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By Alex P.
Kellogg
(africana.com)
The sun rose in Kenya's capital of Nairobi a week ago today to a human spectacle. Those who hadn't packed the city's main park and surrounding streets perched on lamp posts, treetops, roofs and balconies just to catch a glimpse of perhaps the most important transfer of power since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963. When President Daniel arap Moi handed control of the country over to its newly elected leader, Mwai Kibaki, 24 years of rule by one of Africa's most controversial and longest serving heads of state came to an end. Among the nearly one million people gathered to witness the historic handover were civil servants, day laborers, military personnel, businessmen and slum dwellers - it was the first time any of them had seen one president relinquish power to another. "This is just like independence - it's the beginning of a new era," said Dan Murithi, a 37-year-old police officer who watched the inauguration ceremony on TV from a downtown restaurant. "It is historic, it is a national day...a lucky day!" said Peter Njenga, a 35-year-old farmer and father on his way back from the ceremony. "We never thought the Moi era would come to an end." The inauguration of the 71-year-old Kibaki, a former finance minister and leading opposition figure who quit his post as Moi's vice president in 1988 after ten years, marks an important turning point for the country, and arguably, the continent. Just the third president in the country's 39-year history as an independent nation, Kibaki unseated one of the continent's dinosaurs. Along with the late Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the 78-year-old Moi is widely regarded as an old-school autocrat, one who ruled with an iron fist and tolerated little dissent. Reforms following intense international pressure and widespread domestic unrest forced multiparty elections - the first two of which, in 1992 and 1997, Moi won - and term limits, which finally forced him to step down. Kibaki also ran in '92 and '97, but those elections saw a fractious and divided opposition split the anti-Moi vote. This time, though, Kibaki led an alliance of opposition parties dubbed the National Rainbow Coalition, who united largely to ensure Moi's handpicked successor, Uhuru Kenyatta (son of the famed freedom fighter and Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta), didn't take power. Kibaki, who spent most of the last month at home rather than on the campaign trail after suffering a dislocated foot, a broken arm and a hairline fracture in vertebra in his neck in a car accident in early December, opened his inauguration speech with a conciliatory tone before delivering arguably the most public denunciation of Moi's rule ever made. "We have inherited a country which has been ravaged by years of misrule and neglect," he said, a cast over his right foot and visibly hurting from his arm and neck injuries. "Corruption will cease to be a way of life in Kenya." Such comments elicited uproarious applause from a crowd of supporters enjoying their first opportunity ever to heckle Moi in his presence. "This is a historic day in the life of our country," said Moi, whose last speech as Kenya's head of state was nearly drowned out by the jeers from the crowd and who was even bombarded by a hail of stones as he ascended the main stage. "We have demonstrated to the whole world that Africa can determine its own destiny without destruction." On a continent where leaders must frequently be lauded for doing merely what they should, Moi rightly claimed credit for an election generally regarded as fair and peaceful. It is sad that this should be surprising, but heartening that it is true. Moi, who took power after Kenyatta's 1978 death, followed his predecessor's habits of political nepotism, tribal favoritism and detention or elimination of political rivals. But the elder Kenyatta retains a heroic glow because of his famous charisma and the leading roll he played in the liberation of the country. Many saw Moi's attempt to place one of the elder Kenyatta's lesser known sons, Uhuru, as his successor as an attempt to milk people's allegiance to the late president while maintaining some ability to rule from the sidelines. Though pre-election polls indicated Kibaki's party was well ahead, its victory in both the presidential and parliamentary elections was startlingly swift. KANU, Moi's party, had controlled both the parliament and the presidency since independence. In addition to winning the statehouse, Kibaki's rainbow alliance captured 127 seats in parliament out of a total of 210. KANU got just 63 (the remaining seats were divided among a handful of smaller political parties). Fourteen former KANU cabinet ministers lost their seats, as did Moi's vice president. The sweeping desire for change was obvious: 92 elected candidates had never previously served as MPs. In this way, in a mere matter of days, one of Africa's longest ruling parties was relegated to the opposition. The younger Kenyatta, who won a seat in parliament but lost the presidential race by more than 30% of the vote, is now left the momentous task of, as he put it, "[rebuilding] from where we are, and from those ashes." Don't cry for Moi, who leaves office one of the richest men in the world. He oversaw more than two decades of economic decline, cultural malaise and crippling corruption that have left Kenya in its worst economic crisis since independence. Today the majority of Kenya's 30 million citizens live on less than a dollar a day. Bribery has become an accepted part of governance and business. Many look more to the West for cultural values than they do to their own long-standing traditions. What's more, unlike Mobutu of Zaire or Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Moi isn't the mix of heroic and evil that is almost an archetype for African heads of state. He led no cultural revolution in Kenya as Mobutu did in Zaire in the early '70s, nor was he a major player in the nation's independence struggle, as Mugabe was in Zimbabwe. Though some advocates argue Moi must be credited with leading one of the only nations in the region - and indeed, on the continent - to avoid civil war, genocide or border conflict, he is to many simply a cunning manipulator and vicious micromanager, jokingly dubbed a "professor of politics" by his critics, the title a stab at his humble beginnings as a primary school teacher. Without question, Moi's legacy is tainted by the detention and murder of political dissidents and even close political allies. The most prominent was the death of Moi's then Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Ouko in 1990, who was abducted and later found scattered across the Kenyan countryside after having been shot multiple times and subsequently burned. Though no one was ever brought to justice for the killing, and a government-led inquiry dismissed Ouko's murder as a suicide, an investigation by Scotland Yard implicated senior party officials. Prevailing wisdom has it that Moi had Ouko slain for upstaging him during a visit in Washington with the elder Bush. For their part, Kibaki and his rainbow alliance are not free of faults. Despite the near-ubiquitous euphoria that led to dancing in the streets over the weekend, his election contains some ambiguities. The ramshackle coalition he heads includes a number of prominent defectors from Moi ranks, many of them presumed to have left when Moi chose the largely untested younger Kenyatta to succeed him. These include George Saitoti, Moi's longest serving vice president, who was directly implicated in the country's biggest corruption scandal ever, in which kickbacks were paid to a phony company exporting gold from a country that doesn't have any. Kibaki himself pushed through the bill outlawing multipartyism in 1982 while serving as Moi's vice president. He lost to Moi in the past two elections. "This coalition is first and foremost a coalition of convenience," says Philip Nyinguro, a professor of political science and senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya's premier institution. "Though this election will mark an important period of transition, it probably won't lead to fundamental change in terms of public accountability.... You can't clean up without teaching past evildoers that corruption doesn't pay." Still, Kenyans have high expectations. The hope is that the farsightedness that enabled Kibaki's coalition to defeat Moi will keep it united in its promise to move the country forward well into the future. One coalition MP detained and later forced into exiled by Moi cut dreadlocks he'd grown for more than a decade to mark the end of his rule, and his era - out of the chaotic remains of the Moi era, a refreshing optimism about what the future will bring. First published: January 6, 2003 ___________ --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.427 / Virus Database: 240 - Release Date: 12/6/2002 |
