Sitting Down With The Devil

Kigali is impressive. From its clean streets and new buildings to the ubiquitous sense of safety and order, it is today hailed as a model for capital cities across the continent. Similarly hailed is the Rwandan government, which has transformed the country, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the 1994 genocide into the rising star of Africa.

Last week, a network of bloggers on the continent, of which I am a part, was invited to a brainstorming session in Kigali over how to engage in policy discourses with governments on the subject of supporting digitally-driven innovation across the continent. The Rwandan state has set itself up as a driving force in the field, with its President, Paul Kagame, chairing the board of Smart Africa, which seeks to “accelerate socio-economic development through information and communications technologies”.

Many of the young, globe-trotting, idealistic individuals I met in these sessions were passionate about the possibilities offered by ICT and the need to engage governments in the effort. However, while I did not doubt their sincerity, what I found disturbing was the seeming blindness to the dangers such engagement may pose.

At about the same time, 750km to the east, yet another State House Summit was getting underway in Nairobi. According to press reports, President Uhuru Kenyatta had invited his administration’s “harshest critics” to a televised pow-wow over corruption. Two specified critics -John Githongo and David Ndii- did not honor the summons earning themselves a Presidential rebuke and much ridicule from ruling party supporters. But I think the two experienced hands had seen something that my friends in Kigali seemed unwilling to acknowledge: that “engagement” is a two-way street. 

In Kenya, as Ndii noted in an article explaining his absence, the problem is neither that government is unaware of corruption nor that it is ignorant of the questions raised about its custody of public finances. Its own agencies have documented much of this. The real problem is the lack of will within the governing elite which perpetrates the looting to do something about it. There is no appetite not just to prosecute friends and political allies, but more fundamentally, to restructure the state to eliminate the opportunities and impunity that incentivize graft.

In such an environment, the State House “engagements” would be of limited utility for those demanding reform and accountability while gifting the government a massive propaganda opportunity to burnish its anti-corruption credentials. In the end, the absence of Githongo and Ndii forced the spotlight back on the government’s lack of action rather than on its rhetoric, which dissolved in a flurry of buck-passing led by the responsibility-ducking Commander-In-Chief, himself. #CryBabyPresident was how Kenyans on Twitter summarized it.

In Kigali, there seemed little understanding that the problems of poverty on the continent do not spring from a lack of knowledge or innovation but rather from a lack of accountability and democracy. The poor Africans my friends sought to help were largely impoverished by the very governments they sought to engage; who were stealing from them, fueling the conflicts that displaced them and denying them a say in decisions affecting their lives. Apart from Kagame, the Smart Africa Board is peopled by such luminaries as Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Gabon’s Ali Bongo, South Sudan’s Salva Kiir, Chad’s Idriss Deby, and, of course, Kenya’s Uhuru.

Engagement with such a gang risks affording them an opportunity to hide their sins under the carpet of innovation and broadband access. It risks moving the spotlight away from what they are actually doing to their own citizens and focusing it on their rhetoric of progress and inclusion. It is why, when addressing the meeting in Kigali, Jean Nsengimana, Rwanda’s Minister for Youth and ICT, could bemoan the fact that the continent was not creating billion-dollar “Unicorns” while ignoring that it was very proficient at creating billion-dollar politicians.

In fact, all the talk of transforming communities and making them smarter and more innovative seems to completely elide the fact that it is governments and the states they serve that require transformation. There is little talk of who actually benefits from the ICT Hubs and events established and held across the continent, most in the wealthier parts of capital cities.

And speaking of capital cities, with all its impressive progressive, it is easy to miss what Kigali hides. The unspoken conversations, the disappearances and assassinations, the rounding up of street families so visiting potentates can enjoy a view unblemished by evidence of failure. Yes, Kigali is safe, but safe for whom? Yes, it is clean, but clean for whom? Yes, it works, but works for whom?

These are questions any who purport to be interested in the welfare of the continent’s people, rather than that of “Africa” must be willing to engage with. And while the answers may not necessarily preclude engagement with governments, they will certainly allow us to choose forums that are more likely to deliver real action and change for the people rather than a megaphone for their governments.   

The Leadership Is The Problem. Not Kenyans.

The death of Lee Kuan Yew, architect of Singapore’s rise from a corrupt economic backwater to one of the globe’s most prosperous and clean societies will undoubtedly spark debate across the world on the lessons that can be drawn from his successful efforts to eliminate corruption. Across Africa, he has been lionised and some, particularly Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame, have sought to replicate his autocratic methods with varying degrees of success.

In Kenya, which is consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt nations on earth, many have pined for a benevolent dictator in the mould of Lee Kuan Yew. The argument has been advanced that the country’s myriad security and economic problems cannot be addressed in the context of a free-wheeling liberal democracy. President Uhuru Kenyatta regularly proclaims his administration’s need to be freed from the constraints of constant political competition in order to focus on the imperatives of development and economic growth.

However, this misses the crucial lesson from Singapore. It is true that Lee Kuan Yew brooked little dissent and that his rule was characterised by a clampdown on political freedoms as well as harsh social controls. It is equally true that he ruled for an inordinately long time, turned Singapore into a de facto one party state and that his family, especially his children, have done pretty well for themselves: one son is the current prime minister, another heads the Civil Aviation Authority and his a daughter is the director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

But in this, Singapore is not very different from, Kenya and much of Africa, which have similarly experienced the diminution of civil and political freedoms though these have tended to entrench, not alleviate poverty and the looting of state resources. The crucial difference is not that Singapore was a dictatorship and Kenya wasn’t. It was in the quality of the leadership. Simply put, Lee Kuan Yew walked the talk on corruption. Where he eschewed graft and actively worked to prevent the capture of the state for the benefit of a corrupt elite, successive Kenyan presidents have used the state as a means to enriching themselves, their families and rewarding their cronies.

Compare the records of the two countries’ anti-corruption agencies. Lee Kuan Yew inherited the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau from the British and transformed it into a formidable graft-fighting watchdog which has taken scalps among high ranking government officials including cabinet ministers. According to a 2013 study commissioned by the Prime Minister’s office, in the previous five years, the CPIB had on average opened 39 cases involving public officers each year with two-thirds resulting in prosecution or disciplinary proceedings.

By contrast, Kenya’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has only prosecuted 22 cases in the last three years, a negligible fraction of the nearly 10,000 complaints it received. And it lost most of these, securing only 3 convictions. Further, in the last half century, despite the fact that dozens of investigative commissions have thrown light on hundreds of cases of corruption, not a single cabinet minister has ever been convicted.

Currently, Kenya is prosecuting 13 suspects, including two former Finance Ministers over the Anglo Leasing scam which cost the taxpayers nearly $1 billion in fictitious supply of security related equipment. However, given the government’s past record, few expect that this will result in convictions. A “list of shame” released in 2006 by then Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Martha Karua, had implicated at least 28 senior officials in the Mwai Kibaki and Daniel Arap Moi administrations including then Vice President, Moody Awori and current Deputy President, William Ruto. Further muddying the waters, the EACC and watchdog committees in Parliament today find themselves embroiled in allegations of taking bribes to cover up the involvement of senior administration officials and businessmen in the theft of public resources, including in the Anglo Leasing investigation.

The fact is while the Kenyan elite talks a good game, it has not demonstrated any interest in battling graft. They do not see the raison d’etre of the state as uplifting the lives of ordinary Kenyans but rather as a means of preying on them. Instead of fundamentally reforming the parasitic colonial system, the elite have instead sought to blame the victims, to convince Kenyans that they are the problem, their culture, their stupid and tribal politics, their willingness to pay bribes. In effect, the elite has argued that Kenyans are in fact stealing from themselves, impoverishing themselves and, in turn, scapegoating those in power.

 Lee Kuan Yew’s record against corruption is not a lesson in what authoritarianism can achieve and democracy can’t. If it were, African countries would head the corruption indices. It rather teaches that what matters is a genuine commitment within the leadership to eradicating the vice and to building systems that, to paraphrase the former Singaporean Minister for Home Affairs, Ong Pang Boon, "reduce opportunities for corruption, make its detection easier, deter those susceptible to it and severely punish those who engage in it".

In truth, Kenyans and Africans in general, are no more prone to corruption than are Singaporeans. Their leadership, however, is. And that is the problem.

Dictating Democracy?

War and Peace-keeping

Si vispacem, para bellum is a well-worn Latin adage that translates as, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war." However to prepare for war, one must have an idea of the likely threats as well as which to prioritise. According to the Kenyan Ministry of Defence, the two-fold mission of the country’s armed forces, as defined by the Constitution, is “to deter aggression and should deterrence fail, defend the Republic; provide support to civil power in the maintenance of order.” But what does it mean to defend the Republic?

Kenya’s National Security Intelligence Services Act defines “a threat to national security” as espionage, sabotage, terrorism or subversion directed against the country’s interests; the destruction or overthrow of the constitutionally established system of the Government; violence promotinga constitutional, political, industrial, social or economic objective or change in Kenya; and “foreign-influenced activity” that is detrimental to the interests of Kenya.

Thus the military’s mandate does not preclude its intervening in internal matters to preserve and defend the state. In fact, the prospect of military intervention is domestic matters is not new in the region. Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have been host to numerous coups d’etat by the military establishment, in most cases to the detriment of society as the military administrations proved to be much worse than the civilian regimes they deposed. In fact, two of the region’s leaders, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, came to power via military force and thereafter sought to legitimize their rule through elections.

More recently, addressing an East African security meeting in October 2009, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni called for the creation of an East-African defence force to counter threats both from within and outside the region. And during Kenya’s post-election conflagration in 2008, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, drew the wrath of the Kibaki administration when he urged the Kenyan army into action saying that he did not oppose military intervention when “institutions have lost control”. Ironically, according to the Financial Times, President Kibaki had himself considered imposing a state of emergency but the army resisted, fearing a split in their own ranks.Instead the army preferred a low-key role, distributing food and opening up blocked roads, though on at least one occasion it did step in to separate fighting mobs. According to a paper by the Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director, Muthoni Wanyeki, Agenda Item One of the mediation processes contemplated the possibility of preventive military deploymentto immediately end the violence.

However, in its interventions, whether internally or facing an external foe the military falls under the same limitations as described by Jakkie Cilliers of the Institute for Defence Politics in the case of the South African Defence Force. “It is part of the executive arm of the Government. It therefore does not have autonomy of action, or unlimited scope in defining its own role in society at large, except in so far as such actions or roles support, and are within the guidelines of national policy and objectives.”

A paper by Carolyne Pumphrey for the US Department of Defence states that while the traditional view of national security is that it is concerned with the preservation of state sovereignty (most especially its monopoly of force) and the protection of national interests, these interests are not confined to countries’ borders. If one compares Kenya’s territory to its ecological footprint- the amount of resources the country needs to maintain itself- the latter is far larger than the former.Therefore a threat to the country’s ability to secure supplies from without its territory, such as that posed by Somali pirates to shipping destined for Mombasa is a threat to its national security.

While the military can be seen as an instrument available to a sovereign government to provide security for its citizens and defend the nation’s vital interests, in the 21st century it may be necessary to modify this traditional approach, for more and more in today’s world protecting a way of life has moved well beyond the use of military power. According to Col. Dan Smith and Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information, “interlocking if not competing political, economic, social, and environmental interests are tying together as never before the fate of sovereign states. In turn the freedoms of citizens in an ever growing number of nations are becoming intertwined in such a way that individual security is becoming increasingly linked to the achievement of security at the international level through the reciprocal implementation of policies driven by national priorities.” To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, insecurity anywhere is a threat to security everywhere.

Therefore, a new paradigm of security has emerged which stands the Westphalian system, and its designation of the nation-state as the focal point of security, on its head. Referred to as “human security,” it decrees that the individual (or the collection of individuals known as the nation) is supreme, and not the institutions of governance. In this conception, the military’s purpose is not the protection of the state but rather the citizen. Within this paradigm, it is easy to understand the Kenya military’s queasiness about the proposed declaration of emergency during the post-election conflict. As one person, at the time described by the Financial Times, as being close to the senior command, put it, “The question the army has been asking is, is this a legally elected government? If not, and they deploy, are they supporting a ‘civilian coup?’”

However, this should not be taken to mean that the army always behaves itself when it comes to civilians. It has been accused of systematic murder, torture and scores of other human rights abuses in its interventions to quell insurgencies in Sabaot and in the country’s restive North Eastern Province. Similarly, Uganda’s military was accused of terrorized the very civilians it was supposedly rescuing from the clutches of the psychopathic LRA.

Such tactics, which breed resentment and anger, do little to further the military objective of pacification, as the US and its allies are discovering in Iraq and Afghanistan. More and more, the talk there has moved from the macho “winning,” with its visions of tidy victories and foes who know when they are beaten, to the softer “winning hearts and minds,” which recognizes that insurgencies are not defeated by capturing cities and bridges, but by embracing the people. It is a lesson the AU is yet to learn in Somalia, where it strives to secure a feckless government instead of the suffering populace. In Iraq, the troop surge, an emphasis on capturing and holding cities instead of withdrawing to the relative safety of green zones, as well as engaging with locals bore fruit. The AU should consider doing the same in Somalia.

This does not mean that insurgencies should not be fought militarily. According to Jane’s Information Group, the terror strikes on US and Israeli targets in Kenya in 1998 and 2002 highlight the fact that the country is at risk of attack by international terrorists. The country's geographical location bordering the conflict zones of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan has also made it vulnerable to infiltration by neighbouring rebel groups for use as a rear base or transit country. Similarly, Rwanda is threatened by former genocidaires who are also causing chaos on the other side of the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The LRA continues to make Northern Uganda and parts of the DRC ungovernable. All these threats need to be met squarely and the countries should not shy away from military confrontation if such is called for.

But, whether it is confronting Al Shebbab on Kenya’s borders or the Interhamwe on Rwanda’s, the focus of policymakers should be to extend the fruits of peace to the populations that breed and host these elements. This might mean working with the more reasonable elements of these groups, or, in the extreme, direct military intervention. It would also require that the military starts to provide security and services to the beleaguered peoples on their side of the borders to prevent them falling under the spell of armed groups.

General Sir David Ramsbotham of the British Army notes that every military operation is, in itself, a man-made disaster because “the use of force is bound to result in damage, not just to life and limb but also to national infrastructures. Having inflicted or received that damage, the military are trained, equipped and accustomed to repairing it. Furthermore, they are accustomed to functioning under the Law of Armed Conflict, so conforming with the dictate of international law is not strange to them either.” Our troops, with the experience of policing war zones on other continents, should prove no less adept at doing it at home.

Seek Ye First The Popular Kingdom

Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain. The inauguration of the East Africa Community’s Common Market as a step on the way to an envisaged political federation induced just such a feeling. The thing is, we have been here before.

The five Presidents congregated in Nairobi mirrored another, albeit smaller, gathering in the same city 46 years ago. In June, 1963, the leaders of the newly independent states of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika declared, “… we believe a political federation of East Africa is desired by our peoples. There is throughout East Africa a great urge for unity and an appreciation of the significance of federation.”

The three were being more than a little disingenuous. The political federation of East Africa has never been a people-driven affair. From the start it was a colonial project opposed by the very people in whose name it was done. Which is surprising, since we were East Africans long before we became Kenyans and Ugandans and Tanzanians.

The integration of the region began with the building of the Uganda Railway in 1895. This was rapidly followed by the creation of the East African Common market which started in 1900 with a customs arrangement between British East Africa (now Uganda and Tanzania) and German East Africa (now Tanganyika), the establishment of a Court of Appeal for East Africa in 1902, creation of the East African Currency Board in 1905 and a Postal Union in 1911. In 1917, the British colonial administration established a Customs Union and by 1920, when the Kenya Colony was formally established, the EACB was already issuing a single regional currency, the East African Shilling.

By independence, we already had more than 40 different East African institutions covering areas such as research, social services, education/training and defence among others. This lead Tanganyikan President, Julius Nyerere, to observe in March 1963, that, “a federation of at least Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika should be comparatively easy to achieve. We already have a common market, and run many services through the Common Services Organisation…. This is the nucleus from which a federation is the natural growth.”

Yet 2 years later, the common market would disintegrate following Tanzanian proposals that each country establish separate currencies and banks. Frenzied actions to save the federation project, including the promulgation of a formal Treaty for East African Co-operation and the setting up of the East African Community, would come to naught as the EAC itself collapsed in 1977 and was formally wound up in Arusha on 14th May 1984. On the latter occasion Nyerere declared that he could not “pretend that this is a very proud day for East Africa”.

What went wrong? Quite simply, the leadership failed to carry the people along. The project was a forced marriage that made sense to and benefitted the elite few but was viewed with suspicion by and never properly explained to the common citizenry. As early as 1925, when the British government established an East Africa Commission chaired by Colonial Secretary, W. G. Ormsby-Gore to solicit views from Africans, people of Asian descent and Europeans on federation, the idea found “little, if any, support ... and in some quarters …definite hostility.”

The commission “received a memorandum against federation from the King and the native government of Buganda, and discussions which had taken place in parts of Kenya immediately prior to our arrival revealed that the suggestion was viewed with more than a little suspicion by all sections of European opinion in Kenya. All shades of opinion in Zanzibar are hostile to federation and we also received representations against federation from various Indian Associations throughout the three northern territories”. Africans were particularly suspicious of the motives and intentions of the colonists. In 1927, yet another commission, this time chaired by Sir Hilton Young, received a memorandum from the Kikuyu Central Association rejecting the idea of federation.

Without the bulwark of popular support, at independence the colonial enterprise of federation became hostage to the petty personal rivalries and jealousies of the region’s new class of leaders. By 1977, it resembled more a clash of heads than a union hearts.

Its current reincarnation is proving to be little different. A recent report notes that the majority of East Africa's 126 million people are not aware of the benefit of regional integration, let alone the process with most citizens viewing it as an elite project."The project has a lot of goodwill from ordinary citizens but lack of active involvement has left it standing solely on the political pillar, without the critical social and economic relevance that would make it a reality in people's lives," Prof Regina Karega, one of the scholars who conducted the study said. This lack of an integration of the peoples was in evidence in September 2008, when Kenyans kicked up a fuss over reports that the US President George W. Bush and Tanzanian president, Jakoyo Kikwete had discussed "instability in Kenya. It was further exposed earlier this year when Kenyans ripped up sections of the Uganda railway and openly called war over Ugandan military occupation of Migingo Island (population:250), an insignificant piece of rock in Lake Victoria.

It is acknowledged in the appellations of the organs of integration. In much of the rest of the world the name of the regional grouping tends to reflect the stage of integration which has actually been attained. African regional groupings and the EAC in particular, have used terms such as “Community”, and “Common Market” in their names more as a reflection of elite aspirations. Thus our customs union meant neither the abolition of internal tariffs nor synchronization of external ones, disputes over fishing rights and work permits are a feature of our “common markets”, the East African passport is only valid for travel within what is supposed to be a borderless East Africa and our federating countries still have territorial disputes.

The exclusive focus on reaching political and macro-economic milestones has left the process blind to the needs of the common man. While economic benefits of integration are touted (greater bargaining power in international arena; the larger market makes for a more attractive foreign direct investment (FDI) destination), ask any common East African whether last week’s ceremony means he or she can traverse the region seeking employment and you will probably get a blank stare. An East African Parliament and envisioned Presidency are not matched by moves towards a common East African identity and citizenship. In fact, they are assumed to be the same things. The legality of belonging to the EAC is thus confused for the feeling of true community.

In the 1950s, the then leader of Ghana, Nkwame Nkrumah, declared “seek ye first the political kingdom and the rest will follow” arguing that African countries should right away integrate politically. The East African leadership seems to have taken this literally. The assumption that they can create an East African kingdom to which the people will thereafter be added is dead wrong and needs to change. And there are signs that it is. Last week, The EastAfrican reported reported that the partner states are to establish integration centres at border points to sensitize the citizenry on the benefits of regional assimilation and that Kenya's EAC Ministry would use mobile phones to educate up to 17 million people on the Common Market Protocol. Hopefully this time the reality will prove different.