[DEBATE] : Horace Campbell on Kenya

[Sean Jacobs]

> DRAMA OF THE POPULAR STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN KENYA
> Horace Campbell
>
> National elections were held in Kenya on December 27, 2007; the
> results of the Presidential election were announced three days later.
> Within minutes of the announcement that Mwai Kibaki had emerged as the
> winner, there were spontaneous acts of opposition to the government in
> all parts of the country. The opposition was especially intense among
> the jobless youths who had voted overwhelmingly for change. A ruling
> clique that had stolen billions of dollars in a period of five years
> had stolen the elections. This was the verdict of the poor. However,
> this verdict was obscured by ethnic alienation and the constant
> refrain by local and foreign intellectuals that the crisis and
> killings emanated from deep 'tribal' hostilities. This tribal
> narrative was intensified after the burning and killings of innocent
> civilians in a church, in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley region of Kenya.
> But while these killings had all of the hallmarks of the genocidal
> violence of Rwanda and Burundi, more importantly, they heightened the
> need for Kenyan society to step back from the brink of all out war.
> Violence and killings provided a feedback loop that threatened to
> engulf even the political leaders of the society.
>
> This analysis argues that the calls for peace and reconciliation by
> the political and religious leaders will remain hollow until there are
> efforts to break from the recursive processes of looting, extra
> judicial killings, rape and violation of women, and general low
> respect for African lives.
>
> This short commentary on the elections and the aftermath seeks to
> introduce a unified emancipatory approach: liberating humanity from
> the mechanical, competitive, and individualistic constraints of
> western philosophy, and re-unifying Kenyans with each other, the
> Earth, and spirituality. This analysis draws from fractal theory and
> seeks to place Africans as human beings at the center of the analysis.
> Fractal theory is founded on aspects of the African knowledge system
> and breaks the old tribal narratives that refer to Africans as sub
> humans needing Civilization, Christianity and Commerce.
> Those who condemn the post-election violence in Kenya have failed to
> condemn the traditions of killings and economic terrorism in Kenya. It
> should be stated clearly that using African women as guinea pigs for
> western pharmaceuticals is just as outrageous as burning innocent
> women and children in churches. Rape and violation of women, and
> exploitation of the poor and of jobless youth have been overlooked by
> the commentators who focus on one component of the matrix of
> exploitation in Kenya -- ethnicity.
>
> In tandem with much of the current discourse on fractal theory, this
> commentary is addressed to progressive intellectuals from Kenya and
> calls for a revolutionary paradigmatic transformation- one that is
> intrinsic to African knowledge systems and can be witnessed in
> practice in the everyday activities of African life. Revolutionary
> transformations are necessary to break from the processes that have
> been unleashed in Kenya and East Africa since British colonialism and
> the British Gulag. This break requires revolutionary ideas in Kenya,
> along with revolutionary leaders and new forms of political
> organization. Thus far, neo-liberal capitalism and neo-liberal
> democratic organizations, along with the focus on party organization
> have created leaders who organize for political power. These leaders
> are not even concerned about forming lasting political parties. Far
> more profound transformations are required in Kenya, beyond the
> winning of elections. However, until new ideas and new leaders emerge,
> the current struggles will serve to educate the poor on the
> limitations of the old politics and ethnic alliances that privilege
> sections of the Kenyan capitalist class.
>
> The analysis is presented as a drama of three acts. The first act was
> played out in the form of the election campaign. The second act
> involved the drama after the announcement of the results and the
> violent reactions from all sections of the society. The third act of
> this drama continues to unfold with the call for a fractal analysis
> that will place revolutionary transformation as the central question
> on the political agenda in Kenya and East Africa.
>
> Act One - The Struggles over the election and the campaign for the
> Presidency.
>
> The Scene: Kenya had been the epi- center of imperial domination in
> East Africa from the period of British colonialism. Caroline Elkins in
> the book, Britain's Gulag, has documented for posterity the extreme
> violence and murders bequeathed to the Kenyan political culture by the
> British government. At independence in December 1963, Britain handed
> over power to people who, in essence, agreed to act as junior partners
> with British capitalism in Eastern and Central Africa. This
> partnership included an acceptance by the ruling class in Kenya of the
> western European forms of land ownership that stated that Africans had
> to be modernized from their "tribal" and "backward" ways. For forty
> years, Kenya was presented as a success story where a parasitic middle
> class and a thriving Nairobi Stock Exchange (composed of foreign
> capital) sought to prove that capitalism could take root in Africa.
>
> Act 1 Scene Two of this drama took the form of a campaign for the
> tenth Parliament of Kenya. The drama of the struggle for change in
> Kenya was played out before the world in the form of an electoral
> struggle that gripped the society for many months. At the end of Scene
> Two one of the principal props of this drama - the local media -
> reported that the results were like a "blood bath." The headline
> screamed " energized voters sweep out Vice President, Cabinet
> Ministers and seasoned politicians as wind of change blows across the
> country." But the newspapers were not yet aware of the implications of
> using language like "blood bath" in their headlines. Every one awaited
> the final results of the news of who would be President. The results
> were being delayed while the votes were being cooked. As news of the
> parliamentary routing of the incumbent President and his allies in the
> Party of National Unity (PNU) splashed on the streets, on the screens
> and on text messages while the principal actors and actresses of the
> drama, the people of Kenya, sought spontaneous actions to ensure that
> they were not silenced by the power brokers who had placed themselves
> at the head of the movement for change. These central actors and
> actresses (wananchi) had enthusiastically participated in the election
> campaign articulating their demand for peace, reconstruction and
> transformation of Kenyan society.
>
> By the time of the third scene of this drama, those from the den of
> thieves around the incumbent Mwai Kibaki sought to silence the media.
> In order for this scene to be played out without an audience,
> international observers and the media (both national and
> international) were ejected from Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK)
> election center at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The
> Chairperson of the ECK went to a small room and announced the results
> of the elections naming Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the election.
> Three days later, the same chairperson of the ECK said in the media
> that he was not sure if Kibaki won the elections.
>
> Earlier in the drama Raila Odinga's team of regional barons and
> aspiring capitalists argued that the true results of the elections
> showed that Raila Odinga had been chosen by the majority of the main
> players to be the leading man on the Kenyan stage. How was it possible
> for his Movement to win over one hundred seats in the Parliament (when
> Kibaki's den of thieves had won less than thirty parliamentary seats)
> and still lose the Presidency? Local and foreign observers cried foul.
> The elections had been rigged. Ballot boxes had been stuffed. Results
> were being announced that did not correspond to the votes from the
> constituencies. The integrity of the process was flawed. These voices
> were soon drowned out by the might and power of those with strategic
> control over the military and media sections of the performance.
> Neo-liberal politics include rigging, so that the international
> observers used 'measured' language of "irregularities," "anomalies"
> and "weighty issues" to conceal the reality of outright theft. Raila
> Odinga termed the process a "civilian coup." But international capital
> became confused, because, after all the precedent of election rigging
> in Florida,U.S.A in 2000 had given the green light to electoral fraud
> internationally.
>
> The Swearing in of President Kibaki
>
> Act One Scene Three of this drama was performed within the guarded
> confines of State House where parastatal executives, mostly defeated
> cabinet members and a small section of the media were invited. In this
> scene, Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as the Third President of the Republic
> of Kenya. The stage and setting of this scene was markedly different
> from the previous swearing in at the Uhuru Park (in Nairobi) where an
> enthusiastic audience had cheered on the President on December 30,
> 2002. The 2007 swearing in scene had to be played out without the
> audience because the principal actors and actresses did not endorse
> this new act. Minutes after the announcement of the victory of Kibaki,
> there were spontaneous demonstrations all over the country, especially
> the urban areas. Popular outrage at the theft of the elections brought
> violence and the killings of innocent civilians in Kakamega, Kisumu,
> Mombassa, Nairobi, Nakuru and other centers. The police killed
> innocent demonstrators as the foreign media portrayed the
> demonstrations in ethnic terms. The gendered, class and ethnic
> dimensions of the opposition to Kibaki began to be played out in the
> poor communities that were called slums, but the media focused on one
> dimension, the ethnic alienation of the poor and exploited.
>
> Hundreds of dead brought home the reality that the elections and vote
> counting were simply one site of struggle in the quest to break the
> old politics of exploitation and dehumanization in Kenya. However,
> because so much of the old politics of exploitation had been masked by
> the politicization of ethnicity, poor members of the Kikuyu
> nationality were targeted in some communities, with the killings in
> Eldoret bringing home the long traditions of ethnic cleaning that had
> been going on in this region during the Moi regime. The same media
> neglected to report that poor Kalenjin also torched the home of former
> President Arap Moi.
>
> Would there be a break from this recursive process of killing of the
> poor?
> Odinga and members of the Pentagon condemned the killings of members
> of a particular ethnic group but the anger was too deep for the youths
> to listen. Unfortunately, the ODM did not have structures to properly
> mobilize the youths away from looting.
>
> Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic Movement
>
> In order to avert the possible war that could emanate from this new
> act of the drama there was the need for fresh if not revolutionary
> ideas to harness the pent up energies of the people for change. The
> radicalization of Kenyan politics had merged with the anti-
> globalization forces internationally to the point where in 2007 Kenya
> hosted the World Social Forum. The radical demands of the Bamako
> appeal of the Africa Social Forum (for profound social, economic and
> gender transformations in Africa) could not be carried forward by the
> old Non Governmental Organization elements allied with international
> NGO's from Western Europe. What the World Social Forum had
> demonstrated was the reality that new revolutionary ideas with new
> revolutionary forms of organization were needed to realize the goals
> and aspirations and appeal of the Africa social forum. Raila Odinga
> and his group of regional ethnic barons had tapped into the radical
> sentiments of the youth all across the ethnic divisions. Calling his
> team, the Pentagon, Odinga mobilized the popular discourses about
> youth, women and disabled to speak about 'poverty eradication' and
> "corruption."
>
> Absent from the platform of the Orange Democratic Movement was a clear
> program for reconstruction and transformation. Raila Odinga had been a
> major political actor on the Kenyan stage for four decades. He had
> participated in every major political party and formation since his
> father, Odinga Odinga had emerged as the opponent of the Kenyan form
> of neo-colonialism. The 2007 elections exposed the reality that there
> were no real political parties in Kenya. Leaders on all sides were not
> interested in building a lasting movement for change. They were
> interested in parties as electoral vehicles to capture state power.
> There were more than 300 parties registered in Kenya and over 117
> participated in the elections in December 2007.
>
> Local and international writers who earlier had been voices for the
> poor enthusiastically supported the enactment of the first scene of
> the drama (the election and voting). Some of these writers moaned and
> groaned that the script had been changed when those who controlled the
> state machinery unleashed violence against the poor. In order to
> unleash state violence against the poor, the Minister of Internal
> Affairs banned the broadcast of live images. The state also toyed with
> the idea of banning SMS messaging in Kenya. But
> Kenyans simply tuned in to the international media to confirm what
> they knew, that the recursive processes of killings and revenge were
> spiraling out of control.
>
> Without enacting an official state of emergency (in the fear of
> further hurting the tourist industry) the majority of poor Kenyans
> lived under curfew-like conditions as the military, the police, and
> General Service Units were deployed all over the country and new forms
> of censorship were implemented. The political leadership that stole
> the elections had to be careful with the use of the police, military
> and the intelligence services in so far as the divisions within the
> security forces challenged the authority of those who stole the
> elections. Raila Odinga sought to tap into this division of the
> coercive forces by calling a demonstration of a million Kenyans to
> oppose the stolen election results.
>
> The International media and international capital
>
> The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other cultural voices
> of imperial power were from the outset one of the props of this drama.
> The British were particularly active because the interests of British
> capitalism were very much an important part of narrative of the drama.
> During Act 1 scenes two and three, this foreign prop had been
> condemning the "irregularities'" and "anomalies" of the drama and
> carried the press statements of the International Observers of the
> European Union and the Commonwealth. The head of the European Union
> observer mission issued a statement declaring that, "the Presidential
> poll lacks credibility and an independent audit should be instituted
> to rectify things."
>
> This clear statement led the US government to reverse its earlier
> recognition of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the Presidential
> elections. There had been concern in Washington over the future of
> Kenya in so far as the US authorities sought to mobilize Kenyans in
> the war against terrorism. During the period of Kibaki, Kenyan
> citizens were shipped out of the country to be tried as terrorists
> under the US policy of kidnapping, called rendition. The ODM signed a
> memorandum of understanding with the Islamic community during the
> election campaign and members of the ODM condemned the rendering of
> Kenyan citizens by the government. It was argued that if these
> citizens acted contrary to Kenyan law, they should be tried under
> Kenyan law.
>
> The propaganda war had been virulent and since Raila Odinga held the
> moral and political high ground, sections of the international media
> began to retreat from endorsement of the electoral coup. However, the
> occupation of the moral high ground was shaky. Would the government
> and opposition be more concerned with the lives of the poor than with
> political power?
>
> In the face of the absence of resolute moral leadership to condemn
> these killings, the international media had a field day portraying the
> struggles for democracy in Kenya as primitive "tribal" violence.
>
> Act Two - Stalemate and brinkmanship in politics
>
> Raila Odinga and his team called the Pentagon had entered the drama
> seeking to play on the terms of those who had seized power from the
> time of colonialism. The very naming of his team as the 'Pentagon' had
> shown an insensitivity to the international revulsion against military
> symbols. The five leaders of the Pentagon were, (i) Vice Presidential
> running mate M Mudavadi, (ii) Charity Ngilu, (iii) William Ruto, (iv)
> Bilal Najib and (v) Joseph Nyagah. These regional ethnic barons had
> emerged from multiple political formations and many had family and
> business linkages with capitalists inside and outside of the
> government. During the campaign these regional leaders had campaigned
> on a pledge to devolve power from central government. The poor
> believed this would bring power closer to the village and communities
> so that health care facilities, water supply systems, road and
> pathways in the villages, education, sanitation and other services
> could be delivered so that the conditions of exploitation are
> ameliorated. These localized services were interpreted by various
> local communities as job creation avenues for the jobless youths. For
> the regional barons, the devolution debate was carried out to ensure
> easier access to the treasury. The word 'majimbo' re- emerged in the
> political vocabulary of Kenya to reignite the memory of the alliance
> between the 'home guards' and settlers at the dawn of independence.
>
> Youths all across Kenya had transcended the ethnic identification and
> wanted real change in the quality of life in the society.
>
> Entering the drama without a real party and without a real organ to
> bring the majority of the actors and actresses to the center of the
> drama, it was easy for the team around Mwai Kibaki to stall so that
> the spontaneous anger would peter out. Would the Orange Democratic
> Revolution learn the lessons of popular power in the streets of the
> Ukraine Orange Revolution and shake the old power with new bases of
> alternative power? This provided the setting for the central aspect of
> the drama, the stand off between the forces of orange and the forces
> of the defeated power. Kibaki came across as an imprisoned leader,
> surrounded by politicians and financiers who argued that Kibaki must
> enter any negotiation from a position of strength. Odinga countered
> that negotiations could only begin when Kibaki accepted that the
> elections had been stolen. The hardening of positions ratcheted up the
> tensions in the country as regionally countries such as Uganda, Rwanda
> and the Southern Sudan began to feel the effects of the shutdown of
> the transportation system in Kenya.
>
> Mwai Kibaki and the neo-liberal regime in Kenya
>
> Mwai Kibaki had been associated with the ruling class in Kenya for
> over fifty years. Starting his career as a representative of Shell Oil
> Company in Kampala, Uganda, Kibaki moved from an academic position at
> Makerere University to the top echelons of the independent government
> of Kenya after independence. In the book, The Reds and the Blacks,
> William Atwood, then-US ambassador, had identified Kibaki as one of
> the steady 'reformers" who would guarantee the interests of foreign
> capital. Kibaki emerged as a stable force in the ruling circles
> serving both Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi as Minister of Finance.
> It was under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi that the forms of
> theft by the ruling elements in Kenya were refined. Extra judicial
> killings and accidental deaths of prominent trade union leaders and
> politicians were papered over by the foreign press that labeled Kenya
> a 'stable' democracy.
>
> Arap Moi and international capital.
>
> After the death of Kenyatta in 1978, Daniel Arap Moi moved decisively
> to cement an alliance of foreign capitalists and local political
> careerists to loot the society and spread divisions and ethnic hatred
> among the poor and oppressed. British capitalism had been the dominant
> force in Kenya with British companies such as Unilever, Finlays, GSK,
> Vodafone, Barclays and Standard Bank becoming leading names on the
> Nairobi Stock Exchange. Britain had made a deal with the independence
> leaders and awarded a small sum to enhance this new class of African
> yeoman farmers to join the British settlers in the exploitation of
> Kenya and indeed, East Africa. Molo, in the Rift Valley (one of the
> constituencies at the center of the row over the rigged elections),
> represented one of the places where Kikuyu settlers had been relocated
> after independence.
>
> Moi during his Presidency remained at the center of the alliance
> between British capitalists, Asian capitalists and Kikuyu
> entrepreneurs from Central Province. By the time of the electoral
> defeat of Moi in December 2002, the Moi family and cronies in the
> ruling party, Kenya African National Union (KANU) had become junior
> capitalists in the game of exploitation. It was under the leadership
> of Moi that imperialism used Kenya as a base to subvert African
> independence. A report commissioned by the Kibaki administration,
> (called the Kroll Report), had named Moi and his sons as billionaires
> with assets in banks in Britain, Switzerland, South Africa, Namibia,
> the Cayman Islands and Brunei. The 110-page report by the
> international risk consultancy Kroll alleged that relatives and
> associates of former President Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of
> government money. This documentation placed the Mois on a par with
> Africa's other great politicians-cum-looters such as Mobutu Sese Seko
> of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.
> The Kroll report of the levels of theft when presented to the Kibaki
> government was never acted on. The alliance between Moi and Kibaki
> forces became clearer during the election campaign when Moi and his
> sons fiercely campaigned for the re -election of President Kibaki. The
> sons of Moi were decisively defeated in the elections.
>
> The documentation of the level of theft by Moi was exposed before the
> public in what to became known as the Goldenberg scandal. This scandal
> brought to the fore the alliance between Moi, KANU and Asian
> capitalists in Kenya. These capitalists had looted the country with
> such impunity that Kamlesh Mdami Pattni (an Asian capitalist named in
> the Goldenberg scandal) took over one party Kenda to contest the 2007
> elections.
>
> Prior to the 1992 multi-party struggles, Kibaki had sought to distance
> himself from this group of capitalists. These were the capitalists
> involved in settler agriculture, manufacturing, transport, services,
> old forms of banking, insurance, real estate, construction and
> engineering and the health and education sectors. These capitalists
> from inside and outside the political arena provided cover for looters
> all across Eastern Africa. In the Kenyan economy money from oil in the
> Sudan (especially Southern Sudan), commercial interests in Somalia,
> gold and diamond dealers from Rwanda, Burundi and the Eastern Congo
> circulated with the resources from the exploited Kenyan working poor
> so that in the past ten years there has been a growth of the Kenyan
> economy. Felicia Kabunga, wanted by the International Criminal
> Tribunal on Rwanda (ICRT) for crimes of genocide in Rwanda was the
> kind of looter and money spinner who found safe haven among the money
> launderers in Kenya.
>
> Kibaki and the rise of new capitalists.
>
>
> Although Mwai Kbaki had campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket in
> 2002, his tenure as President of Kenya was marked by an explosion of
> new schemes for accumulation. The rise of the telecommunications,
> information technology and banking sectors boomed with new enterprises
> such as Equity Bank and a number of communications companies
> (Safaricom, Flashcom, Telecom etc) rivaling the old capitalists. The
> floating of new shares n the form on an Initial Public Offer (IPO) for
> the Company, Safarcom, became a central question in the election
> campaign in so far as those who got access to the shares at the time
> of the issuing of the IPO became instant millionaires.
>
> The Kibaki government was in the main dominated by elements who formed
> a company called MEGA (a regrouping of the old Gema Gikuyu, Embu, Meru
> Association), and through Transcentury Corporation had elevated
> themselves to be the among the leading capitalists in Kenya. This
> group presented a program called Vision 2030 where Kenya would become
> the leading capitalist country in Africa, becoming the Singapore of
> Africa. Control of the governmental apparatus was crucial for Vision
> 2030.
>
> Space does not allow for an elaboration of the individuals of this
> capitalist clique and their place in the interpenetrating directorates
> of the Nairobi Stock Exchange. What is significant is that the names
> of the capitalists and politicians of Trancentury figured in the
> scandal of corruption that rocked the government of Mai Kibaki. This
> was termed the Anglo-leasing scandal which involved awarding huge
> government contracts to bogus companies. One insider, John Githongo,
> exposed the scandal and repaired to Britain.
>
> No money from the Anglo leasing scandal had been recovered before the
> elections and although European and US governments made noises about
> corruption there were no moves to repatriate the stolen wealth back to
> Kenya. These scandals were very much a part of the election campaign.
> Three of the four ministers who resigned after the Anglo Leasing
> scandal was exposed had been reinstated by Kibaki. These ministers
> along with twenty other ministers lost their parliamentary seats in
> the December 2007 elections.
> The poor of Kenya had used the ballot to send a message to the
> capitalists in Kenya but those who stole billions of dollars from the
> Kenyan Treasury were not above stealing an election.
>
> The real test in Kenyan politics was whether the team called the
> Pentagon was serious about changing the political culture of theft,
> looting and storing billions of dollars in foreign banks. The people
> of Kenya had voted for change. Was the Orange Democratic Movement a
> movement for change or a movement for political power? This was the
> outstanding question as the cast and the writers got ready for Act
> three of the drama of the struggle for democracy.
>
> Act 3. A Revolutionary situation without revolutionary ideas and real
> revolutionaries.
>
> Because the drama is being played out it is not possible to make a
> presentation of the last act of this drama. This is the act where the
> peoples of Kenya are torn between two traditions. These are the
> traditions of the freedom fighters for independence and the traditions
> of violence, looting and the low respect for African life. The youths
> of Kenya have been brought up in the period of the aftermath of the
> end of apartheid and the defeat of Mobutism. These youths have risen
> above the politicization of ethnicity and along with progressive women
> want to end the rape and violation of women. These youths have been
> heard to say that Kenya is in the midst of a liberation war.
>
> While the consciousness of the youth may be high with the thought of a
> long term struggle, there are very few revolutionary leaders and a
> poverty of revolutionary ideas in Kenya. If anything, the poorer
> youths are being mobilized into counter-revolutionary violence where
> poor and oppressed people burn and kill each other. This was the
> lesson of the killings, burning and massacre in the Rift Valley.
> Counter-revolutionary violence of the Rwanda genocidal form lay just
> below the surface and the same politicians who gave refuge to
> genocidaires from Rwanda are not above fomenting genocidal violence
> among the poor. The media images of marauding youths with pangas
> provide the necessary imagery to represent to the world another
> version of African savagery. This same media will not prominently
> carry the news that poor peasants from the home area of Danieal Arap
> Moi burnt his house to the ground. The prospect of real class warfare
> in Kenya frightens both the government and the opposition so there is
> a delicate effort to manage the crisis so that the forms of capital
> accumulation can return to the business pages rather than the front
> pages.
>
> Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic movement are now caught between
> the aspirations of the regional capitalists of the 'Pentagon' and the
> demand for real change across Kenya. The post election mayhem is a
> clear demonstration that the ODM did not sufficiently engage their
> followers on new ideas transcending ethnicity and patriarchy. This
> demand for democratic change in Kenya will require new forms of
> organization beyond electoral politics and new ideas about the value
> of African lives. This requires a break with the European ideation
> systems that promote capitalism as democracy and genocide as progress.
>
> * Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse
> University
>
> * Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at
> http://www.pambazuka.org
> ******

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