The economic and social breakdown of Kenya is indeed tragic. What
once was supposed to be a model post-colonial lesson for Africa
has devolved to a nation teetering once again on the edge of
turmoil.
At independence in 1963 Kenya appeared to have it all: a thriving
tourist industry, excellent cash crops of coffee and tea, a major
regional port, a growing manufacturing capability and, most
importantly, an education system that was producing thousands of
literate middle school students every year. With its hero, the
Kikuyu leader, Jomo Kenyatta, as its head of state and his
political and tribal rival, the Luo chief, Oginga Odinga, as the
vice president, the country offered an example of successful
African political cooperation. At least that’s how it looked, and
how the press characterized it.
In reality the white farmers were selling out or investigating
the possibilities of doing so. The younger white Kenyans were
encouraged by their relatives to emigrate — U.K., Australia,
South Africa, etc. More and more black Kenyan college students
went abroad but upon return found that unless one had excellent
political connections jobs in government were dead ends.
In the business sphere it was clear that approval for new or
expanded investments had to go through an increasingly slow
bureaucratic process as poorly paid government staffs at all
levels were increased to accommodate the new African employees.
The result was an immediate growth in gratuities offered to
overcome the business delays.
What had been a reasonably pristine political environment
pre-independence devolved into something more akin to the “dash”
system of payoffs traditional in West Africa. This gift giving
was required at all levels, but it actually was reasonably
orderly during the original Kenyatta-Odinga years.
Daniel arap Moi came in as president at Kenyatta’s death in 1978
and corruption soared in amount and character even as foreign
investment grew. When Moi finally left in 2002, governance had
become so warped that as one longtime Kenya observer noted, “Even
the corruption had become corrupted.” There was no aspect of life
in that East African country that was not being exploited.
Foreign aid was squandered; vast criminal schemes were hatched;
and the usually stable $1 billion yearly tourist industry began
to deteriorate, some say due to terrorism fears.
Mwai Kabaki’s victory over a chosen Moi successor was initially
hailed as a turning point from the earlier days of political and
economic malfeasance. It didn’t last long and as a British
diplomat was quoted by the Financial Times in 2004: “The
ministers have become gluttonous.” However, an even more damning
line was written by a columnist from Kenya’s own Daily
Nation, Kwamchetsi Makkha: “It was such a dysfunctional
administration that normalizing it [the dysfunction] scores
points.” Graft, ethnic discrimination, and political economic
corruption that had flowered during the Moi years simply
“matured” during Kabaki’s first term. What appeared as economic
boom times quickly deflated with the drop of commodity prices and
rise of political infighting. Accountability and responsibility
were nowhere to be found.
Greater Nairobi is essentially divided in two: one is a
metropolitan area distinguished by high rises, suburban estates,
luxury cars and a middle class awaiting the next eco-ethnic
outbreak. A few kilometers beyond the plush life are the tribally
segregated slums of newly rebuilt corrugated iron housing sites
of the recent riots. This is a community reflecting the country
as a whole, where 70% of the population is calculated as below 30
years old and where 50% live on less than one dollar a day.
The orgy of tribal violence that began in the last days of ‘07
and lasted into February ‘08 resulted in hundreds of dead and
wounded as well as the destruction of thousands of stores and
dwellings in city, town and village slums.
Today Kenya is run by a ruling coalition of the aging and ill
President Mwai Kabaki, heir to the Kikuyu dominance of the
earliest Kenyatta years, and the prison-schooled son of the early
Luo leader, Oginga Odinga, Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba
University-trained Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The slums of
Nairobi, everyone agrees, will breed the next cruel cycle of
violence. This time, however, the major tribes of Kenya
represented there, as strong as their rivalry remains, are united
in agreement that the cause of their shared deprivation is the
current failing government.
The natural beauty of the country camouflages the tribal
animosities that have always existed, held in check first by
colonial power and then by Kikuyu domination. The signs exist
that tribal predominance, while continuing to be important, is
not the sole critical factor. The ethnic challenge is matched now
by the economic divisions of the haves and the have-nots. Kenya
roils, seemingly powerless to change.
