Back to Index

Sad lesson in Kenyan crisis for Zimbabwe
Dianna Games, Business Day (SA)
February 04, 2008

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A697962

Everyone-s talking about power, so why not me? I-m taking the contrary position: advocating less power, not more. Actually, I am talking about political power. While SA and its neighbours suffer power shortages of the light-bulb kind, our fellow Africans in Kenya have a quite different power problem on their hands.

Their problem focuses on one person having all the power, or at least too much of it — President Mwai Kibaki.

Kenya is the latest victim of the winner-takes-all game of political power, with one politician claiming victory in a patently flawed election and a disgruntled opponent asserting that he deserves the spoils of leadership. More than 800 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in the fallout of the dispute.

At the lowest level, this is a story of two politicians head-butting each other. At a more significant level, it is about the process of democracy, which is directly linked to the amount of power vested in the president.

The stakes are high — and are directly related to corruption, power of patronage and unrivalled access to resources, all of which have long characterised the Kenyan presidency.

Being out of a job does not compare favourably with being top dog. Kibaki can hardly look forward to winning industrialist Mo Ibrahim-s next prize for African governance after a record that includes rampant corruption in the government and a betrayal of the power-sharing arrangement he crafted for his first term.

It is clear he plans to sit tight. As African leaders jetted in for talks to find a solution to the crisis, Kibaki was appointing his cabinet. The Kenyan police were last week told to shoot on sight — even as the politicians were locked in talks with former United Nations chief Kofi Annan. The scale of murder and mayhem does not seem to have moved Kibaki sufficiently to seek a solution voluntarily.

And as the powermongers waffle behind closed doors, a new cycle of violence has begun on the ground — revenge killings for the first round of attacks. This cycle is more dangerous; it generates its own momentum, usually moving away from the original causes and targets, making it harder to rein in.

The crisis has a worrying economic dimension. Companies have already started lowering their earnings projections for the first quarter.

The vital tourism sector was the first casualty, with operators saying occupancies in the height of the December peak season dropped to 10%- 30% — from 70%-90%. The 2008 economic growth target of 8% has been severely dented, with some analysts halving it.

And the region is catching the fallout. Kenya, a cheerleader for regional integration, has overnight become a thorn in the side of the East African Community. Tourism figures in neighbouring countries are down and the likes of Rwanda and Burundi are suffering from disruptions to supply lines and cargo movements on their only route to the sea.

Mediation talks could present a short-term solution, but a lasting deal will be elusive. Compromises may be made among the politicians, but it will take real leadership to provide a sustainable solution. Such leadership is not evident.

If there is one positive in all this, it is that Africans have reacted to the crisis and have waded in to help.

Eddie Cross, an opposition party politician in Zimbabwe, maintains that the lesson for Africa from Kenya is that there have to be better checks and balances regarding elections. Of course he is right. But the more obvious, albeit cynical, lesson seems to be that when your politicians steal an election, create an almighty fuss. The more graphic the images of slaughter and the higher the death toll, the more African leaders are forced to act. Even SA-s Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, who routinely glosses over the magnitude of Zimbabwe-s agony, sounded a lot more alarmed than usual about events in Kenya.

Zimbabweans go to the polls in less than two months to vote, or not, in an election that looks as if the incumbent government has already scripted it — again. History suggests that the violent Kenya scenario is unlikely to play out there. But that does not make electoral fraud or manipulation any less serious. The continent-s leaders need to be rather more even-handed about their problem-solving heroics.

*Games is director of Africa @ Work, a research and publishing company.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP