Chapter 5
KENYA: “SAVE OUR BELOVED COUNTRY”
The old man shuffled into the Oval Office holding on to a beautifully handcrafted ivory walking cane to keep him upright. It was June 27, 2001, and Kenya was to hold elections the following year. Daniel arap Moi had led the country for more than two decades. Now he wanted to be president again.
Colin Powell had met with Moi a month earlier and urged him to honor the constitutional provision barring him from seeking reelection. Moi had made no such commitment. Now it was President Bush’s turn to deliver the message. Just before the Kenyans arrived, Jendayi Frazer, the NSC Africa specialist, briefed the president. “Mr. President, you have to let him know in no uncertain terms that we will not support him if he tries to hold on to power,” she said.
Jendayi knew Kenya. A highly regarded Africanist, she had been my PhD student at Stanford. My mind flashed back to 1991 during my first stint at the White House. Jendayi was on the phone asking to speak with me urgently. She was doing field research in Nairobi. “Things are a little tense here and there is a lot of violence,” she said. “Could you ask someone in the government if I should leave?” I walked down the hall and put the question to the special assistant for African affairs, David D. Miller. He didn’t hesitate. “Tell her to get the hell out of there.” I did, arranging for Stanford to get money to her so that she could come home.
As Moi began his pitch, he seemed to be leaning the wrong way. His eyes darted back and forth, staring at each of us as he recited the old slogans about ethnic tensions in his country and how the next election might exacerbate them. The implication was clear, though he didn’t actually say it: Moi wanted to run again because he was the best man to unify Kenyans. His country needed him.
The president told him flatly to step down. “Everyone’s time comes to leave office. When the American people are done with me, I’ll go back to Texas, proud to have served but glad to be an ordinary citizen again. You need to go home to your children and grandchildren,” he said.
Moi was clearly unhappy with the message, but he seemed to understand that time was up. When the two men met again three months later on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Kenyan was ready to do the right thing. It was, after all, not just the president of the United States who thought it was time for him to go. His people were ready for a change too.
Moi stepped aside, and on December 29 of that year, Mwai Kibaki, only seven years the president’s junior, was elected. Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the country’s founder and Moi’s handpicked successor, conceded the next day. The transition was relatively smooth.
Kenya’s Hard Road to Democracy
That day had been a long time coming for Kenya. For forty years—from independence in 1963 to the watershed election of 2002—the Kenyan people struggled against authoritarian rule.
The struggle actually went back even further. The British East Africa Protectorate was formed in 1895, with white settlers arriving shortly thereafter. The British government appointed a Legislative Council to represent the settler community in 1906, and the first elected representatives were selected by six thousand settlers in 1919.1 A British governor was appointed in 1920 and the protectorate was turned into a colony, now known as Kenya.
The system stayed in place until the upheaval of World War II stirred Africans across the continent to seek independence. Jomo Kenyatta, widely viewed as the father of modern Kenya, became the head of the Kenya African Union in 1944 and the voice of the people’s political push for sovereignty. He, together with Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire, and others, was a powerful advocate for an end to colonialism. These leaders mobilized public opinion across the world to support their cause.
This political movement was essential, but in Kenya the British were also pressed by some of the most violent resistance activities on the continent. A secret group of fighters from the Kikuyu tribe, known as the Mau Mau, carried out a campaign against white settlers for four years, from 1952 to 1956. The Mau Mau rebellion cost fourteen thousand Africans and a hundred or so Europeans their lives.2 The British eventually declared a state of emergency and crushed the guerrillas by force. Kenyatta, despite no direct connection to the rebellion, was tried, arrested, and imprisoned for nine years.
But London’s appetite for maintaining its colonial possessions across Africa and Asia was waning. The United Kingdom had been flattened economically by World War II and was yielding global leadership to the United States. The sun was indeed setting on the British Empire.
Kenya’s First Democratic Opening
In March 1960, the British laid down a framework for a transition to Kenyan independence under majority rule. The Legislative Council, which had been created to allow white settlers to govern themselves, was to be given over to a narrow African majority, though there were seats reserved for Asians and Europeans.3 The Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) were formed as political parties on the eve of independence. Kenya held multiparty elections for the first time in February 1961, and then again in May 1963. KANU won both decisively. Kenyatta became prime minister, leading the transition to independence six months later.
The institutional landscape of Kenya at the birth of the new nation looked promising. The country carried out multiparty elections to the legislature and Kenyatta was a revered civilian leader and a strong figure to unify Kenya’s many ethnic groups. Unlike nearly all other newly independent African states, Kenya would never experience a successful military coup d’état.4
But the external trappings were deceiving. Kenya was and is a country with deep tribal fissures. Its tribes are not tightly knit clans in isolated areas. They are more like ethnic groups that share distinctive cultural, linguistic, and historical roots. Some groups are predominant in certain towns and neighborhoods, but they are generally dispersed throughout the country and the population is mixed. Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president, was a Kikuyu. Moi, his vice president and successor, was a Kalenjin. Although they accounted for only a third of Kenya’s population, these two tribes have always wielded outsized political influence.
Ethnic Group: Kikuyu
Percent: 22%
Key Figures: Jomo Kenyatta, Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta
Ethnic Group: Luhya
Percent: 14%
Key Figures: Michael Kijana Wamalwa
Ethnic Group: Luo
Percent: 13%
Key Figures: Oginga Odinga, Raila Odinga
Ethnic Group: Kalenjin
Percent: 12%
Key Figures: Daniel arap Moi
Ethnic Group: Kamba
Percent: 11%
Ethnic Group: Other African
Percent: 27%
Ethnic Group: Non-African
Percent: 1%
Source: “Kenya,” CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ke.html.
The country’s demographics drove two institutional debates that conditioned Kenya’s road ahead for years to come. One was the question of federalism—how much devolution of power to the regions was appropriate. The centralized state was seen by some as a safeguard against tribalism and the epitome of Kenyan unity. But others saw the strong state as a stand-in for tribal dominance by the Kikuyu, the largest group. The second related question, over the power of the presidency, reflected deep suspicions that any institution was just a cover for tribal and personal loyalties. And, indeed, leaders repeatedly appealed to the streets—speaking of one Kenya but falling back easily on tribal politics in the hardest of times.
The End of Multiparty Rule
Kenyatta did not tolerate dissent for very long. Five months after independence, the government banned public meetings. KADU, the rival political party, was effectively absorbed into KANU, as member after member saw no other choice but to defect.5 The new government was left without formal opposition. In December 1964, the position of prime minister was abolished and Kenyatta became president. His longtime ally, Oginga Odinga, was named vice president, only to resign that position two years later and create the Kenyan People’s Union (KPU). The expressed purpose of the KPU was to oppose the Western orientation of the country and move leftward toward class struggle and state ownership of the economy.
Political parties were losing relevance, however, sidelined by an increasingly centralized state under an increasingly authoritarian president. The Senate was abolished, and the unicameral National Assembly was dominated by Kenyatta’s allies. When Kenyatta died in office in 1978, Moi, his vice president, succeeded him. The next year, Moi ran unopposed. In June 1982, he declared Kenya a one-party state, formalizing the reality of politics in the country for more than a decade.
For the next ten years, Kenya experienced outbreaks of ethnic conflict, economic stagnation, and unsustainable debt to well-meaning foreign donors. The dependence on foreign assistance, however, gave the international community leverage to push for change in support of a Kenyan populace fed up with the state of affairs. By the late 1980s, the economy had stalled. Then it began to contract. GDP per capita was only $382 in 1988, but it declined further, to $366 in 1990, and $328 in 1992.6 Meanwhile, inflation continued to rise. Facing economic crisis, the Kenyan regime sought to reach agreement with the IMF and the World Bank for continued economic support. The “Washington consensus,” as it was known at the time, required countries seeking assistance to take painful steps, including cutting budget deficits, privatizing industries, devaluing currencies, and tackling corruption.7
In Kenya’s case, the United States agreed to forgive $44.7 million in loans immediately and another $130 million over two years if the government abided by the requirements of the IMF/World Bank program.8 This was part of a larger plan to forgive $735 million owed by twelve sub-Saharan African countries. Unfortunately, the rulers of these nations were in many cases more concerned with personal glory than with performing for their people. In Kenya, for example, the government was insistently pursuing plans for a $200 million, sixty-story skyscraper that would have been Africa’s tallest commercial building. The leaders relented and downsized the project only after coming under criticism from the World Bank and donor countries.
The pressure to reform economically would slowly bleed into concerns about the political system. As much as the two are theoretically separable, economic and political institutions do affect one another. But precisely how they interact is a matter of debate. Some have argued that economic reform should be the priority. Democracy is messy, with veto-wielding groups and noisy constituencies that make tough choices untenable: better to liberalize the political system after a country can deliver basic goods and comforts to the people. Support for this view could be found in the stories of the Asian Tigers from Taiwan to South Korea, which built a sound economic foundation and have since become stable democracies.
The alternative view is that many of the ills that limit economic progress can be addressed only through political reform. Law is arbitrary in authoritarian regimes because power rests in too few hands. Corruption is hard to deal with when it is practiced by the leaders and their cronies. And until there is some modicum of free thought and expression, the most capable and creative citizens will seek to live where those liberties exist. In this narrative, some of the Asian Tigers are the exception to the rule, not the other way around.
Those who were faced with this question in confronting the Kenyan regime were largely of the latter view. The degree to which international players insisted on political and not just economic reform is remarkable and a successful example of “democracy promotion.” But importantly, the international pressure was supporting powerful domestic forces that were determined to be heard.
Moi’s stranglehold on power was slowly eroded as political and economic conditions fostered the emergence of counterbalancing forces in Kenya’s institutional landscape. Aided by the regime’s abysmal economic performance, opponents were able to highlight Moi’s failed policies and brutal repression of opposition. They championed a multiparty system as an antidote to Kenya’s ills.
At first the president stood fast, opening a session of the parliament in February 1990 with a resounding rejection of political change. “Kenyans are not opposed to the multiparty system because of ideological reason or designs by those in leadership to impose their will on the people. What we have said is that until our society has become cohesive enough so that tribalism is of no significance… the strategy of a mass-based democratic and accountable one-party system is best,” he said.9
Of course, the party was neither democratic nor accountable. And though ethnic cleavages were most certainly present in Kenya, they were widely viewed as a convenient excuse to ward off change. Former members of the president’s own cabinet, Charles Rubia and Kenneth Matiba, fired the first salvo with calls for a transition to multiparty politics. They were quickly arrested but could not be silenced. Thousands of supporters gathered to demand their release, leading to mass rioting. Scores of people died. And despite Moi’s personal order to muzzle the press, the events were fully covered.
Gibson Kamau Kuria, an opposition lawyer representing Rubia and Matiba, sought asylum at the U.S. embassy, causing an outcry from the government against “unwarranted interference in Kenya’s affairs.”10 Arrests of opposition leaders escalated, but the crisis didn’t abate. Events then followed a familiar cycle in challenges to autocratic regimes: Repression led to further protests, which led to further repression and more protests. With each successive round the regime became more isolated and illegitimate.
A central question in democratic transitions is whether the opposition can organize effectively to take advantage of an opening. In Kenya, the key institutional elements were rapidly emerging to do just that: the press that refused to be silenced; civil society groups, particularly human rights lawyers defending prisoners; a business community that championed change; and charismatic leaders, who spoke out from jail cells and the underground. Prominent Luo leader Oginga Odinga summed up the situation in a widely publicized letter to the president: “The message that Kenyans are sending you is they are tired and dissatisfied with your leadership.”11
The opponents of the regime adopted a strategy for the next eighteen months calibrated to stay technically within the law. Initially, in February 1991, Oginga Odinga formed an opposition party (the National Democratic Party) dedicated to ending the constitutional requirement of a one-party state. He was, of course, unable to register NDP. But within months, he and his allies announced the formation of a different organization, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), calling it a lobby group instead of a political party. Historians have noted that the name was designed to echo the Civic Forum movement in Czechoslovakia and East Germany.12 That effort had incubated the opposition that eventually helped to bring down communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
Nonetheless, the designation that skirted the legal issue didn’t provide protection from the regime. When FORD attempted a rally in November, armed riot police officers fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the demonstrators. Five leaders of the opposition were arrested as they drove to the meeting place. A total of twelve opposition leaders were jailed.
Kenyans—thanks to domestic press coverage—and the international community angrily watched events unfold. The regime’s brutal behavior drew rebukes from across the globe, most importantly from donor nations. At a November meeting, twelve governments, including the United States, Britain, Japan, and others, threatened major aid cuts within six months if Kenya did not improve its performance on human rights and make economic and political reforms. Shortly before the announcement, the Kenyan foreign minister called the U.S. ambassador a racist in a news conference, saying, “I have told the U.S. ambassador that the Kenyan government is very unhappy with his personal behavior, that he is an arrogant man with contempt for Africans, his attitude is that of a slave owner, and he has no respect even for the head of state.”13 The attempt to play the race card made the regime seem even more desperate. It was, after all, Kenyans who had lost respect for the head of state.
Under intense pressure, in December 1991, Moi finally announced that he intended to revise the constitution to allow political opposition to operate legally. An amendment was introduced a few days later and came into effect. But Moi left no doubt about the reasons for his change of heart. “It is because of the Western media set against us, because of the economic setting today. The trend of the world economies is being controlled by developed countries, and I didn’t want my people to be hammered and bothered for a long time.… Don’t you ever believe that multipartyism will produce stability in Africa. It will never.”14
For a while it appeared that he was right. The country was hit with wave after wave of ethnic violence. And, indeed, much of it stemmed from the tribal underpinnings of the political forces. Members of the opposition belonged largely to the Luo, the second-largest tribe in the country. The Kikuyu, the most populous group, made clear that it would vote along ethnic lines. And the president’s own tribe, the Kalenjin, used the moment to settle grievances and seize fertile farmland in the Rift Valley. Non-Kalenjin farmers abandoned their land, leading to cuts in food production. In a matter of months, ethnic conclaves were hardening, with the tribes determined to defend themselves and exact revenge on others.
By the spring of 1992, the New York Times reported, “for the first time since independence from Britain nearly 30 years ago, fierce ethnic violence has raised the specter of civil war in Kenya.… Bodies were still being found today in bushes… and in houses after a wave of killings, burnings and terror by Kalenjin warriors.… Some who ventured back to retrieve their belongings… escaped death only by following orders… to chant an oath in support of the Kalenjin-dominated Government.”15
The political system fractured further when FORD split along ethnic lines. Odinga, a Luo from western Kenya, led one faction and Matiba, a Kikuyu, headed the other. Mwai Kibaki, also Kikuyu, took the reins of the Democratic Party. Despite their mutual opposition to Moi, the two largest tribes remained wary of one another, always concerned that the other would gain the upper hand in the battle for political power.
In this chaotic environment, it is not surprising that the country’s first multiparty elections in December 1992 failed. Moi took advantage of the opposition’s disarray and won the contest, which was widely regarded as tainted by cheating and vote rigging. The opposition refused to accept the outcome. Moi ignored them, governing with an iron fist over a decaying economy and a badly fractured country.
But the calls for democracy did not end. Over the next five years, student protests, outcry from the Roman Catholic Church, and international condemnation pressured the regime. Events reached a crescendo on July 7, 1997, when riot policemen crushed pro-democracy rallies across the country. Two days later, the regime closed five university campuses in the Nairobi area, hoping to quell student activism.
The Moi regime was facing a more organized effort this time. While political parties remained weak and given to infighting, civil society was beginning to coalesce. Seeking to update the constitution before the elections, the non-governmental organization Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Change organized a National Convention Assembly to press for reforms. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the group demanded changes to the constitution and threatened civil disobedience if the demands were not met. A number of key political figures, including Kibaki, attended the meeting.
Once again domestic unrest and international pressure were closing in on the government. The regime promised to consider reforms but did virtually nothing. Fearful that civil war was indeed approaching, moderates within the president’s own party sought compromise with moderates from the Citizens Coalition.
Against the backdrop of worsening chaos, in the fall of 1997, Moi endorsed the moderates’ package of reforms, wrong-footing civil rights advocates, clergy, and politicians who were pushing for more dramatic moves. There were important changes nonetheless, reducing state authority, ending preventive detention, and creating a new election commission with wide powers. Finally, the reforms called for a review of the constitution.
Realizing that he had split the opposition, Moi called for elections to be held on December 29. There was, of course, no time for reforms to take hold, though the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) was constituted to oversee them. The chaotic elections produced confusion, and for a time it appeared as if neither Moi nor the opposition would reach the 25 percent threshold in several provinces needed to avoid a runoff. When the smoke cleared, however, the president was declared the winner. Despite all the benefits of incumbency and considerable fraud on his behalf, the president won only about 40 percent of the vote. In a harbinger of things to come, the major ethnic groups voted for their kinsmen: the Kikuyu for Kibaki; the Luo for Raila Odinga (the son of Oginga Odinga); Luhya for Michael Wamalwa; and Kamba for Charity Ngilu.
The results seemed to have a chastening effect on the president. “My next government will be more sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the people,” he said.16 And, slowly, Moi began to keep his promise and loosen his grip. International pressure was growing again, this time from the United States and the Bush administration, focused squarely on political reform. When Secretary of State Colin Powell visited in May 2001, he urged Moi to allow the election of a new president and to step aside. The constitution prohibited him from running again, and though some urged him to do so, Powell appealed to his sense of legacy.
Knowing that he might have to step down, Moi tried to arrange the succession. He threw his weight behind Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founder. Uhuru was a dashing figure, young, Western-educated, and charismatic. But many Kenyans worried that he would just be a continuation of the Moi regime. The president didn’t help his protégé by making it known that he would be around to help.
Kibaki succeeded in uniting the opposition in a “Rainbow Coalition.” His platform focused on eliminating corruption and establishing the rule of law. Though there were sporadic reports of cheating by both sides and considerable violence, the elections were held on December 27, 2002. Kibaki won and Uhuru conceded. Kenya had reestablished a multiparty system and committed to a democratic path.
Another Opening but Kibaki Disappoints
Early on, observers of Kenyan politics gave Mwai Kibaki high marks for his personal qualities and commitment to a better Kenya. On inauguration day, he told Kenyans that he was “inheriting a country… badly ravaged by years of misrule and ineptitude.”17 It was not particularly gracious to say so with Moi sitting next to him on the dais. But it resonated with the Kenyan people, who had high hopes for their newly elected government.
To his credit, Kibaki launched a serious campaign against corruption. Just two months after he took power in 2003, the government suspended the chief justice and created an independent tribunal to investigate allegations that he had tortured opponents and engaged in corruption. A month later, the governor of Kenya’s Central Bank stepped down in a major scandal. A private bank that held pension funds and proceeds from state-owned enterprises had collapsed, leaving the depositors with losses of almost $18 million. The same events brought down the commissioner general of Kenya’s Revenue Authority, who was somehow, despite an obvious conflict of interest, the co-owner of the bank.
There were also wide-ranging probes of the judiciary. A special commission found evidence of corruption and misconduct implicating about one-third of the country’s magistrates and about half of the judges on the high court and the appeals court. Kibaki himself declared, “The writing is on the wall. We are sending a clear message that the day of reckoning for those who engage in corruption has come.”18 Kenya was among the first countries to sign the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. The move was both symbolic and practical. The convention promised to make the seizure of assets across international lines easier—a promise largely unfulfilled to this day.
Kibaki also pursued populist policies like ending fees for primary education. The government pleaded with its citizens to use their democratic institutions and petition for justice. And they obliged. One time, for example, 650 women were allowed to sue the Ministry of Defense. They claimed to have been sexually assaulted by British soldiers during joint exercises with the Kenyan military. The very act of bringing legal action against the state was widely praised by domestic and international human rights groups. And the government undertook prison reform, freeing thousands of young first offenders and working to reduce overcrowding and improve conditions for those incarcerated.
The president was a breath of fresh air, and he was celebrated internationally for his efforts. The IMF resumed lending to Nairobi on November 21, 2003, opening the way to accelerated international funding from a variety of donors. The country seemed to be well on course for economic recovery and political stability.
Kenya moved as well to institutionalize reforms by revising its constitution. A 629-member National Constitutional Conference spent months debating a new draft before eventually agreeing on the language. The reforms were intended to decentralize power to national, regional, district, and local levels. The executive was to be weakened by separating the functions of president and prime minister, who would choose the cabinet. A bicameral legislature, with women making up one-third of the members, was to be created. The reforms were breathtaking in scope. They were finally put to a referendum in November 2005. They failed.
That disappointment was a kind of watershed event for Kibaki as reforms began to slow on a number of fronts. This was due in part to the president’s worsening health. Shortly before the elections in 2002, he had been involved in a car accident but rallied to finish the campaign and win. He was left with far more serious injuries than he admitted at the time, though. In January 2003, he was hospitalized for high blood pressure and blood clots in his leg. The septuagenarian president never seemed to fully recover. When Kibaki came to the White House for a state visit in October of that year, he clearly struggled to walk and had trouble remembering the names of some of his new cabinet members. After Colin Powell met with him in January 2005, he reported that Kibaki was still having difficulty moving around and that his mental faculties were continuing to decline.
Moreover, even prior to the failed constitutional referendum in 2005, Kenyans were again growing impatient. Promised economic reforms were stalling and Kibaki’s election pledge to create half a million jobs was now haunting him. Few if any had materialized. The heavily publicized campaign against corruption was slowing, leading to the resignation of the anticorruption czar, John Githongo, who accused the government of continuing graft. His stand unnerved international donors, who yet again threatened to cut off aid.
And pressures were again growing for political reforms. In July, demonstrators took to the streets of Nairobi to advocate for changes in the constitution, particularly a weakening of the executive. They were met by riot police and one person died.
Kibaki had championed a weakened executive. Now in power, he and those around him retreated from the high-minded campaign promises to circumscribe presidential authority. Instead, the new constitution submitted to the parliament created an essentially powerless prime minister, although it did give parliament a say in cabinet appointments. The vice president explained, according to the New York Times, that “presidents are father figures in Africa, and the voters would not put up with having someone outside the family rivaling the father.”19
In fact, Kenyans begged to disagree. Kibaki managed to go from reformer to defender of the status quo within a matter of a few years. A challenger emerged in the person of Raila Odinga, a Luo minister in Kibaki’s government who was appalled by the president’s actions. He joined an effort to defeat the constitutional draft from inside the ranks of the president’s own government. Kibaki thus found himself on the defensive among his supporters, calling those who opposed him “stupid.”20
The younger, wealthy, and charismatic Odinga led an indefatigable campaign against the president. And he won. The referendum on the new constitution failed. Kibaki conceded defeat. But when people spilled into the streets to celebrate, the president tried to ban political protests. It didn’t work. “Our rallies will go on,” said a spokesman for those who had opposed the president.21
Kibaki was severely weakened by the events, and the opposition was emboldened. From that point on, after the crucible year of 2005, it was clear that an electoral showdown was looming.
“Save Our Beloved Country”
In 2007, Kenyans participated in what would be a landmark election that would pose a significant challenge to its fledgling institutions. Kenya’s electoral law posed obstacles to the participants, but particularly to opposition figures. A candidate was required to win 25 percent of the vote in at least five of the country’s eight provinces. The threshold was difficult to reach because multiple candidates split the vote. A third-party candidate, Kalonzo Musyoka, decided to stand for election instead of joining Raila or Kibaki, which denied them close to a million votes that would have created a clear victor. The rules set up a likely scenario of thin margins of victory and the potential for a runoff.
In the days leading up to the election, Odinga was the front-runner, but the race had tightened by election day. Early returns showed him ahead: A day after the election, with about half of the votes counted, he held a sizable lead. Several of Kibaki’s key cabinet members lost their seats in parliament. It looked as if the government was headed toward defeat.
But as the counting continued into the next day, the margin began to shift in the president’s favor. Odinga’s lead was shrinking—nine hundred thousand votes, three hundred thousand votes, then less than one hundred thousand votes—and by the end of the day, the president’s party was claiming victory. Odinga and his supporters cried foul.
We were watching Kenya closely in Washington. I checked in with the State Department operations center just before turning in for the night. The outcome was very much in doubt. I immediately called Jendayi, now assistant secretary for African affairs at State. “It’s a mess,” she said. “Everyone is accusing everyone else of cheating and it is really hard to know who really won.” The next day she reported that the head of the ECK that had first called the election for Kibaki now wasn’t willing to certify the results from his own organization. International electoral observers suspected significant fraud on both sides, but the vote was so close that it wasn’t really possible to say whether it had mattered. “Maybe Kibaki did win. But maybe he didn’t,” one group reported.
Throughout the next two days, the embattled ECK tried to make sense of the vote count. Odinga was certain that the commission was trying to further alter the results. He called a press conference and made the charge publicly. Kenya was on the brink.
That Sunday morning, I followed my usual routine, talking to key aides and then to the British foreign secretary before heading to church. I suppose the weekly calls with the Brits underscored how special the relationship really is. I’ve always said that if the Brits weren’t with you, you were alone. Sunday morning was a time to make sure we were on the same page, and somehow checking in with London just seemed like the right thing to do.
December 30 was all about Kenya. My phone rang at around 7 a.m. Jendayi was reporting that rumors were flying in Nairobi that the ECK was going to declare Kibaki the winner. “If they do that there will be blood in the streets,” she warned. I called David Miliband, the British foreign secretary. The Brits too had heard the rumors, and, yes, chaos was about to break out across the country.
A few hours later, the commission chair, Samuel Kivuitu, came out and announced that Kibaki had won 4.6 million votes and Odinga 4.4 million votes. “Why,” people asked, “would the ECK declare a victor with a thin margin of two hundred thousand votes when not all had been certified?” Undeterred, Kibaki was sworn in at the State House under heavy guard. Odinga rejected the electoral outcome. It didn’t help that some members of the ECK emerged to say that there had indeed been vote rigging on both sides. Kenya was plunged into political crisis and tribal violence. More than a thousand people would die over a period of a month. The New York Times wrote vividly that the “streets of Nairobi are beginning to look like war zones, with trucks of soldiers rumbling through a wasteland of burned cars and abandoned homes.… Gangs of young men have built roadblocks between the neighborhoods of the Kikuyus… and those of the Luos.”22 By New Year’s Day, Kenya was on the verge of civil war.
Another New Year’s Day crisis, I thought as I read the morning papers. During my time as national security adviser and then secretary of state, I almost came to dread the holidays. Like clockwork something always seemed to happen right around Christmas and New Year’s. In 2001 it had been the prospect of war between India and Pakistan. In 2004 it was a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The year 2005 brought Vladimir Putin’s threat to cut off the gas supply to Ukraine. In 2006 it was Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia. Then in 2007 Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on December 27. Now, within twenty-four hours of that tragedy in Pakistan—Kenya was headed toward a meltdown.
I knew that the international community had to do something, but, frankly, it wasn’t clear what to do. David Miliband and I issued a joint statement on January 2 urging calm. We welcomed the calls of the African Union (AU), the EU, and the Commonwealth for an end to the violence. And we pledged our diplomatic and political efforts to support reconciliation and national unity at this “vital time for Kenya and the region.”
Then I kept doing what diplomats do in these circumstances—issuing statements, calling other foreign ministers to get them to issue statements, and ultimately having the president speak to the situation to lend weight to what we had been saying. It is hard to convey how frustrating these moments can be. You hope that your words will have an effect, but deep down you know that they probably won’t.
More fruitfully, I sent Jendayi Frazer to Kenya to assess the situation and to represent me in working with the parties to calm the situation. I called Odinga and Kibaki on an almost daily basis, making clear that the United States was watching and ready to help. We tried to find leaders who could speak to both sides. John Kufuor, the president of Ghana and chairman of the AU, went to Nairobi to urge peace talks between Odinga and Kibaki. But the going was tough. Calling the proposed talks a “sideshow,” Odinga added, “We want to meet with him but we don’t recognize him.”23 Kufuor pushed Raila to recognize that his party’s majority in parliament offered an important power center and counterbalance to the presidency in governing the country.
Finally, in consultation with the AU, we agreed that Kofi Annan, the highly regarded former UN chief, should go as a mediator. We had come to the conclusion that a government of national unity was the only way forward. The United States issued a statement saying that “irregularities in the vote tallying” had made the final result “impossible to determine with certainty.” We reminded Kenyan leaders that the United States would not conduct business as usual until they sorted out their political problems.
At the beginning of 2008, I had a lot on my plate with Afghanistan and Iraq and North Korea and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but the secretary of state can’t put an unfolding catastrophe on the back burner. We had invested so much time, energy, and resources in our policies toward Africa in general and Kenya in particular. The president and I had spent hours with African heads of state, trying to support democratic transitions; launched PEPFAR for AIDS relief, the single largest global health initiative in American history; and quadrupled foreign assistance to Africa. And now Kenya, one of the most stable countries in the region, was coming apart. I’ve often been asked how one sets priorities as secretary of state. Sometimes events do it for you. Kenya was now at the top of my agenda.
Every day the news just seemed to get worse. Annan succeeded in getting Kibaki and Odinga to meet. But within minutes, Kibaki was out publicly accusing his rival of stirring up violence. Odinga, for his part, returned the insult. The ethnic character of the unrest was becoming more marked, with revenge killings among the tribal groups. People were being driven from their homes to “purify” neighborhoods.
As fate would have it, President Bush was scheduled to visit Tanzania, Kenya’s neighbor, on February 17. He had decided not to go to Nairobi, saying that he instead wanted to focus on the “success stories” of the region, especially U.S. policies for countering AIDS and malaria. The comment didn’t go over well, sounding tone-deaf at that particular moment. But we knew that it made no sense for the president to go. The delicate talks were moving at a snail’s pace. If the president were to visit, he would be expected to deliver a breakthrough. The stakes would be too high and the chances for failure were strong.
Instead, I would break off from the presidential party in Tanzania and go to Nairobi. I would try to help Kofi, who thought he was making a little progress. The Ghanaian-born diplomat had been on the ground in Kenya for nearly four weeks. I called and asked if he wanted me to come, not wanting to “bigfoot” him by swooping down as the American secretary of state. “Do come,” he said. We had worked closely before in negotiating an end to the Lebanon War in 2006. I believed he genuinely wanted me there.
The night before I left for Kenya, I was sitting with the Tanzanian foreign minister and several other officials at the dinner in honor of President Bush. Somehow the conversation turned to Rwanda and the genocide that had unfolded there in 1994. “For a while,” one of the officials who had been at the border said, “I thought the stories were made up about people being killed with machetes. It all sounded impossible. But then people started fleeing across the border.” He lowered his head and his voice cracked a bit. “There they were. People with one arm, others with one leg—limbs had been hacked off in the most brutal fashion and the wounds were still open. I couldn’t believe my eyes.” That did it for me. Ethnic violence incites the worst and most uncontrolled passions in human beings. Get on that plane tomorrow and make something happen, I thought to myself. Then I prayed. Just help us find a way.
When I arrived, our very capable ambassador, Michael Ranneberger, met me. He pulled out a newspaper from January 3, 2008. “Save Our Beloved Country,” it said. “This was the headline in every newspaper in the country and on every television and radio broadcast,” Michael told me. “Civil society, the church, and the business community have been meeting and issuing statements to the protagonists. They are determined to force a solution,” he continued. As we traveled along the road to the hotel where I would meet Kofi, people were holding signs with similar messages. It was a show of cohesion in civil society that defied tribal, social, and economic fault lines in the country. We have something to work with, I thought. I felt energized and encouraged. Kenyans wanted to save their democracy. Their leaders just had to respond.
After Kofi and I held a brief press conference, I headed off to meet Kibaki at one of the president’s offices. The building was very old, and as we climbed the rickety stairs to the third floor, I found myself wondering how the crippled president had made it up them. I entered the room and shook his hand, bringing greetings from President Bush, and then sat down. Kibaki made a few rambling comments about wanting to unify the country and then looked to me.
“Mr. President,” I said, “you led your country’s democratic transition with your election in 2002. You have a wonderful legacy. But now we are all worried that the violence and anger is overtaking politics.” He just nodded. But as I looked at the president, I heard someone break in. “He won the election,” one of his advisers said. I ignored her, trying to stay focused on the president. Justice Minister Martha Karua continued by saying that a power-sharing arrangement would undermine democratic processes. The results of the election had to stand. “I am here to support Secretary-General Annan’s efforts to bring about a unity government,” I said. “The elections were very close and there should really be no losers.” It seemed as if the president’s level of consciousness was falling. It was hard to keep his attention.
I could feel the heat rising in the miserable third-floor room. But it was not just the weather on this African summer day. Kibaki’s entourage was in no mood to compromise, and my mere mention of a unity government had raised the political temperature. At that moment it occurred to me that the septuagenarian president was perhaps the least of my problems. Those around him were determined to reap the spoils of electoral victory—no matter how narrow it had been.
As Kibaki’s aides spoke more and more—and the president less and less—I wondered if they were really the power behind the Kibaki throne, manipulating the sick old man. I asked Jendayi. “Maybe a bit,” she said. “But Kibaki is stubborn. They are doing his bidding. He believes that he won and deserves to be president.”
After very pointed, at times hostile discussions with the president, we got back into the car and headed to our ambassador’s house to meet with Odinga. The contrast in mood could not have been greater. We passed through the beautiful garden into a well-lit, air-conditioned room. Odinga was alert and challenging without being combative. He told me that he wanted to have real powers as prime minister. That would require the right to appoint and fire ministers, and he insisted that his party would hold at least one power position—finance or defense.
But then he turned stern and I became worried about his motives. His people would stay in the streets if compromise couldn’t be found, he insisted. Though he personally disavowed violence, the implication was clear—he couldn’t control all who were loyal to him. I wasn’t at all sure he was willing to try.
I looked across the room at his young aides. Among them was Sally Kosgei, who had a PhD from Stanford. We had met when Moi first visited Washington in 2001. Sally, tall and imposing, was one of those people who commanded a room when she walked in, and it was clear that the president listened to everything she said. Uhuru Kenyatta’s sister had also gone to Stanford with Jendayi. Suddenly my attention shifted back to the conversation with Odinga when he asked what I was proposing.
The key was to get Odinga to give up on the street and to get Kibaki to agree to share power. The sides had to move toward one another, and time was of the essence. I sketched out elements of a proposal for allocating ministries and shared it with Odinga. He agreed that it was a “good starting point.” I gave it to Jendayi. “Stay and talk to Sally. Then go and talk to Uhuru. You know them both. Use the connections,” I told her.
Before leaving, I joined a gathering of civil society leaders and listened to their pleas for a unity government. They were impressive people—university leaders, businesspeople, and human rights advocates. They were pressuring their leaders publicly and privately. I encouraged them to keep doing it and held a press conference with them to talk about the importance of civil society in democracy. I explained that the two sides were not too far apart and that only will was lacking. “It is the Kenyans who are insisting that its leaders and political class find a solution,” I said to remind Kibaki and Odinga of their obligations to their people. But I added that the United States would be supportive if they agreed upon a path forward. “I don’t want to talk about threats and sanctions,” I said. Still, I made clear that the half billion dollars of annual American aid to Kenya was a part of the Bush administration’s policy of rewarding those who embraced democracy.
Then I stopped off to see Kofi before heading to the airport. We reviewed the results of my meetings, and he thought the compromise might work. As I walked out of the room I thought to myself, He looks really tired. I wondered how long he would have to stay here to get this done. Kofi had been the director of UN peacekeeping during the Rwandan genocide. He knew that the stakes were very, very high. He’ll stay as long as it takes, I thought.
Ten days later, after many ups and downs, he succeeded in closing the deal. A powerful prime minister post was created for Odinga, weakening the authority of the president. “I call on Kenyans to embrace the spirit of togetherness,” Kibaki said. Our ambassador reported that Odinga was smiling widely at the ceremony. He had won almost everything he wanted.
I phoned the two Kenyans the next day to congratulate them, expressing my relief for their country. It was one of those rare really good moments when diplomacy works to forestall catastrophe.
Let me be clear: Kofi Annan did the hard work, staying in Nairobi for over a month to bring the sides together. But it helped to throw the weight of the United States behind the compromise. Odinga would later say that I had been tough and influential in getting the president to agree. People in the Kibaki camp conceded that pressure from “donor nations like the United States” had led to their change of heart. And who would have thought that connections made long ago at Stanford between members of the next generation might help too.
The power-sharing agreement allowed Kenyans to put the divisive election behind them and to get back to work, at least for the time being. Sometimes young democracies need breathing space, a chance to survive a crisis, to live to fight another day, and to get it right the next time.
It took two months for the camps to agree on the formation of a new government, but it was done with virtually no violence. Kibaki and Odinga jointly visited the Rift Valley in the west of the country, the scene of so much ethnic conflict after the flawed election. They appealed for unity. “Please forgive one another for what happened so that once again you can start living as Kenyans and build one nation,” Kibaki said. Added Odinga, “We are here as leaders.… We can solve all the problems in order for peace to exist.”24
Later that year, Prime Minister Odinga came to visit me at the State Department in Washington. He was on a trade mission to attract business to Kenya. “How is it going with the president?” I asked.
“I respect him as an elder,” he said. “It works okay.”
Still, the moments of unity could not mask the lingering bitterness and desire to blame someone for the events of 2007. The Kenyans were reluctant to open the wounds, fearing that prosecutions would ignite new violence. But the issue could not be simply swept under the rug. Official commissions were launched to investigate the post-election violence, improve the country’s electoral system, and promote reconciliation. The commission that investigated the violence recommended setting up a special tribunal to try those involved.
The Kenyan people also wanted to see the constitutional reforms agreed upon in 2008 passed and the fight against corruption reinvigorated. The Obama administration sent warning letters to several prominent Kenyans, including some government ministers, telling them that they would be denied visas to the United States if they did not act on these matters; take steps to root out corruption; and pass the constitutional reforms agreed upon in 2008.
Eventually, the internal demands and international pressure succeeded. The draft constitution was finally approved on April 2, 2010, putting an end to the “imperial presidency” that had characterized Kenyan politics since the country’s founding. There were new and explicit guarantees of women’s rights, minority rights, and efforts to reach out to marginalized communities. In addition to weakening the presidency, the document devolved power to regions and localities. People were hopeful that at least in political matters, tribal ties would become secondary. Sixty-seven percent of Kenyans voted in favor of the new constitution, and there was no violence and relatively few charges of fraud.
Kenyan democracy had survived the near-death experience of the contested 2007 election, and political leaders, including Odinga and Kibaki, made good on the pledge to work toward unity in the country. Still, as Kenya prepared for the next election, observers wondered if the relative peace would hold. Kenyatta and William Ruto, who had been on opposite sides in 2007 and were allegedly implicated in the violence, announced an alliance to challenge Odinga, who was now planning to run for president. There was some isolated unrest in the country, but nothing on the scale of 2007. The election process was smoother and more orderly. Kenyans would even watch their first presidential debate. The national media sent a clear message that the violence of the last election should not be repeated. It gave voice to concerns about instability and defended the country’s democracy by actively calling for the elections to proceed peacefully.
But the cloud of responsibility for the violence of the prior election hung over the new process. Kofi Annan had threatened to use the International Criminal Court if the parliament failed to set up its own tribunal. When it did not, he and others supported the ICC’s decision to launch an inquiry. Even though the cases were eventually dropped for lack of evidence, six high-ranking political figures—three from Kibaki’s side and three from Odinga’s—were named in the investigation, among them Kenyatta. The government agreed to cooperate. Human rights groups wanted more, appealing to the Kenyan high court to disqualify politicians who were being investigated by the ICC. The court refused, saying that it had no standing to do so. Kenyatta was allowed to stand for election.
This time, despite technical flaws and delays, the Kenyan people experienced a relatively peaceful and smooth election day. The results were again close, but after two days Kenyatta was declared the winner. Odinga refused to admit defeat and appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the results and hold new elections. Kenya was on edge as the court ordered a partial recount, allowing that there may have been some irregularities. Then finally, on March 29, three weeks after the balloting, the court released the retallied votes, showing that there had indeed been errors in the original count. A day later, however, the court unanimously ruled that the errors had not affected the outcome, upholding the original result. “The court has now spoken,” Odinga conceded.25 He wished Kenyatta well, though he did not attend the inauguration. Kenyatta declared, “Our nation has now successfully navigated the most complex general election in our history. Our journey began three years ago, with the promulgation of a new constitution, and ended eleven days ago, with a landmark Supreme Court decision.”26
It was a good summary of Kenya’s progress along the path toward a more stable democracy. There was a stark contrast in the reaction to a flawed election in 2007–8 and the response to a tight contest in 2012–13. This time the candidates for office put their faith in the country’s institutions, which were respected as the legitimate intermediaries of political and social conflict. More important, the leaders accepted the outcome and encouraged their supporters to do so too. Perhaps they had learned from the events of 2007 that the Kenyan people expected no less.
This is not to suggest that Kenya’s democracy is fully consolidated. The tribal basis of some of the country’s regions, and its political parties, is a continuing challenge for stability. Corruption is still too prevalent and undermines the population’s faith in their government. Moreover, political institutions are still suspect. Indeed, the devolution of authority as a result of constitutional changes in 2010 has exacerbated the problem. Local governors and regional leaders have used the new rules to ignore the central government in matters ranging from education to economic affairs. Federalism has been a double-edged sword, reinforcing some of the tribal tensions that threaten the country’s unity.
Still, the hope is that over time the forces that lead people to vote in lockstep with their tribal affiliation will eventually break down. Kenyan leaders appeal to their people as Kenyans. But in times of challenge and adversity, the temptation to revert to tribal support has been irresistible. Breaking that pattern is the next step in Kenya’s transition. Until then, every election holds the potential for violence and ethnic passion.
Kenya has come a long way in the sixty years since its independence, and perhaps the experience with peaceful elections and the constitution of 2010 will temper behavior the next time around—and again and again. Each time the country will get closer to stable democracy. And in time, the people will gain confidence that their faith in democracy is justified, whatever challenges lie ahead.