Kenya has made significant strides towards democratic consolidation, but recent developments suggest there is still much to be done. Since the return of multiparty democracy in 1992, Kenya has had six general elections with incrementally broad political party participation. The upcoming elections, the seventh, seem to be indicative of a threat to Kenya’s democratic consolidation for several reasons. For one, the number of presidential candidates is the lowest it has been since 1997 when fifteen candidates ran for president. In 2022, only four candidates made it onto the ballot: Raila Odinga, William Ruto, George Wajackoyah and David Waihiga. It must be said though, that more than 50 candidates applied to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for clearance to vie for president, a positive development. However, due to constitutional and statutory prerequisites, only four eventually made the cut, with two of them arguably occupying the fringes such that it is effectively a two-horse race between Odinga and Ruto. 

Whilst the number of active political parties has increased with each election cycle, the irony is that the choice for the electorate is effectively binary. These parties often end up forming or joining two major camps with a view to appealing to multiple tribal bases as is the case in the upcoming election. For example, Odinga’s Azimio Coalition is made up of 23 parties while Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza Alliance consists of 9. The rigidity of the resulting binary choice often betrays the nuanced and diverse views that characterise robust multiparty democracies.

That Kenya finds itself in this situation three decades after the return of multiparty democracy is an indictment of the state of political parties. As opposed to rallying the electorate around common ideals, political parties often serve as tribal fiefdoms akin to special purpose vehicles dominated by strongmen laying claim to tribal legitimacy for a passing election cycle. It is unsurprising that the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung concluded that parties have “failed to articulate coherent ideologies, develop political programmes, establish national following and practice internal democracy” and instead have “tended to articulate interests on the basis of ethnicity, thereby intensifying already existing societal divisions, tensions and conflicts”.

Perhaps due to the absence of an organising principle beyond sheer self-interest, the practice of politics has seemingly left many Kenyans jaded, as explained by Patrick Gathara. Coupled with the fact that Kenyans are subjected to the same pool of candidates with recycled promises at every election, one cannot help but sympathise when the electorate find amusement in eccentric policy propositions by non-establishment candidates such as exporting snake venom to address public debt. Perhaps this nod to exploiting reptiles for gain is a metaphor for the reptilian behaviour of our political class who have consistently exploited citizens for gain.

Much has been said regarding the choice Kenyans face in the upcoming elections. The two major sides have both made bold claims regarding their suitability for office, but is there any substance to these claims, or are they simply two sides of the same coin?

A closer look at the candidates 

Before selecting their running mates, the competition between Odinga and Ruto was dull and seemingly uninspired. With both having been in active politics for most of their lives, they had little to offer in the way of novelty. They are simply political dinosaurs from different eras.

However, the campaigns were injected with a fresh sense of dynamism and excitement with the selection of running mates. Odinga opted for former Gichugu MP, Martha Karua while Ruto chose Rigathi Gachagua, the current MP for Mathira. Cementing the reality that Kenyan politics is yet to move away from tribal equations, contrary to their own assertions, both chose candidates from the vote-rich Mt. Kenya region. Karua’s selection was arguably met with a lot more palpable excitement than Gachagua’s for several valid reasons: her selection makes her the first woman to make it onto a major presidential ticket in Kenya; she has a strong record advocating for human rights and the rule of law; and she is well known for her integrity. In fact, the choice to nominate Gachagua caught many by surprise, even within Ruto’s camp. Pundits suggest that Ruto likely chose the one-term legislator who has never sponsored a bill, due to his financial muscle and purported ability to mobilise voters within his community.

Perhaps this nod to exploiting reptiles for gain is a metaphor for the reptilian behaviour of our political class who have consistently exploited citizens for gain.

Since the deputy-presidential candidate nominations, there has been a clear effort by the Azimio coalition to play up the supposedly stark difference between the two camps. Taken side by side at face value, one may be forgiven for concluding that the decision is a no brainer: Azimio has two politicians who fought for Kenya’s second liberation and have come together at a crucial turning point in the country’s democracy. Kenya Kwanza, on the other hand, has two politicians both of whom have been implicated in major corruption scandals and one of whom has jointly overseen the economic mismanagement of the country for the past decade. However, as is often the case, there is more than meets the eye.

Without taking away from Odinga and Karua’s respective track records, their current cohesion is obviously born of convenience. In 2013, when asked if she would consider running alongside Odinga, Karua stated that there existed no shared values between them, and that as far as she was concerned, Odinga should retire for failure to stem corruption. This was a lot more measured than her sentiments towards the former Prime Minister in 2009 when she accused his party of planning ethnic cleansing. Aside from the difficulty in squaring off their current partnership, there also exists President Kenyatta’s lingering shadow over the Azimio campaigns. Over the past several months, the Azimio camp has enjoyed the benefits of a partisan state machinery. Odinga and Karua have had to walk the tightrope of claiming that they will reform the very system they are now relying on. From questionable endorsements by Cabinet Secretaries who are still in office, to the unsustainable continuation of fuel subsidies and the introduction of flour subsidies with only weeks to the election, both candidates expect an election bump from these patent voter manipulation strategies. 

Reports of “weak” candidates being asked to shelve their ambitions in exchange for future appointments are increasingly common and the president has not hesitated to use what is left of his term to shape the political landscape. With less than a month left in office, the president and his cabinet appointed 142 individuals to various parastatals, state corporations and commissions, some of whom recently dropped their bid for political office. It is difficult to reconcile the fact that both Odinga and Karua fought for multiparty democracy with their apparent complicity with these electoral tactics. Raila, the establishment’s nightmare, has now become Raila, the establishment’s agenda.

The president’s considerable influence over the Azimio camp belies Azimio’s reformist credentials. However, the same sentiment rings true for Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza grouping. Over the past year or so, Kenyans have watched the Deputy President walk a different tightrope of having to distance himself from the Jubilee administration’s failures while taking credit for its successes, as we previously discussed. His selection of Gachagua, who only last year was charged with obtaining Shs7 billion by fraud, has done little to quell the scepticism around his candidature. While they have tried, with relative success, to shift the electoral dynamic towards economic justice and a populist narrative, their decisions around power sharing put them in the same boat as their opponents as being primarily driven by tribal considerations.  Their hustler narrative has certainly struck a chord.

Raila, the establishment’s nightmare, has now become Raila, the establishment’s agenda.

However, whilst we ordinary Kenyans hustle our way through life, stuck in traffic, squeezed into inadequate public transport, harassed by corrupt police, Ruto and Gachagua look down from above at us, through the myriad of helicopters that are their means of transport and now symbolize their gilded lives. That truly is a different kind of hustle. Kenyans also cannot easily forget that Ruto was at the vanguard of resistance alongside Odinga, marching arm in arm in resisting the outcome of the 2007 general elections, which then triggered the outpouring of blood-letting across our nation. Were not Ruto and President Kenyatta also an inseparable pair, winning two general elections as a team? Behold them now, at each other’s throats, incapable of disguising the contempt in which they hold each other.

Kenyan politicians seem to take Otto Von Bismarck more seriously than he took himself when he said, “There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

Is there a valid choice?

Politics is supposed to be about servant leadership. Neither Odinga nor Ruto carry themselves with the gait of servant leaders. Both expect and demand power. Neither is a reformist candidate. Both represent continuity. Whilst Odinga was in the BBI team demanding reform of our hard won 2010 Constitution, at least he campaigned for it in the first place. Ruto campaigned against the 2010 Constitution and then campaigned against BBI, evidently then not out of any deep sense of conviction but based on political convenience. In the forthcoming polls then, it would appear that the outcome for Kenyans would in effect be the same no matter the choice.

Kenyan politicians seem to take Otto Von Bismarck more seriously than he took himself when he said, “There are no permanent enemies, and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

The key challenges that face us are democratic consolidation, separation of powers, uncontrolled graft, making devolution work for the people, climate change and, more pressingly, a sovereign debt crisis and rampant inflation that will not magically disappear, whoever is elected. Neither the Kenya Kwanza nor the Azimio camp fill one with any confidence that they have the wherewithal to overcome these challenges. As ever, it will be up to the Kenyan people to soldier on, to demonstrate their tenacity and fortitude, for civil society to continue to fight in the corner of democratic consolidation, for Kenyan business, finance and industry, which are creating African and global champions, to continue their creative growth, for friends of goodwill to continue to support Kenya and together for us all to hold government to account and at bay, to prevent their predatory instincts and to grow our nation brick by brick, day after day.

Rwanda, a country to which the UK plans to deport asylum seekers, has been producing refugees since its independence on the 1st of July 1962. Successive regimes have used any and all means to stay in power, refusing to implement governance reforms and causing the country to experience cycles of violence that have led Rwandans to seek refuge in other countries.

Already, the independence of Rwanda was preceded by a revolution in 1959 that forced Rwandans into exile.

The first ever ruling party to lead Rwanda, the Party for Hutu Emancipation (MDR-Parmehutu) gradually transformed the multi-party political system into a single party system. It made no attempt to address the social grievances engendered by the 1959 revolution and nor did it engage directly with those Rwandans who had fled Rwanda during the revolution to agree on their safe and voluntary return to their motherland.

In 1973, the then President of Rwanda Grégoire Kayibanda was overthrown through a coup d’état that created a new wave of Rwandan exiles.  The new ruling party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND), enacted laws effectively making Rwanda a single-party state and replaced the 1st of July independence celebrations with the 5th of July celebrations of the MRND coming into power. The MRND was in power for over two decades, with its chairman, Juvénal Habyarimana, the sole presidential candidate, consecutively winning elections with close to 100 per cent of the vote. While Habyarimana was commended for his economic achievements, maintaining order and security in Rwanda and good relations with regional states, he was criticised for human rights violations and lack of democracy.

As with its predecessor, the MRND government did not address the social grievances of those who fled Rwanda during the 1959 revolution and following the 1973 coup d’état, grievances which were also shared by Rwandans inside the country, including the families and friends of those who fled and other dissenting voices inside Rwanda. While it was clear that there was an urgent need to implement reforms in governance, the ruling MRND was slow to act, and when it did, it was too late.

The single party system was replaced by a multiparty system in 1990 but in the same year the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched an attack on Rwanda. The RPF was mainly composed of the descendants of Rwandans who had fled the country in the wake of the 1959 revolution. Negotiations between the MRND, various political parties and the RPF, were agreed in 1993. However, in 1994, Habyarimana was assassinated, and the civil war resumed that culminated in the genocide against the Tutsi.

The RPF went on to win the battle and take power in 1994. Although the majority of Rwandans who had fled Rwanda during the 1959 revolution returned, the civil war and the genocide led to a new exodus of thousands of Rwandans into exile.

The RPF implemented a consensus democracy that aimed to prevent further ethnic violence while accelerating development. Although this political system was supposedly a multi-party system, it has transformed over time into a single party system that suppresses political dissent, restricts pluralism and curbs civil liberties.

Similar to its predecessor, the current regime does not celebrate Rwanda’s independence day on the 1st July of each year but rather the 4th July, the day it won the battle and took over power. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has ruled the country for over two decades, winning elections with close to 100 per cent of the vote. Rwanda has once more been praised for its economic achievements and maintaining order and stability within its territory but has again been criticised for its human rights violations and lack of inclusiveness in political processes.

There is, however, a difference in how the RPF has opted to solve the Rwandan refugee problem.

The RPF’s security policy is premised on the strategy that any threat, real or perceived, is pre-empted beyond Rwanda’s borders since Rwanda is a small and densely populated country, and consequently, has no space for war within her territory.

It is in that perspective the Rwandan army invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), its neighbouring state to the east, in the late 1990s with the aim of fighting the remaining Rwandan forces that had sought refuge in the DRC after the civil war and the 1994 genocide. The United Nations has reported that thousands of Rwandan refugees and Congolese nationals were killed in the process while thousands of Rwandan refugees were returned by force to their motherland.

In an effort to get Rwandan refugees to return home, the RPF also convinced the UN to invoke the cessation clause on the basis that Rwanda is now safe, and no Rwandan citizen should be considered a refugee. The RPF government has also implemented initiatives such as “Come and See” and “Rwanda Day” both in Rwanda and abroad in a bid to get Rwandan refugees to return to Rwanda. However, here are still over 200,000 Rwandan refugees across the world who do not wish to return home.

The RPF’s security policy is premised on the strategy that any threat, real or perceived, is pre-empted beyond Rwanda’s borders

There are compelling reasons why Rwandan refugees do not return while others continue to leave the country to seek refuge abroad. The devastating memories of the civil war, the genocide and the refugees killed in the forests of the Congo are still fresh in the minds of Rwandan refugees and, in the absence of a comprehensive reconciliation policy in Rwanda, they are unlikely to return. Moreover, persistent and widespread poverty and inequalities are forcing more Rwandans to leave the county and discouraging the return of refugees. And despite the international community recognising the economic achievements made by all regimes that have led Rwanda, 60 years after independence, Rwanda remains classified among the least developed and 25 poorest and most vulnerable countries in the world.

Political persecution and human rights violations are also rife in Rwanda and these deter Rwandan refugees from returning home while inciting those in the country to leave. Anyone who dares or is perceived to challenge the government’s policies and narratives is persecuted and labelled an “enemy of the state intending to destabilise Rwanda”.

In 2010, I was convicted on fabricated charges, including denying genocide, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for daring to question the government’s policies. My appeal to the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights cleared me and I was released in 2018 through a presidential pardon after eight years in prison, five of which I spent in solitary confinement.

My story, and those of others who have gone and continue to go through similar experiences or worse for challenging the government, are testament that Rwanda is yet to embrace democratic values including respect for human rights and the rule of law.

Since its independence, successive regimes in Rwanda have been built around a strong man rather than strong institutions while external powers turn a blind eye to their repression and persistently provide political and diplomatic support. The result is that state institutions have been weakened, human rights and democratic values have been infringed upon and the problem of Rwandan refugees has remained unresolved, causing instability in Rwanda and providing a source of political tension in the African Great Lakes region.

Persistent and widespread poverty and inequalities are forcing more Rwandans to leave the county and discouraging the return of refugees.

Over the past two decades since the RPF took the power, Rwanda has been in political tensions with almost all its neighbouring states, accusing them of hosting Rwandan refugees who want to topple its current leadership by force.

Continuing in that direction means that Rwandan refugees abroad and Rwandans inside the country (half of whom are today aged between 15 and 44 years old and were minors or not yet born when the civil war and the genocide took place, and whose civil liberties are infringed upon through the various restrictions imposed by a regime that claims that its aim is to prevent the breakout of another ethnic conflict and to accelerate development) will eventually take the situation into their hands and fight for their rights in the same way the RPF did in 1990, with the risk of taking Rwanda back into its dark past and creating another exodus of Rwandans into exile.

But it must not be that way. Both Rwanda and friends of Rwanda must not let history repeat itself but must instead strive to create a better history for Rwanda that can inspire future generations to work together in harmony towards the development of their country while peacefully contributing to that of the region.

That is why governance reforms in Rwanda are a prerequisite to preventing history repeating itself in Rwanda and to putting an end to the tensions in the African Great Lakes region. Reforms can concretely be realised through an intra-Rwandan dialogue between the government, the opposition and civil society organisations based inside and outside Rwanda, especially those made up of Rwandan refugees. This inclusive dialogue would agree on and create an environment that would enable the safe and voluntary return of Rwandan refugees and facilitate long-term stability in Rwanda and in the African Great Lakes region. Dialogue as a means of finding a lasting solution to state problems is one of the fundamental principles of the constitution of Rwanda and it is aligned with the United Nations Strategy for peace consolidation, conflict resolution and prevention in the Great Lakes region adopted in 2020.

In 1913, Maasai communities went to the Privy Council in London, the highest court in the British Empire, because they were trying to stop the colonial government from evicting them from a large part of their land – which is in today’s Kenya. At that time, the colonialists wanted to pave the way for white settlers to use the land for private capitalist enterprise. Back then, in 1913, the Maasai were unsuccessful.

This year, another court decision is expected, this time around by the East African Court of Justice, where Maasai communities seek redress against the renewed threat of eviction. Now, the government of Tanzania wants to expand the space for luxury tourists to enjoy picturesque views of nature in Ngorongoro district – a kind of nature supposedly untouched by humans. While the outcome of the court case is yet unsure, the government continues its harassment of Maasai communities.

It seems not much has changed in the basic constellation between Maasai pastoralists and their governments. Maasai are continuously forced to leave their land through violent means. At recent demonstrations, dozens of Maasai protesters were severely injured. What has changed, however, are the discourses through which governments justify the dispossession of the indigenous communities – from “economic development” to “wildlife conservation”.

In 1913, “development”, “modernization”, and “economic progress” were central keywords to justify the dispossession of Maasai lands. Arguments such as these remain of central importance even today, for example when people are being forced to leave their homes because of large-scale mining operations. People can lose their land either directly by forced eviction, such as in the recent examples from the Karamoja region in northern Uganda or Senegal, or indirectly because their homelands become too toxic to live in, as in the case of communities around Lake Malawi. Here, justifying discourses are often not very sophisticated. One newspaper article reporting on Zimbabwean villagers about to be forcefully evicted from their homes to make way for a Chinese mining company ends with the laconic sentence: “In a statement, the embassy said Chinese investors in Zimbabwe are working for the betterment of the country”.

In case of East African Maasai communities fighting to remain on their land in 2022, the vocabulary of land dispossession has shifted from “economic development” to “wildlife conservation”. Studies show that wildlife conservation has increasingly been used as an argument to evict indigenous communities from their homelands. This trend can be observed since the 1990s and is prevalent in all parts of the world, but particularly in South and South East Asia, North America, and Africa. Another recent example from East Africa is the attempt of the Kenyan government to force 20000 members of the Ogiek ethnic group from their ancestral lands in the Mau Forest on the grounds that the forest constituted a reserved water catchment zone and the Kenyan state had to conserve it.

One reason for this change in discourse is that in the eyes of many people in the international community, economic reasons alone have lost some of their argumentative force to justify an infringement on indigenous rights. As indigenous movements have gained standing in international organizations such as the United Nations, they have done much to convince people that indigenous cultures deserve protection from certain economic interests in “their” nation states. Article 32 of the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for instance, states that “indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop priorities and strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources” and that the nation states must take “appropriate measures” to mitigate the “adverse environmental, economic, social, cultural and spiritual impact” of economic enterprises. Because of these indigenous rights discourses, indigenous communities have moved into a significantly better position to publicly protest land evictions when they are simply justified as serving “the betterment of the country”.

Protecting lions and elephants from extinction, however, is another matter. In this framework, powerful donors and environmentalist organizations from Europe and the US are much more inclined to prioritize the interests of endangered animals over the interests of humans. But even though the language has changed, colonial projects of capitalist extraction still determine the political agenda.

Those who demand that Maasai communities must leave their lands in Ngorongoro district argue that Maasai pastoralism, the economic system in which herding of cattle is the main livelihood, damages the environment and endangers wild animals. Critical conservation scientists, however, insist that the narrative of “animals versus people” presents a false choice. Studies show that indigenous pastoral communities such as the Maasai rarely negatively affect wildlife conservation, not least because they do not engage in hunting. Instead, it is very telling that many of the wild animals that still exist in East Africa reside in Maasailand. History clearly shows: The economic system that systematically destroys wildlife is capitalism, not pastoralism.

Many think that wildlife conservation regulations prevent the capitalist commodification of land because human settlement and specific economic uses such as mining and intensive agriculture are banned in conservation areas. But this underestimates how much money international luxury tourism companies make out of wildlife conservation areas. These companies sell their clients fantasies of untouched nature – an idea that is endlessly repeated in romanticizing wildlife documentaries. This capitalist commodification of images of “nature without people” is being decried by critical conservation scientists. In 2019, revenues from the tourism sector amounted to US$2.64 billion, or 4.2 % of Tanzania’s GDP.

Although these luxury tourism companies depend on wildlife conservation measures to keep out the humans, they are not always taking the protection of animals very seriously. Numerous companies in Tanzania offer big game hunting to their high-end clientele from the US, Europe, China or Arab countries. On the websites of such companies, one can frequently find pictures of foreigners proudly posing in front of a buffalo or a lion, one they have slain themselves.

Maasai people in northern Tanzania, including those in Ngorongoro district, have over the years experienced violent evictions in their ancestral lands to give room for exactly these kinds of hunting companies. In Loliondo, one of the areas in the district, people have been evicted to allow the Ortello Business Corporation (OBC), based in the United Arab Emirates, to conduct game hunting activities. In 1992, the Tanzanian government granted OBC an exclusive private hunting licence. The long-term plan is to establish a 1500 km2 wildlife corridor exclusively for OBC hunters. In the last years, both state security forces and OBC’s security guards have repeatedly used violence and harassment against Maasai “trespassers”.

All the while, the Tanzanian government has made the intensification of tourism a political priority. President Samia Suluhu Hassan ranks it highly on her agenda and has clearly stated that she sees international tourism entangled with international investment. Recently, she participated in a lavish wildlife documentary made by US American TV producer Peter Greenberg, called “The Royal Tour”. Afterwards, she went on a promotion tour through different countries, including the US, to show the film and to market international tourism investments  – endlessly reported on in national television.

In one telling scene in this documentary, Suluhu Hassan and Greenberg are shown flying in an airplane over Maasai territory. The president introduces the Maasai as “one of the newest” arrivals to Tanzania, migrating from the Nile valley “only in the 1700s”, thereby echoing longstanding narratives by the government that Maasai are not “really” indigenous to the region. Then, Greenberg picks up the thread and comments that it was “fascinating to see these primitive tribes still holding on to their traditional values”. As an elderly white male voice off screen, Greenberg tells the viewers that although the Tanzanian government had attempted to convince the Maasai to change their way of life many times, “they persisted to clinging to their ancient ways”. In summary, Greenberg says, “they may not have a choice now and need to find other ways to support their families”.

What a chilling self-fulfilling prophecy. If not anything else, movies like these showcase the unholy alliance of capitalist agendas to commodify indigenous lands, colonial imagery of African nature untouched by Africans, and the misleading appropriation of conservation discourses. In order to understand what is behind the violent mass evictions of Maasai communities from Ngorongoro district it is crucial to unmask the capitalist agendas of enrichment that underlie these indigenous rights violations, and the “colonial conservationism” that is mobilized to justify them.

–

This article was first published by ROAPE.