Commentary (by Makau Mutua) - Understanding the peace ceremony

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=2&newsid=119605
Story by MAKAU MUTUA
Publication Date: 3/23/2008

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. One particular recent historic photograph will make you appreciate the full import of that statement.

It is the famous portrait, forever seared into our minds, of President Mwai Kibaki and Mr Raila Odinga appending their signatures to the power-sharing pact on February 28 at Harambee House to end two months of diabolical violence.

That picture says many things, but it is the pose struck by the two key protagonists and the three men standing behind them that symbolises how far down Kenya has fallen, and how steep the climb back up is likely to be. Let us decipher the multiple meanings of that picture without any sentimentality.

The picture is a paradox, an alchemy of hope and despair. On the one hand, the picture represents a rebirth of the country from the ruins of catastrophe. It is a pictorial acknowledgement that President Kibaki and Mr Odinga had decided to pull back from the seduction of a fatal duel, and turned away from the precipice.

On the other hand, the picture conjures up images of submission to a higher, external authority, an instrumentality outside the State. Behind President Kibaki and Mr Odinga stood three men – the symbols of extra-territorial authority over the Kenyan sovereign.

The three men – Mr Kofi Annan, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, and Mr Benjamin Mkapa, his immediate predecessor – symbolised Kenya’s lost glory.

The three men stood in a straight line behind Mr Odinga and President Kibaki, both of whom were sitting down. Mr Mkapa and President Kikwete stood on either side of Mr Annan, who was in the middle. In the picture, Mr Annan stands straight, his chin up, like Alexander the Great.

His position in the middle and his commanding posture suggest a generalship of the field. It is clear that he – and not President Kikwete or Mr Mkapa – is in charge of the proceedings. But President Kikwete and Mr Mkapa are not insignificant – they are clearly Mr Annan’s chief lieutenants because they complete the circle of the guardians of the pact.

Significantly, no single Kenyan was a member of this guardians’ council.

Apart from Mr Odinga and President Kibaki, the only other Kenyans of note in the picture are Mr James Orengo, who was Mr Odinga’s key legal adviser, and Attorney General Amos Wako, President Kibaki’s and the PNU government’s chief legal counsel.

It was Mr Wako and Mr Orengo who had ascertained that the power-sharing pact had been transformed into a legally binding document. But their presence at the signing ceremony was largely symbolic – to show the principals on which page to sign and to formally assure them that the document was legal, binding, and fair. This is part of what lawyers do.

But in this role, both Mr Orengo and Mr Wako were important appendages to the larger text of the ceremony, and added solemnity to the somber and historic occasion. But it is the presence of President Kikwete and Mr Mkapa that is most intriguing.

For decades, Kenyans have regarded Tanzania as a slow controlled society. Not many Kenyans take Tanzania seriously as a regional competitor. But this mistaken stereotype is a terrible miscalculation about the character of Tanzania as a state, and its people as a nation.

I know because I lived in exile there from 1981-84 as a student at the University of Dar es Salaam. While Kenyans have spent the last 45 years since independence solidifying their ethnic identities, Tanzanians have been engaged in the most serious project of nation building this side of the Sahara.

Tanzania is one of only several African countries that have been able to cohere as a nation, thanks to the yeoman work and pan-Africanist leadership of the late Julius Nyerere, one of Africa’s greatest statesmen.

That is why President Kikwete’s and Mr Mkapa’s presence at the signing ceremony was no accident. There is no other country in Africa whose leaders would have had more credibility to supervise Kenya’s peace deal.

Tanzanians have created the most solid state and society in Africa. Just look at its leaders, and where they have come from. President Nyerere came from a small group in Butiama, near Lake Victoria. His successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, was a Zanzibari.

Mr Mkapa, his successor, came from Mtwara in the southern tip, an impoverished area. President Kikwete is a Zaramo from Bagamoyo, formerly a slave trading area. This is a rich diversity of leadership that Kenyans can only dream about.

Tanzanians have such a high national consciousness that the word tribe is not part of their national nomenclature. I lived there for four years and never once was I asked to identify my tribe. The only rite of passage was fluent Kiswahili.

I never once heard Tanzanians link their leaders to tribes, or talk about the tribe in politics. Political interests were never organised by regions, and tribal barons did not exist. This stands in marked contrast to Kenya where tribal affiliation is the starting point for any political calculations.

That is why Kenya is in danger of becoming a completely failed state if it does not figure out a way to build a national identity out of its 42 groups.

Is it not ironic that a country Kenyans had come to take for granted provided two of the three anchors for the signing ceremony? Is it not a paradox that Kenya – which had spent years brokering peace in Somalia and Sudan – was now itself the subject of mercy and supervision by Tanzania, its more resilient southern neighbour?

How did Kenya end up here with two of its most senior leaders seated in front of three outsiders with their heads bowed down signing a peace pact to avoid genocide? Neither President Kibaki’s facial expression, nor Mr Odinga’s, seems happy.

They seem forlorn, as though they are signing a death warrant. Ironically, it is that warrant – under Mr Annan’s resolute generalship – that has for now saved Kenya from collapse. That picture is worth a thousand words.

Makau Mutua is Interim Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.