Affordable Housing Institute : US

For nearly two months I’ve been hoping to be able to write this post as I, like much of the world, watched in anxious passivity as Kenya brought itself to the brink of a tribally based civil war … and then, apparently, brought itself back from the cliff.  As reported in the Boston Globe:

Kenya to build coalition government

 

NAIROBI - Kenya’s presidential rivals yesterday [That is, 28 Feb – Ed.] agreed to share power in a coalition government aimed at ending postelection chaos that has killed 1,000 people and brought this once-promising East African nation to the brink of collapse.

 

Under the terms of a deal signed by President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, their parties will:

 

1.      Divide Cabinet positions 50-50, and

2.       Amend the constitution to create a prime minister position for Odinga, who will share power with the president.

 

 

All along, this outcome was, if not the best possible result, the best result actually possible.  International observers are unanimous that the election was massively flawed, and I’ve heard enough from my Kenyan friends to believe that it was flawed on both sides.  With each party having strong entrenched tribal heartlands, the ballot-box stuffing could have occurred in equal measures. 

 

Public reaction to the deal varied, often depending on ethnicity and political persuasion.

In Odinga strongholds, including the western city of Kisumu and the Nairobi slum of Kibera, crowds danced and sang in the streets.

 

Sympathizers of Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga celebrated in Kisumu as they heard a radio transmission about the pact. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

 

To any protagonist, compromise is intrinsically less than ideal – and here, it’s clear that the opposition gained more than it lost, a fact of which everyone is aware (the happy people pictured are Odinga supporters). 

 

The agreement marks a significant step toward resolving Kenya’s political crisis, and most citizens, who had feared that failed peace talks would trigger more violence, gave a collective sigh of relief. Likewise, the news brought praise from the United States and other Western governments, which had come to count on Kenya as an economic partner and source of stability in East Africa.

 

With hindsight, and even as it was taking place, the explosion into flames of a country many people had seen as a model of multi-ethnic civility shocked not only the outside world, but also the Kenyans themselves. 

 

 

Nairobi, January 4, 2008

 

As I wrote in Always the poor suffer first, I found myself personally affected:

 

From the BBC site: People walk through the charred remains of a market in Nairobi’s Kibera slum

 

I’ve been to Kibera; I’ve seen how people live and what they aspire to:

 

 

I’ve done work designing financial and programmatic models to finance slum upgrading in Kenya.  The models were predicated on government making commitments, and keeping them.  When the election came up, with its talk of slum improvements, I was among those very hopeful:

 

Something potentially remarkable is happening in Kenya right now, and it’s happening because of slums, or more precisely Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.  Kibera’s residents, long ignored in economic and policy terms, may just decide Kenya’s next president. 

 

This increased focus on Kibera is heartening in many ways.  Kibera’s people need a voice, and slums are vote banks.  As I wrote in a post entitled urban cryptobiotica:

 

Slumdwellers can speak; in the voting booth wealth disappears.  People who live in slums are just as smart as any of us.  Even though individual slumdwellers are as nothing politically, when they join together and take control of their vote bank potential, they become a force that the highest officials respond to.  Many date the fall of apartheid from the Soweto riots.  Here in the US, Watts led directly to the National Housing Act. 

 

In Mumbai, when Jockin called out the slumdwellers, they stopped the airport from running. 

 

Mumbai airport today, with slums that lap right up to the runways

 

It was a demonstration of distributed network intelligence, and it worked.

 

Just as government is a factory that produces two products (money and laws), politics is a game with two counters, money and votes.  Individually, slumdwellers can be ignored; they are effective only when collective. 

 

When slums become democratic, slums produce leaders.

 

Given Kenya’s sordid history, with the kleptocratic Daniel arap Moi in power as recently as 2002, to have a semblance of functioning democracy is real progress.

 

Real democracy, even if flawed, creates political pressure, and that creates political vaporware, such as Mr. Odinga’s pledges.  From elections come political capital, and political equity.

 

Then came the power grab, and Kenya’s eruption into looting, shooting, and killing.

 

 

Nairobi, January 4, 2008

 

The scenes reminded me of one of Star Trek’s more didactic and yet powerful allegorical episodes.  Entitled Let that be your last battlefield, it featured two races of aliens sharing a single planet, each half white and half black, but on different sides of their faces.  One of them, Commander Bele (rhymes with real), played with sinister superiority by Frank Gorshin, explains what should have been self-evident to every thinking being:

 

Obviously of the same race as Lokai, however, the sides of Bele’s black and white skin are reversed. The difference is pointed out by Bele to a perplexed Captain Kirk who asks what is the difference between them, to which he replies, “Isn’t it obvious? Lokai is white on the right side. All his people are white on the right side.”

 

Commander Bele, obviously superior because he is white on the left side

 

Bele explains he is a police commissioner from Cheron and on a mission to retrieve political traitors. His current quarry is Lokai who he has been chasing for what Bele claims to be 50,000 Earth years. Bele then instructs Captain Kirk to take him to see his “prisoner”. Bele is taken to Lokai, but Lokai reacts fearfully to Bele’s presence and strongly demands he be taken away. The two aliens begin arguing about slavery and racial segregation which almost come to blows.

 

Broadcast as it was in early 1969, with the memory of burning Watts, Detroit, Harlem and other cities vivid in viewers’ imaginations, its liberal anti-racist message was overt.  Bele and Lokai agree on only two things: they hate each other, and the bystanders are cowards:

 

Bele: You’ve combed the galaxy and all you’ve come up with is mono-colored trash, bleeding hearts and do-gooders. You’re dead, you half-white.

Lokai: [to the crew] You useless piles of bland flesh.

 

Kirk eventually takes them back to their home planet, where they discover:

 

Once there, the two aliens find the planet’s population completely wiped out by a global war fueled by insane racial hatred.

 

 

Both Lokai and Bele stare silently at the destruction on the monitor and realize they are the only ones left of their race (or, as they see it, their races).

 

Whose fault was it?

 

Instead of calling a truce, the two beings begin to blame each other for the destruction of the planet and a physical brawl ensues. As the two aliens fight, their innate powers radiate, cloaking them with an energy aura that threatens to damage the ship. With no other choice, Kirk sadly allows the two aliens to chase each other down to their obliterated world to decide their own fates, consumed by their now self-perpetuating mutual hate.

 

 

The story closes with Bele and Lokai chasing one another against a backdrop of burning buildings (taken, as I recall, from the Watts riots):

 

[Lokai and Bele have transported to their decimated world]

Spock: All that matters to them… is their hate.
Uhura: Do you suppose that’s all they ever had, sir?
Kirk: No. But that’s all they have left.

 

For weeks I could never quite banish this episode from my mind, as the world watched while Kenya’s elite – and make no mistake, though Mr. Odinga is of a different racial tribe, he comes from the same oligarchic elite that has given Kenya all its leaders since independence – risk their nation’s future as they fought for control of it.

 

The feelings got more painful last week, when I was in Colombo, Sri Lanka, working with Slum Dwellers International’s board on the design of their International Urban Poor Fund.  To help everybody understand what the Fund entails, we did a role-playing exercise where the federation representative from each of six countries presented a funding request.  One of them, by Ezekiel from Kenya, was for the rebuilding of Toi Market, which had been a heartening success story until it was engulfed in the riots and flames.

 

 

Friday morning, as we were waiting for the session to start, I displayed via my wi-fi laptop and the LED projector the New York Times front-page story

 

Standing behind chairs, President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, left, and Raila Odinga prepared to sign a deal on Thursday in Nairobi.

 

You can imagine how quiet it was as a roomful of slum dwellers from fifteen countries read.

 

Key details of the coalition government have yet to be determined, including how exactly the president and prime minister will share powers, how to divide Cabinet posts, how disputes will be resolved, and what happens if the coalition falls apart. Parliament is due to convene on March 6 to begin revising the constitution.

 

In the final hours of negotiation, Kibaki made significant concessions to the opposition, agreeing to a constitutional amendment that just one day earlier he had ruled out.

 

Give credit to Kofi Annan for talking them into it, and to the United States for leading the constructive pressure that made them agree:

 

His change of heart came amid intense pressure from the United States and others in the international community, who voiced warnings about possible sanctions and isolation for those perceived to be blocking a deal.

 

In addition, neighboring countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania, pushed Kibaki to settle because their economies rely heavily on Kenyan ports and have suffered during the unrest.

 

Sense prevailed:

 

After signing the agreement, Kibaki called on Kenyans to forget the ethnic clashes of the last two months and live together in peace. “Kenya has room for all of us,” he said.

 

Though there is a notional settlement, it may collapse:

 

But many Kenyans also said they were taking a wait-and-see attitude to determine whether the rivals are genuinely committed and willing to work together. They noted that their nation still faces sizable challenges, including a shattered economy, rising ethnic tensions, and 350,000 people displaced by violence since the Dec. 27 elections.

 

So far the swords have barely been lowered, much less beaten into plowshares.  Kenya faces enormous challenges, and a need for capital and commitment from its friends:

 

“They are solving their political problems, but not our problems yet,” said Alfonse Mutuku, 24, who lives in a displacement camp near Limuru, north of Nairobi.

 

Money cannot buy peace, but sometimes money can give peace a chance.  As I wrote two months ago, when hope was fighting with observation:

 

Democracy is a process, not an event.  Democracy empowers the poor.  Empowerment occurs by fits and starts.  It involves venality and crass self-interest and scheming.  Like lots of other things, it’s messier in the event than the memory. 

 

ODM supporter celebrating as a shop burns, Saturday

 

Given Kenya’s sordid history, with the kleptocratic Daniel arap Moi in power as recently as 2002, to have a semblance of functioning democracy is real progress.

 

Real democracy, even if flawed, creates political pressure, and that creates political vaporware, such as Mr. Odinga’s pledges.  From elections come political capital, and political equity.

 

Kenya’s road may seem longer today, two months after riots tore the country apart.  I think not.  As Churchill said, after a bright spot in a multi-year global nightmare:

 

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning

 

Good luck to Kenya, and to Kibera’s and Kisumu’s people.

 

Send post as PDF to