Kenya’s Corrupt Elite Under Threat, Reports Guardian journalist Xan Rice
Dec 3rd, 2009 by Mars Group Kenya
Kenya’s Corrupt Elite Under Threat, Reports Guardian journalist Xan Rice
Wednesday December 2nd 2009
In his Kenya diary, Guardian journalist Xan Rice reports on how a decision by the prosecutor of the international criminal court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to investigate the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya threatens the corrupt elite
Disputed poll...violence after the presidential election of 2008. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
When someone complains about the state of Kenya today, human rights lawyer Pheroze Nowrojee breaks into a mischievous smile and tells a story from the 90s. President Daniel arap Moi was backing out of promises to review the constitution, and Nowrojee had gone to complain to Mwai Kibaki, then the most senior opposition figure. Kibaki listened and shrugged. “Kenya yetu,” Kibaki said – “Our Kenya”.
This was meant to suggest this was just the ways things were, so why waste time getting angry about it? But coming from a politician it meant, for the ruling elite, the country has always been theirs for the taking. And aided by a weak, complicit judiciary that has since independence virtually guaranteed senior politicians immunity from conviction, they have taken a lot.
Those at the very top of the political pile usually took the most. The family of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, stole so much land they made the original white British settlers look like petty thieves by comparison. Succeeding Kenyatta, Moi grabbed land too, but did more damage by stealing epic sums of government money through bribery and graft schemes. He also helped take lives by inciting ethnic clashes in the Rift Valley over successive elections in 1992 and 1997.
But now the days of Our Kenya may be under threat. The person threatening to cut through the bonds of impunity is not Kibaki – who broke his promise to do just that by condoning massive corruption by his ministers after taking over from Moi in 2002. Rather it is an Argentinian lawyer who first earned fame by helping send senior members of his country’s military junta to jail.
Last week Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), requested the court’s pre-trial chamber to allow him to investigate the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya. At least 1,133 people were killed – either by police or members of other ethnic groups – after Kibaki dubiously triumphed over his presidential rival and current prime minister, Raila Odinga.
Ocampo’s decision to pursue the case has received overwhelming support from the Kenyan public – and sent shock waves through the government.
If the ICC judges give the go-ahead, Ocampo will focus on three or four cases, likely to include top members of both Kibaki’s and Odinga’s parties who are alleged to have organised ethnic killings.
Ocampo has insisted that “impunity is not an option” if loss of life in subsequent Kenyan elections is to be avoided, and that the country will serve as a “world example on managing violence”.
How the case came to Ocampo is illustrative of how Our Kenya works. After former UN secretary general Kofi Annan persuaded Kibaki and Odinga to come together to form a coalition government – and end the violence – they agreed to form a commission of inquiry into the post-election chaos. It was headed by a Kenyan judge, Philip Waki, who concluded that a special local tribunal, incorporating some foreign judges, should be set up to try those most responsible for the chaos, including senior politicians. As happened with virtually every other commission established to look into some sort of high-level malfeasance in Kenya, the report’s findings and recommendations were largely ignored.
But Waki was smart. In his report, he said that if no local tribunal was established he would forward the names of the main suspects via Annan to the ICC, which he duly did in July.
Cue the panic among senior government officials. The Kenya National Commission of Human Rights (KNCHR) had publicly already named several cabinet ministers for alleged involvement in the 2008 violence. One of them was Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Jomo, and the current finance minister and deputy prime minister, who was accused of supporting Kikuyu militias.
Another was William Ruto, the agriculture minister, who was alleged to have incited Kalenjin gangs. Both strongly deny any wrongdoing. Kenyatta had already taken the KNCHR to court to try to clear his name. Ruto subsequently announced in November that he was also pursuing legal action against the KNCHR.
The two men, who both have strong presidential aspirations and are extremely wealthy, then came together to form an alliance.
From outside the move may have seemed positive – leaders from the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities leading the way on reconciliation. But the alliance appears to be purely political, meant to guarantee that one of the two is Kenya’s next leader, continuing the Kikuyu-Kanlenjin hold on power (Kenyatta was Kikuyu, Moi is Kalenjin, Kibaki is Kikuyu), to the exclusion of Kenya’s 40 other ethnic groups. Solidarity in case they appear in Ocampo’s sights is likely to be another motivation.
“Our Kenya” is under threat, but it is not done
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1366&catID=17
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