Lessons from The Hague

Watching the court proceedings from The Hague on TV, and listening to the Prosecution's case, I am starkly reminded of events that I witnessed first-hand as a student in India in the summer of 2002, when marauding gangs of fanatical Hindus, egged on by politicians, went on the rampage and massacred thousands of Muslims in the State of Gujarat after a train-load of Hindus were attacked and murdered in cold blood. It was alleged by many, and proven by a few brave reporters, that, in what amounted to a pogrom in Gujarat, the Hindu attackers relied on electoral rolls to identify and target Muslim households. 

Men, women and children who professed the Muslim faith were targetted and brutally butchered. Their homes were set alight. Their properties were destroyed. Women were gang-raped before being executed by marauding gangs of Hindu youth. Pregnant women had foetuses butchered from their swollen bellies and thrown into fires. Politicians, especially the Chief Minister of Gujarat, were implicated in the pogrom; many of them either paid or directed the violence that rocked that state in 2002.

The similarities between the Gujarat pogrom and the violence that rocked Nakuru and Naivasha in 2007/08 are plain to see. In Gujarat, Hindu pilgrims returning from a religious pilgrim were attacked in their train and brutally murdered. In retaliation, Hindu politicians and businessmen organised themselves and set about punishing an entire community for the crimes of a handful of their co-religionists. 

In Kenya, following violence that rocked the North Rift after the disputed elections of 2007, Kikuyu politicians and businessmen, in retaliation for the deaths of Kikuyus in the North Rift, organised themselves and set about not just punishing Kalenjins, but also Luos and Luhyas residing in Nakuru and Naivasha. The barbarities perpetrated against them are similar to those perpetrated in Gujarat in 2002: murder, rape and the wanton destruction of property and sources of livelihood. as in India, the marauding gangs in Nakuru and Naivasha relied on lists prepared in advance, perhaps the electoral roll. And just as in Gujarat, no one was spared: men, women and children were fair game for the bloodthirsty gangs unleashed in 2007/08.

In the aftermath of the violence in Kenya, it was politicians who set about profiting from the blood spilled by thousands upon thousands of innocent Kenyans. The politicians who had set Kenyans upon each other resolved to bury the blood-soaked hatchet and join together in a coalition government. The Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya entered into a coalition agreement, where the President, representing the PNU got to keep his job and Raila Odinga, representing ODM, became Kenya's second Prime Minister, the position having been abolished when Kenya became a republic in 1964. 

In their zeal to make the best of the coalition arrangement, the Principals, as they were now referred, agreed to establish Independent Commissions of Inquiry to investigate the bungling of the elections and the violence that had paralysed East Africa's leading economy. The politicians, for the most part, had no quarrel with the findings of South African Justice (Rtd) Johann Kriegler-led Commission that investigated the 2007 general elections, and agreed, without too much rancour, to establish the Interim Independent Electoral Commission and the Interim Independent Boundaries Commission (though they would vehemently disagree with the work of the Boundaries Commission later on). But, almost to a man, they disagreed with the findings of the Justice Philip Waki-led Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence (CIPEV) and its recommendations, especially that of establishing a local mechanism to investigate and try persons who may have been responsible for the violence. 

Justice Waki set the cat among the pigeons by publishing a secret list of persons his Commission felt should be investigated and tried for crimes committed during the PEV, and by giving the list to Koffi Annan, the mediator appointed by the Panel of Eminent African Personalities of the African Union, he all but guaranteed that Kenyan politicians would use his Commission's report and its recommendations as fodder for political gain. 

Initially, the politicians were united in rejecting the establishment of a local mechanism, insisting that The Hague option was the only one that inspired confidence that the issues surrounding the PEV would be adequately investigated, and they rejected the President's and Prime Minister's advise that a local mechanism was the better option. Their slogan was: "Don't be vague, go to The Hague!". Only when William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta became suspects did their tune change and they started maneuvering to kill The Hague option, but it was too late.

Listening to the Prosecutor laying the basis for his application for a full trial, one can see why the politicians don't want the charges to be confirmed or a trial to take place. They are accused of not just perpetrating violence against their fellow Kenyans, but of instigating, planning and funding the violence on both sides of the events of 2007/08.They are accused of knowingly ensuring that not only were innocent Kenyans brutally murdered, but that the murderous violence spared no one: age, gender and status in society was no protection. 

The ICC hearings are the first time that Kenyans are hearing an unvarnished truth about the character of their political leaders and it makes for chilling viewing when the Prosecutor describes scenes of unimaginable cruelty and barbarity and the suspects sit calmly and studiously aloof, as if they are above the events being described. Whether they are guilty or not is not the point; Kenyans are getting a master-class in what is required if we are to eradicate political impunity from our body politic. It is a lesson we had better take to heart or the next time this country goes up in flames, we may never put the pieces together again.