From coups and poll clashes to Covid-19: The crises that shaped Kenya

 

Chaotic scenes during the 2007-2008 post-election violence. [File, Standard]

The coronavirus has come to spoil the party for President Uhuru Kenyatta, if he ever thought he was on a roller coaster. After slowing down his nemesis Raila Odinga with the March 9, 2018 handshake, it looked like things were on the roll for Uhuru, barring miscellaneous anxiety from his deputy William Ruto’s Tangatanga corner. 

Until the outbreak of the dreaded pandemic, the President had ridden the mercurial political tide rather well. Taking on an easy self-assured mien most of the time, he took little notice of detractors within his own Jubilee Party. He gave the impression of a relaxed leader in control of his environment and circumstances. When he wanted important things done, he would point the way forward and detail his faithful lieutenants to do the spadework. 

Accordingly, ahead of Covid-19, Uhuru had Parliament and the political Opposition safely under lock and key. There was nothing the President could not get done in Parliament or outside, despite the discordant, but neutered Tangatanga voices. All legislation went his way. Where he did not like a Bill before him for signature, he returned it to Parliament to be tweaked his way. 

The Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) tamed ODM and placed its leaders on a short leash in the President’s own corner. He could ignore Ruto and his lieutenants. But, occasionally, he read them the riot act. Whenever necessary, he would unleash his dogs of war to snarl and bay at them. Life was just good. His second and last term looked like an assured roller coaster affair, with some of his acolytes — like Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli and leading Jubilee political gadfly David Murathe — openly suggesting that the President should not even think of retiring in 2022.

The corona headache

Then coronavirus happened, and things have never been the same. The country is in a bad place. The President, like his counterparts all over the world, is now riding an unpredictable tiger. The cases of Covid-19 infection are rising by the day despite a partial lockdown. There is no clear indication of how they could be arrested, beyond asking people to avoid each other. Moreover, the effects of the partial lockdown on the economy and social life are bad. The business environment is unstable, and tax collection uncertain. With three coastal counties and Nairobi cut off from the rest of the country, commerce and industry are ailing. 

The jobless ranks are swollen and seem set to worsen, as broke employers can ill afford their preexisting payrolls. Institutions of learning are in lockdown, with national examinations hanging in the balance. Nothing looks clear anymore.

The government’s definitive strategic objective is not known. Not even the strategic thrust seems clear – possibly even to the President himself. Like other global leaders, Uhuru’s government talks of “defeating coronavirus.” But what does this mean? Nobody has defined “defeating coronavirus.” Does it mean having zero positive cases, or is it bringing the contagion to some manageable levels, which the country could live with? What are those levels? The expression in vogue is “flattening the curve.” But what exactly does this mean in the Kenyan context? 

There are far too many unanswered questions. What will be the sign that Kenya has now defeated the virus? And after the defeat, how will the country find its feet again? What will happen with national examinations? What about the national economy; how will it be restored? And will the BBI project go on? If it does not, how does the President manage his former hostile competitors and now partners in the BBI?

Uhuru’s tough math

Amidst all this, how does Uhuru plan to manage the transition from his reign to the next one? How does he tame the caustic politics that are tearing apart his own party, Jubilee, in this difficult season? How does he steer the ship of State away from the treacherous waters of negative ethnicity? Will he hand over a stable country to the next ruler? These and many more related questions constitute the crisis that confront the President today.

They are set to travel with him for quite some distance. But Uhuru is not alone. He is on a well-travelled road, and in good global company, too. Whether you look for power, or power is thrust upon you, you will soon discover that it is not a bed or roses.

Theodore H White, an American journalist and historian, said of his friend and confidant, President John F Kennedy, soon after the latter took the oath of office in 1961: “Exactly what he did want to do with power was not clear immediately – either to the public or to him.”

JFK, however, enjoyed the fact that he was in power, at least initially. White, an obvious admirer of the President, said further: “His relish of the power was so apparent that one is tempted to think he used the spectacle to amuse and entertain the suspicious and adoring alike.” The honeymoon, however, soon ends and the big challenges begin. The challenges define the leader and the tenure.

Kenya’s four presidents have each had a blending of looking for greatness and greatness being thrust upon them. In the same vein, they have had to reckon with character-defining challenges of local and global nature.

Jomo Kenyatta was a front-runner, right from his years in the United Kingdom and later after detention in Kapenguria. James Gichuru, the official political leader during Kenyatta’s absences, would twice step down for him to lead. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga refused to take power in a soon-to-be independent Kenya, explaining the person to take the colony to independence was Kenyatta. Whether they thrust power upon Mzee Kenyatta, or he stepped into office because he was already powerful, the fanfare of power soon gave way to trying moments.  

Kenya’s new leader would find himself having to employ the iron fist. The Cold War on the international circuit found its way into the heart of the Kenyatta government.

It generated caustic ideological conflicts and dramas that split his own Kanu party right in the middle. Radical formations around the Vice President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, wanted to slant the country towards socialism and communism. Conservatives around Tom Mboya, Charles Njonjo and Kenyatta himself embraced capitalism.

Jomo’s trying moments

The ideological conflicts in the Kenyatta government were heightened by suspicions and machinations around his succession.

From the very outset, even his most loyal friends thought that Kenya’s founding President would not live long. They schemed and jostled to succeed him. The intrigues around power would lead to a military mutiny in 1964, a coup plot in 1971 and to assassinations of Pio Gama Pinto, Tom Mboya and JM Kariuki, respectively in the years 1965 to 1975. The mutiny and coup schemes were swiftly stymied. The assassinations, however, shook the Kenyatta government and the country quite significantly. 

The government’s response to public disquiet brought out the character of the President as a leader not averse to draconian methods. In the wake of the Mboya assassination, he banned the opposition KPU party and detained its leaders. This followed a public altercation with Odinga and a shootout in Kisumu in October 1969.

Eleven people – including children – were killed. The JM murder led to a purge in government. Independent thinkers, like Masinde Muliro and Peter Kibisu, were sacked.

Kibisu was later jailed on spurious grounds, as was Nakuru Town MP Mark Mwithaga. Kenyatta’s government had numerous ugly run-ins with University of Nairobi students, who protested the extremes of some of his interventions. 

President Moi inherited from Kenyatta the culture of detention without trial during political crises. Once again the ideological divide, between the Western Capitalists and Eastern communists, provided the springboard. Independent minded leaders and academicians were called out, as the enemies of the State. They would be dealt with deftly through the detention avenue. Others would be jailed through rushed one-evening hearings.

Coup attempt against Moi

Mercifully for President Moi, he had the support of the West at this time. Western leaders easily turned a blind eye, provided that their interests in the country were safe. The most critical concern for Western regimes remained the ideological slant and their strategic military and commercial interests in the country and the region. The lowest moment for the Moi regime was August 1, 1982, when elements of the military attempted to take over power through the barrel of the gun. Moi survived the coup attempt, but now ruled with suspicion and an undisguised iron fist.

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe generated new crises for Moi. Suddenly, Western countries were demanding good governance in Kenya and elsewhere in the Third World. They tied foreign aid to transparent and accountable government. Human rights, previously ignored with impunity, were now a cardinal principal for donor money. Kenya went through very difficult patches with the World Bank Group and with other multilateral foreign donors. The economy teetered on the edges of collapse in the period 1990-1999. Progressive, although reluctant financial, legal and political reforms, however restored better relations.

Moi and Kenyatta governments faced serious food crises due to climatic extremes and poor planning for food security. They also had to reckon with the Shifta menace in the North Eastern, and with deteriorated relations in the East African Community. An ideologically angry Tanzania closed the border with Kenya. In Uganda, anarchy reigned under Presidents Milton Obote and Idi Amin, and a succession of others.

The East African Community collapsed in the hands of President Kenyatta in 1977. The fallout was left to Moi to sort out after the death of Kenyatta in 1978. Earlier, the Kilo famine ravaged the country in 1970 and 1971. Imported yellow maize saved the situation, under Mzee Kenyatta. Moi would experience the same several times, and especially in 1980 to 1981 and in 1984 to 1985.

The people charged with food security never quite learned to get it right. Put together with a heavy dose of corruption and selfish interests in the corridors of power, food would remain a crisis for government, right across each of the four regimes in Kenya since independence. 

Cholera epidemic

The Kenyatta regime also wrestled with the cholera epidemic of 1971 and 1972 in several parts of the country. Cholera would strike again and repeatedly in Kisumu, across the Kenyatta and Moi regimes. The two regimes also contended with global energy crises and recession. In spite of this, the country made significant development across a wide range of sectors. The first 16 years of independence saw advancement in textile industries, motor vehicle assembly and in transport and communication.

Mombasa was on the growth path, and opening up the rest of the country and the region. Indeed, international maritime authorities ranked the port of Mombasa as the most efficient between the Middle East and South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Road construction went on in diverse parts of the country, with aid from Japan and the World Bank. Hydroelectric and geothermal plants were set up as a response to the oil shocks of the 1970s and early 1980s. The Kisumu molasses project was launched in the same era. It never got to maturity, however, mainly as a factor of corrupt conflict of interest. 

Agriculture stabilised under Kenyatta and for a while boomed under Moi, to become the backbone of the national economy. Coffee became the king of cash crops. Pyrethrum went through a boom season before bursting. Tea production expanded to just under 100,000 tonnes per annum. Sugar production in the Lake Basin grew apace, placing money into many local pockets. About 100,000 smallholders in Nyanza and Western produced about half of the country’s cotton, which fed the growing textile industry. Elsewhere, tourism also boomed, with Kenya becoming the place to go.

Kibaki’s short honeymoon

The post-Cold War democratisation process, donor fatigue and poor governance, however, turned the fortunes of all of these sectors for the worse. President Mwai Kibaki would take over an economically ailing nation in 2002, rejected and abandoned by the international community.

Economic stimulation became his foremost focus. How do we grow the economy? This was Kibaki’s main focus. President Kibaki had an initial honeymoon with Western donors, who funded reconstruction of old roads and construction of many new ones. He instituted several economic stimuli packages that would leave the economy growing at the rate of about 6 per cent per annum, at his retirement in 2013. 

Yet, Kibaki’s biggest challenge was in democratisation. A president who arrived in power flying on the wings of democratic slogans went on to stifle democracy.

First was the exclusivist nature of opening up participation in economic opportunities. Kibaki did poorly in the inclusion of Kenyans in opportunities offered by his government. In appointments and in award of State-based business and growth opportunities, his home region of Central Kenya dominated everything, almost exclusively. 

Towards the end of President Kibaki’s first tenure, the rest of the country outside Central Kenya was openly voicing concern over exclusion. The louder the complaints became, the more Kibaki dug in. In the end, ethnicity became the central campaign issue in the 2007 general and presidential elections in which the incumbent faced off with ODM’s Raila Odinga. The country was palpably badly polarised, with the emergence of such toxic campaign slogans as “Forty-one tribes against one.”

Negative ethnicity and abuse of democracy gave Kibaki his biggest crisis, in the name of the post-election violence of 2008. About 1,300 Kenyans were killed.

2007-2008 poll mayhem

Subsequent reports by various authorities, such as the Waki Commission Report, Truth Justice and Reconciliation Report and the report of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission tell of arson, forced migrations, cold-blooded murder and rape. The country found itself before the International Criminal Court (ICC), with prominent politicians and other leaders answering to the charge of crimes against humanity. 

Kenya survived the crises, but to be ruled by a grand government of national unity in which Raila was named Prime Minister, and to place the ICC behind it – at least for the time being. It gave itself a new constitution and fresh opportunities, mostly through devolution and independent State institutions.

A future government could still, however, open up the ICC cases against Uhuru and his deputy Ruto, as the closure of these cases was never definitive. For now, Uhuru is riding the new coronavirus tiger into an unknown future. He will need to work with very fine and reflective minds. He will also need to muster personal patience and exercise an acute sense of judgement to navigate the country through this uncertain period.