By Alex P. Kellogg
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
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