Two years have gone by since we last saw Mzee Joshua Mwakesi Mwalilika. He hasn’t changed a bit. His birth certificate says he was born in 1923. This means that Mzee Mwalilika is just two years shy of a hundred. He says that the birth certificate is wrong, that he was actually born in 1921. Mzee Mwalilika is from Taita, of the Wakasighau, a people who were uprooted from their native Kasighau region and exiled by the British to Malindi where they languished for over twenty years.

It all started in August 1915, at a time when Kenya was under British colonial rule and neighbouring Tanzania, then Tanganyika, was under the Germans. World War I had begun and, being so close to the border with Tanganyika, Kasighau was bound to suffer the effects of the war. When the Germans attacked the British, the British took revenge on the local African populations.

“All the houses were torched in the entire Kasighau on August 11th 1915. From Kigongwe, Makwasinyi, Jora, Kiteghe, Bungule, and Rukanga,” recalls Mzee Mwalilika. It was the handiwork of the British; they were on a punitive expedition against the Wakasighau whom the British suspected of having betrayed them to the Germans. A few days prior, the Germans had  carried out a night raid on the British garrison at Kasighau, committing a massacre. This was eight years before Mzee Mwalilika was born.

One version of the events is that after the attack, the Germans wrote a letter to the British claiming that the locals had voluntarily betrayed them, which prompted the British to retaliate. At Rukanga Village in Kasighau, retired teacher Jonathan Mshiri, now aged 71, says that local accounts of the events tell of two individuals from the area who unknowingly directed some Germans who were on a spying mission to where the British had set up camp.

“Two people were harvesting honey in the bush and the soldiers came and interrogated them and said, ‘Can you show us where the wazungu are?’” says Mwalimu Mshiri. “They used the term wazungu not British, so Kinona and Mwashutu thought that these white people were just friends of fellow white people. They did not know that these were Germans.”  The Germans laid waste to the British garrison at Jora in Kasighau and 38 British soldiers, including their captain, were taken captive by the Germans. This enraged the British so much that they decided to exile the entire Kasighau community.

For the Kasighau people, the British chose Malindi. After torching all the houses in the five villages, they rounded up all the people and gathered them at a place that was central to all the villages. “The British chose these open grounds because it gave them a view of Tanganyika where the Germans had come from,” explains Ezra Mdamu, a descendant of the survivors. “They also hoped that some of the villagers would have a better chance of pointing out exactly where the Germans had headed to. The people were also subjected to torture to extract information from them.”

The Wakasighau were then forced to march to Maungu Township, some 35 kilometres by today’s roads. From Maungu to the border at Holili is 144 kilometres using today’s road network, if indeed the German attackers had come through Holili.

The captives were herded into train wagons and taken to Malindi where the British had prepared the ground by forewarning the Giriama that the Wakasighau were cannibals.

At Maungu, the captives were herded into train wagons and taken to Malindi where the British had prepared the ground by forewarning the Giriama that the Wakasighau were cannibals. “What the new hosts did was put poison in the water holes, and this led to many deaths amongst our people,” Mwalimu Mshiri explains.

Macharia Munene, professor of History and International Affairs at the United States International University, says that using exile as punishment summarizes the colonial policy of subjugation and dispossession of local peoples.

“Most of these people who were deported were individuals, people trying to challenge colonial authority,” he says, “but colonialists also deported groups of people, often to hostile, undesirable places.”

Return to Kasighau

The plight of the Kasighau in their new land did not go unnoticed, and various parties, including church organizations, brought pressure to bear on the colonialists to review their position. But it was not until 1936 that the Kasighau people were allowed to return home, only to find most of their land gone.

“All the land around Kasighau Hill was termed as hunting blocks where the British people could hunt. The block here was called ‘66A’, the Kasighau people were only confined to a 10km² block around the hill called ‘Trust Land’. The rest of the land was called ‘Crown Land,’” says Mwalimu Mshiri.

It was not until 1936 that the Kasighau people were allowed to return home, only to find most of their land gone.

After independence in 1963, Crown Land became State Land and some of the remaining land was handed over to ex-WWII British colonial soldiers. The people of Kasighau were not represented at the time and the remaining land was subdivided into ranches that today surround the 10km² settlement area. It is within some of these ranches that mineral deposits and precious stones are found, and there are frequent tussles between the youth, miners and investors.

According to a report titled The Taita Taveta County Integrated Development Plan 2013-2017, only 35 per cent of all landowners possess title deeds. The report says that land adjudication was ongoing to ensure that all landowners possess title deeds. The 2019 census puts the population of Taita Taveta at 340,671. Kasighau Ward alone is home to 13,000 people. The majority say they do not have title deeds.

No land, more problems

In February 2019, a group of young men from Kasighau descended on a disputed mine inside Kasighau Ranch. Around the mining area are mounds of earth and makeshift tents. People selling foodstuffs have followed in the wake of the miners. Those mining say they are simply going for what they believe belongs to them. They do not have the heavy equipment needed for serious mining operations such as earthmovers or elaborate underground mining shafts. They are artisanal miners who rely on simple tools such as hoes, spades and mattocks.

“When we young people saw that we did not have leaders serious on championing our rights, we decided to have our own revolution,” says Elijah Mademu, a youth leader. “We decided to redeem our lost lands, lands rich in mineral resources. There are about 500 young men and women eking out a living from these minerals.”

According to retired Kasighau Location chief Pascal Kizaka, the occupation of the mine can be attributed to population pressure and young people running out of options. “Every economic activity starts with land. Without land, you are like that person who is given water but cannot drink it,” he says.

Prof. Macharia says land ownership remains a significant cause of conflict across much of Kenya where land issues remain unresolved. “The government, particularly the area MP and area governor, because they have power, they should raise the issue and say, these are our people, so process their [land] titles.”

However, Taita Taveta Lands County Executive Committee member Mwandawiro Mghanga disputes the assertion that the county or the leadership at the local level are fully able to resolve the issue of title deeds, arguing that land and natural resources adjudication have not been fully devolved.

“It is true in this matter there are injustices, but on title deed issues even the entire Taita Taveta County has the same problem. In Kasighau the plan is to let them get the title deeds alongside the rest of the county”, he says.

“Of course there are six ranches, agriculturally-driven ranches (ADR’s) and there’s Kasighau Ranch which is very large. . . . There should not be a drive motivated by the capitalist system to grab ranches. What needs to be done is that everyone who needs a title for land to settle should have access to it.”

“Without land, you are like that person who is given water but cannot drink it.”

Land alone might not be the only thorny issue. Chief Kizaka laments that throughout his time living and working in the area, local Kasighau people have noticeably been lagging behind even in education matters. For instance, a 2013 report on inequalities compared Kasighau Ward to neighbouring Mbololo ward and found that only 8 per cent of Kasighau residents have a secondary education or above. A Kenya National Bureau of Statistics report titled Exploring Kenya’s Inequality: Pulling Apart or Pooling Together? shows Kasighau’s literacy rates to be four times less than Mbololo’s 32 per cent of the population who have gone beyond secondary school education.

“By independence time, we had only three primary schools, in Bungule, Rukanga and Mwakwasinyi. Illiteracy was very high. You can imagine, illiterate parents producing illiterate children,” bemoans Chief Kizaka. “There is no movement. The number of locals in school is very low. Compared to many parts of the country where locals are the majority, here we do not dominate.”

Today, Mwalimu Jonathan Mshiri says the thought of squeezing almost his entire descendants onto 15 acres of land troubles him daily. He knows too well that already the 13,000 Kasighau residents, whose numbers are increasing, are also facing the difficulty of having to make do with 10 square kilometres of land.

“We are the Kasighau people, we belong to this mountain and the surroundings, why are we not being given the priority?” he asks.

It is 6 p.m. and as the sun sets in the west, in the direction of Tanzania, it casts a golden glow on the Kasighau massif, but the dark despair of the Wakasighau remains.

In today’s world, it is almost expected that a truth commission will be introduced in the wake of conflict or a period of authoritarianism to try and consolidate a transition to democracy and peace. A truth commission generally understood – as per Priscilla Hayner – as a temporary state-sanctioned body that investigates a pattern of past abuse, engages ‘directly and broadly with the affected population, gathering information on their experiences’ and which aims to conclude with a public report.

The underlying idea is that societies need to confront and deal with unjust histories if they are to establish a qualitative break with that past. Proponents of modern truth commissions thus ‘look backwards’, not as interested historians, but as a way to ‘reach forwards.’ As Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained in his foreword to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report:

The other reason amnesia simply will not do is that the past refuses to lie down quietly. It has an uncanny habit of returning to haunt one … However painful the experience, the wounds of the past must not be allowed to fester. They must be opened. They must be cleansed. And balm must be poured on them, so they can heal. This is not to be obsessed with the past. It is to take care that the past is properly dealt with for the sake of the future.

Motivated by this desire to render the past ‘passed’ in the substantial sense of being ‘dead’ or ‘over and done with’, modern truth commissions dedicate most of their time to two activities: the holding of public hearings and production of a final report.

This is a relatively recent development. Early truth commissions did not hold public hearings and were largely fact-finding bodies. However, ever since the South African TRC of the 1990s, truth commissions have held hearings as a stage for various actors – victims, perpetrators, political parties, state institutions and so forth – to present their account of past wrongs. The underlying idea is that people will have a chance to speak and be heard, and thus regain their humanity; that a wider (and engaged) audience will bear witness to a new human rights-conscious regime; and the overview provided will feed into, and help legitimise, a final report. The latter in turn intended to record and acknowledge past wrongs and provide recommendations that can help to promote truth, justice and reconciliation.

However, while much hope is often placed, and much time and money expended, on truth commissions and their hearings and final reports, it is evident that these processes generally fall far short of ambitious goals and high expectations. But what explains this gap between aspiration and reality?

This is one of the questions that I address in a new book – Performances of Injustice: The politics of truth, justice and reconciliation in Kenya – which analyses several transitional justice mechanisms introduced following Kenya’s post-election violence of 2007/8 when over 1,000 people were killed and almost 700,000 were displaced.

This includes the establishment of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). Significantly, the Commission’s mandate recognised that, while the 2007/8 post-election violence was triggered by a disputed election, it was fuelled by more deep-rooted problems.  In turn, the Commission was tasked with investigating a wide array of injustices – from state repression and causes of political violence to perceptions of economic marginalisation and irregular land acquisition – between Kenya’s independence in 1963 and the end of the post-election violence in February 2008.

Established through an Act of Parliament in 2008, and operational from 2009 to 2013, the TJRC sought to meet its mandate, in large part, by collecting statements (with over 40,000 collected in total), holding public and women’s hearings in 35 locations across the country and adversely mentioned person (AMP) hearings in western and Nairobi, and publishing a substantial final report that runs to over 2,000 pages.

Despite such achievements, the Commission was soon mired in controversy with calls for the chairman – who was soon linked to three injustices that the Commission was meant to investigate – to resign, while the public hearings attracted little media attention, and the final report is yet to be discussed in parliament let alone implemented.

The Kenyan experience highlights a range of lessons and insights. This includes the fact – as recently outlined in a piece for The Conversation – that transitional justice mechanisms are not ‘tools’ that can be introduced in different contexts with the same effect. Instead, their success (or failure) rests on their design, approach and personnel – all of which are incredibly difficult to get right – but also on their evaluation and reception, and thus on their broader contexts, which commissions have little or no control over.

However, the lessons that can be drawn go beyond reception and context and extend to the inherent shortcomings of such an approach.

First, while victims appreciate a chance to speak and be heard, the majority clearly submitted statements or memoranda or provided testimony in the hope that they would be heard and that some action would be taken to redress the injustices described. As one woman explained after a women’s hearing in Nakuru, she was glad that she had spoken and how, having told her story, the Commission would ‘come in and help.’

To be fair, the TJRC’s founders were aware of the inadequacies of speaking, which is why they included ‘justice’ in the title and gave the Commission powers to recommend further investigations, prosecutions, lustration (or a ban from holding public office), reparations and institutional and constitutional reforms.

However, on the question of whether recommendations would be implemented, the Commission rather naively relied on the TJRC Act (2008), which stipulated that ‘recommendations shall be implemented.’ However, such legal provisions proved insufficient. Amidst general scepticism about the Commission’s work, parliament amended the TJRC Act in December 2013 to ensure that the report needed to be considered by the National Assembly – something that is yet to happen.

Moreover, to document and acknowledge the truth requires that one hears from both victims and perpetrators. However, the latter often have little motivation, and much to lose, from telling the truth. This was evident in Kenya where, during the AMP hearings I attended, where I heard little that was new and not a single admission of personal responsibility or guilt. Instead, testimonies were characterised by five discursive strands of responsibility denied: denial through a transfer of responsibility, denial through a questioning of sources, denial through amnesia, denial through a reinterpretation of events and an assertion of victimhood, and denial that events constituted a wrongdoing. However, while AMPs denied responsibility, none denied that injustices had occurred. As a result, while the hearings provided little clarity on how and why a series of reported events may have occurred, they simultaneously drew attention to, and recognised, past injustice. In this way, they provided a public enactment of impunity: Kenya’s history was replete with injustice, but AMPs were unwilling to shoulder any responsibility for it.

This ongoing culture of impunity points to another issue, which is that – for most victims – injustices clearly do not belong to the past but to the present and future. The loss of a person or income, for example, often constitutes a course that now seems beyond reach – from the hardship that accompanies the loss of a wage earner to the diminished opportunities that stem from a child’s extended absence from school. However, the past also persists in other ways, from the injustices that never ended, such as gross inequalities or corruption, to fears of repetition and experiences of new injustice.

Unfortunately, the idea that one can ‘look backwards to reach forwards’ downplays the complex ways in which the past actually persists, and possible futures infringe on the present. This is problematic since it can encourage a situation where small changes dampen demands for more substantive reform. At the same time, it can facilitate a politicised assertion of closure that excludes those who do not buy into the absence of the past, the newness of the present, or the desirability of imagined futures and provides a resource to those who seek to present such ‘difficult people’ as untrusting, unreasonable and unpatriotic.

This is not to say that truth commissions are useless and should never be considered. On the contrary, many view speaking as better than silence, while the commission’s report provides a historical overview of injustice in Kenya and a range of recommendations that activists and politicians are using to lobby for justice and reform.

However, when introduced, truth commissions should be more aware of the importance of persuasive performances and how their initial reception and longer-term impact is shaped by broader socio-economic, political and historic contexts. Truth commissions also need to adopt a more complex understanding of the ways in which the past persists, and possible futures infringe on the present and avoid easy assertions of closure.

Ultimately, such ambitious goals as truth, justice and reconciliation require not Freudian ‘talk therapy’, although catharsis and psycho-social support are often appreciated, but an ongoing political struggle, and substantive socio-economic and political change, which something like a truth commission can recommend, and sometimes contribute to, but cannot be expected to achieve.

–

This article was first published in the Review of African political Economy (ROAPE).

During the five-year-long proceedings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against former Ugandan rebel commander Dominic Ongwen, there was not a peep from the Ugandan government about the ICC’s bias against Africans.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni did not show any such restraint towards the ICC when he was the chief guest at the April 2013 inauguration of then newly elected Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“I was one of those that supported the ICC because I abhor impunity. However, the usual opinionated and arrogant actors using their careless analysis have distorted the purpose of that institution,” Museveni said in his 9 April 2013 speech. The actors he made indirect reference to were unnamed Western countries.

Museveni accused those actors of using the ICC, “to install leaders of their choice in Africa and eliminate the ones they do not like.”

At the time Museveni spoke, Kenyatta and his deputy William Samoei Ruto were due to face trial at the ICC. The case against Kenyatta was terminated in March 2015 before trial hearings began. Ruto’s case was terminated in April 2016 after the prosecution had called its witnesses. In a majority decision, the judges said the case against Ruto and former journalist Joshua arap Sang had deteriorated so much that they could not determine Ruto’s and Sang’s innocence or guilt. The judges said the case deteriorated because of a campaign to intimidate and bribe witnesses.

No sense of irony

During the April 2013 inauguration of Kenyatta, Museveni exhibited no sense of irony when he accused unnamed actors of using the ICC to eliminate leaders they did not like. By the time Museveni was making his speech, his government had already debated and agreed to use the ICC as one way of “eliminating” its problems with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group in northern Uganda. In December 2003 Uganda formally asked the ICC to investigate the atrocities committed in northern Uganda.

Following that formal request, Uganda shared with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) several years’ worth of recordings of the government’s intercepts of LRA radio communications. Together with those recordings, the government also gave the OTP the contemporaneous notes made of the intercepts. On top of that, the government also gave the OTP a list of 15 LRA leaders it believed were responsible for the atrocities committed in northern Uganda.

All this emerged during the course of Ongwen’s trial at the ICC for his role in atrocities committed between 2002 and 2005 in northern Uganda. Ongwen, a former LRA commander, was convicted of 61 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in February this year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in May. Ongwen is in the process of appealing against his conviction and sentence.

In his April 2013 speech, Museveni acknowledged that his government had cooperated with the ICC. “We only referred Joseph Kony of LRA to the ICC because he was operating outside Uganda. Otherwise, we would have handled him ourselves,” said Museveni. This statement is only partly true.

When in December 2003 Uganda formally requested the ICC to investigate the atrocities committed in northern Uganda, Kony was based in what is today South Sudan. But he was there with a small group of senior LRA commanders and other LRA members. During Ongwen’s trial, the court heard that by the time Uganda made its referral to the ICC, most of the LRA’s commanders and members had left the group’s rear bases in then southern Sudan and crossed the border back into northern Uganda. This is because Uganda had reached a deal with Sudan that allowed it to cross the border and attack the LRA’s rear bases. Uganda called this military offensive Operation Iron Fist.

African leaders protecting each other

The Ugandan government’s actions may seem contradictory but they fall well within the pattern African leaders have adopted when it comes to the ICC. Whenever there has been a case against an African president or deputy president at the ICC, this has been discussed at the African Union. As for ICC cases against other Africans, the African Union has not discussed them or passed resolutions on them, even if those cases involved former presidents or vice presidents. Despite its contradictory approach towards ICC matters, the African Union has not shied away from accusing the ICC of having an Africa bias.

Ever since, in July 2008, the OTP applied for an arrest warrant against then Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in connection with the atrocities committed in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, the ICC has been on the agenda of the regular African Union meetings of presidents and prime ministers. ICC pre-trial judges eventually issued two arrest warrants against al-Bashir in March 2009 and July 2010.

African heads of state and government usually meet twice a year as the summit of the AU. Between 2009 and 2020, at each of those summits, they passed resolutions on the ICC or they reaffirmed past resolutions on the matter and directed a ministerial committee to follow up on those resolutions. The resolutions African leaders have passed at these summits have called for the termination or deferral of cases at the ICC implicating serving heads of state or their deputies.

Despite its contradictory approach towards ICC matters, the African Union has not shied away from accusing the ICC of having an Africa bias.

None of the resolutions has mentioned any of the other cases that have come before the ICC such as the one against Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s former president, or the one against Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former vice-president and senator of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ICC has concluded the cases against Gbagbo and Bemba, acquitting both of them.

The African Union has not been the only critic of the Africa-bias in case selection at the ICC. Academics, lawyers and members of civil society have all criticised or highlighted this bias. But the African Union has been the loudest critic. And what the African Union has said on the issue has often been summarised to mean Africa is against the ICC.

Presidents have immunity, ok?

But this paring-down a complicated issue has blurred the African Union’s two-track approach in its relationship with the ICC. Whenever a head of state such as Sudan’s Omar al Bashir is the target of an arrest warrant, the African Union is strident in its criticism of the court. After al-Bashir was toppled from power in April 2019, his arrest warrants ceased to be the subject of AU resolutions.

Instead, the AU has now turned its focus on the issue of the immunity of heads of state and other senior government officials. Under the Rome Statute, head of state does not have immunity if that person is charged with a crime under that Statute. What’s more, the ICC regularly communicates with member states when the court has been informed that a person for whom there is an outstanding arrest warrant is traveling to those member states.

This was the case with al-Bashir when he was Sudan’s president. Some countries chose to ignore the ICC’s communication. Others advised al-Bashir not to travel to their country and risk arrest. And some have argued they could not arrest al-Bashir because he was in their country to attend an international meeting they were hosting and that, under international customary law, al-Bashir enjoyed immunity for the purpose of the meeting. This is what South Africa and Jordan argued when the issue of immunity for heads of state was litigated before the ICC.

The most recent AU summit resolution on the ICC was issued in February 2020. In it, AU member states are called on to “oppose” the ICC Appeals Chamber judgement in a case Jordan had filed. The resolution said the decision by the ICC Appeals Chamber was, “at variance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, customary international law and the AU Common Position.”

The judgement referred to in the AU resolution dealt with the question of whether Jordan, as an ICC member, should have arrested al-Bashir when he went to Jordan in March 2017 to attend a regular summit of the League of Arab States. The ICC Appeals Chambers was unanimous that Jordan should have arrested al-Bashir when he visited that country.

After al-Bashir was toppled from power in April 2019, his arrest warrants ceased to be the subject of AU resolutions.

The five-judge panel also agreed that customary international law gave heads of state immunity in certain circumstances such as immunity from another country’s jurisdiction. But the Appeals Chamber concluded that such immunity did not extend to executing ICC arrest warrants.

The AU’s call to oppose the ICC Appeals Chamber’s May 2019 judgement on Jordan ignores one thing: the AU made submissions to the Appeals Chamber before it reached its judgement. The AU made its submissions at the invitation of the Appeals Chamber. The AU’s chief lawyer, Namira Negm, led the team that argued its submission during the hearings on the Jordan case that were held between 10 and 14 September 2018.

In the February 2020 resolution, the AU also asked African members of the ICC to raise before the court’s membership issues that concern African states such as “the rights of the accused and the immunities of Heads of State and Government and other senior officials.” The resolution further asked African members to “propose necessary amendments to the Rome Statute within the ambit of the ongoing discussions on the reform of the ICC,” by its membership.

Making peace without al Bashir

One reason the AU gave against effecting the arrest warrants against al Bashir was that he was key to bringing peace to Sudan’s western region of Darfur. The AU was involved in negotiations for peace in Darfur, a process that has been on and off over the years. Ironically, once al-Bashir was removed from power in April 2019, the transitional authorities who replaced him were able to initiate and conclude peace deals on the Darfur conflict last year.

In August this year, the Cabinet in Sudan resolved to hand over al Bashir to the ICC in execution of the two arrest warrants against him. This is a significant step since the transitional government took office in 2019 and indicated that Sudanese authorities were considering reversing the previous position that al Bashir would not be handed over to the ICC. The next step is for the overall transitional authority in Sudan, the Sovereignty Council, to discuss the Cabinet decision and decide whether to endorse it.

Ignoring victims

The criticism levelled at the ICC that it is biased against Africa often ignores a key issue: the victims of conflict on the continent. When a conflict is at its peak, victims will receive emergency aid. The more prolonged a conflict becomes, the less aid victims receive. Rarely will such aid be from the victims’ government. And often that foreign-donated aid is all that victims of conflict can expect.

The perpetrators of the conflict that made them victims are rarely held to account for the atrocities they committed. Yet, victims live with the consequences of those atrocities for the rest of their lives. This was the constant refrain of the victims of the northern Uganda conflict who testified during the Ongwen trial.

The criticism levelled at the ICC that it is biased against Africa often ignores a key issue: the victims of conflict on the continent.

Women testified about their families rejecting them because they returned home with children they gave birth to while with the LRA. One person testified about having to change schools several times because teachers and students abused him when they found out he had been in the LRA. Another person testified about wanting to resume his education that was interrupted when he was abducted by the LRA but he did not earn enough to do that and also educate his children. So he has focused on educating his children.

These and other victim stories are rarely spoken about whenever the ICC is criticised of having an African bias.