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NEWS & LETTERS, June-July 2006Life and politics in Kenya since the fall of the dictatorshipKoigi wa Wamwere, Kenyan human rights and political activist for three decades, spoke to the New York News and Letters Committee April 30. Following many years in jail in Kenya and in exile, Wamwere was elected to Parliament after the fall of the Moi dictatorship in 2002, riding on a wave of "people’s power." He is currently a member of the Ministry of Information. * * * Kenya still has many problems, but now we have hope that someday we will have a society where people will have three meals a day and enjoy basic rights. That will take awhile. Moi is out of power, but the system is still there; the structure of dictatorship was inherited and the mentality is very much the same. Because virtually the same class is in power, the resistance to fundamental change is still very stiff. TIME OF TRANSITION It has been a government of transition. Those of us who were in prison are out. It’s not colonialism, nor as insensitive as the Kenyatta government, nor a dictatorship as bad as Moi’s. It may not take us to "the promised land," but at least it’s not leading us back to the past. There is corruption, but less than before. I think much of the criticism of the government, especially in the Western media, is meant to bring the government down. Western corporations are mad that Kenya is doing business with China instead of only with them. Attacks have been led by the British ambassador, who seems to want to restore the former regime, without regard to its record on human rights. Regarding human rights, Moi belongs to the same class as Pinochet. I’m sad that Moi is not also being prosecuted. Part of the reason is that he owns so much of the media, including the most popular TV station. The media have succeeded in cleansing him. The commercial interests want him back in power. It scares me that he seems to be coming full circle. Our other problem is what I call "negative ethnicity," what used to be called tribalism: organization along ethnic lines. Each ethnic community has its own party and leader. Even the government we have now is actually more or less a coalition of tribal chiefs, people who only represent their respective communities--even the government ministries operate that way. We tried to change this by changing the constitution, but the proposal was wrongly branded as benefiting only one ethnic group, so the other ethnic groups voted against it. This was a big setback. The proposed constitution would have set an upper limit on how much land one individual could own, and established gender equality and children’s rights. So we continue under the old constitution, which makes it possible for the country to slip back into dictatorship. There is still hope, if we can beat back negative ethnicity. You remember what happened in Rwanda and Somalia, where the government and opposition were of different ethnic groups, leading to civil war and genocide. I have appealed to the UN not to continue to stand back and allow these situations to develop, but it seems as if the Western powers are fanning the flames. The same thing could happen in Kenya. Even on the national level, every politician is tagged by his ethnicity. You can’t have real democracy under these conditions. You can’t fight corruption, because whoever is in power, his ethnic group thinks that means it is their turn to eat at the trough. Corruption is seen as bad only when it’s done by the other communities. You can’t fight corruption or mismanagement as long as those responsible are from your community. A GOVERNMENT FOR EVERYONE If we can overcome this, then we have a chance of setting up a government for everyone, but we’d have to do more than just unite people. There is the problem of class. As long as the economy is divided along class lines, the resources are enjoyed by the elites from all ethnic communities. At the top, they unite. I like to compare our country to a jungle with grass-eaters and meat-eaters. The grass-eaters struggle to end meat-eating, but even as they do so, they still admire the meat-eaters and call them their leaders. Moi is seen as an old lion. Elections may replace old lions with young ones, but the life of the jungle continues. The real problem is that the grass-eaters don’t believe that real leadership can come from them, nor that it is possible actually to end meat-eating. We are in danger of losing our own history. I was shocked to learn that as part of the economic restructuring imposed by creditor countries, Kenya was required to eliminate separate courses on history, geography and civics from the schools. Now there is only one course, "social studies." To me, this seems like part of a conspiracy to re-colonize Kenya by hiding our past. The gospel of globalization is neo-colonialism. The U.N. and Western governments talk only about corruption in Kenya, as if there were none in the West. Their dominant call is for privatization. We are close to being asked to privatize the government, to hand it over to a Western company that would be more efficient! I’m afraid some Kenyans almost accept this. It seems we are taking some steps backward before we can go forward. We need to cut through the noise and propaganda from a media that is no longer patriotic or nationalistic, and form one party that is not based on ethnicity. The current government does deserve credit for establishing free primary school education although secondary school is still very expensive and many cannot afford it. [Ed. Note: Readers can make contributions to Wamwere’s scholarship fund for poor students unable to afford high school.] Another good program is the yearly funding that each constituency (political district) gets to devote to development of grass-roots projects. Economic development is on the way up. But perhaps the most important result of the new government is to make the country freer. There is a free press and media, freedom to set up opposition parties and radio stations, freedom of movement, freedom of speech--all of Nairobi is like Hyde Park, with people speaking on every corner. This freedom gives the country a chance for real change in the future. |
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