On The Eve of Uncertainty / by Cale Ettenberg

As I sit here on the eve of Kenya’s election, I feel it is an apt time to break my self-imposed silence to reach out to my long-suffering readers abroad.  Tomorrow, Kenyans go to the polls and it’s a pretty big deal.  Some of you might already be well aware of all that has happened in the last ten years that leads up to tomorrow, and some might have no idea that there are even elections happening.  In preparation for whatever might come tomorrow, I thought I would take an opportunity for a basic intro to Kenyan politics.

10 years ago, in 2007, Kenya held a contested election that erupted into violence.  When the dust settled, thousands of people had died (officially 1,200 people, but I have heard of numbers closer to 3,000 as well) and 600,000 people had been internally displaced.  Kenya contains 46 different tribes, and most voting ends up happening along these ethnic lines.  In 2007, the incumbent Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner, sparking massive protests of electoral fraud which were widely confirmed by international observers.  Protesters started killing Kikuyu’s, which was Kibaki’s tribe, including a particularly brutal episode involving the burning of a church filled with women and children.  This incited reprisals in the form of Kikuyu’s going after Luo’s, the tribe to which Kibaki’s challenger belongs. The violence intensified from there, pitting tribe against tribe in crime and murder, until Kofi Annan stepped in a month later to help broker an armistice.

The ethnic-induced violence of 2007 led the International Criminal Court to press charges on both Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, Kenya’s current President and Vice President respectively, for crimes against humanity.  These charges have since been dropped due to lack of evidence (and mysteriously disappearing witnesses) but it underscores the fragile nature of political peace here in Kenya.  The shocking violence of 2007 led to a subdued and sober election in 2013, where a nation still reeling from the effects of the previous election shied away from significant post-election aggression.   That 2013 election contained the same primary players of the tomorrow’s contest, Kenyatta Vs Odinga, and also involved accusations of electoral-rigging.  But with the trauma of 2007 fresh in people’s minds, and a recently re-invigorated judicial system, the challenger Raila Odinga turned to the courts for help.  In what ended up being a stunning blow to the faith the average Kenyan had placed in their new court, the Supreme Court took only 10 minutes to come back with one of the shortest judgments they have ever passed.  In a judgement whose impact is still felt today, the new court summarily dismissed Odinga’s claim of vote-rigging, cementing the Presidency for Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president.  Many would argue that the campaign for tomorrow’s election started then and there.

And yet, as 2016 turned into 2017, all indications were that this election would be peaceful and that a return to the post-election violence of the past would be highly unlikely.  Despite the high tensions between the ruling Jubilee coalition and the challenging National Super Alliance (or NASA), shocking memories of the 2007 elections still held significant sway in the minds of most Kenyans.  Then, about five weeks ago, a series of seemingly coincidental events sparked a change to the mood of the country.

First we had the unexpected death of the minister of Internal Security, of “natural causes”.  This emboldened members of Al-Shabaab, who decided that an appropriate response would be the beheading of nine people in Lamu County.  Then the IEBC (Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission – the organization tasked with ensuring a fair election) had an injunction filed against them which could have postponed the election.  The NASA opposition party claimed that the tender to print the ballots for the election was not on the up-and-up, and that therefore the bid had to be redone.  This would have resulted in a postponement of the elections, and so it was clearly a huge deal.  The court originally sided with NASA, but then it was thrown out on appeal, inflaming emotions on both sides.  Meanwhile, tensions continued to increase in Nairobi and contested areas, as Jubilee and NASA supporters continued to clash in ever-more heated confrontations.  Add to this volatile mix a hospitalization of Raila Odinga, the head of NASA and the challenger for the presidency, the collapse of a brand new bridge, and a narrowing of Jubilee’s lead over NASA.   All of these events have contributed to a quickening of the collective heart of the country, making a contested election much less of a hypothetical situation.  Despite all this, people still thought the chances of violence to be low.

Then, a mere 9 days before Kenyans go to the polls, the country received a stark reminder of how high the stakes actually are.  Chris Msando, head of IT for the IEBC and the man in charge of ensuring that Kenya’s new electronic voting system was functional and free of interference, was kidnapped and brutally murdered.  Despite many threats in the preceding weeks, Msando had repeatedly spoken publicly about ensuring a fair and transparent election.  Eleven days before the elections, he went missing.  Two days later, police found his body on the side of the road in Nairobi, clearly the victim of both torture and murder.  No suspects have been named thus far, but no one believes it was a coincidence.  Most importantly, no matter what actually happened, Msando’s murder can be seen as rallying cry for both sides on this election, proof in their eyes of the duplicity of their opponents.

In the face of all this mounting tension, many Kenyans are still hopeful about peace.  In discussions on matatus (the ubiquitous public transportation of Kenya), uber drivers, coworkers, and random people on the street, many Kenyans express the belief that the elections will see a limited amount of tension, and that peace will prevail.  The shock of the 2007 tribal-themed violence still resounds ten years later, as does the collective horror that the rest of the world felt at the time.  Kenyans by and large do not want to be embarrassed once more on the world stage, and would rather a peaceful if not quite honest election than a return to violence.  But there are almost 50 million people living in Kenya, and it would take a tiny fraction of those turning to violence to seriously undermine the social order.  At the end of the day, the people I’ve spoken to are not the ones that are most likely to turn to violence.  Many people I have spoken to know at least one person who has said, “I am prepared to fight and die to ensure my people are no longer marginalized”.

As we head into the election tomorrow, and the results that will come out in the next few days, the country holds its breath.  Will calmer heads prevail, or will the tensions of last month combined with the fact that the once-significant lead of the current president has decreased to only one percentage point in some polls lead to a resurgence of violence?  Odinga has already said that a return to the Supreme Court is not an option, so what options remain to a dissatisfied and angry electorate?  While the area in which I live is under absolutely no threat of violence, the ramifications of a contested election will be felt in ripples across the country, and for some time to come.  It is all balanced on a knife’s edge, and the smallest of actions could cause a chain reaction in either direction.  So as I sit in my apartment with my roommates and colleagues, we will collectively hope and wish for a safe election.  For all my Kenyan friends and colleagues, and for this country itself that I have come to love, I hope for the most anti of climaxes.  For a safe and easy election that will set the country on a continued path for success, and not a return to the violence of the past.  May my own hopes exert a minuscule positive energy in that regard.

 

Are you interested in more information about the elections?  Here are some articles that you might find interesting:

A primer from last May about why this elections is important:
http://africanarguments.org/2017/05/09/tense-kenyas-high-stake-elections-explained/

Toronto man and an American deported this past week from Kenya for helping the opposition party:
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2017/08/07/toronto-man-describes-harrowing-detainment-deportation-from-kenya_c1611487

Recent BBC article talking about the electoral tensions:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-40843728

Long article on tension from early July by a Nairobi-based blogger:
https://www.theelephant.info/future/2017/07/06/election-2017-a-silent-panic-in-kenya/

A Murder and an Exodus — Another Election in Kenya:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/opinion/kenya-election-murder.html

That last article is written by Michela Wrong, aBritish journalist and author of a very good book entitled “It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower”.  I would highly encourage anyone interested to get a copy and have a read.