Kenya's uncertain future

Paul Martin

Nairobi On those increasingly rare occasions when President Jomo Kenyatta goes to town, usually to open parliament or an important gathering at the ultra-modern Kenyatta International Conference Centre, his cavalcade winds down from State House in a curious semi-circle, first away from the city centre, then in a curve towards Kenyatta Avenue, which provides a straight run in to his destination. But why not simply drive down State House Road, I wondered, then along Uhuru Highway into town, a much shorter journey? A university lecturer, rashly unsolicitous as to my profession, solved the conundrum: 'Because the students who live in the residences along State House Road would lean out of their bedroom windows and throw rocks at him.'

Which is exactly what they did earlier this month, their targets on this occasion being (besides the police) passing members of the WaBenzi 'tribe', a very conspicuous group markedly distinct from the sixty-odd runof-the-mill ethnic groups making up Kenya's thirteen million hotch-potch. All WaBenzi have at least one attribute in common: they are stinking rich. They can usually be observed cruising contemptuously through the plusher suburbs in sleek limousines hence their name: literally, the 'Mercedes Benz People'. (They are now diversifying into the WaVolvo, WaJag and WaRange Rover.) The WaBenzi, unlike the Wananchi (the common folk) have made it. They have reached the El Dorado promised them on the attainment of Uhuru (independence) in 1963. After initial flirtations with the African socialist model so enthusiastically expounded by neighbouring Tanzania,

Kenya devoted itself with singleminded tenacity to the pursuit of full-blooded capitalism mixed with a strongly protectionist economic policy. The result is an economy with a very healthy-looking flush this year, thanks largely to good rainfalls and rising prices netting the country a 130 per cent rise in revenue from 'brown gold' coffee. Kenya is starting to reap the harvest of its enterprise or is it the whirlwind?

More and more voices and clenched fists are being raised against the system, which its critics describe as man-eat-man (to which its protagonists retort that it's better than the situation in neighbouring countries of man-eat-nothing.) Corruption in high places is pervasive, unemployment in the cities, where a tenth of the population live, is widespread, but the average city worker earns six times his country cousin. A recent survey showed that 16 per cent of university graduates would not be able to find a suitable job for the next three years. Small wonder, then, that the WaBenzi are under attack. 'It's a great feeling to hear the sweet thud of a rock on the roof of a Mercedes,' a student confided on 3 March, a day of violent demonstrations in which the students thrilled to the screech of tyres and the shattering of car-windscreens and the police rejoiced in the screeching of students being beaten with batons and the shattering of student dormitory doors as they burst in. Not far below the glittering Kenyan exterior of Nairobi's night-clubs, casinos, high-rise buildings and bustling streets, trouble brews. At home, students are restive; once-fearless politicians are either locked up or cowed into silence; academics and writers likewise keep quiet while the heat is on. Externally, Kenya is becoming increasingly isolated. It has two warring neighbours to the north (Ethiopia and Somalia), an unstable tyrant to the east (Uganda), and an ideological foe to the south (Tanzania). Kenya fears that a number of these outsiders are waiting to pursue their interests at Kenya's expense as soon as the right moment arrives.

Both inside and outside Kenya, everyone is waiting . .. waiting for the inevitable crunch when Kenyatta goes. 'Mzee' (the Wise Old Man), Saviour and Liberator of Kenya, as the local press frequently hail him, is in his eighties no-one knows his precise age. He suffers from gout and periodic blackouts, and was taken seriously ill in 1976. But he has confounded everyone by resolutely clinging to life, and, increasingly, to power. Two major traumatic events have turned the once outgoing society into a xenophobic and mildly repressive hot-bed of suspicion and fear. The more recent was and is the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia. From Kenya's point of view Somalia was inflicting a grievous wrong on Ethiopia by invading it to lay claim to the Ogaden Desert, inhabited by Somali clansmen. The Somalis had made similar land claims over the northern section of Kenya, comprising no less than one third of Kenyan soil. And ever since the early 'sixties, so-called Shifta bandits have been raiding Kenya, either as cattle-rustlers or with the out-and-out aim of uniting northern Kenya with Somalia and, the Ogaden to form a 'Greater Somalia' incorporating all the Somali-speaking people of the region. With massive fears for its territorial integrity, Kenya was shaken to the core by the West's apparent readiness to support Somalia against Soviet-backed Ethiopia in the event of an Ethiopian counter-attack. 'Where have all our Western friends gone?' asked an anguished analytical magazine. 'Are they going to leave us in the lurch?'

These reactions are significant preciselY because they are hysterical and unfounded especially in view of evidence that one of the major considerations of Britain and America in not agreeing to aid Somalia while its troops were in the Ogaden was its declared policy of annexing northern Kenya. (A high-powered Kenyan ministerial delegation flew to the US and Britain last week and apparently was given an assurance that a Somali renunciation of the land claim would be a condition for Western backing of Somalia.) Somalia's crushing defeat will leave it powerless to set about attacking Kenya for at least two years, it is widely thought. But the internal upheaval possible after Kenyatta's death may give it the opportunity, just

as the weakened Ethiopian government seemed an ideal target.

It seems clear that nerve-ends in Kenya are raw indeed, as the moment of truth — Kenyatta's death — draws nearer. The Kenyan delegation to the US and Britain, containing at least two of the men tipped as likely contenders for the presidency, was Clearly looking for a deeper commitment than that on Somalia alone. They wanted the West to realise the importance of capitalist Kenya in an increasingly communist-influenced part of Africa. Will the west protect Kenya from the internal and external ructions that may follow Kenyatta's demise? That is the major, indeed the only significant, question the Kenyan government really wants answered.

Kenya was bound to lose from the Ogaden war, since they fear communism almost as much as people with claims on their territory. In making a pact with the Sudan last year, Kenyan Foreign Minister Munyua Waiyaki said: 'We are uncomfortable with foreign interference in Africa, especially the Horn. We have decided to fight together against uninvited foreign intrusion.' By siding with Ethiopia in spite of this, Kenya has alienated itself from the Pro-Western Arab countries with which it had just started to establish friendly political and economic ties — now Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt and Iran are estranged, increasing Kenyan isolation still further. And while war made strange bedfellows, Communist-dominated Ethiopia may decide that Kenyan patronage is no longer necessary. Uganda too is given Russian arms and advice, and has in the past laid Claim to eastern areas of Kenya. Amin has a far stronger airforce, with sophisticated M iGs being flown by Russian-trained pilots from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

Faced with these threats, Kenya has embarked on a rapid expansion of her armed forces, and has pleaded for speedy delivery of American Phantom F5s ordered last year. She is also making frantic efforts to patch up soured relations with both Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya and Uganda recently agreed to exchange ambassadors, and Kenya is holding talks with Tanzania about reopening their common border. Its Closure last year after a squabble about buses from Kenya ruining Tanzanian roads has severely hit Kenyan trade not only to Tanzania but also to its Southern African Markets in Mozambique and Zambia. The East African Federation linking Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania is dead, but Kenya has now seen the need to set up a larger trading confederation incorporating the three former East African members, Mozambique, Zambia, Zaire, and possibly Ethiopia. Kenya's haste in pursuing this stems from factors more wide than simple economic considerations.

The second major trauma suffered by Kenya in recent times was the clamp-down on free speech that followed the mysterious death on 3 March 1975 of J. M. Kariuki, an outspoken radical memb._ of parliament. Parliamentarians insisted on a commission to investigate, and iis revelations were astonishing. It implicated the three most senior police and security police officers in a massive cover-up operation and linked them with the murder itself (the body, in true storybook fashion, had been dumped in the Ngong Hills in the Great Rift Valley to be eaten by hyenas). Just who the officers were covering up for was never revealed, because the police took no action at all, and no trial ever took place. Two of the most vociferous inquirers were arrested within the precincts of parliament, and are still under detention without trial or charge. The same fate awaited another two outspoken MPs, the latest arrest being made last year. Now the country's foremost poet and playwright, Ngugi wa Thiongo, is also in detention, for no apparent reason other than possession of communist literature.

But it was the third anniversary of Kariuki's death, not Ngugi's detention (although he was a leading academic at their university) that led to the outburst of student protest this month. Because Kariuki was seen as the only truly national figure, able to transcend the deep tribal cleavages of Kenyan society. It was of his death that the committee wrote: 'There is reason to believe that the prompt action of the National Assembly in appointing the committee before the funeral of J. M. saved the country from civil war,' Kariuki, like Ngugi, pressed for a fairer distribution of land, and the removal of 'neo-colonialism'. Both saw black faces instead_of white garnering the nation's wealth at the expense of the common people. Both wanted to see less expatriate whites occupying positions of influence in finance and government ministries. And both wanted corruption stamped out at all levels, including the top. Their voices, and others, were silenced.

Partly perhaps because of the jealousies it might cause, and partly, it appears, out of a stubbprn refusal to contemplate the future, Kenyatta has made no efforts to groom a successor, once dismissing his wife's queries as to an heir apparent with this (perhaps apocryphal) retort: 'Don't ask me. Kenyatta won't have a vote. Ask the people who have the votes.'

In theory, the vice-president, Arap Moi, will take over the presidency with limited powers for up to three months, when elections must be called. But a lot can happen in that ninety days, as rivals have noted with concern. Attempts to discuss changes to the procedure were snuffed by the Attorney General, Mr Njonjo, who warned MPs that raising this hypersensitive issue could render them liable to the death penalty! The chances of an orthodox coup d'etat by the military seem slender — it has remained apolitical — but then so had Uganda's army until 1971. Some observers consider feasible a scenario in which those with power and/or money retain power through manipulation of the police and security forces, establishing a token cabinet.

But the democratic tradition runs deep in Kenya. Its tribal society had no centralised power structures akin to the kingdoms of neighbouring states like Uganda, Burundi or Ethiopia. And on the whole the country's post-independence record of free speech and free elections is scarcely rivalled in black Africa — in the last general election, although there is only one legal party, no less than four cabinet ministers and thirteen junior ministers were voted out of office. There is a lively if at times restricted press, and a lingering memory of the repressive Emergency period under British rule.

These attributes, however, may not be able to compensate for the tribal divisions which have bred hatred and suspicion. The largest group, the Kikuyu, comprising two and a half million of the thirteen million Kenyans, have garnered the lion's share of the spoils,,, partly because Nairobi lies in their home territory, and partly because they have a great desire for wealth and power, not shared to the same degree by the others, particularly the two million Luos, whose lifestyle was traditionally more relaxed. Tom Mboya, a Luo who was Kenya's vice-president, was assassinated in 1969, and other Luo leaders seem scarce, in spite of the fact that they are traditionally tine orators.

The Luos' jibe is that they believe in selfhelp, whereas the Kikuyu believe in help yourself. It is across this divide that the major bloodletting may come in the aftermath of Kenyatta. Even between different elements of the Kikuyu, with many scores to settle from the Mau Mau days, there will at the very least be a mad scramble for power.