Jenerali Ulimwengu

6 September 2010

opinion

Nairobi — To avert self-destructing, build a culture of talking to and with each other.

When, after the electoral fiasco of 2007, Kenya caught fire and turned its ugliest face to itself and the world, a doomsday scenario of sorts emerged that had strong men quaking in their boots.As bands of marauding youths roamed the countryside, killing and maiming, burning and raping, it seemed that a whole nation was unravelling, and obituary writers could hardly restrain their pens.

Those hideous scenes of demented throngs chopping and slashing, spiking and torching, will forever remain on the collective conscience of all those who watched Kenya self-destruct with abandon, apparently giving vent to fears and hatreds bottled up for far too long in the entrails of communities, denied open expression for the sake of ephemeral political expediency.

Yet, at a time when the more pessimistic would have thrown their arms in the air and exclaimed, "What can anyone do?" African men and women of goodwill got going. They looked at the carnage going on in Kenya and saw in it an African problem, born and bred in Africa, and one that only an African herb could cure.

Kofi Annan, John Kufuor, Jakaya Kikwete, Benjamin Mkapa, Joaquim Chissano, Graca Machel and others rushed to Kenya's rescue because, I suspect, they recognised themselves in what was going on in Kenya.

For them, there must have been a sense of déjà vu in the senseless slaughter, because they had had experiences of it in one form or another.

It was on Annan's watch as head of peacekeeping operations at the UN that the Rwanda genocide had taken place and, if we are to believe his expressed sentiments, it is something he deeply regretted.

He was not going to sit on his hands and watch another Rwanda unfold, if he could help it. His compatriot, Kufour, was at the time outgoing chair of the African Union and his docket had included, needless to say, trying to get murderous Africans to talk to each other.

The two Tanzanians, Kikwete and Mkapa (respectively as foreign minister and president) had also had their share of a botched politics gone terribly wrong, with the Zanzibar tragedy of 2001, when Tanzania for the first time graduated from refugee benefactor to refugee generator, with hundreds of its citizens seeking protection in Shimoni and elsewhere in Kenya. Apart from anything else, they had a debt of gratitude to repay.

As for Chissano and Graca, they are easily the most qualified of all who took the urgent flight to Nairobi. Immediately after the troubles broke out in Kenya I telephoned President Chissano -- he is an old comrade, that's why -- to ask him what he intended to do about the escalating insanity, and, sure enough, he was getting ready to leave.

National reconciliation

Mozambique has, with Chissano at its head, probably Africa's most instructive history of national reconciliation cobbled out of bloody conflict, which would serve as an object lesson for Kenya, and others.

If Frelimo, the erstwhile Marxist movement, with its known intransigence on questions of principle, could allow its government to talk to Renamo and its loathed leader, Afonso Dlakhama, then anyone could talk to anyone.

All these Africans - and other less sung heroes - converged on Nairobi, took stock of the situation and administered the medicine that the principal protagonists should have chosen in the first place: Sit and down and talk.

This sounds simpler than it actually is, but Africans, especially of the modern type, have developed a special aversion to talking to and with each other.

They are at their most magisterial when they hold forth and pontificate, mostly talking at each other, past each other, about each other, behind each other, above each other or against each other.

Talking to and with each other has eluded the modern African politician like smiling has eluded the serpent.

Our mechanical adaptation of formalised competitive politics from our colonial masters has generally not afforded us space to apply our ingenuity in order to lay down our own philosophical moorings, fashion our own native institutions, hone our own intra-national negotiation skills and promote the virtues of permanent dialogue. What we took from our erstwhile masters we assimilated very badly.

For one thing, politics in the African context has remained so tragically zero-sum: You either win or lose, and when you lose, God help you, because you lose not only an election, but also your livelihood, your self-esteem, even your freedom.

The winner-take-all jinx makes losing an election an absolute non-option. This is because the winner takes the government as his own private fiefdom, the army and police as his personal militia, the central bank and Treasury as his personal piggy-banks and the whole country as his own private shamba.

The injustices that arise out of our elections - most of which are stolen, anyway - will cause even the yellowest of cowards to fight.

Lesson from Kenya

From the experiences we have had, this unsatisfactory state of affairs will not change unless we liberate politics from politicians and civilise it.

This is the lesson that Kenya is teaching all of us - at least that's my take. Politicians of the old school just don't get it, and they need to make way for the new and vigorous actors in the civil society movement, who have been the prime movers of the Constitution making process in Kenya.Since the original civil society stalwarts in Kenya, the ones who helped bring about the current changes, are now effectively the ones running government, it is to be hoped that a new crop will emerge and keep their forebears on their toes, lest they lose the plot.

For the rest of us in the region, it would be most salutary for our leaders to take the lessons from Kenya with the seriousness they deserve.

We all need the humility to acknowledge that Kenya, having stared into the chasm of annihilation and sobered up, now leads the way, and we others must follow.

Yoweri Museveni could do himself a favour by becoming the turkey that voted for Christmas. Were he to lead a national discussion of a new constitutional dispensation that enshrined, say, a limit to the number of terms a president may serve, he might, just might, rescue his legacy from ignominy.

Ugandans may still find it in themselves to forgive a revolutionary fighter who fell in love with the candy store.

Opening up

Rwanda's Paul Kagame could put a fresh gleam on its admirable social delivery systems by opening up space for his critics, especially those who are not necessarily advocates of genocide, or those whose corruption can be adjudged to be a matter of unschooled, but curable, appetites.

Rwanda would be all the greater if socio-economic performance were to be matched by a more ventilated politics.

Pierre Nkurunziza does have a lot of cleaning up to do, and the first thing he might want to do might be to recognise the futility of a fractious politics in a climate where muscular interventions have all too often marred efforts seeking reconciliation.

With a name like his - meaning Joyful Tidings - people would take his call for full reconciliation at face value.

For obvious reasons, I will reserve the last part of this contribution to the two eminent Tanzanians who intervened to help Kenyans sheath their swords, a commendable act by a good neighbour, which for all that cannot negate the wisdom that wants charity to begin at home.

His successor, Kikwete, came into office promising to deal with the "Zanzibar question" but dillydallied till the Zanzibaris themselves decided their own thing, with the Union president none the wiser.