Dear, President Mwai Kibaki

Dear Sir, After Kenya emerged from the repressive and dictatorial regime under former despotic ruler Daniel Moi, bringing to an end his 24-years of misrule, the country has disintegrated further into a state of political apathy. This time you, yourself have decided to supervise increased state institutionalised corruption, repressionn and other related human rights abuse. The country has been subjected to increased tribalism, individualism with your full knowledge.

Sir, its my honest believe that your administration is evading a historic responsibility by failing to resolve issues that are pertinent to a peaceful transition and the very future of democracy, human rights and transitional justice in Kenya. Sir, l wish to remind you and your fellow members of the infamous ‘Muthaiga club’ that the power-sharing deal reached upon under the National Accord and Reconciliation Act, 2008 was primarily because your government was regarded as unpopular, deceptive and undemocratic by majority of Kenyans. Undemocratic because the disputed Dec 27 Presidential polls were characterised by violence and claims of malpractice; the state instruments were partisan; your government was intolerant to divergent opinions; and was insensitive to popular demands.

However, since the power-sharing deal was reached, there have been undercurrents that your administration is no different from its predecessor after all.

Firstly, though your government appeares more tolerant to different opinions, recent events indicate that the your regime is growing increasingly sensitive by the day. Indeed, like the Moi dictatorship of early 1980s, your administration is eager to use the oppressive tools of the state, including the provincial administration, to muzzle opposing opinions. Sir, recent attempt by your administration to bar members of the civil society to freely hold peaceful protests and the forceful repatriation of internally displaced people back to their ancestral homes has been interpreted in this light.

Paradoxically, while you were in the opposition, you vigorously campaigned for the dismantling of the provincial administration. Your then official opposition party, Democratic Party of Kenya, indeed presented a memorandum to the constitution of Kenya Review Commission calling for the scrapping of the provincial administration. However, on assuming power, you have not only defended the administration, but ministers in your government have been quoted as vowing to weed out those sympathetic to the opposition and in fact they have engaged in a systematic conspiracy to victimise those who served in the previous government.

Secondly, your leadership has increasingly been using the same old methods. In the Dec 27 election, ministers allied to your-the Party of National Unity, were criss-crossing their strong holds using the trappings of power, state resources and promising largesse from the state. Yet, when they were in the opposition six year ago, they constantly accused KANU, which was in power then, of using state resources for partisan gains. Closely related to that, of course, is the old tactic of divide and rule and the mentality that only those who support your government will benefit from government resources. Week after week, your ministers are quoted exhorting the various ethnic communities to support the your unpopular regime if they hope to benefit from its largesse.

Sir, it worthy to note that not even yester-years’ democracy and human rights crusaders are immune from this anachronistic thinking being perpetuated by your regime. Indeed, remember when you visited the violence prone districts of Rift Valley, members of your Kikuyu tribe expressed fear of how they had been exposed to a ‘systematic genocide’ targeting to wipe them from parts of the Rift Valley. They alleged a deliberate conspiracy to isolate and condemn them for voting for you. Apparently, the right to an opinion and association has lost meaning now that you are in power courtesy of a flawed and fraudulent process.

Thirdly, the old issue of selective application of the law has reared its ugly head again. There are increasing concerns that the war against corruption is turning out to be a mirage under your leadership. Your have perfected the selective and targeted conspiracy at specific individuals and families in the name of fighting corruption. The refusal to prosecute known perpetrators of the infamous Goldenburg and Anglosleasing scandals are just but examples of your government’s ineptness to deal with graft.

Sir, many key members of your government were in fact stalwarts of the previous administration. It’s therefore highly inconceivable that they were not involved in the corruption of that era. Indeed, their names appear in several public accounts and public investment committee reports. Others were mentioned in the various human rights reports as players in various human rights abuses, including ethnic violence that was witnessed in 1992, 1997, 2002 and have also played an active role in planning and bank rolling of the post-election violence witnessed after the December 27 disputed vote.

Yet, today, they continue serving in the cabinet as ministers, assistant ministers and others as influential PNU members of parliament, while your close allies continue making allegations against certain families and individuals. Again the old adage that charity begins at home appears to have lost its meaning under your leadership.

And fourthly is the question of the current coalition’s internal democracy. As it were, a political party cannot give a country what it lacks internally. Thus, PNU and ODM cannot entrench democracy in the country if they cannot grant the same to its members and more primarily to the Kenyan people. One measure of a party’s attitude towards democracy is its capacity to subject its leaders to popular mandate, which is through party elections and the respect to multi-party democracy. Yet, this is the most divisive issue in your coalition arrangement.

The established tradition worldwide is that parties, whose ideological persuasions are close, form coalitions after elections in order to constitute a government, where no single party wins a majority. For PNU and ODM, political parties and amorphous groups have yet again formed the coalition regardless of their political persuasions after the disputed Dec 27 polls. Thus, the coalition lacks clear structures and leadership, has no quantifiable membership, lacks unifying ideology and, much worse, has not agreed whether to be one party or to retain its current amorphous state. The persistent war between factions of the coalitions over cabinet positions means that the coalition will take sometime before it can guarantee its membership internal democracy. And that undermines the capacity of the coalition to entrench democracy in the country.

On the human rights front, the coalition government must do better than what your previous NARC and Daniel Moi’s KANU did. On assuming power, the NARC government accorded human rights campaigners positions in its ranks, opened torture chambers - among them the famous Nyayo House - and cautioned the security organs against abusing suspects’ rights. However, there have been genuine concerns that the country may have slided back into the days of torture and a culture of impunity. In recent weeks, there have been complaints that police officers are perpetrating arbitrary arrests; extra-judicial killings are still prevalent while the security officers have been accused of torturing suspects, notably during and after the post-election period.

Moreover, the government recently initiated a security operation in Mount Elgon district, which continues despite fierce battles between the residents and the security forces. While the number of the dead remains unknown, there are fears that the operation will leave behind trails of human rights abuses, which will never be documented.

Sir, there are also expressions of genuine grievances arising from the recent efforts to form a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. The concerns are that the proposed commission is a tactic to witch-hunt and humiliate certain individuals and communities, and not an effort to promote national reconciliation that is badly needed to heal the scares of the Dec 27 post-election violence.

The old tactic of destroying people’s income basis in an effort to remove them from certain areas, which was perfected in the 1990s, has been brought back. In the last few weeks, your local government Minister, Uhuru Mwigai Kenyatta, in conjunction with the Nairobi City Council, has been demolishing informal business structures in order to remove those businesses from supposedly the Central Business District and road reserves. The problem is that this destruction, which has only been conducted in upmarket areas, leaves many people without an income and thus compromises their economic rights.

More importantly, the recent sale of Safaricom IPO to offshore foreign investors by your finance minister Amos Kimunya has sent shock waves into the spines of many Kenyans and human rights activists. Indeed, the sale has met resistance from many quarters including members of parliament.

Sir, the resistance has its roots in two areas. Firstly, the government announced the sale without consulting with stakeholders, and appeared to be bowing to pressure from foreign individual and companies. Indeed, despite protests against this sale, the government has indicated its resolve not to withdraw the sale. Secondly, and much worse, the identity of the directors of Mobitelea- a major shareholder in Safaricom-with a 5 per cent stake in Vodafon Kenya Limited remains unknown, this runs against the national spirit and militates against our national sovereignty and economic interests in favour of the interests of foreign masters and a few selfish fraudsters working on behalf of your government.

Sir, it’s embarrassing that a number of your senior ministers are engaging in a conspiracy to blackmail and implicate you in their failed schemes to defraud the tax payers. Recent events where you have been appearing in prearranged photo sessions with them has been used to blackmail you in the face of the media. In fact, the media bears the brunt for openly criticising this clique of good for nothing ministers.

You will remember that even in the face of international pressure for you and Raila Odinga to cede ground and enter a compromised political solution and save the country from sliding the Rwanda way, some of your ministers led by Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Martha Karua held a ‘dangerous hard line’ position. In fact, she even verbally engaged the former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and dared to face off with the US Secretary of State Condeleza Rice. It took your own heart and mind to resolve the stalemate that had played at Serena.

Is Africa a case of a failed democracy

In Africa coups and countercoups have remained in the political menu as electoral fraud and brutal civil wars become the order of the day. The political and civil gains that ordinary people had died for in order to wrest freedom from long entrenched oppressive governments appears at times to have been in vain, especially for countries consumed by fresh onslaughts brought about by some African leaders obsessed with power. These are the topics the media and human rights groups in Africa have been addressing. It does not help to blame the ordinary folk for the tragic human rights record that Africa carries as the century dawned.

The blame in many ways lies with the continent’s political leaders and their foreign allies who do not seem to have come to terms with the order. It took demonstrations and wars to democratize these countries, yet some leaders have chosen to ignore this.

Additionally, the obtaining concept of politics in Africa is largely borrowed from the residues of the western political culture and norms, and therefore its destructive to the greater vision of a liberated, independent, prosperous and a human rights responsive Africa. The need to design a new concept a homegrown concept of politics remains is a priority agenda for Africa.

The Genocide

These leaders seem to think it was a mistake to grant their countrymen their rights and political freedoms. They claim to be representing their countries and people, yet it is not lost to many and should not be to them that such loud claims are being met by even louder and bolder statements from their citizenry who have not hesitated to let it be known that their patience is running out.

A case in point is the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which over 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. The killings went down in the annals of history as the most catastrophic phenomenon in the African continent in the millennium. The genocide can perhaps only be compared to the holocaust, the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Hitler and his sympathizers and the slave trade of the 17th century in which millions of Africans were uprooted form their homes and shipped to foreign land to start a life of slavery. The Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha was set up by the United Nations to try the perpetrators, but no one can really get the full reprieve of the horror that left millions scared and traumatized for life.

Four years ago, I visited Rwanda to report on the memorial of the genocide and to follow up on the elusive search of Rwanda’s most wanted genocide suspect Felician Kabuga who remains at large. I used the opportunity to make a visit to the Gisozi Memorial site, which lies at the center of the genocide and symbolizes Africa’s darkest moments; about 250,000 people were buried in mass graves at this site. The site carries with it the memories of a forgotten genocide and a haunted nation. Inside the site is a storage facility where human skulls, clothes and crud weapons used in the genocide have been stored for historical purposes.

Rwanda stands between a fragile transition and a conceptual reconciliation period. The memorial sites both in Kigali and in Gisozi represents a wounded generation. According to Mrs. Murebwayihe Alphousine, the site was built in 2002 significantly to the healing and reconciliation process and plays a central role to the genocide survivors. The occurrence of the genocide goes way back in 1957 to 1994. The genocides used savagery methods to attack, both the Tutsi-led Banyamulenge and the Hutu-led Interahamwe militia shoot, clobbered and hacked to death many innocent civilians. The guerrilla-styled attacks organized against women and children were the most degrading form of human treatment ever perpetuated by human race. Tutsi pregnant mothers were attacked, brutally beaten and subjected to gang rape; in the process most of the Women miscarried.

My visit to Rwanda was a soul-searching one and carries with it great lessons for Kenya. The current transition needs to be reconciliatory with the past human rights violations and a culture of impunity.

Troubled region

In the troubled great Lakes, genocide minded-armed faction and militias have not given any indications that they learnt any lesson from the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. The armed factions that continue to roam this troubled area have left no doubt that they have unfinished business and they will not rest until they annihilate certain ethnic groups. On the other hand, the national armies in these two countries in the course of their duties and out of ethnic concern have not hesitated to show their displeasure. The number of internally displaced persons in this region has continued to rise over time to become the highest in the continent. Thousands have been forced out of their homes due to insecurity and fear of recurring attacks. The Gisozi memorial site is significantly symbolic to the region if peace is to become a reality.

Human rights groups have confirmed that the interahamwe and their counterparts, the former soldiers of the Habyarimana regime, the ex-FAR, have now settled in refugees camps in western Tanzania having disguised as genuine refugees fleeing the conflicts in Burundi. But while these killers and torturous may have decided to change their bases, their mission remain the same- kill all Tutsi even if that involves destabilization of the whole region.

It seems now that after many years of ineffective attacks on Rwanda, these death squads have now decided to switch to Burundi, a country that in recent weeks has been tethering on the brink. Since last December, Hutu rebels allied to the Foreces for National Liberation (FNL) have stepped up their attacks in Burundi. They haved accused the CNDD/FDD wing of President Pierre Ngurunziza of undermining the Arusha Accord and staging attacks aganist opposition figuires in Bujumbura. The recent power sharing deal is acting as a catalyst. The rebels have taken advantage of the deal and have opted to mount attacks on government forces and innocent civillians. Burundi’s Tutsi –dominated army has not taken these lightly and is now squaring with some of the internally based rebel groups who continue to run the power game.

The consequence of this increased turmoil is a rise in civilian toll and serious human rights violations. By the end of December 2007 the rebels had step-up their onslaught to an ethnic protracted war thus threatening the peace process. At the same time the power sharing government in Burundi ticks as the rebels continues to mobilize hundreds of thousands of its supporters to scuttle the transition arrangements. Even President Pierri Ngurunziza onslaught on his persived enemies within the party has refused to bore fruits and has continued to push him into politcal wilderness.

Though it is easy to understand why the militia has turned its attention on derailing the deal, ethnic persuasions remains a factor in the conflict. It only needs the correct timing and willing ethnic demagogues. Like elsewhere in the continent, the latter are in abundance and one of these, the interahamwe, has offered to inflame the conflict in Burundi once again.

Refugees
This turmoil has precipitated an unmanageable refugee crisis aptly described by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees; the fate and conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons remain pathetic. Refugees continue the exodus from their countries of origin and settle in hostile environments, most of them are housed in shabby shelters that lack basic amenities. The conflict in the Great Lakes Region and the fragile peace in the Sudan, the absence of a central government in Somalia, the failed democracy in Kenya and repressive regime of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have compelled hundreds of thousands of refugees to settle almost permanently in neighboring countries as the situation in their own countries continues to deteriorate. From the dismal performance of president Joseph Kabila of the Republic of Congo to the armed skirmishes between foreign troops in Congo to the eruption of a brutal border clash between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a consensus seems to have emerged among the populace and human rights activists that will have a long way to go.