones in Sudan,
> Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda.
>
> Kenyan media united in pleas for peace, with every major newspaper
> running the same front-page headline: "Save Our Beloved Country".
>
> "Kenya is a burnt-out, smouldering ruin. The economy is at a virtual
> standstill and the armies of destruction are on the march," said the
> Nation.
>
> "In the midst of this, leaders -- who are the direct cause of this
> catastrophe -- are issuing half-hearted calls for peace, from the
> comfort of their hotels and walled homes in Nairobi, where they are
> conveyed in bullet-proof limousines." -- Reuters
>
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