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Why Kenya Imploded: The Solution
George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D.
The real tragedy of Kenya’s political turmoil is that the
country has traveled this road before -- in 1992 when a disputed
election plunged the country into violence. It seems it never
learned from that experience and continued to adhere to the same
pernicious script that has claimed several African countries --
Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote
d’Ivoire and Togo. Ethnicity or religion was not the underlying
cause of the conflagration. Somalia is ethnically homogenous;
yet, it imploded. Rather, unpopular politicians play one tribe
against others to maintain their deadly grip on power. Nor is
colonialism or artificial colonial borders the culprit.
Protestors and rebel leaders do not seek to redraw colonial
borders; they head straight to the capital city where power
lies. The real culprit in virtually all cases is the politics of
exclusion.
“Government” in most of Africa has been hijacked by a phalanx of
bandits and gangsters. State machinery is used to enrich self,
cronies, tribesmen and exclude everyone else – a quasi-apartheid
system. The richest in Africa are heads of state, ministers and
government officials.
• In Kenya where the government is described as the “Mount Kenya
mafia,” the income per capita is $463 a year while the base
compensation of legislators is about $81,000 a year, tax free,
plus a variety of allowances and perks, which can effectively
double their take-home pay.
• In Tanzania, ahead of President George Bush’s visit, the
entire Cabinet has been dissolved over a corruption scandal,
involving the award of $172.5 million contract to supply 100
megawatts of emergency power to a Texas based company that does
not exist. Even the anti-corruption czar, Dr Edward Hosea, is
implicated.
• Between 1970 and 2004, Nigeria raked in over $450 billion in
oil revenue. But according to former head of Nigeria’s Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission, the country’s rulers stole $412
billion of that oil revenue. Billions in oil revenue have also
gone missing in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.
Callous contempt for the poor is palpable in government circles:
“The poor are hard to lead. They should be arrested. This is the
way to develop,” said Uganda’s agriculture minister Kibirige
Ssebunya in 2004.
Discontent and resentment bubble but kept in check by
heavy-handed security forces and repressive laws. But elections
often blow the lid away. Africans may be poor and illiterate but
despite assertions by their leaders that poor people think of
their stomachs first, Africans take elections seriously -- very
seriously -- especially free, fair and transparent elections. In
fact, a careful study of Africa's recent political history
reveals the critical importance of the electoral process. The
destruction of an African country, regardless of the professed
ideology, ethnicity or religion of its leader, always begins
with electoral malfeasance.
Blockage of the democratic process or the refusal to hold
elections plunged Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia,
and Sudan into civil war. Hard-liner manipulation of the
electoral process destroyed Rwanda (1993), Sierra Leone (1992)
and Zaire (1996). Subversion of the electoral process in Liberia
(1985) eventually set off a civil war in 1989. The same type of
subversion instigated civil strife in Cameroon (1991), Congo
(1992), Kenya (1992), Togo (1992), Lesotho (1998), and Cote
d’Ivoire (2000). In Congo (Brazzaville), a dispute over the 1997
electoral framework flared into mayhem and civil war. Finally,
the military's annulment of electoral results by the military
started Algeria's civil war (1992) and plunged Nigeria into
political turmoil (1993). Watch Zimbabwe which holds elections
next month (March).
To end the political crisis in Kenya, the U.S. has called for
direct talks between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition
leader, Raila Odinga. But each has dug in their heels. Various
mediators, including President John Kufuor, Chairman of the
African Union, Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the
United Nations and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate, made
no headway. A “government of national unity” (GNU) has been
proposed in a power-sharing arrangement but GNU has never worked
anywhere in Africa where it was tried; not even in South Africa
after the dismantling of apartheid. Its failure often stems from
the dissatisfaction with the positions the parties get, which
invariably leads to resumption of hostilities. Fortunately, a
better solution exists.
After international and diplomatic pressure is brought to bear
on Ivory Coast, combatants are in Paris to negotiate and reach a
peace accord. But caution should be in order.
Peace accords are essentially a blueprint for joint plunder of
the state. A "government of national unity" (GNU) is often
proposed to "bring the rebels or opposition forces into the
government." A certain number of ministerial or government
positions are reserved for rebel or opposition leaders. Remember
Foday Sankoh got Minister of Lands and Mines at the 1999 Lome
Peace Accord? But nobody is satisfied with what they got at the
peace talks. Inevitably, resentment linger and incessant
squabbles erupt over which side got what -- squabbles which lead
to resumption of conflict again (Angola in 1992, Congo in 1999,
and Sierra Leone in 2000).
More than 30 such peace accords have been brokered in Africa
since the 1970s with abysmal success record. Only Mozambique's
1991 peace accord has endured, while shaky pacts hold in Chad,
Liberia, and Niger. Elsewhere, peace accords were shredded like
confetti even before the ink on them was dry, amid mutual
recriminations of cease-fire violations. The most spectacular
failures were: Angola (1991 Bicesse Accord, 1994 Lusaka Accord),
Burundi (1993 Arusha Accord), DR Congo (July 1999 Lusaka
Accord), Rwanda (1993 Arusha Accord) and Sierra Leone (1999 Lome
Accord). All collapsed because they adopted the Western approach
to conflict resolution.
The cornerstone of this approach, often foisted on Africa by
well-intentioned Western donors, is direct face-to-face
negotiation between warring factions. It works if factional
leaders want peace or must pay a price for the mayhem they cause
-- assumptions, which grotesquely confute reality. Fact is,
violence is “acceptable” to opposition leaders because it allows
their supporters to vent their frustrations and anger against a
government which has failed them, hoping that such government
can be overthrown.
The violence also gives the government an excuse ("national
security") to suspend development projects, provision of social
services and keep its defense budget secret, thereby shielding
padded contracts to cronies from scrutiny.
Africa's own indigenous conflict resolution mechanism provides a
better approach.
After a month of violence, it must be recognized that the crisis
in Kenya is beyond the capabilities of Mr. Kibaki and Odinga to
resolve. It has morphed into ethnic cleansing and, as such, it
is for all Kenyans to resolve -- not just Kibaki and Odinga. In
fact, if this were an African village and two recalcitrant
combatants refuse to make peace, BOTH of them would be expelled
from the village. Remember these African proverbs:
• When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt.
• When two people fight, the entire village is affected.
• It takes a village to raise a child. Therefore it must take a
village to resolve a crisis.
In this context, it would be useful to review how we resolved
crises in our own “African way.” When a crisis erupts in an
African village, the chief will convene a village meeting and
put the issue before the people. It would be debated until a
consensus was reached. Once reached, all in the village,
including the chief, were required to abide by it. Hence, the
term “sovereign consensus,” meaning nobody could flout the will
of the people. In recent years, this indigenous African
tradition has been revived by pro-democracy forces in the form
of "national conferences" to chart a new political future in
Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Congo, Malawi, Mali, South Africa,
and Zambia.
Benin's nine-day "national conference" began on 19 February
1990, with 488 delegates, representing various political,
religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad
spectrum of Beninois society. The conference, whose chairman was
Father Isidore de Souza, held "sovereign power" and its
decisions were binding on all, including the government. It
stripped President Matthieu Kerekou of power, scheduled
multiparty elections that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist
rule.
Congo's national conference had more delegates (1,500) and
lasted longer three months. But when it was over in June 1991,
the 12-year old government of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso had
been dismantled. The constitution was rewritten and the nation's
first free elections were scheduled for June 1992. Before the
conference, Congo was among Africa's most avowedly
Marxist-Leninist states. A Western business executive said, "The
remarkable thing is that the revolution occurred without a
single shot being fired . . . (and) if it can happen here, it
can happen anywhere" (The New York Times, 25 June 1991, A8).
South Africa used the same vehicle: the Convention for a
Democratic South Africa or CODESA. It began deliberations in
July 1991, with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political
parties and various anti-apartheid groups. The de Klerk
government made no effort to "control" the composition of CODESA.
Political parties were not excluded; not even ultra right-wing
political groups, although they chose to boycott its
deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a "working consensus" on
an interim constitution and set a date for the March 1994
elections. It established the composition of an interim or
transitional government that would rule until the elections were
held. More important, CODESA was "sovereign." Its decisions were
binding on the de Klerk government. De Klerk could not abrogate
any decision made by CODESA -- just as the African chief could
not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting. [In
2004, Afghanistan also revived an ancient tribal conclave (loya
jirga) to transition to democratic rule.]
Clearly, the sovereign national conference is the vehicle to
defuse political crises in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Togo, Uganda,
Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa. It is an “African solution to
an African problem.”
Related article:
Why Kenya
Imploded
__________________________
The writer, a Ghanaian, is the President of the Free Africa
Foundation
and a Distinguished Economist at American University, both in
Washington, DC. He is the author of Africa In Chaos and Africa
Unchained.
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