From Russia With Love: Lessons For Kenya From The Ukraine Crisis

This week, Kenya will mark the first anniversary of the controversial elections that brought the Jubilee government into power. To many, those elections, and the manner  in which the country's affairs have been managed since, left a bitter taste in the mouth, and were a betrayal of the 2010 constitution and the more than two-decade long fight for political and economic justice.

On the other side of the world, in the Ukraine, a thieving tyrant has just been been deposed and a mobilization for war is under way. The events happening thousands of kilometers away in a part of the world few of us know about and even fewer have actually visited, carry important consequences and lessons for us here.

A very brief outline of events: Ukraine has seen off and on political crises and revolutions for close to a decade with the main sticking point being whether it will remain in Russia's sphere of influence or move westward.The country is ethnically divided and split down the middle on the issue. The current crisis was sparked by President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to abandon a trade agreement with the EU, and seek closer ties with Moscow. This precipitated three months of demonstrations in the capital, draconian anti-protest laws, occupation of government buildings and street clashes in which over a hundred demonstrators died. At the end of it all, Yanukovich had been stripped of the Presidency and had fled to Russian, a new pro-Western government had been formed and Russian troops had invaded the province of Crimea amid talk of, and mobilization for, war.

Predictably, the West has reacted with howls of outrage at Moscow's actions, cancelled a meeting with Moscow and done little else. If it came to a fight with Russia, it is abundantly clear that the Ukraine would be on its own. There may be talk of economic sanctions, perhaps asset freezes and visa bans, but the  fact is Russia will probably escape with little more than a pat of the hand courtesy of it's nukes and the West's hypocritical "morality of the hedge-fund."

What does this mean for us? The main lesson that our elites will undoubtedly draw is one of Western hypocrisy and weakness. This will reinforce the idea that despite its rhetoric, the West is not much more than a paper tiger and, when push comes to shove, will quickly abandon hifalutin principles and allies. Above all, realpolitik rules.

It has not been a good year for Western prestige, having been forced to swallow its words on the consequences of Kenyans electing indictees of the International Criminal Court to the highest office in the land as well as having to back down on the issue of presidential impunity. A crackdown on homosexual rights across the continent is also being painted as a thumbing of the nose to the Occidentals.

On the other hand, the Easterners, particularly the Russians and the Chinese, are increasingly being seen as viable patrons, powerful, flush with cash, if not exactly moneyed populations, and who will not ask too many uncomfortable questions about the uses to which their money is actually put. Since no one really believes in communism anymore, least of all the self proclaimed communists, there's little danger of ideology intruding into relations.

For the rest of  us, a resurgence of East-West rivalry will also mean that they all once again needs allies. As was the case with the war on terrorism, countries that were on the brink of becoming irrelevant are once again becoming "strategic." That was the designation craved by elites but that meant doom for many African countries during the Cold War, that turned them into arenas of perpetual misery and conflict as unaccountable elites essentially were let loose to loot, murder and maim in the service of either side. Words like transparency and accountability and democracy were emptied of all meaning. Today's do-gooder West was not only providing safe havens for ill-gotten wealth but financing coups against legitimately elected governments, propping up genocidal dictatorships and kleptocracies.

Thus the stage is set for a return to the heady days of independence when African rulers faced few international constraints in their dealings with their populations. In Kenya, we have already seen moves towards consolidation of state power and silencing of dissent. Laws clamping down on media independence and threatening the viability of civil society organisations have already been mooted and the former actually passed. Government propaganda rules the airwaves, courts are routinely ignored and corruption and the theft of public resources are once again a way of life.

As in the 60s, we are today urged to sing the praises of our government and its leaders; to stay silent; to keep the rot hidden; that dissent is somehow unpatriotic; to forget how the dreams of "development" and social justice floundered on the rocks of sycophancy and a wilful ignorance. We are being lulled into a false sense of security.

Yet,, as we cast our eyes at Ukraine,  it is important we realize that no one will come riding to our rescue. Like them, we will ultimately be alone in the fight against the oppressions and predations of the big brother in State House. And, therefore, we need to mobilize. We need to form alliances and create platforms and forums where the dangers can be articulated to the society.

Like the Ukraine, Kenya has seen a political revolution betrayed by greedy elites. If we do not stand up to them today, if we do not insist on accountability, then their promises of "development" tomorrow will be so much ash in our mouths. We've rid ourselves of a thieving tyrant once before and we can do it again. The question we really need to ask ourselves is whether we are truly ready to play our part in demanding that Kenya is run for the benefit of all Kenyans, not just for those who can afford to steal elections.

The Courage To Be Free

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," said Benjamin Franklin. The arrest and nine-hour detention of Brazilian David Miranda at London's Heathrow airport has today re-ignited debate over the erosion of civil liberties in the war against terror. Miranda's treatment was widely seen as a vindictive attempt to intimidate his partner, and Guardian reporter, Glen Greenwald, for publishing information on US government spying on both its citizens and people across the world.

The source of Greewald's information was Edward Snowden, whom the West has turned into a fugitive, following in the footsteps of Wikipedia's Julian Assange, still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Chelsea Manning, who was recently sentenced to 35 yeas imprisonment for being the providing Wikileaks with thousands of secret US diplomatic cables. The scale of this unprecedented attack on civil liberties supposedly guaranteed in the West was recently underlined by reports of UK government goons overseeing the destruction of hard drives containing information relating to the Snowden leaks in the Guardian's basement.  "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," one said.

As noted by Agnes Callamard, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, an international human rights organisation that defends freedom of expression, Miranda's arrest has also highlighted the fact that odious so-called "anti-terror" legislation is actually being used, not to target terrorists, but against against activists and journalists who dare to question and expose the "all-encompassing security response to terrorism and the human rights violations that result from it".

Any of this sound familiar?

In Kenya, the diminution of fundamental freedoms in the name of an elusive "peace" or security has been a fact of life for a long time now. By the time the election season rolled around, we had gotten used to the idea of trading innocent lives and the rights to a fair trial for the illusion of security. We cheered whenever the police announced their latest kills. "Cops gun down suspected thugs in shootout," was a regular headline. "Suspected" became more than a word. It became a means to strip people of their humanity. So few raised their voices when suspected thugs were shot and suspected witches were burned.

(It is worth noting, however, that in the hallowed halls of the powerful, "suspected" didn't have a similar connotations. For example, when calls grew for senior officials implicated in theft to resign, the government invented a new taxonomy where they could "step aside" and continue earning their obscene wages without the bother of working for them.)

In the run up to the election and in the time since, the dread of a 2007/8-like post-election conflagration has created an atmosphere where the public is increasingly willing to acquiesce to, if not support, the silencing of voices challenging official conduct and narratives. Like the Guardian in the UK, our media have become complicit in this silencing, destroying journalism standards under the watchful eye of the government's security apparatus. Editors have allowed the news to be lobotomised. Journalists do little other than parrot the official line and are more concerned with their celebrity status than in an informed audience.

The period following the election has demonstrated that, like in the West, these silences are not erected to protect the public, but rather to protect the elite, who have used the period to line their pockets with public cash, from prying eyes and uncomfortable questions. We have seen a bill in Parliament to "improve" the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission's report by deleting their names from it, the rehabilitation of Daniel arap Moi from erstwhile kleptocratic and brutal dictator, to lovable elder statesman as well as the revival of Nyayo-era intimidation by officials openly issuing warnings to those "fomenting disaffection against the government."

In this atmosphere, organised civil society has been effectively silenced. Calls for reform of the electoral system have been branded as the resurrection of a dangerous electoral politics. Human and political rights activists with a distinguished history of standing up for Kenyans' freedom and dignity are today designated as Western stooges and regularly receive death threats. With no public outcry, the government has passed a law allowing it to register and regulate the operation of civil society organisations. It has similarly drafted a bill to similarly muzzle the compliant press, again facing little public opposition.

In Kenya, as in other parts of the globe, there is an effort to convince the public that fundamental freedoms need to be curtailed for the sake of security. "Security, rather than human rights, has emerged as the algorithm de rigueur," says Callamard. This argument must be resisted for it seeks to mask the real causes of conflict and precludes effective remedy to both deliver justice and enhance security. The actions carried out under the cover of darkness or the cloak of secrecy, actions claimed to be necessary for national security, have time and again been shown to be neither necessary nor in the national interest. Revelations such as those from Wikileaks have demonstrated the folly of putting our faith in official pronouncements or in public professions of commitment to protection of fundamental freedoms.

We must instead insist on the means to monitor and punish any government malfeasance. We must insist on a press that is truly free and that takes its duty to inform, rather than entertain, the nation seriously. We must also insist that the government keeps its dirty hands off civil society and leaves them be to question and interrogate official conduct and policy. We must insist on a better electoral system and refuse to be bought off by talk of building the nation, economic growth and free maternity and laptops.

We must build up the courage to be free and come to understand that it is we, the citizenry, who are the ultimate guarantors of accountability in government. If we shrink back out of fear, if we sacrifice "liberty for a little temporary safety" then we not only won't deserve, we also won't achieve either freedom or security.

Don't Forget The Other National Disaster

When the arrivals section of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport's Terminal 1 went up in flames, it was interesting to watch the government spring into action. within hours, President Uhuru Kenyatta was at the scene and he stayed there for a few hours more, supposedly to supervise the admittedly crappy response. He and his mandarins were on TV and online providing regular updates. Within days, he had restructured airport security, ordered an investigation into the fire and promised to build a new terminal and fully refurbish the existing three. "We are on top of this. We will find the problem and we will fix it," seemed to be the message.

It is a complete reversal of his ostrich-like attitude to the elections in March. Despite the many failures then, we have heard nothing about an audit or about reform. Quite the contrary. His deputy has declared that the IEBC did a "fabulous job." This cavalier approach is all the more surprising given that it was a bungled election that set the country alight 5 years ago.

You would think that a burning airport would be of less consequence than a burning country. But the Kenyatta administration seems to care more for the former than the latter.

The smouldering terminal is the perfect symbol for a smouldering nation. The election fiasco has left many angry and disillusioned with the hollowness of democracy. Autocracy stalks the land. From the rehabilitation of Daniel Arap Moi to the increasingly bellicose and threatening language of the new Principal Secretaries, it is clear that the country is heading down the wrong path.

The airport fire was the result of multiple institutional failures. Over the last few days, the evidence of the country's lack of effective disaster prevention and response tragedies has been overwhelming and is leading to calls for change. Already, President Kenyatta has declared the overhaul of our national disaster services with the formation of a new agency to spearhead coordination. But what about that most severe of threats to our national fabric, the election?

The institutional failures in March must also be addressed. When the IEBC cannot say who or how many voters it registered; when all the systems meant to ensure the transparency and credibility of the poll fail; when the newly minted Supreme Court refuses to consider evidence on a technicality and offers up a moronic judgement; then we are playing with fire.

Just like there were reports of immigration and Kenya Airports Authority staff shooing people away from a small fire while leaving it to become an inferno, our politicians are shooing us into the safety of our tribal stockades while leaving the country to burn. We must resist this. The charade of "accept and move on" poses real risks down the line. If we do not seek to understand and address the problems of the last election, we will go into our next one even more divided and even more frightened.

Today the air is thick with talk of national disaster preparedness. Every pundit on TV and on the internet is offering his two cents on what failed and what needs fixing. Yet the March elections were every bit a national disaster as was the JKIA fire. And when we speak of improving our capacity to prevent and respond to disasters, we must also speak of how we are responding to the election and what we are doing to prevent catastrophe in 2017.

I, for one, would much rather see President Kenyatta taking the lead in, and giving regular updates on, that effort. And I would much rather the talking heads were putting that at the top of the national agenda. Let's get on top of this. Let's find the problem and let us fix it

Who Will Bell The Cat?

Less than three years after we promulgated a new constitution, meant to herald a new era of democratic governance, our polity is facing a severe crisis of legitimacy. Today few Kenyans believe their MP represents them. Half the country thinks the presidential election was stolen and the revelations of IEBC incompetence threaten the credibility of the entire March General election. Untrammelled rent-seeking by the new county authorities and petty arguments over the appropriate manner of addressing housing and transporting governors and their wives are making a mockery of devolution. We are now the fourth most corrupt nation in the world.

The system is broken. So why aren't we fixing it? Why aren't we even talking of fixing it?

I think we may be seeing the consequence of a deficit in accountability. We are already well past the point at which our shamocracy pushed honesty and prudence out of public office. Now that the thugs and tribalists have taken over, they are systematically deconstructing our national identity and replacing it with ethnicities. This fracturing of identity makes it much harder for the people to mount collective action to punish thieving elites.

One of the primary ways (by no means the only one) the masses can enforce accontability is through elections. But we live in terror of elections. And with good reason. Elections work, when governments are evaluated on their performance, and when citizens watch whether governments keep their promises, and oust those that don’t measure up. Such accountability improves the provision of public goods, boosting incomes and welfare and reinforcing the sense of national belonging.

However, in poor and diverse societies such as ours, electoral competition undisciplined by accountability and enforced rules curtailing scope for cheating as well as constraints on the exercise of power, can be very dangerous indeed. Politicians are evaluated on their propensity for patronage, further polarizing the fractured identities and leading to higher risks of violence.

We don't have to look far for examples of what happens when we stay on the road we are on. Cote D'Ivoire and Somalia have been through this. The former was once Africa's economic miracle and is now a basket case. The latter is one of it's most ethnically homogenous societies, which has been tearing itself apart for more than two decades. We ourselves had a taste of it in 2007.

The lack of accountability and fracturing of the national identity is the road to hell. It is why we are deathly afraid of elections. When accountability for the deaths of 1500 Kenyans is swept under the carpet in the name of a fake reconciliation, when we elect thugs to public office and turn a blind eye to electoral malfeasance in the name of peace, we are just storing up further troubles down the road.

It is also proof positive of the hollowness of our democracy. A free people should have no reason fear electoral contests. And to the extent that we do, we are neither free nor a people.

So what is to be done? The politicians will not fix it. Their unrestrained greed for power and prestige is a big part of the problem. Also, the president and his henchmen do not want to broach the issue for fear of having to acknowledge that their victory is stained. None other than the Deputy President has openly declared that the IEBC, despite its manifold failures, did a "fabulous job." Presumably he meant in installing the ruling clique's preferred candidate. In Parliament, a similar reluctance to highlight the problems springs from similar motivations: impugning the integrity of the system impugns the legitimacy of all incumbents. It was telling that when calling for reforms, the opposition CORD alliance threatened to boycott the next General Election. But that's in five years time! The system needs to be fixed today.

No. We have to look elsewhere. And we have a ready example from our recent past. It was a coalition of civil society, churches, media and disaffected politicians which mobilized the Kenyan people and the international community to stand up to the Moi dictatorship in the 1990s and to demand accountability. This coalition can be re-formed. But for that to happen, we need to shake off the fear and ignorance that seems to infect its parts.

Civil Society must come out from hiding and find the courage to speak out. The media must rediscover its core function of informing the public. The lobotomising of the news must stop and journalists should go back to being newsmen and not performing monkeys. The church (and the mosque) must rediscover their moral centres. And politicians must reacquaint with principle. Most importantly, the silence must stop. If this is done, then the people and the international community will regain their voice, just as they did twenty years ago and force reform on the elite.

But all this takes courage. It takes leadership. So the question is: In a nation where we have turned men into mice, who will bell the cat?

Kenya: Is The Dream Over? Wake Up And Smell The Fear.

Lately, questions have started to be asked about the conduct and outcome of the election. And the more information leaks out, the more the questions keep coming. For me, the first significant crack in the official facade came at the end of May. Buried deep in an otherwise unremarkable story about the IEBC's proposal to change the way public funding for political parties would be calculated, is a startling admission by an unnamed Commissioner: "We are having sleepless nights reconciling the presidential results and those of the other positions. Over a million votes must be reconciled with the others."

If the Commission is indeed burning the midnight oil to "reconcile" the fact that one million voters seemed to have discarded 5 of the 6 ballots they were given without anyone noticing, and then only cast a vote for the presidential election, then that would raise more serious doubts over the integrity of Uhuru Kenyatta's victory. More than three months after the election, the IEBC is yet to release the full election results and every day, this delay further erodes the already shaky public confidence in the electoral process. A recent opinion poll by Infotrak found that nearly half of all of Kenyans had their doubts which pretty much reflects the divided nation. Even Western governments that were eager to ignore concerns over the veracity of the results and in a rush to  embrace the new administration, seem to be backing off a little. "Uncertainty following Kenya’s elections" was last week given as one of the two reasons US President Barrack Obama's is ducking Kenya (the other is obvious).

You would think that all this would be enough to shake the Kenyan media and society out of its post-election slumber. You might expect outraged protests, ala Brazil and Turkey. Of course you'd be wrong. As a society, we seem resolutely determined, in what has become the prevailing mantra, to "accept and move on." Although a vocal and increasingly strident and shrill minority continues to man the online barricades and trade insults, much of the society has indeed moved on. But what is it that we have moved on to and what have we accepted?

Every time I hear the phrase, it seems to mark the end of a dream. Today the election seems like a world away. Instead of a celebration of nationhood, it has become something else to forget, another nail in Kenya's coffin. As the simmering resentment of those on the losing side is swept under the carpet of indifference and resignation and the winners attempt to drown their doubts in a histrionic cacophony of  shallow optimism and empty chest-thumping, one can't help feeling that questioning the poll is flogging a dead horse. 

Time to wake up and smell the fear, I suppose. There is a real reluctance to go back and explore what happened. A real terror of peering behind the curtain of official truth, of what that might reveal, of what it might provoke. In this atmosphere, thick with our terror of each other and of our common past, "accept and move on" is a comfort blanket that smothers the spark of outrage while soothing the afflicted conscience. In its embrace, we are suffocating the idea of Kenya, of a nation of rights, responsibility and opportunity for all; where life, hope and choices are not defined by one's surname.

Even when we rail against the brazen greed of MPigs or the alleged racism of ArtCafe, the anger sometimes seems contrived. We wish we could feel as genuinely Boniface Mwangi seems to, and in the throes of an imagined outrage, we may even swear to attend the next Occupy Parliament demo. Deep inside, I think, we recognize that something has changed. Something fundamental. A sense that Kenya and Kenyans cannot long endure in this fearful place where we have exchanged the truth for the lie, where we hide things in plain sight.

That realization is, I think, Kenya gasping for breath, for life. Yet we want to move on and forget. Every morning it is a little easier to ignore the cries of a dying nation, to accept that the pursuit of justice is an inherently dangerous thing. As every day inflicts upon us new outrages, pretty soon, what should be outrageous becomes normal. And we learn to ignore or silently endure the humiliations. The national spirit shrivels even further.

Where we once looked to freedom and rights, understood ourselves to be exceptional in our part of the globe, were proud of our fractious and loud media and civil society, today we celebrate silence and lies and tyranny and manipulation. Where we once we saw ourselves as a beacon for the region, we have become a place to hide, where questions are not answered but themselves queried. No longer an island of peace, we are today content to swim in a sea of chaos, corruption and injustice.

The other day I got to thinking that perhaps we've given up on doing better because we believe we've already tried it and it didn't turn out so well. In 2002, we elected the activists. We tried the good guys. We gave them their shot and they gave us tyranny and assassinations, and corruption and Anglo-Leasing and the Arturs. Perhaps this is why we now do not care for civil society. And why we've turned the country over to the bad guys, the corrupt, the wicked, the indictees and the drug dealers. They surely could do no worse!

But the election has given us an important insights into our own part in abetting this poverty of values among the governing elite. The brutal, kleptocratic leadership can afford to ignore us because they are aware that deep down we are afraid that we are just like them. That we are just as murderous. It is this awareness that we fear but it is also, paradoxically, the truth that will set us free. For only by accepting responsibility for the past, can we own our future. By learning to believe in our own agency and to stop hiding behind the tribe or leader.

I don't want to accept and move on, to forget what the election revealed. I don't want to turn from it or paper it over or minimize it. I want to face it. Remembering and acting upon that remembrance is the only salvation for Kenya.

Media Culpa

It is a strange world our media seems to inhabit nowadays. At the end of last week, the Star's weekly pullout, Expression Today, contained what comes perilously close to a collective mea culpa for the coverage of the election.

"We over-trusted the IEBC," NTV Managing Editor declares. The overriding concern of journalists, one of the articles concludes, was "peace," not using election reporting "as an opportunity for national political education" in the words of Ipsos Synovate research Analyst, Tom Wolfe. Capital FM News Editor, Michael Mumo, says he was puzzled by the media downplaying or ignoring events that did not fit into the "peace" narrative (given his job title, one wonders why he should be puzzled at all and who in fact was making the news decisions!) Even the usual apologists seem to accept the media was too busy preventing a repeat of the 2007/2008 violence to actually do its job, though they obviously think that was a good thing.

The pullout criticizes the lack of analysis and discussion of the Supreme Court decision as well as the "sloppy" coverage of the decision of the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to drop charges against Francis Muthaura and its implications (and that of the other crumbling cases) for the search for justice in Kenya.

Sounds like a good start, eh? But as I read it, I found myself having to constantly refer to the date on the masthead to ensure I was actually reading the most recent edition. For all the navel-gazing, the media is still transfixed by the election period.

If the media truly wants to regain the trust of its audience, it needs to do more than a little self-flagellation. Actual changes must flow from a deeper understanding of, not just failures during the election, but the disturbing trends we have witnessed since.

Like the poor coverage of stories such as the Garissa "anti-terror" operation, the lack on interest in the delays and shenanigans leading to the release of the TJRC report, the blind fascination with the new administration and mindless parroting of government propaganda, the triumph of form over substance, showmanship over journalism, entertainment over information.

Perhaps the media could start to tackle the undisguised misogyny that has become a staple of our news. Like the humiliation of seven young women whom the media publicly accused of bestiality without offering a shred of proof. Like the Nation publishing a suggestion from one of our prominent psychiatrists that victims of sexual abuse may themselves be mentally ill for wishing to report their abusers. Like TV anchors seeing the funny side of a woman being stripped in public for supposedly dressing indecently. Like the recent article that observed that though still "wonderful, colourful creatures," women still need men to help them run companies and to presumably cheer the inevitable cat-fights.

How about they query articles such as Jacob Ng'etich's who, writing in the Standard, has produce a glowing rendition of Deputy President William Ruto's rise to power absent any mention of the shadowy moments of that career: the allegations of corruption, the charges of crimes against humanity for allegedly funding and organising murderous militia during the 2007/8 post election violence.

The truth is our press has much to seek forgiveness for. But before they get that, a full and honest audit of their performance to date, as well as a commitment to doing things better, is the least we should demand.

Are We Trying To Fake It Till We Make It?

There is an interesting scene in one of those dreary, black and white independence era TV documentaries that the media trots out every national holiday. A colonial settler expresses his shock and outrage at the brutality of the Mau Mau uprising. He seems genuinely outraged that a man to whom you have been kind enough to offer employment, whose kids play with yours and who you have even allowed to live on and farm a small corner of your land, could steal into your house in the dead of night and massacre your entire family.

Of course, what makes the statement so unbelievably cretinous is the idea that the Africans should have been grateful for getting back a tiny fraction of what had been stolen from them. It seems that the colonials had come to believe their own hype, that the country's bounty was theirs as of right. Today, I can't help feeling that we , inheritors of the artificial country and systems they created, have been similarly lying to ourselves, and have become victims of our own hubris.

The problem with fake societies is their people do not feel anything more than a superficial duty to them.

Consider the recent elections. We invested a great deal of money in technology meant to safeguard its credibility and disregarded all concerns about its efficacy. When it all failed, we were unwilling to even consider that the results might be fraudulent. Despite all our earnest protestations, we were not really interested in democracy or the will of the people or justice. We were, on the contrary, quite content to fake a free and fair poll. Like the settler, we were careful not to give it too much thought lest we discover what lay under our seemingly honest exterior.

Similarly we celebrate our new and improved constitution even when it seems to do nothing to regulate the behaviour of our famously avaricious politicians. We speak reverently of a reformed judiciary though it still seems incapable of delivering justice. We have a penchant to compare the young(ish) duo in Statehouse with US President Barrack Obama,  all the while pretending that it is normal to have an ICC-indicted president who has to be whisked through the cargo terminals of international airports, hidden from the press and whose hosts are camera-shy when he's around.

Today the carpet of economic growth covers many ills. On the back of GDP figures and the number of kilometres of tarmac and fibre optic cable, we are taught to believe that things are improving, the country is moving forward, that we should just sit back and enjoy the ride. As a result, buoyed by narratives of a rising Africa and blinded by the gleaming towers of our cities, we forget that we live in one of the most unequal countries on earth, where wealth is concentrated in the top ten percent. On a per capita basis, the biggest economy in East Africa, as we like to refer to ourselves, ranks only a mediocre 24th out of 48 sub-Saharan economies. One survey of the income distribution of workers in the formal sector found that the top 10 percent lived off monthly wages that were more than 6 times those of the bottom 90 percent. In fact, another study found that the top 10 percent of households control nearly half of total income while the bottom 10 percent take home nearly nothing.

We have little inkling of the country that lies beyond those numbers which is still very much a Hobbesian one. Where men live without security and in constant fear of a violent death; where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is a place where people are set alight while crowds cheer and where young girls can be pulled kicking and screaming from crowded commuter buses to be gang-raped without anybody intervening.

We prefer the compartmentalized view, the trees to the wood. Thus we periodically rotate the thieves in government without tackling the systemic attitudes that incentivize bad behaviour. Like turning a blind eye to the rip-off that is the presidential retirement package while at the same time berating Mps for trying to get in on the enrichment act. We reach for legal bans as a quick fix to social problems even when we know that the laws are rarely enforced and even when they are, provide avenues for graft, can be ineffective and can even create worse problems. We thus celebrate traffic rules that fill the government coffers without doing anything about the anarchy on our roads and abortion bans whose only effect is to kill and maim our women and girls.

One would think it would be the job of the media to disabuse us of such inaccurate notions. But the fact is, the Kenyan media long ago shirked its duty to expose truth and to challenge our assumptions. In fact, it is itself a mirror of the society it serves. Famed across the globe as one of the most vibrant on the continent, it has produced award winning journalists by the dozen, many of whom have been snapped up by international networks. Yet back home,  they are not given to critical scrutiny and revel in sensational tales of superstition and sex. For our comfort and pleasure, they provide us with a smattering of sanitized news bulletins conservatively sprinkled atop a diet of entertainment and advertising.

Though loudly proclaiming their independence and objectivity, they nonetheless seem almost as ignorant as those they are supposed to inform. As I was writing this, the news anchor on TV was saying something about the Mandera clashes. She declared, with little apparent embarrassment, that the fighting had been going on "unreported" for 3 months. It was unclear whose job she thought it was to do the reporting.

It seems that we are a nation that is determined to fake its way through the world. That we believe we can continue to pretend to be virtuous or successful and all will be well. However, at the end of that road lies an inevitable and painful collision with reality. Like the colonial settlers, we will eventually discover that we cannot paper over the truth indefinitely.

Hire-and-Forget Dumbocrats

A little over two months ago, Kenyan voters were harangued into queuing up for hours in the hot sun to cast a vote. "Go out and vote" was the mantra parroted by every pundit, columnist and anchor. Someone was slapped on an internet video for saying he wouldn't vote. The message was clear: if you don't vote, you have no right to speak.

Well, Kenyans, in their millions did exactly as they were told but today it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. In fact, voters seem to have even less of a say in how the country is run than they did previously. On Election Day, we were urged to vote and then go home. When murmuring begun about suspicious technology failures and inconsistent tallies, public protests were immediately banned. The media went into over-drive, providing non-news and calling for patience and peace. 

Neither was much heard from the people of Garissa when a security operation supposedly cracking down on terrorists was carried out by what government officials called "a rotten team" and seemed to only target non-terrorists. When citizens in Bungoma decide to highlight the spate of brutal gang attacks that have claimed tens of lives in the last few days, the authorities respond with clubs and tear gas. 

Even when the voting public is allowed to speak, it seems rather easy to ignore them. Howls of outrage do not seem to have any effect on elected representatives' determination to gerrymander constitutional checks on their greed. When reminded of the recall clause, MPs smugly point out the fact that it doesn't kick in till two years into their term. The sub-text: "We can afford to ignore you till then."

I think the MPs scorn underscores what the citizen's role in the Kenyan version of democracy is. An advertisement now running on Kenyan TV also alludes to it. In it, young celebrities praise us for the peaceful voting and acceptance of the outcome. "Tunawacheki! (We are watching you!)" the successful candidates are warned. The kicker: Five years is not a long time. 

And there it is: citizen involvement reduced to the act of voting, the act of expressing a preference. Vote, then shut up till the next election. Military folks have a term for weapons that do not need active human guidance once deployed. Fire-and-forget. In Kenya, the prevailing sentiment when it comes to the politicians we have deployed seems to be: "hire-and-forget."

But citizens are an integral part of the democratic system, of ensuring that the elected deliver on what they have promised, of protecting the country and the constitution.  We may have devised systems of checks and balances as well as created institutions to these, but they all only act on our behalf. The ultimate responsibility for the defense of the realm lies with us.

However, this is not the narrative we hear. Today we are exhorted to forget politics and focus on building the nation. The voices that were urging Kenyans to participate in democracy prior to March 4 seem to have fallen silent. It seems that casting a ballot was all the citizen was required to do. Once you did that, you had done your part, and could go back to your normal business. There is little call to any follow-up action. Though one might still hear a few isolated voices such as the activist Boniface Mwangi or Okiya Omtata, the new norm seems to be an increasing reluctance, perhaps fear, even intolerance, to challenging the official stance. 

Yet, to my mind, citizens should be doing more than keeping a silent 5-year vigil. I wish for a vibrant and engaged people demonstrating, querying, debating. Challenging official truths. Expressing passion, outrage even. Discarding the stupefying relief at surviving yet another election. We should no longer accept a role that reduces us to dumbocrats. To be seen every half decade but not to be heard in the intervening period. Like French general Charles De Gaulle, we should realise that politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians.

Shut Down and Shut Up

The search for a teenage terror suspect -accused, along with his brother, of bombing the Boston Marathon two days ago, killing 3 people and injuring nearly 150 more- yesterday shut down the entire city. Think about that. 650,000 people living in the birthplace of the American Revolution, which gave the world its most constitutionally shackled government, have been terrorized into staying at home by the hunt for a 19-year old student.

Closer to home, the Uhuru government has finally broken its two day silence on the terror attacks in Garissa which killed 10. It was a tragedy which President Uhuru Kenyatta felt did not merit a mention in any of the speeches he has given since, let alone a special media address or visit to the town ala his counterpart in the White House. 

Now he has apparently released a statement expressing "his concern over the continued killing of civilians and security personnel" and ordering security chiefs to head to Garissa on Saturday. I am not expecting to hear of a lock down there. Given the history of government action in that part of Kenya, it would probably create more fear than the original attack. 

But a lock down of sorts has already been underway across most of the country for some time. It is not a physical one though, which is easier to identify. One can see the pictures of empty freeways and train stations in Boston and immediately know that something is amiss. 

Not here. It is, however, not dissimilar to what is happening in Boston. A deep-seated terror has overtaken the land and the authorities, with the help of a compliant media, have instituted a shut down. Only this is a mental and spiritual one. A desertion of the streets of thought and conscience. A confinement in the tribal homes. The 2008 post-election violence has become today’s bogeyman.

How else is one to understand the silence that has greeted the Supreme Court’s release of it judgement? One would have expected our “vibrant” media to be all over it, taking it apart, explaining the precedents it sets or overturns. Where are the eloquent lawyers to whose endless analysis and opinions we were subjected in lieu of actual news during the election? Why, for that matter, did the Chief Justice not read his judgement in open court?

Why, a month after the election, and with the Supreme Court asking for a corruption investigation into the procurement of technology for the election, haven't we heard of the police or the EACC launching investigations? Where are the demands for an audit of the way the entire election was handled, for reforming the Commission and its way of doing business?

How can the man who masterminded one of Kenya’s biggest financial scams through which the country lost up to Sh100 billion walk free after all those years of tribunals and trials? Was the Goldenberg scandal, which bought Kamlesh Pattni national infamy, just a figment of our imagination? For that matter, why was Brother Paul even allowed to run for elected office? 

I guess a country that has just chosen a guy accused of bankrolling militias to kill innocent Kenyans to be its President would not be expected to be squeamish about the face of the guy accused of almost bankrupting the country twenty years ago gracing an election billboard. But what should we make of the fact that the Nation filed the story of Pattni’s acquittal under the title “Politics”?

This is all about fear. Fear of one another. Fear of the uncertain. Fear of looking foolish.

We need to leave our comfort zones and venture outside. We need to remember the taste of freedom and the scent of justice. We need to start thinking and feeling again. It is time to show some outrage. To speak up. Let’s not move on. Let’s go back and make it better. 

My Dissenting Opinion

Legal judgements do not always make for absorbing reading. I suppose this is because judges want to sound measured and impartial, disinterested if not particularly interesting to those whose study of the law consists of a few seasons of Boston Legal.

And so it was when the Supreme Court released its judgement, finally offering up a justification for its decision to uphold the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as President of the Republic of Kenya. Still, as I dutifully and valiantly trudged through it 113 pages, I found myself getting all emotional about this lack of emotion.

Now I'm a great Boston Legal fan so I will not pretend to understand the intricacies of law or the ways of lawyers. My ignorance was not helped by the reluctance of the media to unpackage the judgement and explain the old precedents it has overturned or new ones it has established (BTW, why is that?). In any case, how a ballot transmogrifies into a vote holds little fascination for me. What did, however, was to see the problems of the election reduced to such bland, tasteless and uninspiring arguments.

“Is that it? Where is the outrage?” I kept asking myself. Surely, the frozen IEBC screens that kept a nation in purgatory for a week deserve more than a “We came to the conclusion that, by no means can the conduct of this election be said to have been perfect, even though, quite clearly, the election had been of the greatest interest to the Kenyan people, and they had voluntarily come out into the polling stations, for the purpose of electing the occupant of the Presidential office.”

I am sure the distinctions of who bore the shifting burdens of proof as well as just how convinced the Court needed to be (beyond reasonable doubt or on the balance of probability or somewhere in between) have their place in the sanitized arena of the courtroom where everyone is friendly and learned. But out here, where elections are more about raw emotions than rational choices, such abstract considerations are a luxury we cannot afford.

Whether “the Petitioner clearly and decisively show[ed] the conduct of the election to have been so devoid of merits, and so distorted, as not to reflect the expression of the people’s electoral intent (italics theirs)” is of less import as a test here. In the end, the fact of who won pales in significance in comparison to the manner in which that win was secured.

By now, the substance of the legal battles enacted live on TV will have ebbed from most minds but few will ever forget those IEBC screens. In the real world, it is those screens that militate against legal assumptions such as omnia praesumuntur rite et solemniter esse acta: all acts (of public bodies accused of irregularities) are presumed to have been done rightly and regularly. We dare not presume a thing like that. How can we when it is public bodies that have given away our land, detained, tortured, disappeared and murdered those they were meant to serve, and turned a blind eye when thieves loot the treasury and granary?

In truth, while the Supreme Court has quite correctly pronounced itself on the validity and legality of the IEBC register(s), methods and declarations, the ultimate judges of the credibility of the exercise are the people of Kenya. If a number of them feel that their votes did not count, feel disenfranchised by the system, then to that extent the processes failed.

The Court’s opinion is undoubtedly the one that matters in deciding whether the election achieved the standards set forth in our law. And I wouldn't have it any other way. But there are other opinions and other courts. The opinion of the public court, imperfect and prone to mood swings and vulnerable to deceptions, matters most in sustaining and developing a democracy. It is the opinions of the millions who live and breathe outside its hallowed halls that should always have been the focus of our attention. So, when one hears stories of people wanting to burn IDs or saying they'll never vote again, it is clear that there are real credibility issues that need resolving. The question must now be: How do we restore the faith of half the country in a system that they believe, rightly or wrongly, has betrayed them once too often? How do we provide relief to the other half who feel the need to constantly and sometimes hysterically defend the electoral result?

I think a good place to start would be a comprehensive, honest and impartial audit of the entire electoral process, everything from the registration of voters to the tallying and transmission of results. Something more than the corruption investigation that the Supreme Court has recommended.

Lets's fix this before we "move on." It must not be swept this under the national carpet. And while we’re at it, an airing of our collective closet -the TJRC report is due in just over two weeks time- would help immensely in tempering the emotion associated with elections and creating space for more rational deliberation, perhaps too not unlike what happens in the courtroom. After all, we could use a break from the interesting times.

An Easy Patriotism

This morning, I attended my daughter’s school’s prize giving ceremony. One of the many presentations put on by the kids was a rendition of Eric Wainaina’s Daima Mkenya. As they sang sweetly and innocently, I found myself mourning a lost childhood, a bygone age when being Kenyan was easy. When all one had to do was fly a flag, sing an anthem and say a pledge of loyalty. When we did not need to be convinced of our Kenyanness.

By contrast, much of the rest of the programme was spent lecturing us, the adults, on the need to keep peace, to stay united, to remember our Kenyanness. It seems that as we grow older, the easy patriotism of childhood, unencumbered by complicated issues of identity, history and ethnicity, becomes less satisfying. How we understand ourselves and the ties we have to others, even to childhood friends with whom we may have once stood on a stage and performed a patriotic skit, become hostage to the vagaries of experience and exposure. We still have our moments of easy nationalism, such as when a national sports team does well or when one of our world-beating athletes wins a gold medal.

For most of the time, however, Kenyanness is something we have to recreate and rediscover for ourselves. It is hard work to be empathetic to your fellow countrymen, to try to understand and find common bonds with people -sometimes thousands of kilometres away, sometimes just across the road- whose experience of reality is far removed from ours, whose culture and customs are alien to us. It is uncomfortable to countenance the poverty and misery that exists in our midst and to contemplate our role, and that of our fathers, in the subjugation and impoverishment of our fellow citizens. For the most part, we prefer not to think about these things. We just want to get on with our lives.

Time heals all wounds, we tell ourselves. If we work hard, produce enough to grow an economy, then all will be forgiven and forgotten. The discomfiting issues will go away, or at least we will not have to deal with them. This now seems to be entrenched as Kenya’s post-election maxim. Let us move on and build the nation. To be honest, there’s nothing I would like better. I would love to agree with President Uhuru Kenyatta that, a few moments of anxiety aside, the poll “helped define and make stronger our democracy” and that “Kenyans had real choices.” Or with Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan graduate student at the University of Oxford, who wrote that the poll showed that “democracy in Kenya is working the best way it can."

I would like to believe that what we just witnessed was nothing exceptional, in the grand scheme of things. After all, as Charles Onyango Obbo puts it, “are messy and divisive not just in Kenya but everywhere.” So what’s the point of dwelling on it? Like everyone else, I long for an easy patriotism.

But I know that something is seriously wrong when we have to be constantly reminded that the outcome of an election is not a matter of life and death, when people stockpile food and water in its anticipation. I cannot ignore the fear that the election exposed, and the ease with which we were stampeded into tribal stockades. I know that this was not the best election we could have had, and that a democracy in which a large proportion of the population feels it has no say is neither working nor strengthened.

I sense a problem when choices have less to do with the welfare of the people than with that of those who lord it over them, when election campaigns are used to undermine global institutions.

I also know that while the economy matters, a lasting peace can only be built on a foundation of justice. And that it is only when we openly acknowledge and address the wounds of the past that we can truly move on.

Can Uhuru Free Himself? Not Likely.

 The richest man in Kenya is now its leader and in his first address has indicated that he is viewing our problems from a distinctly economic and technological perspective. Throughout the inauguration ceremony, we heard promises of double digit economic growth, free laptops, free maternity health, a fund for women and youth.

But the events of the last month have exposed have exposed deep rifts in the national psyche that cannot be papered over with money alone. President Uhuru Kenyatta, to his credit, recognized that his election has divided the country but said little on how he was planning to undertake the process of reconciliation. He would do well to go a little further. Though he is the lawful President of Kenya, he should acknowledge that the election, in the manner in which it was conducted and adjudicated, has not only alienated a significant proportion of the population, but has harmed the credibility, if not legitimacy, of his victory. There is thus a large disaffected constituency he will need to actively win over, if he is serious in his desire to be the president of all Kenyans.

Vague appeals to national unity, to moving on and working together are not enough. His government must demonstrate the will to reform the flawed electoral system that has brought him to power. As he works to deliver laptops to primary schools, he must also insist on a full and comprehensive audit of why all the systems set up to guard the transparency of the election failed. After all, many were deployed in these very schools.

It was also encouraging to hear him talk of "a permanent peace through which democracy is glorified and not undermined" as opposed to "a perfunctory peace" that is held hostage to the five year election cycle. Than in itself is a valuable acknowledgement of the spell of fear and paranoia that has swept the country over the last month and that is beginning to be buried. I hope he also recognises that this national pathology has deep roots in traumatic historical events and outcomes that the country has avoided confronting for the last five decades. If he truly wants to get rid of it, he must not allow us to move on until we have truly come to grips with it. I hope his administration will begin by lifting the ban on public demonstrations to allow the people opportunity to peacefully vent whatever frustrations they may be harbouring. After all, he did declare his commitment to the protection of fundamental freedoms. I hope he will not seek to roll back the gains won over the last 20 years.

The report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, which is expected in less than a month, should provide another perfect opportunity to further this work. However, that will require a commitment to truth and justice. Given how his election campaign has, with more than a little success, sought to disparage and deligitimize civil society organisations that advocate for justice and good governance, as well as the accusations of interference with witnesses at the ICC and the personal cost he would bear if the prosecution were to be successful, many are understandably sceptical about his resolve in this regard. But perhaps with the heat of the electoral battle now fading, and with the case against him at the Hague looking less likely to succeed, he may decide to surprise us all.

Will we now see a let up in the assault on civil society, the bedrock of any democracy? Will we see moves to provide some semblance of local justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of, not just the violence of 2008, but of the political violence that has accompanied every election since 1992? They, sadly, didn't merit a mention on his speech. Will he be committed to justice for the millions more who have been impoverished by the succession of corrupt and greedy regimes that begun with his father's and whose policies have bequeathed him much of the wealth he enjoys today? Not having mentioned corruption once in his speech, does he consider stamping out the vice a priority and will he be able to resist the vulture "businessmen" associated with his own campaign?

In a very real sense, if President Uhuru Kenyatta is to live up to his promise of working towards "a rich and abiding peace," he will have to confront the very system that has put him where he is. He, perhaps even more than the rest of the country, would need to confront and expose painful realities about the conduct of his family and its old friends. He would have to live up to his name and free himself, and thus his countrymen, from the shackles of the past. If he found the courage to do so, he might just be the best thing that ever happened to Kenya. So, Godspeed to him.

But we all know that this is unlikely to happen. The likelihood is that President Kenyatta will, like his predecessors, have little interest in justice or fighting graft. Instead he will, as he has already done, continue to urge us to get back to work, to build the nation, to forget the election. He will seek to bribe us and buy our loyalty with free goodies and he will continue his campaign to undermine both the ICC and local civil society. Whether he succeeds in this will be up to the rest of us. 

The Republic Of Fear

It used to be we were only afraid of the state and its capacity for illegitimate violence. We blamed politicians, not opinions, for inciting tribal clashes. It was the government, not citizens, which gagged the press or forbade dissent.

No more.

Welcome to the Republic of Fear. Where terror rules and citizens are frightened of what lurks in the dark recesses of their hearts. It is a country where no questions are allowed which may break uncomfortable silences or awaken the ghosts of deadened intellectual faculties.

This is the nation we are building in Kenya. A country of official truth. When citizens feel disenfranchised by bungled elections, we tell them to shut up and keep the peace. Wait for the Supreme Court to tell you what you should or should not think. Do not trust yourself, just as we do not trust you.

Well, the Supreme Court has given its ruling. The election and declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as President-Elect were done in conformity with the law. That is the official truth. We will wait for two weeks to learn of the reasons underlying it. In the meantime, we are told to keep calm. In the Republic of Fear, inconvenient opinions and uncomfortable thoughts are banned. But, unlike in the past, this is not a ban enforced by the security agencies. It is imposed by mobs of citizens which roam our airwaves and digital superhighways, armed with virtual machetes and ready to hack away at the first hint of free thinking.

We have already let them burn down the temples of dissent. Our famously rumbustious press now remains mute when expensive BVR kits and results transmission systems don’t work and when the IEBC presents woolly sums, and when protestors (today called rioters) die following the Supreme Court verdict. Our civil society organisations have been silenced by dubious allegations of pursuing foreign agendas. When politicians kiss and make up, "historical grievances" and the IDPs they have generated disappear.

Only official election results matter -or more accurately, only the official version of election results matters. Media houses with reporters on the ground at all polling stations cannot call the election as their sums may differ from official tallies. And if they do differ, they are not to ask questions. The official truth trumps all! Today our journalists are reduced to performers and comedians – a role they seem to have accepted with relish as cheerleaders for the “Keep the Peace” and “Let’s Move On” bands.

But what exactly are we moving on to? Rather than signal Kenya’s rise from the ashes of the violence of five years ago, the elections have revealed just how much further we still have to go. We have spent the last half-century of independence in a battle against the state, in an effort to tame and reform it. In large measure, the people’s triumph, as reflected in the new constitution, has turned out to be a hollow victory.The struggle against the state obscured a much more fundamental challenge. With these elections, that mask has been removed. It is now obvious that the real enemies lie within. It is our passions and minds that need reforming. It is our fear and distrust of one another that need taming.

No longer can we just blame a thieving political class. It is rather a time for deep reflection on our own conduct and beliefs. The media can and should lead this effort. It is the least they can do to begin to atone for their own conduct over the last month.