Which Way for Kenya?

By Prof Stuart Fowler

This article is a response to an article titled “What Kibaki and Raila can do to check diplomatic onslaught“ by ELIAS MOKUA NYATETE, published on the Daily Nation on the Wednesday November 4th, 09.

I wrote to my friend Prof Fowler concerning the article. This is what our communication looks like.

Fowler -

This article was written by a Kenyan who is currently at the University of Melbourne. What is your take on the content?

Dan

I seem to be spending most of my time with issues of Kenyan politics at present! I am not sure whether I have already told you about my own experience of political life. Anyhow, I will go ahead with a brief summary.

Some decades ago I was Research Director of Justice in Broadcasting. which was a small organisation of individual Christians with prominent non-political roles in society. At the time broadcasting in Australia was regulated by a government appointed, independent commission which held public hearings to which anyone could make a submission. Our aim was to ensure that the regulation was just, since we saw doing justice and supporting the socially weak as a fundamental Christian calling.

We were up against some powerful commercial interests, including News Corporation and Australia’s richest man both of which had large broadcasting interests. It was a real David and Goliath contest, except that we were not able to topple the Goliaths but, by God’s grace, we did make a difference. Shortly before the organisation ceased operations I phoned a senior manager of one of Australia’s largest companies, told him who I represented saying “I do not know whether you know about us”. His response was: “I know enough to know that you are listened to in Canberra” (as I am sure you will know this is the national capital).

I learned a lot about practical politics from that experience.

So what is my take on the Nation article. While the writer says some things that make good sense, I do not think that either of his alternatives are viable.

On the first one, who is going to choose this cabinet composed of people of integrity? Who is  going to vouch for this integrity?

Even if these obstacles could be overcome practical political administration is a specialised activity. Just because a person is a university professor, head of a company, church leader is no guarantee that this person could do a good job as a Cabinet minister. The seasoned politicians in parliament would most likely twist this Cabinet in any direction they want.

On the second alternative, while there is certainly merit in something like thisthough like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission I think it should be presided over by Kenyan leaders of integrity outside politics. But, I have two qualifications:

1.      The South African experience was not as effective as it was made to appear in dealing with that country’s history of conflict and injustice. The present government has conceded that it will not be able to make its 2014 deadline for the transfer of just one third of its farming land to the black majority. The gap between rich and poor is much bigger than that of Kenya. Kenyans need to stop looking to South Africa as a model. It simply is not. ANC has been in power continuously since 1994-15 years-with little restraint on how it uses this power. Any democracy based on what I call the conflict model, as distinct from Switzerland’s consensus model, needs a strong opposition that is a viable alternative government to check abuse of power. Without such a check abuse of power and corruption is inevitable.

2.           It would do nothing to solve the issues of governance in Kenya.

As I see it, the roots of Kenya’s problems lie in legacy of the years of British occupation. I  believe that today’s generation needs to be well informed about Kenya’s political history in order to understand the present , and move forward to a new era of effective democracy.

When Kenya gained its independence it lacked leaders with political experience. They knew how to resist the occupation, but there is a big gulf between resistance and governance. In this latter area they were all novices. Consequently they took over the colonial structure of governance with only minor changes. The of title of Governor was changed to President (after less than six months as Prime Minister) and Legco became the Parliament. While the Parliament had more power than Legco, and was certainly a representative body (which Legco was not), the primary power was in the Presidency. To understand the present, therefore, we need to go back to the Kenyatta years.

For many years no-one dared to speak of Kenyatta other than in heroic terms. He should be credited with some important achievements. Mostly on the economic front, but also in healing social divisions:

1. He laid the foundations for Kenya to become the second most industrialised nation in Africa.
2. He supported the development of a strong tourist industry. He did this on the grounds that Kenya, unlike a number of other African countries, has no significant mineral resources so it must make the most of what it does have.
3. He strongly supported agricultural development on the grounds that Kenya must be able to feed its people.
4. He healed the divisions that occurred during the struggle for independence by saying: “We can never forget what the British have done, but we must forgive and embrace them as friends”. While he did not directly say so, this also healed internal divisions since Kenyans were divided in the independence struggle. Some valiantly fought the British occupiers, while others supported the colonial government including joining the armed “Home Guard” an unpaid but officially recognised force. The latter were generally Christians following the teaching of missionaries that they must support the colonial government on the basis of Rom 13. It is ironical that these same missionaries taught their converts that they must reject the traditional African governing authorities on the grounds that they were pagan-this despite the fact that when Paul wrote the governing authorities to which he referred were those of pagan Rome.

At the same time there were two important flaws in these achievements:

1. Industrialisation was heavily dependent on foreign investment. The law was changed more than once at the urging of large foreign companies in order to give them favoured treatment. This might not have been a bad thing if similar incentives were given to Kenyan investment but this was not done.
2. In healing divisions he failed to give due recognition to those who had risked their lives and often sustained injuries in their fight for independence. These people helped him to gain the power he had yet he turned his back on them. This can only be regard as a glaring injustice in his rule.

Kenyatta was a charismatic figure but also an autocratic President, intolerant of criticism and maintaining a tight hold on power. Not content with his already wide powers, in 1967 he had the Constitution amended to further widen his powers as President making himself almost certainly the most powerful President of any elected government in the world. In 1969, when Jaramogi Oginga Odinga formed the Kenya People’s Union as he was fully entitled to do under the constitution.

The ruthless nature of his rule was shown in practice by two intertwined events in 1969:

1. The assassination of Tom Mboya, a Cabinet Minister, gunned down on Moi Avenue, Nairobi. Mboya’s abilities and charismatic presentation undoubtedly made him a potential threat to Kenyatta. The man who pulled the trigger, and who was convicted and hanged, Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge asked the police after his arrest: ”Why don’t you go after the big man?”. Since there was never any inquiry held (which in itself is strange in the case of the assassination of such a high proflle cabinet minister) no-one can say with certainty that Kenyatta had some involvement. However, among the Kenyan people there was a widespread perception that he was. There was a mass demostration against Kenyatta when he attended Mboya’s funeral. And a short time later when Kenyatta, at the invitation of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, opened the Nyanza General Hospital, there was again a mass protest in which 10 people died when Kenyatta’s security detail fired into the crow
2. On the basis of major policy differences, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga shortly before the assassination of Mboya and the following mass protests, had quit KANU and established a new political party, the Kenya People’s Union (KPU). This was done entirely within the law and constitution which allowed for multiple parties. Two days after the Nyanza protest Oginga and his colleagues in the leadership of KPU were arrested and detained and KPU was banned by Presidential decree. The detainees were eventually released but the ban on the party stayed. In doing so Kenyatta made it clear that, under his rule, Kenya would be a de facto one party state regardless of the constitution.

There were several other prominent political figures who died in suspicious circumstances at that time including Pio Gama Pinto,  J.M. Kariuki,  C.M.G. Argwings-Kodhek and Ronald Ngala. In the case of Argwings-Kodhek it was officially treated at the time as a car accident. However, subsequent investigations initiated by his family provided substantial evidence is that he died by a bullet with substantial evidence that the bullet was fired by a member of the Vide-Presidential security detail.

Finally, in relation to the Kenyatta years, it was characterised by a clear and increasing Gikuyu bias. Kenyatta was the one that allocated large tracts of land in the Rift Valley to Gikuyu (one of the issues in the 2007 election riots) surrounded himself with Gikuyu in every important position and fostered a culture of corruption that enriched prominent Gikuyu figures who held public office. He appropriated for himself the largest tract of land held by one person in Kenya and it is suggested that the combined Kenyatta family land holding is equal to the size of Nyanza.

Rather than uniting all Kenyans as one people, regardless of ethnicity, it was Kenyatta who sowed the seeds of ethnic division and conflict which are now bearing fruit. Moi, as Vice-Presdent was the token figure appointed to give some semblance of ethic inclusion to the administration. But Moi was appointed because he was seen as no threat, and also had no power. In the final decade of his rule Kenyatta was very sick and left matters of state to his trusted Gikuyu elite-Moi was a figurehead. In fact, it was not unusual for Gikuyu in the security forces to stop the Vice-Presidential car in which Moi was travelling in order to search it, or to have him wait at the gates of State House before getting a clearance to enter.

In any case, the Gikuyu elite felt secure in their power because they had a well developed plan to kill Moi as soon as Kenyatta died so that Moi would not become President as the constitution provided if a President died in office. That failed, because Kenyatta was in Mombasa when he died and all the plans assumed he would be in State House.

The present generation focus a lot of attention on the Moi years, But I knew Kenya first in the Kenyatta years, and Joy once was “honoured” with a seat on the official platform at a rally at which Kenyatta was the speaker. Nothing was more repressive than the Kenyatta years. When the President was travelling on the highway, all traffic was stopped at least two hours before he was due. Criticism of his rule was not tolerated.

In those years, as well as the early Moi years, while I taught courses on social issues it would have jeapodised the lives of my students and the existence Scott if I had encouraged any critical analysis of Kenyan politics. I can still recall the open fear in the eyes of a NEGST lecturer when he learned that I had in my position a clandestine copy of a banned journal critical of the Kenyan President. As it was I had no difficulty taking it out of the country in my luggage, though if I was a Kenyan found in possession of it the story may well have been different.

I am not an apologist for Moi, but he did regularise Kenyatta’s de facto one party state by changing the constitution to make it a de jure one party state. Probably this was because of concern that he needed to defend his position as President from the powerful Gikuyu clique who effectively exercised the powers of government in the later Kenyatta years. The 1982 coup and subsequent revelations would have confirmed that he was right in such a concern.

Moi did also allow open criticism of his rule in his later years. Some of this may have been due to the influence of Dr Titus Kivunzi in his term of AIC Bishop. I know that he was unique in that role. He refused to ask Moi for favours (though he could well have used more money) because, as he said to me: “I cannot be a faithful pastor to him if I am taking favours from him”. Kivunzi, has no understanding of politics but I believe it likely that he did influence Moi to make some changes in the direction of freedom and inclusion on moral grounds.

The reason I have written in so much detail is that it is my conviction that the only effective measure to get rid of the corruption and ethnic rivalry in Kenya’s government is by a radical constitutional overhaul. The problem is that those in power would have to authorise such an overhaul and I cannot see them letting go of the power they now have. As for outside intervention, I know of no country in history that has become a viable democracy by the intervention of another country. Those who think that the US will intervene constructively are whistling in the dark. The US needs Kenya as an ally at this point of time, and for some time to come.

I do not think there is any short term solution to Kenya’s governance problems. The problems, rooted as they are in the Kenyatta years, are too deeply rooted. My Facebook interactions encourage me by seeing the beginnings of a grassroots movement in that direction. In the end, however, I think real change will come only by a peaceful revolution. By this I mean a popular outcry that is so loud and widespread that politicians dare not ignore it. To achieve this I believe there is a need for some non-political, multi-ethic grouping to become active in making Kenyans at the grassroots aware of the possibilities for Kenya to become a model democracy; a country where both petty corruption and mega-corruption is minimised and not a daily reality, and where the voice of the people is truly heard by those who govern. (Every government has within it a measure of corruption, but it can and should be contained)

Such a strategy will require courage and perseverance but what is at stake requires this, or something like it. Even the shots that are now being fired, while praiseworthy, remain like throwing pebbles against the stone wall of a fortress.

Hope this is some use. It is the best I can do, and I will be happy if someone can come up with a better idea. But it MUST be realistic; a vision and not a mere dream.

Greetings from us both

Prof Stuart Fowler lecturers at Faculty of Management and Commerce in the University of Fort Hare in South Africa

Quote of the Day

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology.

The issue, the, is not, do we want to have a theology?

That’s given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology?

- R.C. Sproul