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Monday 7 July 2008

When elephants fight, the grass suffers

Aidan Hartley says that the violence in Kenya reflects the failure of the political class: better paid than their European counterparts in a nation where many live on 50p a day

Kenyan democracy failed because ordinary people were encouraged to believe that democracy would work as a instrument of change. But Kenya’s leaders — and often international observers — interpret democracy simply in terms of the ceremony of multi-party elections. Polls bestow legitimacy on politicians to pillage for five years until the next depressing cycle begins. This time, the elections themselves were a travesty, with rampant rigging on both sides. One candidate in our constituency put ballot boxes from two voting stations into his vehicle and drove them around to his supporters.

In the election campaign rallies I attended there were no debates about policies, despite the huge health, education, security and poverty problems. The Big Men arrived in helicopters hired at £1,000 an hour to address voters in slums and forest clearings. When they spoke English for the Western media’s benefit, they talked of human rights and democracy. But when they switched to vernacular languages, I was shocked at how venomous and filled with ethnic chauvinism their rhetoric became. At one rally I saw a candidate accuse her opponent of being a pig, another of being a blood-sucking tick. Voters responded by chanting curses against a rival tribe. Praise singers kowtowed to the Big Men, who dozed, talked on their mobile phones and then waddled back to their helicopters, which blew dust into the faces of the poor on take-off.

As we saw later, the tribal hate-speak resulted in scenes that were reminiscent of Burundi and Rwanda: FM radio stations broadcasting ethnic chauvinism, machete-wielding youths at roadblocks, refugees being burned in churches.

It is a little-known fact that though Raila Odinga was a socialist firebrand who named his son Fidel Castro, his mentor was the former Liberal party leader Lord Steel. Liberal party support for decentralisation and stronger local government might have inspired Raila to revive a 1960s Kenyan campaign for a policy known as ‘Majimboism’. On paper, devolution of power in an African nation led by corrupt politicians seemed to make sense, and Raila supported the flow of resources to the districts to kick-start the building of schools, clinics and clean water projects.

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