Even as Kenya moves forward from the political violence that set the country alight at the beginning of the year after the fiercely contested netional elections, there are still hundreds of people who were displaced as a result of the violence living in camps around Nairobi. Chaos that takes just days or weeks to flare and abate can take months and years to overcome.
How does a country reconcile itself after horrific paroxysms of violence? Numerous countries have had to deal with precisely this dilemma. South Africa, through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), did so most famously and most extensively. And the TRC process has served as a model, an inspiration, and as a template for several other countries that have followed with processes of their own to reconcile the past with the present and with a hoped-for future, though the process was also fraught with imperfections and faced sometimes intense criticism from across the political spectrum.
Zimbabwe will almost surely have to go through a comparable process, whether in a matter of weeks and months or years. And today Kenya is trying to deal with its relatively brief but still nightmarish political violence of a few months ago. President Mwai Kibaki has declared categorically that his coalition government will not provide blanket amnesty for the perpetrators of post-election violence, once again putting him at odds with his erstwhile rival and uncomfortable supposed government coalition partner Raila Odinga. Kenya’s violence did not endure like that in most of the countries that have gone through formal reconciliation processes, but the chaos that exploded nationwide nonetheless reveals fissures in Kenyan society that runs deeper than the mere electoral divide that provided the proximate causes of violence. At some point Kenya is going to have to address those divisions in something other than a patchwork manner.
Kenya’s Standard reports on how environmental issues, high-level politics and ethnic concerns are merging to create another potential flashpoint in that country’s tenuous recovery process. The Mau Forest involves a complex interplay of tensions related to conservation and the country’s (indeed the region’s) environmental health, the prospects for putatively ethnic clashes over land, and tensions between local control and national governmental power.
One issue you never thought about, and neither did I, is the fact that after the post-election violence in Kenya there are a lot of new weapons. I wish I had something more clever to say than: How very frustrating.
Yet anything more clever would involve gun control policies that would seem uniliateral, or punishment policies that would seem draconian, or political policies that would seem fatuous.
Writing about Africa isn’t always fun.
There is lots of news and not much time for analysis, so enjoy these links on a range of issues:
At Pambazuka News Chido Makunike looks at the Complexities of Zimbabwe with special emphasis on the various political participants and their needs and desires. A little less elegantly — which is not to say any less accuratel — Binyavanga Wainaina at the Mail & Guardian compares Robert Mugabe to a haemorrhoid, arguing, “He is not Aids, cancer, leukemia or malaria — those things that can kill you.” While Wainaina’s larger argument stands, the fact remains that Mugabe can, of course, “kill you,” especially if you are the opposition. One assumes that the coming weeks, and possibly months, will not be without their Mugabe-backed killings.
IRIN reveals how Botswana has shut down cross-border fuel sales to Zimbabwe and also has a story on how Amnesty International’s report on human rights abuses in Somalia barely “scratch the surface.” the latter story might provide another example of how Zimbabwe’s neighbors are, however belatedly, increasingly fed up with Mugabe’s regime. Meanwhile the Somali government, or what amounts to the Somali government, predictably denies the report even as most civil society groups argue that the report is insufficient in revealing the true extent of the Somali crisis. My money is on the civil society groups being correct.
In Kenya many refugees are afraid to return home, fearing that violence may resume. Cautious optimism aside, for those who were caught up in the post-election maelstrom the healing process will almost inevitably be slow and may never be complete.
Finally, in this grab-bag of not-so-cheery news, it appears that more than a third of anti-malarial drugs tested in six cities across sub-Saharan Africa failed quality tests. Malaria does not draw the attention that AIDS (rightly) gets in Africa, and yet it is every bit as pervasive and deadly.
Is Kenya starting to heal? Thousands of Kenyans displaced by the post-election violence are beginning to return home, which is a sign that people are moderately confident that resuming their lives is safe, or at least safer than it was in the wake of the disputed election.
The Kenya situation embodies what may well prove to be an example of the sort of crises Africans may face in years to come: While devastating, the post-election chaos did not devolve into a permanent state of war. Perhaps this marks progress of a sort in the post-colonial era. One wonders if Zimbabwe might not experience the same throes after Mugabe goes (whenever that may be). Counter Kenya with, say, Somalia or the pretty much constant state of affairs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kenyan runner Robert Cheruiyot’s victory in Monday’s Boston Marathon may represent one of those moments when sport can serve to unite rather than divide. At least that is the hope among Kenyans, where the country’s world class distance runners are heroes to millions.
Kenya (more famously) and Nigeria have both been dealing with fraught internal negotiations regarding the inner workings of government. The stalemate over the composition of the cabinet (and thus the dynamics of power) continues in Kenya. Outside observers, including the British, have advised that Mwai Kibaki’s side be willing to give up some seats in order to bring about peace. Not surprisingly, Kibaki’s people don’t seem enamored of the idea. For peace to prevail, someone is going to have to yield. Kibaki feels he ought not to be the one because he is the President. Odinga’s side argues, not without merit, that Kibaki’s victory was illegitimate and that Kibaki ought to relent. Whether and how this stalemate is resolved will go a long way in determining Kenya’s future.
Meanwhile in Nigeria a similiarly contentious divide seems to have been closed. President Umaru Musa Yar-Adua and his opponents have come to an agreement over the budget crisis that has been hovering over the country. Nigeria’s status as a stable state continues to be tenuous. Suffice it to say that if that situation goes awry it has the potential to make the troubles in Kenya and Zimbabwe pale by comparison.
Unrest and fear of worse to come has again taken hold in Kenya as the country’s political stalemate has again spilled out into the streets. While some commentators have taken to dreaming of future hopes, such as Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, most Kenyans are caught up in the here and now. I wrote yesterday that:
In all likelihood the masses are not going to raise arms over an issue as relatively esoteric (from the vantage point of the average Kenyan, anyway) as the composition of the country’s cabinet unless someone stokes the fire of chaos.
I still fundamentally believe those words. But the reality is that one out of the tube, the toothpaste is tough to get back in. Kenya’s leaders cannot allow this stalemate to continue indefinitely without thrusting the country back into chaos, or, to be more accurate, without thrusting chaos back onto the country.
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