On Dec. 27, 2007, Kenya held its presidential elections. The incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, of the Party of National Unity declared victory over opposition leader, Raila Odinga, of the Orange Democratic Movement. Kenya’s Electoral Commission certified Kibaki’s victory on Dec. 31, despite evidence of widespread irregularities.
Odinga and his supporters have accused the government of rigging the vote, an accusation strengthened by observers
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Kenya is an East African country bordering Tanzania to the south, Uganda and Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. Kenyans suffer first and foremost from poverty. Of Kenya’s 35 million people, 58 percent live on less than $2 per day; 23 percent live on less than $1 a day. All population statistics point to the effects of poverty on every aspect of life. Kenya has the extremely low life expectancy of 45.4 years and a very high infant mortality rate of 79 per 1,000.
Like many of the rest of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya’s poverty is not the result of a shortage of natural resources. Poverty is caused by a history of the plundering of the country’s resources by colonialism and the resulting severe underdevelopment that Kenya has had to cope with since independence.
The declaration of Kibaki as the winner of the elections sparked large and militant demonstrations in protest. Hundreds have been killed in the resulting clashes, mostly at the hands of Kenya’s police, who have tried to put down the demonstrations through the use of extreme violence.
Most of the demonstrators have been Kenya’s urban poor, the majority of whom voted for Odinga’s party. Odinga campaigned on promises of a more equitable distribution of resources and an end to corruption. Odinga’s campaign used slogans like: “It’s our turn to eat” to mobilize the poor to vote for him.
Ethnic violence
In conditions of extreme hardship and in the absence of a political leadership fomenting unity among the working class and the poor, the justified anger of the masses is sometimes directed against people of other ethnicities. Kenya is going through this process right now.
There are over 200 ethnic groups in Kenya. President Kibaki is of the Kikuyu tribe, the largest tribe comprising 22 percent of the Kenyan population. Odinga, the leader of the opposition, belongs to the Luo tribe. The post-election violence has heightened ethnic conflicts in the country. While the majority of the deaths have been at the hands of the police, there have been numerous incidents of killings based on ethnicity.
Most of the ethnic violence has been in central Keyna’s Rift Valley. The Kenyan struggle for independence led to the eviction of the British colonizers, many of whom had settled in the Rift Valley. This was an area historically populated by the Kalenjin and Luo tribes. However, Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya after independence, resettled the area vacated by the British mostly with people of his own tribe, the Kikuyu. This is why the resentment of much of Kenya’s poor against the election fraud of Kibaki, a Kikuyu, is coupled with a resentment of his tribe.
It is important to point out, however, that the majority of the post-election violence has been violence perpetrated by the police against demonstrators, not the falsely characterized “mob violence” directed at “ethnic cleansing” featured in some bourgeois media sources.
Imperialist allies
Kenya gained its independence through an intense struggle against British imperialism. But while the British were forced to relinquish their colonial rule, imperialist domination of Kenya continued in different forms.
Extreme underdevelopment made it difficult for Kenya’s leaders to chart an independent course of development. Kenya’s economy has been formed largely under the direction of the IMF and the World Bank. Kenya’s main source of currency has been international tourism and the export of agricultural products and raw materials.
The neoliberal program of slashing the public sector and privatizing the resources has been implemented at varying rates through different administrations. In recent years, Kenya’s economy has experienced a growth, estimated at 6.3 percent for 2007. However, as to be expected in the neoliberal economic model, the only beneficiary of this growth has been a tiny layer of Kenya’s elite. The vast majority of the population has seen no relief to their conditions of dire need.
Politically, Kenya has taken a path far from the goals of the independence struggle. Kenya has allowed military exercises by the United States and Britain on its soil, including the use of its ports and airbases. The United States considers Kenya an ally in its “war on terror.” Kenya has handed many “suspected terrorists” to the United States.
The people in Kenya are demonstrating against a corrupt government pursuing a program that perpetuates their condition of destitution. But despite his campaign promises of benefits to the poor, Odinga, the opposition candidate, can hardly be an instrument of change.
Odinga’s father, Oginga Odinga, was one of the leaders of Kenya’s independence struggle and the vice president of the first independent Kenyan state. His alliance with the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, reportedly broke up over Odinga’s orientation towards the socialist bloc. In fact, he sent his son, Raila, to the socialist German Democratic Republic to receive his education.
But Raila Odinga, now a rich businessman, is not politically very different from Kibaki. The two were close political allies until a few years ago. Odinga energetically campaigned for Kibaki’s election in 2002 and held cabinet posts in his administration. And Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement has not presented a political program that is substantially different from that of Kibaki’s.
The crisis in Kenya has prompted imperialist powers to find ways to intervene. Jendayi Frazier, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, has traveled to Kenya and met with both Kibaki and Odinga. On Jan. 22, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, to mediate in the dispute.
All indications are that the United States and the European imperialists want to avert the continuation of mass demonstrations. They are courting both leaders and seem content with any accommodation between Kibaki and Odinga that will bring about stability.
Continued mass action may escalate into a situation that neither the imperialists nor their trusted local allies will be able to control. If that happens, Kenya may cease to remain an ally to imperialism.
