[DEBATE] : Daniel Branch on Kenyan vote

[Sean Jacobs]

London Review of Books

     * 24 January 2008


At the Polling Station in Kibera
Daniel Branch

The voters queuing outside the Olympic Primary School in Nairobi’s 
Kibera slum on 27 December were sure of two things. First, that if a 
free and fair election were held, Raila Odinga and his Orange 
Democratic Movement (ODM) had sufficient support to win Kenya’s 
presidential and parliamentary elections. Second, that the polls would 
be fixed in order to ensure a second term of office for President Mwai 
Kibaki of the Party of National Unity (PNU). On both counts, the crowd 
was right.

The polling station in Kibera – an opposition stronghold – was typical 
of many in this election. Queues began forming at 3 a.m., stretching 
back over a kilometre by the time the polling station opened at dawn. 
Similar queues across the country demonstrated the determination of the 
people to have their voices heard. The patience of those queuing in 
Kibera was gravely tested, however. The ballot boxes arrived late, 
leading to fears that those still in line when the polls closed at 5 
p.m. would not be able to vote, and parts of the alphabet were entirely 
missing from the electoral register – mostly those letters that begin 
common Luo surnames. This contributed to a general sense of 
mismanagement and showed the frailty of the Electoral Commission of 
Kenya. Although voting was conducted peacefully, there was a foretaste 
of what would later transpire. Roadblocks manned by local civilians 
were put up on the one road into Kibera. All incoming cars were 
searched for stuffed ballot boxes or any sign that non-resident voters 
were being bussed in to boost support for the government. A commitment 
to the democratic process does not in Kenya preclude the use of 
violence.

Kenyans were simultaneously voting for local authority representatives, 
MPs and in the presidential ballot. In a state governed by a 
constitution that gives enormous powers to the president, it was the 
last poll that monopolised attention. Although nine candidates were 
listed on the ballot papers, only three mounted credible nationwide 
campaigns. Kibaki, Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka had been allies in the 
National Rainbow Coalition, which had defeated the hated Kenya African 
National Union (KANU) in the 2002 elections. The opposition to the 
authoritarian rule of Daniel arap Moi had divided along factional lines 
in 1992 and 1997: in 2002 the various leaders opposed to the 
continuation of KANU’s rule under Moi’s anointed successor, Uhuru 
Kenyatta, successfully united behind Kibaki.

Once in power, Kibaki’s clique reneged on promises of ministerial 
appointments for other members of the coalition. They sabotaged 
constitutional reforms that would have weakened the powers of the 
presidency and a watered-down draft constitution that left the 
influence of central government intact was eventually the subject of a 
referendum in 2005. The symbol on the ballot for the ‘No’ vote – 
championed by Odinga, Musyoka and other leaders – was an orange. Having 
won the referendum, the opposition took the orange as its label. Since 
then, the grouping has split into two factions – Odinga’s ODM and 
Musyoka’s ODM-Kenya. In order to shore up parliamentary support after 
the referendum, Kibaki made an alliance with KANU and its unpopular but 
wealthy former leaders.

With ODM fielding the largest number of candidates in the December 
elections and able to impose a degree of discipline on its candidates, 
there was little surprise among commentators and pollsters when it won 
the most parliamentary seats. In contrast to Odinga, Kibaki was unable 
to bring the disparate factions backing him under the umbrella of a 
single party, and in campaign rallies frequently had to try to calm 
supporters of rival groups who clashed during his speeches.

Each main candidate sought to discredit the other in expensive media 
campaigns, which by mid-December were estimated to have cost $20 
million. Kibaki’s re-election effort alone topped $10 million. Who paid 
for these campaigns is an important question. Odinga in particular 
raised funds from the Kenyan diaspora in South Africa, Britain and 
North America, but the candidates’ campaign costs nevertheless ran far 
in excess of their apparent means. Many of the corruption scandals that 
engulfed Kibaki after 2002 have subsequently been linked to campaign 
funding during that election.

The PNU’s difficulties with funding have had serious consequences. 
Kibaki’s inner circle was widely thought to have been bankrupted by the 
cost of mounting the unsuccessful referendum campaign in 2005 and the 
need for funds seems to have driven Kibaki to make his alliance with 
Moi and his wealthy henchman Nicholas Biwott. Rewards necessarily 
followed. The big winner in the new cabinet is George Saitoti, who has 
been made minister for internal security. Although his background is in 
academia, Saitoti amassed a fortune while serving as a minister under 
President Moi. Hounded during the previous parliament by accusations of 
involvement in corruption scandals during the Moi presidency, Saitoti 
has returned unscathed. As unrest continues, and with serious 
disturbances likely in the future, the internal security portfolio is a 
major prize for a future presidential aspirant.

Politics in Kenya are micro-local in focus. Political leaders are 
judged on what they deliver to their communities. Those aspiring to 
office appeal for support by spelling out what they can do for their 
constituents once in power. The two main presidential candidates did 
little to encourage a broader perspective. Kibaki made a series of 
impromptu stops at small roadside trading centres to announce new and 
ever smaller districts, the construction of roads, free secondary 
education and the funding of new schools. ‘Promise them everything,’ 
one PNU campaigner urged his fellow Kibaki supporters at a meeting in 
Nairobi, ‘and apologise afterwards.’ Mentions of a brighter future for 
Kenyans living out of earshot were rare.

Both candidates constructed their bids around a series of ‘wedge 
issues’. Kibaki supporters depicted Odinga as Idi Amin reincarnate, 
stressing his authoritarian streak and calling into question Luo 
citizenship in Kenya (Luos originate from the area straddling the 
Ugandan border and along the shores of Lake Victoria), and exploited 
intra-provincial and intra-ethnic tensions in ODM strongholds. In turn, 
Odinga spoke a great deal about Kibaki’s role in the undemocratic 
regimes of Moi and Jomo Kenyatta; he too exploited regional grievances 
– and more successfully. Within his own community, Odinga complained 
that Luos had too long played the bridesmaid in Kenyan politics. On the 
coast and along the northern border, ODM appealed to the country’s 
Muslims, angry with Kibaki’s support of anti-terror operations led by 
the United States. Among Kalenjin in the Rift Valley, ODM courted 
voters upset by the purge of the civil service that followed Kibaki’s 
2002 victory.

Kibaki’s reliance on economic growth as the main pillar of his campaign 
backfired. With an average of 5 per cent growth per annum effectively 
boosting the living standards only of the elite, ordinary Kenyans, 
Kikuyu or otherwise, have not yet benefited. Those who live elsewhere 
assumed that all the money was going to Kibaki’s own Central Province. 
Kibaki hardly played the role of a national leader, attacking Odinga 
for the latter’s alliance with Muslim groups and making much of his own 
Christianity. As election day approached, the attention of his 
grassroots campaign shifted to getting the people of the region 
surrounding Mount Kenya out to vote. When the campaign officially came 
to a close on Christmas Eve, all agreed that the two main contenders 
were neck and neck.

With the final results in both the parliamentary and presidential 
elections still not released in detail, it remains impossible to 
calculate the full extent of electoral fraud. From the reports of the 
European Union observer mission and those of the domestic observers, it 
appears that votes were inflated throughout the counting and tallying. 
Although the chairman of the Electoral Commission, Samuel Kivuitu, was 
respected by all parties, Kibaki had packed the commission with his own 
supporters earlier in the year. On the ground, commission officials, at 
times in collusion with party agents, oversaw a series of 
misdemeanours. In a number of constituencies, the declaration of the 
final results was delayed so as to give Kibaki’s henchmen time to make 
the necessary upward revisions. All sides committed acts of electoral 
fraud, however, and the extent of it is likely to mean that any attempt 
to retally votes cast for either candidate will be impossible.

During the 72 hours between the polling stations closing and the final 
result being declared, the political temperature rose dramatically. 
Early results suggested Odinga was on course for a comfortable victory, 
but by late afternoon on 29 December it was clear that Kibaki had 
closed the gap. With large constituencies from Kibaki strongholds yet 
to declare, both parties saw where the election was heading. Kivuitu 
seemed to be on the verge of declaring Kibaki the winner when ODM 
leaders persuaded him to delay his announcement until after he had 
looked at their evidence of rigging. Kivuitu promised a definitive 
result the following day.

It was at this point that a first wave of protests against the actions 
of the government broke out. After a night of riots in Kisumu and 
Nairobi, a security cordon was placed around key government buildings 
and the conference centre where the results were to be announced. 
Inside the building a day of waiting began – but there was no suspense. 
The result had been leaked and spread via text message: all present 
knew that one way or another Kibaki would win, that a security 
crackdown would begin almost immediately and that he would be sworn in 
later the same day.

At 4.15 p.m., Kivuitu appeared on stage to make his final announcement. 
As he began to read out the results, Odinga and a contingent of ODM 
leaders swept in through a side door. One of the police officers hit a 
member of Odinga’s bodyguard with his baton as the ODM leader attempted 
to force his way onto the stage to prevent Kivuitu from speaking. In 
the full glare of the media, diplomats and observers, scuffles broke 
out. Faced with the prospect of arrest or worse, the ODM delegation 
swiftly left. Kivuitu slipped out under police guard and, in the 
confusion, the PNU leaders fled the room to the jeers of the crowd.

Five minutes later, Odinga and his ODM contingent came back and accused 
the commission’s staff of altering the results. William Ruto, one of 
the ODM leaders, produced an electoral officer (his authority was 
somewhat undermined by Ruto’s introduction of him as an old friend) who 
claimed that votes for Kibaki had been artificially inflated inside the 
commission’s own tallying centre in Nairobi. The impromptu press 
conference then came to an end. As the audience finally began to leave 
the room, electricity to the building was cut.

Fifteen minutes later, from a secure room, Kivuitu declared that Kibaki 
had won by a margin of 200,000 votes. The announcement was made to the 
state broadcaster; all other media were prevented from attending. The 
broadcast ended as soon as the chairman finished reading his statement. 
Accompanied by the justice minister, he was then whisked away to State 
House, where, with daylight fading, Kibaki was sworn in. Almost 
immediately, riots began in the opposition strongholds of Kisumu and 
Mombasa, as well as in various parts of Nairobi, most violently in the 
Kibera slum. At 8 p.m. it was announced that live radio and TV 
broadcasts would be suspended until further notice. Kenya had become a 
police state overnight.

The burning down on New Year’s Day of the Kenya Assemblies of God 
church at Kiambaa, close to the town of Eldoret, the defining moment of 
the crisis, has provoked ridiculous comparisons to Rwanda. The killing 
of 35 Kikuyu there has been seen as symbolic by those who choose to 
view Kenyan and African politics in terms of ethnicity. But little of 
the violence that followed the official declaration of Kibaki’s victory 
was tribal. There is little question that many Kenyans were deeply 
aggrieved by Kibaki’s actions – ‘They said we must pay for our decision 
to vote for President Kibaki,’ a survivor of the Kiambaa massacre told 
the Daily Nation newspaper – but this grievance was built on a long 
history of regional inequality.

The Rift Valley and, to a lesser extent, Mombasa, the centres of 
anti-Kikuyu activity, experienced similar periods of violence during 
earlier election campaigns. During the so-called ‘tribal clashes’ of 
1992 and 1997, hundreds were killed and thousands forced from their 
homes as politicians exploited tensions within individual communities 
over access to resources. Ethnicity camouflages tremendous class 
conflict in contemporary Kenya. In the Rift Valley and Mombasa, Kikuyu 
traders, entrepreneurs and farmers have caused great resentment within 
local communities since their arrival in the aftermath of independence 
in 1963. Seen as denying local people land, jobs and state investment, 
these ‘outsiders’ have periodically been demonised by politicians 
seeking to mobilise support. Sanctioning or at least acquiescing in a 
bout of anti-Kikuyu violence in the wake of a closely contested 
election serves to consolidate a factionalised support base.

Certainly the anti-Kikuyu violence is useful to ODM. This is not a 
great pro-democracy movement: it has failed to mobilise mass civil 
unrest and its leadership includes figures schooled in the dark arts of 
Kenyan politics. We may never know exactly who orchestrated the 
killings at Kiambaa or elsewhere in Kenya over the past few weeks, but 
we do know that they were organised.

Driven by what the historian E.S. Atieno Odhiambo calls an ‘ideology of 
order’, the state’s response to the protests has tended to privilege 
stability at the expense of personal liberty. Successive postcolonial 
regimes have boasted of Kenya’s relative peacefulness and used the fear 
of instability to justify the repression of human rights. On this 
occasion, Kibaki correctly anticipated that ODM intended to instigate a 
Ukrainian-style Orange Revolution. Plans had long been in place to deal 
with such an event; once Kibaki had been sworn in, the strategy was 
implemented. At 8 p.m. on 30 December, just as Odinga was about to 
announce that a mass rally would be held in Uhuru Park in Nairobi the 
following day, public spaces, including the park, were cordoned off. 
Government buildings were heavily defended and ODM strongholds locked 
down by state security forces.

Police and other branches of the security forces blocked off entire 
neighbourhoods in, among other places, Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi. Any 
protests were dealt with ruthlessly. An unknown number of protesters 
were shot in Kisumu on 30 December as police opened fire on a crowd 
attempting to congregate in the city centre. There were pitched battles 
in Kibera and gunfire filled the night elsewhere in Nairobi during the 
first few days of January. Reports of rape increased and hospitals in 
Nairobi reported cases of forced circumcision of male Luo.

The numbers killed in these operations is not yet known and the 
police’s figure of 600 dead should be treated with scepticism. Police 
action, though, has been hamstrung: the various branches of the 
security forces have members from different ethnic groups and recruits 
tend to serve in their home areas. At the best of times, their levels 
of institutional loyalty are questionable. The government knew that 
they were unlikely to perform all the duties required of them in the 
aftermath of Kibaki’s victory. Indeed, the police did little to prevent 
the attacks on Kikuyu outside of Nairobi. Kibaki instead turned to a 
more unlikely ally in order to win Nairobi back.

On the night of 2 January, the criminal gang and private militia known 
as Mungiki – ‘multitude’ in Kikuyu – entered battle in Kibera, Mathare 
and other parts of Nairobi. Mungiki has its roots in a Kikuyu cultural 
revival movement dating back to the 1990s but rose to prominence during 
the summer of 2007 after carrying out a series of grisly beheadings of 
criminal rivals. John Michuki, then minister for internal security, 
instituted a shoot-to-kill policy. Five hundred people died in the 
subsequent crackdown – most shot in the back of the head. Even as the 
anti-Mungiki crackdown continued, rumours were circulating in Nairobi 
that the group was being readied for use by the government come 
December. By the time of the election, the gravest threat to the Kenyan 
state’s security had become its ally.

The involvement of private citizens in the worst of the violence makes 
reconciliation efforts immeasurably more difficult in what is already 
an ethnically divided country. An estimated 255,000 refugees have left 
their homes, though most will undoubtedly disappear from the public eye 
as they seek assistance from friends and family rather than move to 
photogenic camps. Untold damage has been inflicted on what was a 
burgeoning economy. Tourists have been scared away from the beaches and 
game parks. Business has ground to a halt. Neighbouring countries 
suffering from shortages of oil and other materials normally delivered 
through Kenya are now questioning its viability as a regional provider.

Odinga and Kibaki have both made public statements expressing the need 
for negotiation, but neither has made the concessions necessary to 
bring the other to the table. Kibaki’s announcement of a cabinet that 
includes several hardliners, some tainted by recent corruption 
scandals, provided few grounds for optimism. African mediators such as 
Desmond Tutu and the president of Ghana, John Kufuor, have been used by 
both sides in photo opportunities and as potential cheerleaders rather 
than for any more serious purpose. An impending visit by Kofi Annan 
will surely also end in failure. And there is little sign that the 
British, Americans or EU have sufficient leverage to force either party 
to initiate discussions. This is an intra-elite struggle centred on the 
personal pursuit of power in which almost any cost to the Kenyan people 
is considered acceptable.

The current wave of violence has reached a plateau, but there is no 
reason to think that it has ended entirely. ODM will find it very 
difficult to install Odinga as president. Kibaki comfortably filled the 
role of lame duck president after his defeat in the constitutional 
referendum and seems likely to do the same for the next five years. ODM 
does not have a sufficient majority in parliament to impeach the 
president; it will be able to block government bills, but this is not a 
major concern to Kibaki and his supporters.

Few of the protagonists emerge from this episode with any credit. But 
PNU, and Kibaki in particular, deserve the fiercest condemnation. He 
and his clique stole an election in the knowledge that the people who 
would pay the penalty for their actions would almost certainly be from 
their own power base, the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley. They used 
profoundly anti-democratic measures to restrain protests and hired 
thugs to suppress the unrest in Nairobi’s slums. The argument of 
figures such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o that Kibaki deserved a second term on 
the basis of opening up a democratic space for the Kenyan people now 
looks like a very poor joke.

Kibaki, a man who has built his political career on his image as a 
conciliatory technocrat, apparently retained control throughout the 
security crackdown. Kenya’s current generation of political leaders is 
rotten to the core. Where alternatives can be found is another 
question. The country is ill-served by a colonial constitutional legacy 
that privileged executive power, patronage and ethnicity, a blueprint 
seized on by successive regimes to construct a political system that is 
unresponsive to the people, violent and corrupt.

11 January

Daniel Branch is a lecturer in history at Exeter.

--------------------------------------------
Sean Jacobs
Blogging as Leo Africanus at http://theleoafricanus.blogspot.com