Kenya's recent crisis, fueled by allegations of rigged elections and marked by ethnic massacres, is a microcosm of the problems that confront the practice of democracy in Africa. Although Kenya has been a democracy since independence in 1963, the struggle for democracy at the end of the Cold War in many African countries has been followed by a struggle with the practice of the concept. Kenya, like the West African country of Cote d'Ivoire before its shocking collapse into anarchy and war, enjoyed a reputation for what appeared to be rock-solid stability. Comparisons of the recent ethnic killings in Kenya with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda were overblown, but once a certain threshold of ethnic violence is crossed in African countries, twice the effort is needed to prevent a recurrence on a larger scale. There had been waves of smaller-scale ethnic massacres in Rwanda in the 35 years before the genocide of Tutsis. So what went wrong at the end of 2007? What shattered Kenya's peace? Ethnicity and attendant feelings of exclusion played a central role. Opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo ethnic group, Kenya's third largest after the Kikuyu and the Luhya, has never held the post of president. Luos feel deeply marginalized by President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu group, and are quick to point out that their rising stars in Kenya's politics have been cut down by the assassin's bullet – Tom Mboya in the late 1969 and Robert Ouko in 1990. Oginga Odinga, Raila's father, was said to have been frequently humiliated by the Kikuyus when he was Kenya's vice president. But Raila, the rising son, has doggedly pursued power. There is a Luo joke that the United States may elect a Luo as president before Kenya does – a reference to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, born of a Kenyan father and to whom every Luo politician worth his or her salt dutifully claims to be distantly related. Add to this the politics of land. The Luo have long felt dispossessed of land in Kenya's Rift Valley by economically and politically dominant Kikuyus who redistributed government-held land to their own advantage after independence. The simmering tensions over resources and power – which in Africa tend to go hand in hand -- led to an explosion of violence by the Luo against the Kikuyu after the December 2007 polls in which Odinga believed he was robbed of victory. With Odinga having already been marginalized by Kibaki after he helped the latter win the 2002 presidential elections, the Luo were primed for violence after their loss to Odinga's erstwhile alliance partner five years later. Then there is the crisis of governance. Like several African states, Kenya, although a democracy, is hardly famous for good governance. As in several other countries in the continent, it has a venal political elite that has fed off the country's resources. Massive corruption scandals are common, as is the politics of the “big man” who doles out the fruits of corrupt enrichment to maintain political power and patronage. The practice of democracy in Africa is in many countries frequently a smokescreen. Elections are a convenient ritual. After decades of military juntas and civilian dictatorships, the end of the Cold War forced Africa's despots to hold elections as a gale of democratic “change” swept across the continent. Some military dictators simply threw off their uniforms and transmuted into “democratically elected” leaders. But, it must be said, these are growing pains. The democratic processes in several African countries – from Ghana to Sierra Leone, from Benin to Botswana – have allowed the will of the people to prevail. Nigeria's courts have voided several crooked elections. Democracy is not a perfect thing. Watching the presidential primaries in the United States, Africans in Lagos or Lusaka see identity politics – ethnic, racial, gender and others –just as much as they see debates on the issues. And the spectacle of “hanging chads” and allegations of election rigging in Florida in 2000 made clear that even the most mature democracies struggle with the practice of the concept too. The Kofi Annan-mediated deal that President Kibaki and Odinga signed in late February extricated the Kenyan leader from admitting allegations of election rigging but gave Odinga much of what he wanted by stipulating the creation of a new post of prime minister with wide executive powers in a new coalition government. In effect, Kibaki and Odinga will share power. The challenge will lie in making the deal work in practice. There are some important lessons from Kenya's electoral crisis. The first is that without a truly independent electoral commission as an organizer and umpire, it is difficult to avoid electoral manipulation. Second, governance remains a key challenge for Africa because it affects everything else, from fighting poverty to taming the unbridled lust for power that makes seemingly reasonable men and women do shocking things. Finally econmic growth becomes increasingly important when faced with the post election violence which left half a million homeless and more than 1,000 people dead. – Global Viewpoint * Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, an international lawyer, is the author of “Rwanda's Genocide: The Politics of Global Justice.” __
