Kenya Needs a Mirror

The following article originally appeared in The Star.

Dear Santa:

This December I am asking you to send Kenya a mirror. I am requesting a big, crystal-clear mirror that will enable the country to see its own reflection: to visualize who we really are in order that we may understand what we are about and where we want to go to.

Let me be clear that I do not normally believe in childhood fantasy figures but there are scant avenues to turn to at the moment. On December 15, 2010, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Louis Moreno Ocampo, named six individuals whom he considered to be the most responsible for the 2007 post-election violence that almost eviscerated Kenya. This announcement has shaken this nation to its very foundations: leading us to bare our nakedness and behave in a manner that one hopes the mirror you deliver will clearly and manifestly reflect. What one sees when Kenya is naked is alarming.

For there is no Kenya except by name: there are just several tribes cobbled to live uncomfortably together without any feeling, empathy, respect or affection for each other. How else does one explain, for example, that to the Kikuyu elite only Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta is innocent and must at all costs be exonerated, and to the Kalenjin MPs only former minister for higher education William Ruto is similarly innocent? How else does one explain the Njuri Ncheke saying it will invoke a traditional ritual to protect Head of Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura? I know, Santa, that you are not Kenyan but what is being witnessed is a retreat to the one identity that “Kenyans” belong to: their tribes. And this is sad because barely 100 days ago, “Kenya” promulgated a new constitution.

If “Kenya” really functioned, one would have expected voices to be constantly raised instead for justice for those victims of the post-election violence who were shot, hacked or stoned to death; raped, brutalized, injured, maimed; or the hundreds of thousands who were displaced. If Kenya had a soul, these are the people Kenyan MPs should be fundraising for; did they not lose everything in that cataclysmic moment in the nation’s history? What we hear instead is that the poor and destitute—including those who lost everything in the post-election violence—will be asked to contribute funds to pay legal representation for some of the most affluent citizens in Kenya. Do you, dear Santa, not see the cruel irony of the poor being asked to foot the bills of the fabulously rich?

The mirror you deliver will also expose the fact that in Kenya we do not have leaders but, rather, political entrepreneurs.  A leader who understands the dire straits in which this country was after the 2007 elections would not so much worry about the persons who will be on the presidential ticket in 2012. Rather they would ponder that the shenanigans of 2007 never recur.  Yet, all political talk has centered on the political ambitions of certain individuals like these ambitions are bigger than Kenya. This is political entrepreneurship. It has gone so far that what is being sought now is an avenue to exit from the ambit of the International Criminal Court! When leadership failed in December 2007, it was the international community that bailed Kenya out. Now, with a little—and oft bumpy—stability we want to thumb our noses at the very same international community. Is it a wonder that U.S. Ambassador Michael Rannerberger informed his bosses at State Department that there is no reformist leadership in Kenya?

Your gift of a sparkling new mirror will also show that in Kenya it is credible institutions that are perennially under attack. If an institution does its work, it is immediately cut down or intimidated. The political class has issued the threat to disband the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights now that it is accused of having concocted evidence and bribed witnesses on the post-election violence. It is no matter that the people who have made these accusations have not been proved to be credible: in fact, quite the contrary. Now, if we were to talk about institutional failure—where would one place the police force and office of the Attorney General given the fact that Ocampo has, in the time he has been allowed to work on Kenya, established two cases against six prominent individuals? Who is more deserving of ire and censure, Ocampo or Kenya’s Attorney General, Amos Shitswila Wako; the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights or the police?

What is more, the political class is now talking of creating a special tribunal to look into post-election violence. There is also the announcement that the reforms of the judiciary and police force are going to be speeded up. The timing of these announcements is what is telling: they are clearly meant to negate or defeat the indictments that Ocampo has applied for. There is no intention of seeking justice for the victims of the post-election violence; these institutions are not meant to investigate and prosecute those who were mid-to-low level perpetrators of the post-election violence.  Rather, they are required to be in place as evidence that something is finally being done in Kenya to bring the messy house in order. All for showmanship, all for demonstration: in short, we are not only seeking to destroy the few institutions that can stand up for what is right but are also simultaneously attempting to create new institutions to solely defend and protect the prominent amongst us: so much for the rule of law. One thing is for certain: despite the new constitution, Kenya will neither achieve a new constitutional order nor Vision 2030 in this manner.

And so dear Santa: please send Kenya a mirror that we may eternally see ourselves in inglorious nakedness.