At independence Kenya’s national philosophy was ‘African socialism’. The experience of colonialism meant most of the ruling elites of many African countries tended to lean East rather than West. As a result, the State, for example, had a leading role in the economy and grappling with priority scourges of the day – ignorance, poverty and disease. Capitalism was supposedly moderated by socialist tenets informed by traditional African egalitarian and communal principles. This caused the Cold War to kick in on the continent with a vengeance. When Nelson Mandela was arrested while leaving a secret ANC meeting in 1962, for example, the information had been provided to the apartheid authorities by the CIA.
MANAGING THE NATIVES
At independence all seemed possible. Kwame Nkurumah pushed hard for a United States of Africa at the Organisation of African Unity’s first full summit in May 1963. His vision was of a continental single market, single currency and Central Bank among other inspirational ideas aimed at fostering a common front in an avaricious world greedy for the continent’s resources. Those were heady days where true passion and commitment were demonstrated by many a leader capturing the imagination of entire populations.
Wananchi backed them and were willing to suffer hardship if it was aimed at realisation of this grand vision. Kenya, Malawi and Ivory Coast were among the first to abandon the African nationalist cause. They allied themselves strongly with the West during the Cold War and some like Kenya and Malawi did the unthinkable and maintained a level of relations with the apartheid regime. Our University of Nairobi that, like Dar es Salaam and Makerere, had become a place of innovation with regard to political theory and practice was gutted. So much so that by the late 1980s all its best brains from the 1960s were in exile, jail or rendered irrelevant by unreformed colonial state machineries that had been designed to ‘manage the natives’ and make sure they didn’t get ahead of themselves.
Across the continent many of the nationalist pioneers morphed into authoritarian thieves capable of some of the most extreme brutalities against their own people. While well rewarded for remaining a steadfast Western ally during the Cold War with large amounts of conventional and military aid, the regime in Kenya emerged as stable but also among the most corrupt on the continent – a land of go-getters where inequalities are extreme but a can-do attitude unencumbered by too many values means business is vibrant even if cut-throat. The flame of African nationalism was left to the leadership of countries such as Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana and others. The sense of Kenyan exceptionalism vis-à-vis the rest of Africa that persisted until the post-election violence of 2007/8 was born out of this contrarian largely reactionary matatu capitalism culture underlying the management of national affairs and foreign policy.
THE ICC AND THE CONSPIRACY OF THE ‘O’s
The government’s refusal to establish a local tribunal to deal with the post-election violence of 2007/8 after the Waki Commission that emerged out of the National Accord of 2008, meant the International Criminal Court process was triggered as part of the range of anti-impunity measures that were subsequently domesticated into Kenyan law when we promulgated a new constitution in August 2010.
At the time the entire country was excited about the ICC and what it promised us in terms of executive accountability. Its Chief Prosecutor, the flamboyant Louis Moreno Ocampo, became something of a media star. So much so that when late in 2009 he was photographed at the Nairobi Animal Orphanage cuddling a cute little cheetah cub called ‘Sharon’ it was major news. Finally, in the ICC, a credible institution and process aimed at seeking justice for those affected by the near civil war Kenya had in 2008 was seemingly finally in-charge. Politicians had been proclaiming, ‘Don’t be vague, lets go to the Hague’. There was widespread consensus that Kenya’s judiciary and other governance institutions were incapable of dealing with the bringing justice to the victims of the post-election violence.
Three months later at the start of December the ICC named six suspects. Attitudes began to change immediately. The list included some of the most powerful people around then President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga. Unsurprisingly the matter was quickly tribalised and politicised. Of greatest chagrin to supporters of Kibaki, Kenyatta and Ruto in particular, was that the PM, who’d led calls for mass action when the election was stolen, was not on the list! Indeed there wasn’t a single ‘O’ (meaning there wasn’t a Luo on the list). A narrative was quickly conjured that there existed a conspiracy of the ‘O’s (Odinga, Ocampo and Obama) to destroy the political careers of Messrs. Kenyatta and Ruto in particular and manage the Kibaki succession in favour of someone they could do business with – Raila Odinga. A brittle but immediate common cause developed between the Gikuyu and Kalenjin elites that eventually became the Jubilee Alliance. On the ground they asked, “How come Odinga isn’t on the list and it was him people were fighting for with the clarion call ‘No Odinga, No Peace!’”
A panic set in among the elite who hadn’t expected the ICC to move so quickly for starters. The realignments were seismic on the political front. In the meantime the same leaders who’d chanted ‘Don’t be vague, go the Hague’ and the core of the State started working around the clock to stop the ICC process. On December 22, 2010 Parliament moved a motion for Kenya to withdraw from the Rome Statute. As elections approached the ICC formed the kernel around which the Jubilee Coalition was constructed. Focused and determined, it was announced by the IEBC and then the new Supreme Court that they had won the election last March. Kenya became the first country in history to elect as president and deputy president, defendants before the ICC. It became clear normal for Kenyans had ended.
THE ICC REDFINED DOMESTIC POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY
The sheer amount of energy and resources the Jubilee government has expended to duck the ICC process has been without precedent. Indeed, Kenya’s ruling elite has rediscovered African nationalism circa 1960 in the 21st Century courtesy of mobilising African nations to reject the ICC as a neo-colonial tool used by the West for political purposes. This narrative has been laid on extremely thick with sophistication and complexity. Its one that seeks to make Kenyans believe, for example, the PEV was a spontaneous unplanned flare up; ICC is a Western plot to interfere in our sovereign affairs; that foreign funded NGOs created witnesses out of thin air and they are now at the Hague all lying; and, that the current administration is God’s handiwork and therefore the blatant contradictions need not be dwelt upon excessively because they undermine the primary organising principles of the administration.
The enemy needs to be external because the internal ones – especially those who fought each other in the Rift Valley in 2007/8 - have been united in response to the ICC. Kenya had never been much interested in the affairs of the OAU and its successor the AU but over the couple of years it has become doubtlessly the most active member state in terms of working to defining policy at the continental level. Cynics would argue Kenya’s invasion of Somalia was partly informed by the same reasoning.
In the run-up to an extraordinary summit of the African Union in Addis next week that has been called around the issue of the ICC, last Monday October 7, 130 civil society groups from across Africa called on African members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to affirm their support for the court at the Summit.
Deputy President Ruto’s case has already started at the Hague and President Kenyatta’s is due next month. As a country we find ourselves in a deeply uncomfortable situation very much the result of our own engineering. Deep down we know that the fundamental unresolved issues that underlay the PEV will ultimately be resolved as part of a political settlement and local judicial processes. Yet we find ourselves chugging through an international judicial process involving both our head of state and his deputy. These realities have turned local politics inside out. They have also naturally caused considerable distractions for leaders attempting to implement a manifesto, which was already over ambitious in parts, and happening at the same time as we roll out a devolved system of government to a deeply divided population.
KENYA REDISCOVERS AFRICAN NATIONALISM
It is deeply ironic that the Kenyan elite has discovered African nationalism 50 years after independence. For African nationalist sentimentalists like myself we have arrived where we should have started in 1963. We are witnessing an utterly unprecedented flexing of Kenyan muscle on the African stage. It a state of being many of our neighbours would have wished of us when struggles for independence were being fought in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique etc. As late arrivals driven by a sense of mission created by the ICC considerable cynicism understandably reigns with regard to our new continental and global posture.
It does to remember for example that the seeds sown that eventually grew into today’s Anglican Communion came about in 1534 because the English king, Henry VIII had sought and failed to obtain an annulment from the Pope of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Sometimes good things can be born out of the ignominies. Kenya is finally pulling her weight at the African Union, some would argue, for all the wrong reasons.
Still, a Kenya robustly engaged with AU can only ultimately bear sweet fruit. As I said the supremacy of this irony could not have been manufactured by the best of fiction writers. But then again one of the key differences between a ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nation is that in the former fact is quite rarely stranger than fiction and authors become millionaires creating fiction from the imagination.
In many developing countries fact is often stranger than fiction so one need only read the papers for entertainment. Here the bizarre is contained in the actions and words of leaders and their actions. It causes us to realise we are extras in a gangster movie whose script is being written on the fly. It does too to remember that God has a sense of humour.