Personal Challenge: Cartooning Post-Election Kenya

Dear Cartoonist,

As you know, Kenya in March underwent its first elections since the disastrous aftermath of the 2007 polls. These were conducted under a new constitution and on the ballot were two politicians indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in relation to their alleged role in the conflagration that followed the previous polls. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto joined together to form the Jubilee Coalition and have now been elected President and Deputy President of Kenya respectively. The elections, while generally peaceful, were not without controversy with the outcome having to be decided by the country's fledgling Supreme Court. 

Ever since the election, the Kenyan Government has been on a so far unsuccessful crusade to get the ICC charges against its two top leaders, which Uhuru Kenyatta had famously called a "Personal Challenge" during the campaign, dropped. In this effort, it has been rebuffed by the UN Security Council and embraced by the African Union. Despite pre-election threats of isolation, the indicted President has visited with UK premier David Cameron (though away from No. 10 and without the customary photo-op). Coupled with the aggressive campaign by his government, the Kenyan situation is now seen as the greatest threat to the legitimacy -and even existence- of the ICC.

Other casualties of the March elections include Kenyan civil society organisations whom the winning Jubilee coalition sought to paint as stooges of the imperialist West both during and after the election, and the Kenyan media which has been accused of forsaking its traditional vocal watchdog stance and turning a blind eye to malfeasance in the name of preserving the peace.

To further complicate the picture, the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission has recently released its report which covers government massacres, rapes and other atrocities against its citizens, illegal land grabs, corruption and larceny. It names over 400 individuals, including Messrs Uhuru and Ruto, and many of their allies and rivals.

The Association of East African Cartoonists is organising an international cartoon exhibition on these and other aspects of the aftermath of the Kenyan Elections. The theme is  "Personal Challenge: Cartooning Post-Election Kenya". The exhibition is open to both professional and amateur cartoonists.

To participate, please send your entries to:

katuni@gmail.com

All entries should be in JPEG format with a resolution of at least 300DPI and should be received by 21 June 2013.

Thanks and I look forward to receiving your works.

The Change Merry-Go-Round

The problem with revolutions is that they tend to go round in circles. Over the last half-century, Kenya has seemed to undergo its own slow-motion revolution. We have gone from an oppressive and extractive colonial state, through a repressed one-party dictatorship to a relatively open, somewhat prospering, pseudo-democracy. Two years ago, we made the crowning achievement -for the second time in our history, we had a new constitution.

Yet, it is still easy to despair with Kenya. We still have pretty much the same crooked politicians, the same corrupt and brutal police, a judiciary that despite "radical surgery," struggles with the concept of justice. Poverty and disease and ignorance and violence are still running amok. A lot of times it just feels like we are aboard a change merry-go-round. The more we change things, the more they remain the same. After twenty years of reform, we seem to have to have ended up right back where we started. We created new constitutional arrangements but, at its core, the country didn't change.

It remains very much the product of the colonial past. As the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission reminded us this week, the colonial state was never dismantled. We simply exchanged one bunch of oppressors for another. The relationship between the powerful and the people remains one based on exploitation, not the platitudes of service we are treated to every day. It is still very much a country that defines success in terms of the fortunes of its government, not those of its citizens.

Our first attempt at independence to pour the new constitutional wine into the old wineskins of the of this colonial edifice did not result in the bursting of the latter. Rather, it was the constitution that was extensively mangled, spawning decades of political, economic and social crises.

It's a lesson we should have learnt by now. Our legalistic approach to all kinds of social problems has not worked. The alcoholism ravaging our communities has not been assuaged by passing laws on opening hours. Ever more copious layers of legislation have not brought order to our roads and illegal drugs are still easily available. Since we do not bother addressing the underlying reasons for destructive behaviour, new laws are either ignored or perverted and sometimes create even worse problems.

Similarly, changing constitutional arrangements without changing the nature of these understandings between citizens and those who exercise the authority of the state, and between the citizens themselves, is thus futile. As was the case 50 years ago, a new constitution will not automatically erase either the century-old practices and attitudes in institutions like the police, or the ingrained habits of those who consider themselves our lords and masters.

A new constitution is therefore insufficient to wring the change we desire. We now need to do the work that the independence generation failed to do. We need to engineer a rebirth of the nation. In a sense the real problem with Kenya was always that it's full of Kenyans and to change that means refashioning the very idea of what it means to be Kenyan.

During the struggle for the second liberation, there was much talk of "the Kenya we want". Not much was said about the the Kenyans we want. We must begin there. We could choose to inscribe the constitution on our hearts, to affirm the value of universal values of life, dignity, and liberty; to begin to measure our progress by the quality of life and opportunities enjoyed by our poorest citizens as opposed to that of our richest.

We cannot change the past but we can make our peace with it, and decide not to let it define us. And that's why I think the TJRC report is so important. It is about releasing Kenyans from the shackles of the past and so freeing them to choose their future. It can be the start of a real national self-examination. If we have the courage to do this, then we can finally begin to learn from the mistakes of the past instead of being condemned to repeat them.

A Tribute To GADO