Kenya is heading into dangerous political times. The insistence of retiring President Daniel arap Moi on pushing through his own choice of successor is threatening to split his KANU party, which has ruled Kenya since independence 40 years ago. Moi has selected Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first independent leader and also the man who gradually moved the country toward a one-party state. His own ethnically dominant Kikuyu also dominated the KANU ruling party.
Multiparty democracy returned only in 1991 under pressure from Kenya’s major international aid donors. The elections in 1992 and 1997 were widely seen as fixed. But what was of more concern was that, during the 1997 campaign, Moi did nothing to rein in a racist campaign mounted by his Kikuyu supporters against minorities. Opposition parties meanwhile proved to be their own worst enemies, being unable to unite under a single leader or a single political program. Now, however, it looks as if KANU itself may be about to split with a significant faction threatening to break away to form a new party.
This ought to have been good news for Kenyan democracy, since KANU has been in power for too long. A change of political leadership might inject new life into the moribund economy and come up with new solutions for Kenya growing social ills. Unfortunately, the threatened split is less to do with the emergence of political plurality but rather more to do with would-be contenders for the presidential job maneuvering for position. The main opposition party, the National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) has already nominated Mwai Kibaki, a former KANU vice president, as its presidential candidate.
What Kenya’s political leaders should be thinking about now is what is best Kenya. Uhuru Kenyatta may be a suitable candidate or, as his detractors claim, could be a puppet chosen by Moi, who hopes to continue to rule behind the scenes. The president should rightly be challenged on his nominee. There is also the issue that Uhuru Kenyatta is one of Kenya’s leading businessmen and, as with Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, it should be wondered whether it is right to have commercial and political power concentrated in a single pair of hands.
If the KANU breakaway is purely about thwarted political ambitions, then it does not bode well. Kenya is in an economic mess. The effects of corruption and ineptitude have been exacerbated by the serious drought that has struck Africa. Ordinary Kenyans are fed up with their lot. Crime, especially in the cities, is increasing and the safari tourist trade, once the country’s biggest foreign-currency earner, is in decline because of the unsafe streets. Indeed, tourists to Kenya’s highly protected beach resorts are flown in and out by feeder aircraft from Nairobi airport and never get to shop and browse in what were once tourist areas.
The biggest danger is that political turmoil will result in splits along racial lines. The tensions are certainly there. Only ten years ago, some 2,000 people were killed in tribal conflict in the west of the country. Kenyan politics badly needs a change, in which politicians put their country and not their bank accounts first.
