Fall of Iron Curtain set stage for radical changes in Africa

By Juma Kwayera

Twenty years ago, the political situation in the country was heavy with expectation. What has come to be known as the Second Liberation was building momentum and reactionary forces in the only political party, Kanu, were loosening their grip on the instruments of power.

The historical moment coincided with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the political divide between the capitalist West Germany and the communist East Germany, with the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as their ideological Meccas.

The end of the Cold War necessitated realignment.

The rivalry of superpowers created satellite states in Africa. Former Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi says it was inevitable that when the Berlin Wall collapsed it triggered a spontaneous reaction that heralded the dawn of a new world order.

Dr Kituyi, who had brushes with Kenyatta and Moi administrations for his political activities as a university student and a member of the Forum for Restoration of Democracy (Ford), recalls the poisoned political atmosphere of the time as a product of competing ideologies that left little room for democracy and human rights.

fall of dictatorship

"The collapse of the Berlin Wall was transformative. We saw a shift in relationship between the West and the East, which culminated in the fall of dictatorships in Africa," says Kituyi, a political scientist and an active participant in the Second Liberation that ushered in multiparty democracy in 1992.

"Dictators were forced to embrace democracy. Regimes such as Mobutu Seseko’s in Zaire (now DRC) and Kenneth Kaunda’s in Zambia lost favour with donors. They insisted on the rule of law, human rights, good governance, transparency and political tolerance," says Kituyi.

The coming down of the Iron Curtain, Berlin Wall, tolled for the end of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that were averse to democracy.

Western aid

The era was heralded by the disintegration of USSR’s minion states into multiple autonomous units whose political structures were at variance with their communist past.

Locally, multiparty democracy created room for the independent media. Until that time, state-controlled Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (known as Voice of Kenya) was the only source of information. Diversity came with the new world order following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was a major departure from apparatchiks (conservatism), which prescribed total control on politics, economy and information.

By reviewing the mistakes his predecessors had committed, Gorbachev succeeded in securing the backing of the Soviet people in favour perestroika (free market or market economy) as practised in the West.

"The momentum for reforms in Kenya gathered when the West tied disbursement of aid to political and economic reforms," says Kituyi.

The economic reforms triggered by Berlin Wall collapse were the form of structural adjustment programmes that saw donors scaling down on development aid.

Disbursement of aid was contingent on divesture from enterprises it had total control over. Freeing the economy from state control hastened reforms in Africa, where governments maintained a leash on pricing of goods and services.

"The collapse of the Berlin wall was a dramatic implosion of communism as the bulwark that protected African dictators and elsewhere in developing countries. It necessitated a shift in the way the West engaged with developing countries," says Kituyi.

New dispensation

"At the time of the collapse, West Germany was the largest economy in Europe. This contrasted with the countries that were allied to the East, which were poor. The removal of the ideological barriers affected adversely the flow of foreign direct investments to Africa," says Kituyi.

To Kenyatta University History Lecturer Eric Masinde Aseka, the political and economic reforms precipitated by end of the Cold War were monumental in their spill over effect to Kenya.

"It set of a chain reaction that resulted in drastic political changes. It broke the barriers that had prevented people to intermingle across ideological lines. Hitherto, single-party states were forced to embrace democracy," Prof Aseka said.

With the political landscape dramatically changed and a new political dispensation beckoning, a break from apparatchik to glasnost to perestroika was in the offing.

Before the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Raila Odinga, Martin Shikuku, James Orengo, Anyang Nyong’o, Mwandawiro Mghanga, Koigi Wamwere and Wanyiri Kihoro, among many others had served terms in detention pushing for an alternative governance platform.

African leaders, averse to good governance and the protection of human rights traded off the US for USSR or vice versa, making it difficult to entrench democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights, say Aseka, a one time Kanu think-tank.