When the ICC process with regard to Kenya's 2008 post-electoral violence began almost everybody in the country (at least superficially) was an ardent Hague-lover. In hindsight I believe this was primarily based on the fact that most people hoped, wished and imagined that it is the other side (depending on where they stood on the political divide) would get it bad.
All perceived enemies would be made to properly roast for whatever injustice -- real or imagined -- that each individual or faction ecstatically concocted in fantasies about the justice that would be meted out by The Hague based ICC. This pleasure could only have been increased with the knowledge that once one was swallowed into the ICC process (unlike the local judicial system) it would be extremely difficult to wriggle out -- oh how wonderful it was, a tamper proof guillotine for enemies.
The ICC delusion did not last very long, particularly for the political class who in any case are the standard target for the ICC. The dubious selection of those to be tried, the still more dubious dismissal of charges against two of the suspects and simply a greater awareness about how international politics is intertwined with the ICC has left many Kenyans confounded. But to be quite honest not that rueful -- for the ordinary Kenyan it is refreshing to see the rich for a change crying, squirming and desperately scratching walls for escape routes.
Nevertheless most Kenyans now waver between supporting and opposing the court; while the ranks of opposers has swelled that of supporters has been diminishing and it has been reduced to an oddly group -- especially amongst the political class and other vested interests.
Few ICC fans today can avoid falling into to two broad categories -- those who support it for political reasons and those who innocently and ignorantly hold onto the belief that the ICC is the best course towards achieving justice for the PEV (Post Election Violence) victims.
Whether be it in The Hague or here in Kenya, for the victims 'justice' has become a diversionary tactic to suppress their calls, their real needs and struggles. It is the mother of all maggots; in the name of this 'justice' that is being elusively sought everywhere they get to be tear gassed while the rest of the country and the ICC continue to cry crocodile tears for their suffering. Even at this very moment they are being brutally forced out of the rapidly disappearing camps, not because they want to or that they have some place to go but because they have become an eyesore and a pestilence unto the government.
In respect of the ongoing process the remaining Hague-lovers have various elegant reasons for supporting the ICC. The most common one is the one surrounding the fight against impunity. Here is how it goes:
If all the ICC suspects and primarily William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta were to go scot free, and the charges against them dismissed peremptorily then the actual murderers and habitual perpetrators of electoral violence will be emboldened. Impunity will graduate to an even higher rank.
In this event any future measures locally to seek justice and retribution for the PEV victims will be automatically hamstrung. The suspects -- from high ranking officials to the ordinary citizens -- will vehemently oppose and repudiate their culpability for the atrocities they either committed or accessorized. They will never peaceably submit to a trial, whether or not there is sufficient evidence and legal basis for such accusations.
This is supposedly set to arise out of the fact that if the political class is deemed not culpable for the 2008 post-poll violence nor bear any responsibility then why should junior officers and ordinary fellows accept to be held accountable? Any recourse to justice through the courts at that point will be deemed farcical scape-goating, outright malice and hypocrisy of the highest order.
For in all honesty it is the political class that fights for political power and positions. It is they who incite and rally the people to 'oppose' the perceived devils, foes and enemies. It is the politicians who define, identify and set who the 'legitimate' or acceptable targets are. All these are and always have been the functions of the political class and communal leadership in Kenya's history of post-electoral violence. In this respect the people often see themselves only acting in defense of their communal interests by 'fighting' or 'eliminating' what has already been defined by the political leaders as the threats.
So the witty ones in the ICC bandwagon argue that by nailing to the cross William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, the only remaining politicians at the Hague and salient members of Kenya's political class, a resounding wake-up call will be sent out and reverberate throughout Kenya's political landscape: A potent unambiguous and awe evoking deterrent for post-electoral violence and impunity in Kenya and Africa at large.
At least that is the fairy tale script that the proponents of the ICC process have in mind and from which they partially keep feeding us the less controversial parts. That is what they want you to believe -- if you don't meekly accept Ruto and Uhuru to go through the ongoing ICC sacrifice ritual, then Kenyans will keep murdering each other after every election till kingdom come. Nonsense.
When the individual members of the Kalenjin community were burning Kikuyus in a church in Kiambaa or when they were razing down retired president Moi's (the most eminent Kalenjin in Kenya) property in Eldama Ravine, were they merely acting out of political reasons that Ruto had programmed into them or was that just a traditional pretext that they had been accustomed to and easily came to them as second nature?
Let us get this straight, although the violence was indeed spontaneous in eruption the underlying grievances, prejudice, motives and the 'technical' expertise in carrying out organized attacks during post-electoral violence are long established realities on the ground amongst the Kalenjin. No one needs to go around to tell people to do what they have been doing for decades; all that is needed is the 'right' kind of foul mood and a small trigger and everything would take the same predictable course over a vast and wide area.
So in my view during the PEV in 2008 the Kalenjin were merely manifesting some sort of age-set handover through perpetration of violence that is in part buttressed by cultural inculcation of tribal prejudice against other communities and a myopic recourse (a short cut that is availed during each election over the last twenty years) the growing pressures of insufficient land.
That is, during these PEV episodes the youths are often riled up and eager to earn their colours by exhibiting their own martial superiority and to perpetuate the myth of warlike invincibility of the Kalenjin over the other tribes. In the process they also get to temporarily and if lucky permanently kick out the 'alien' and 'greedy' occupiers from 'Kalenjin' land.
Politicians need to give little incentive to these marauding and willing bands of 'warriors'. This is the most potent piece in the jigsaw puzzle of post electoral violence in Riftvalley that is often ignored; without youths feeling pressed to prove their masculinity and warrior-worthiness there wouldn't be as many cases of widespread violence. Traditions, myths about invincibility that help to shape ethnic identity and a culture of prejudice come together to provide the adhesive and template for post-electoral violence.
Needless to say this is a culture and mentality that urgently needs to be dealt with in a manner that would permanently dissuade the youth from engaging in violence to prove their manhood without leaving them feeling robbed of their Kalenjin identity and somehow making them 'diluted' weakling versions of their ancestors. The very things they are trying to fight i.e. they are trying to prove themselves as worthy warriors and denizens of the Kalenjin nation by their flippant murdering and engaging in arson.
If peaceful engagement, workshops, seminars and sensitization does not work then the state apparatus is obligated to use brutal, overwhelming force at it's disposal. Specifically targeting the youth and purposely aimed at sending a chilling message to all of them -- forever breaking this cycle of pubescent violence and Kalenjin myth of invincibility. If the Mungiki submitted under a Kikuyu presidency, the marauding Kalenjin youths and their parents who egg them on must be sent a similar message. If you live by the sword you should expect to die by the sword -- not to gain and boast about it to the next generation.
In civilized states, violence and force is a monopoly of the government, lawfully granted to it and regulated by a constitution. Anybody else who pretends to use force and violence for whatever reason is a pretender to the throne and must quickly be brought to heel. So besides the Kalenjin youth, the Gor Mahia fans should by now be suffering routinely from broken limbs and broken skulls. Midnight crackdowns that smoke them out from their bedrooms in Kibera, and such . . .otherwise the mayhem will go on.
Going back to the PEV of 2008, the Kikuyu on the other side believed they were under imminent threat of annihilation, particularly in Riftvalley. It is such kind of post-electoral attacks that had in fact even led to the formation of counteracting militias and vigilantes, the most eminent one being Mungiki and the Chinkororo and Sungusungu amongst the Kisii. So as the Kikuyu began to shore up their defences and to build up the momentum and morale amongst their 'warriors' they in turn started to recklessly murder other minority groups and tribes in their midst.
This particularly the perceived ODM affiliated groups such as the Luo, the Luhya and even the Kisii who were mostly affiliated to the Kikuyu and were being butchered in greater numbers by the Kalenjin and the Luo on the western part of the country. Ironically, the Kalenjin, the people who Kikuyu anger and wrath was primarily directed at barely suffered from most of the Kikuyu- Mungiki led blows. The Luo on their part became as murderous as the rest in th anarchy bandwagon and most of the running battles in Nairobi were between the Kikuyu youths and their Luo counterparts. The police simply shot those they perceived as most troublesome at any point in time.
The chaos in most other parts of the country was mainly manifested in the form of vandalism and looting as order broke down that was haphazardly carried out both against enemy and ally tribes.
In retrospect people were killing each other for many other underlying reasons than just politics. Tribal animosity, negative ethnicity that espouses a condescending attitude towards other ethnic groups, bigoted prejudice was in my view a greater cause of these massacres. People had already a bone to pick with each other; they just needed a convenient field to fight it out. The fact that the conflict in hotspots amongst communities mainly coincided with the fault lines along political and ethnic rivalries only served to intensify the violence; for the targets were clearly set in the minds of individuals, they were in plenty and for the most part easy to pick out. Ill-feeling and ill-will was plenty and overflowing, it had been a decade since these feeling had last been played out and released through PEV.
But these ill-feelings and ill-will don't sprout out of nowhere like mushrooms and toadstools. They cannot arise of their own accord, somebody must be cultivating and arduously cooking them for some gain. Of course it is the politicians for who else would it be; they are certified culprits when it comes to inciting PEV. As I had stated earlier this is one of the reasons the Hague lovers would want some amongst the political ilk to roast for such terrible manners. I have no quarrel with that and I would agree with that kind of pitchfork, lynch-some-rich-politicians self-righteous rage mentality; only that I don't think sacrificing William Samoei Ruto and Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta at the altar of the ICC is even remotely sufficient. This makes the whole ICC thing unabashedly callous, unfair and totally unnecessary.
Let me demonstrate:
Assume that for a moment that Ruto was as evil, conniving and blood-thirsty as Ocampo and Raila would want us to believe. That for months before the ill-fated 2007 December elections Ruto sat with various Kalenjin 'commanders' and plotted the murder, mass rape and expulsion of mainly Kikuyu men, women and children from the Riftvalley. That it was his vision to diligently prepare and bring into fruition the arson and wanton destruction of property worth millions and millions of shillings. Then with such elaborate preparations does it not escape some sense how such a considerable number of Kikuyu made it out at all out of Kalenjin heartland -- given that after the swearing in of Kibaki there was greater urgency and need to kill them for going a step further to infuriate the Kalenjin by 'stealing' the elections?
William Ruto, his Kalenjin constituency and many of the ODM supporters fervently believed they would win the 2007 elections.
In this light Ruto's alleged plan to commit atrocities against non-ODM tribes rings hollow for then it would mean that Ruto had planned for months to have thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands expelled from the Riftvalley as some sort of election victory or New Year's gift to only the Kalenjin. With victory at hand and what he would have stood to gain from that alone, for what reason would he have gone through the troubles of plotting massacres for? Again I ask . . . WHAT FOR?
Perhaps Raila knows? Raila must certainly know for he above anyone else would have been privy and a chief co-planner alongside Ruto in such a plot. Ruto and Raila Odinga it must be remembered at this time were nothing less than Siamese twins -- that is how close they were. They hated the same people (PNU and the Kikuyu bandwagon), they fought the same fights and they even plotted and cooked up the same intrigues.
Can you imagine anything other than that it is a blatant lie? For otherwise Raila and his hordes of Luo intellectuals and strategists are the most stupid, naive and politically blind bunch of nincompoops who ever walked on the face of this planet; if they trully didn't have an inkling of what their Kalenjin comrades (amongst whom being a fair share of loud mouths) were upto. Plotting genocides and such. Such a plot would obviously have had serious political ramifications for the Kalenjin, it is incredible that the Kalenjin leaders would accept to bear such responsibility and cost alone -- given that the Luo and Raila would have been some sort of major beneficiaries as well.
Even if Raila denies his complicity (in the fictitious Kalenjin master plan to kill the Kikuyu in 2008) it can only mean that it was ODM's money that was being used to fund nothing less than a full fledged genocide. Do you know why Rwanda's Felicien Kabuga is an international fugitive? He is said to have funded the Rwandese genocide. Raila should shut up, this time for his own good.
Rather than Ruto (who during that fateful time and height of the PEV was honourably doing his duty and defending Raila to the hilt at the KICC; a loyal comrade to his party boss to the last minute) it is the ODM's entire so called 'Pentagon' that should be at the Hague for funding mass rape, murder and genocide. Amongst those at such a ceremonious event (the arraignment of all ODM party big wigs at the ICC) there at the forefront should be one Raila Odinga. Like the child soldiers it can be argued that the Kalenjin nation was merely used a tool . . . a cheap means to Raila's and ODM's diabolical ends.
On the PNU side, Uhuru Kenyatta is the man who is said to have rushed to the ground in aid of the Kikuyu who were being massacred ostensibly because of Kibaki's controversial swearing in. It was because of Kibaki, on behalf of Kibaki, for the personal interests of Kibaki and even perhaps at the behest of Kibaki that Uhuru Kenyatta was even anywhere near anything remotely to do with the PEV. The same can be said of Francis Muthaura.
The fact that these two men are not push-overs and that they could call their own shots with regards to the PEV, nonetheless the over-arching interests they were acting for were those of Kibaki.
If the Mungiki were called upon and rallied from elsewhere in the country to help their Kikuyu kin in Naivasha they were also called upon on the political account and on behalf of Kibaki's own personal interests. If Kibaki had resigned at that point it is known that there wouldn't have been as much tension . . . especially to the point of calling upon the outlawed Mungiki. Remove Kibaki from the equation and there is no rational explanation left for Muthaura's actions and Uhuru turns into a bizarre busy body, one not worth being even near a law court in Kenya, leave alone the ICC.
It is Kibaki's own political, moral and legal responsibility to account for the actions of men who directly acted under his own authority and sway. In the very least alongside Muthaura and Uhuru Kenyatta, Kibaki and other PNU rabble rousers should be at The Hague.
But this is madness, we can't have Kenya's entire top political class standing trial at the Hague . . . justice or not it would be ridiculous and denigrating for this country's sovereignty. That is why it is fitting, fair and sufficient for a new charge sheet to be prepared at the ICC. Whereupon there would be an expedient and immediate arrest of Kibaki and Raila as those most responsible and who bear the greatest political responsibility; alongside those unfortunately already before the court at the Hague. They after all (the principals) can carry bigger crosses due to their stature and the deterrence message will be far much more clearer for Kenyans.
Shameless criminal! Worthless daydreamer! Lazy mongrel! Nonsensical propaganda! Only a paid idiot and an incorrigible inciter can think of such abominable things! --- I imagine that is what the reaction of Kibaki and Raila would be if they actually read this blog post.
But seriously, if the immediate arrest of Raila and Kibaki and their speedy presentation at the Hague is untenable, unpalatable and completely detrimental to interests of this country, then I say it is ten times so (legally and morally) for the Ocampo 4 to be left to hang at the Hague.
Kibaki seems to be doing his part to undo the ugly ICC business. But for political expediency Raila is fanning the flames and shamelessly kicking Ruto's head into the boiling pot of the ICC, whilst he himself has no moral authority whatsoever to do so. If Raila was still thinking for himself (and not Caroli Omondi, his PA) he would know that he is obligated to help them despite their silly selves (as he had been doing before); If for nothing else then for his own personal interests. On the other hand if he thinks the ICC is so fair he should offer to surrender himself to it at anytime, better yet take himself there to account for his utterances and the actions of the ODM side during the PEV, being such a just, brave and principled leader.
Thus I say, either we ship all those who were at the pinnacle of the political leadership during the poll violence to the ICC (whether the ICC wants to prosecute them or not; it would be fulfilling enough to have them pushed into the guillotine even for a day) or we stop burying our heads in the sand and acknowledge that this Hague thing is a wicked game being played with a few individual's lives for political expediency yet it is we as a country who are guilty for the PEV. Truth be told, do you see in the deeper recess of your mind anything like justice written anywhere in this Hague charade? The ICC is nothing more than a private clinic whose owners will demand some form of payment for 'curing' our PEV ailment . . . that is perhaps why Raila is so favoured by the West, he might have already auctioned some unknown part of our sovereignty or future to who knows whom for this costly ICC game.
The feistiness with which the remaining ICC suspects (particularly Ruto and Uhuru) have been fighting this very real threat to their personal freedom might be easily misconstrued as a blatant manifestation of impunity. But wouldn't you fight with whatever means and at whatever platform such a threat aimed at your own freedom?
Try to imagine, if the tables were turned and it was Raila and some of his Luo henchmen who were trembling and quaking at the sight of the ICC noose -- do you think they would 'behave' and be quiet as Raila is telling Ruto and Kenyatta to be? Raila would plead his innocence from every slum roof and pebble-like platform in and outside this country; he would even print it on Uhuru Kenyatta's Brookside milk packets and Superloaf bread wrappers. In bold print, your Unga packet will have 'Jameni Nasua Raila'.
Let us be fair we either take them all there to the ICC, or we bring them all back home -- anything in between is hypocritical and a vile and vicious form of politicking.
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
