Not Yet Reconciliation in Kenya

Time Magazine has a rubric on the first page of the 14 January 2008 issue that disturbs me. It is about the tragic turmoil in Kenya. It says “Bloodshed in Kenya: tribal clashes follow a contested election”. One can see that this well researched magazine somehow had to accommodate the current US policy, which can only be seen as a wish to keep the incumbent, President Mwai Kibaki in place. To be fair, the rubric should rather have stated that the election had been stolen or rigged.

The international observers clearly reported that there had been a number of irregularities, so it was not a free and fair election.

Carl Niehaus, a well-known ANC member was asked to help the opposition in Kenya with their communication work in the election campaign. He writes in The Sunday Independent on 6 January about the time just after the elections when the ballot papers were counted. When the opposition leader Raila Odinga proved to be in a clear lead things started happening like power outages, direct interference in the counting, papers got lost etc. Niehaus seems to give a reliable report in his article. The election was simply stolen. What has not been clear to all is also the fact that the whole election campaign was a clear breakaway from ethnic or tribal allegiances. The opposition campaign in particular was, as it seems, incensed by the democratic freedom to join in behind a leader in whom people believed.

Realizing that the sitting president used his executive powers to steal the whole election naturally awoke the wrath of the people and things went over board. In all fairness so much should be conceded by the various parties in Kenya and worldwide.

If what I have stated here is correct I am bound to add the following. In the wake of the outburst of violence and killing when even people were burned to death in a church, international agencies, governmental as well as non-governmental rush in to mediate and reconcile so that the two leaders may achieve some kind of compromise and have the Kenyan society return to normality.

We here have to distinguish between two things. To calm down people so that killing and any kind of violation cease is one thing that is absolutely vital and necessary and people like the ecumenical world leader Samuel Kobia, himself a Kenyan who has contributed a lot towards democracy in his country, could play a special role.

Secondly we have here an election that went utterly wrong. How do you mediate between the leader who was president up to the election, Kibaki that is, and the opposition leader Odinga who seems to have won the election? In the liberation struggle in Kenya against the colonial powers people used to say “not yet uhuru (freedom)”. In Kenya today one would have to say “not yet reconciliation”. To talk about reconciliation here is both false and incorrect. It is as if you would be allowed to tamper with the truth to get peace and true freedom. What the Kenyan people are facing again is a situation where truth must be told and where justice must be seen. South Africans might remember that there was a time during apartheid when these things had to come first before you could even mention the nice word reconciliation.

Likewise in Kenya: only when the basic wrongs that were committed in connection with this flawed election have been acknowledged and confessed will there perhaps be an opening for that which is rightly called reconciliation, but not just yet.