Kenya: Violence after presidential elections - full text
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on Feb. 1 traveled to Nairobi (the capital of Kenya) to appeal to President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Amolo Odinga to end the violence that had crippled Kenya throughout January following presidential and legislative elections held on Dec. 27, 2007.
The violence had erupted following the declaration on Dec. 30, 2007, that incumbent President Kibaki had won the presidential election, despite claims of victory by Odinga. The post-election conflict pitted the country’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, who supported Kibaki, against the Luo, who backed Odinga.
During his visit to Kenya on Feb. 1, Ban Ki Moon met with Odinga. He had earlier met with Kibaki on Jan. 31 at an African Union (AU) foreign ministers' meeting in Ethiopia. The BBC online news service reported on Feb. 1 that purpose of the UN secretary-general's visit was to offer support to his predecessor, Kofi Annan, who was mediating talks between the two sides.
By Feb. 1, the BBC reported that as a result of the post-election violence more than 850 people had died, while the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency on the same day reported that almost 1,000 people had been killed and some 300,000 displaced..
Immediate Context
Incumbent President Kibaki contested the election as the candidate of a recently formed alliance, the Party of National Unity (PNU). Odinga, the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (former vice president (1964-66) and independence leader), was the candidate of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
On Dec. 30, 2007, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) announced that Kibaki had won the presidential election contested three days earlier, securing 46.7 per cent of the vote, against 44.3 per cent for Odinga. Shortly afterwards, Kibaki was sworn in for a second term as president. Following the announcement of the election result, Alexander Graf Lambsdorf, the (German) head of the EU’s election observer mission, said that the ECK had "not succeeded in establishing the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties and candidates".
Odinga reacted to the ECK's announcement by saying that "Kenyans will not accept the results of a rigged election. No force will stop Kenyans attaining what they want." By the next day, vicious street fights had broken out in Nairobi and in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret between supporters of Kibaki and Odinga. President Kibaki responded to the violence by outlawing public demonstrations, deploying riot police, and banning live television broadcasts. The police fired tear gas in an effort to keep rival gangs apart, but were accused by Odinga's supporters of firing indiscriminately on them. Thousands of ethnic Kikuyus were driven from their homes in the Northern Rift Valley by armed supporters of Odinga.
On Jan. 5, Kibaki offered to form a national unity government to end the turmoil, but the opposition demanded that he admit that the elections had been rigged, the New York Daily News reported on Jan. 6. Nevertheless, on Jan. 8, Kibaki appointed 17 ministers to his new cabinet and on Jan. 15, in a raucous session, the National Assembly (the unicameral legislature) elected Kenneth Marende of Odinga’s ODM, as speaker.
Rallies and demonstrations and outbreaks of violence continued throughout January, displacing thousands of people, who fled to refugee camps. The UN and the International Red Cross made an urgent appeal for food aid for the refugees, The East African Standard reported on Jan. 18. By Jan. 18, 612 people had lost their lives, Red Cross officials reported.
The BBC online news service reported on Jan. 23 that after meeting with former UN Secretary-General Annan, the ODM called off a planned mass demonstration. Kibaki and Odinga met and shook hands for the cameras on Jan. 24 under Annan’s watch. However, despite the meeting, clashes continued on Jan. 25, with a rising death toll.
Substantive negotiations, mediated by Annan, between representatives of Kibaki and Odinga started for the first time on Jan. 31, but were adjourned the same day after David Kimutai Too, an ODM legislator, was shot dead by a policeman in Eldoret. The killing--the second slaying of an opposition legislator in two days--set off further clashes in the volatile western region. Odinga's party claimed that the killing of Too had been a political assassination, but the police described it as a "crime of passion" linked to Too's girlfriend. The negotiations resumed on Feb. 1.
Reaction and Outlook
Members of the international community urged both Kibaki and Odinga to call on their supporters to end the violence and to use dialogue to resolve the crisis. In addition to the efforts of former UN Secretary-General Annan and current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, President of Ghana John Kufuor, and Louis Michel, the EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, were amongst those who attempted to help negotiate a political solution to the crisis.
At the AU summit in Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia), AU President Alpha Oumar Konare on Jan. 31 called on African leaders to help resolve the crisis: "We cannot sit here with our hands folded," he said. The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, on the sidelines of the summit on Feb. 1, warned that the bank may have to suspend some its projects in Kenya, which mainly supported AIDS work and community development, if the violence continued.
US state department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a press briefing on Jan. 30 that the USA was reviewing its allocation of "several millions of dollars" of aid to Kenya. On Jan. 20, Assistant US Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer had described the violence in Kenya as "ethnic cleansing". However, the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation reported on Jan. 31 that the US state department later stressed that this was her personal opinion and not the official US position, although the department would be closely monitoring the situation for "any incidence of atrocities". In addition, the US ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, was reported on the website of the US CNN television network on Feb. 1 as saying that a travel ban was also being considered against people the US government considered responsible for the violence.
Historical Context
Some of the earliest evidence of human existence was discovered in the area that is now Kenya, dating back millions of years. North Africans moved into the region around 2000 BC. Arabs and Persians began to venture into the area from the Red Sea coast from the first century AD along with other African peoples migrating from the north and south. The Portuguese in the late 15th century established trading posts before being eclipsed by the Omani Arabs in the 1600s. European colonialists in the late 19th century partitioned the area and the UK established the East African Protectorate in 1895. The Protectorate encouraged white European settlers to occupy the fertile central highlands, dispossessing the Kikuyu people who lived there.
Kenya officially became a UK colony in 1920. In 1944 an independence movement coalesced into the Kenyan African Union (KAU), with Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, becoming leader of KAU in 1947. A group of Kikuyu rebels, known as the Mau Mau, launched attacks on white settlers in 1952. The UK colonial authorities responded by violently suppressing the Mau Mau, killing thousands of people during an eight-year state of emergency. The KAU was banned in 1953 and Kenyatta imprisoned. In 1960, the UK declared an end to the state of emergency and announced plans to grant independence. The same year the Kenya African National Union (KANU) was formed by Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga and in 1961 Kenyatta, who had been released after serving six years in prison and two under house arrest, became president of KANU.
Kenya gained its independence on Dec. 12, 1963, with Kenyatta as prime minister. Kenyatta became president, with Odinga as vice president, in 1964 when the country became a republic. However, in 1966, the two fell into dispute and Odinga, a Luo, founded the Kenya People's Union (KPU), the only opposition party. The KPU was subsequently banned and no other opposition parties were formed.
After independence, the Kikuyu were seen as having benefited most from land redistribution, which became a source of inter-ethnic tension. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kikuyus from the central highlands acquired large farms in the Rift Valley through their connections to Kenyatta, which was widely resented by the Kalenjin and Masai.
Following Kenyatta's death in 1978, Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, became president. He countenanced attacks on ethnic Kikuyus in the northern Rift Valley and supported the Kalenjin and Luo. However, Luo leader Oginga Odinga was accused of participating in a foiled coup attempt against President Moi in 1982 and was placed under house arrest. Raila Odinga, his son, was also accused of plotting to overthrow the government, and detained. However, both father and son continued to be key opposition figures.
In 1982 the constitution was changed to confirm Kenya as officially a one-party state. This was changed in 1991 and multiparty elections were held in 1992 but Moi and KANU were re-elected.
In 2002 an opposition coalition—the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC)--was formed in order to form a strong enough basis to unseat Moi. When NARC, led by veteran politician Mwai Kibaki, won the 2002 election, the victory was hailed as marking a new era of open government.
Raila Odinga’s party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), had been a significant element of the NARC coalition, but once in power tensions between Odinga and Kibaki began to escalate, in 2004 focusing on disputes over the allocation of ministerial posts.
In 2005, after Kibaki failed to win support in a referendum for his constitutional reforms, he dissolved the cabinet and named a new team, with no LDP representation at all.
By the end of 2006 Kibaki's anti-corruption credentials had been challenged by a number of financial scandals and in July 2007 members of the legislature caused controversy by awarding themselves a huge pay rise.
