Farce or Tragedy?

It should not surprise us that the leadership of Kenya's many faith-based organisations is interested in the outcome of the elections, scheduled for March 2013. The largest bloc belongs, obviously, to the Christian community, led by the traditional organised churches such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church of Kenya. In 2007, church leaders allied themselves with specific politicians and championed some of their goals. The result, if we care to remember, was that many Christians in Kenya forgot their Christian principles and engaged in an orgy of violence that claimed thousands of lives and billions of shillings in property damage. In 2010, once again, the church leaders allied themselves with the Red Campaign against the Proposed Constitution. During that campaign, a case that had been filed by evangelical bishops was decided by a Bench that included the disgraced Joseph Nyamu in which the High Court declared that Kadhis' Courts were unconstitutional. Their inclusion in the Proposed Constitution, as with the inclusion of a weak ban on abortion, galvanised, especially, the evangelical church leaders to campaign actively against the proposed draft. That their objections tended to align themselves with those of some politicians has been claimed to have been happenstance.

In the aftermath of the violence of 2007 ad 2008, many church leaders, especially those of the NCCK and the Episcopal Conference, expressed contrition for the role that the church may have played in fanning the flames of the violence. They declared that in future, the church would act differently. Many Kenyan Christians took them at their word. Over the past eighteen months, those promises now seem to be a cruel joke on the unsuspecting. When the Grand Coalition Government was formed in April 2008, it had four crucial agendas, including the investigation of the causes of the violence and the prosecution of its perpetrators. When it seemed that Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki would be the main suspects, not only did the church leaders of Kenya support the trial of any suspects at The Hague, they did so in solidarity with certain politicians, including Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto. Truth be told, these men and women were not truly interested in justice for the victims of the violence, but in weakening the Prime Minister and preventing him from succeeding President Kibaki. When it was apparent that President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga were not the targets of the International Criminal Court, but that Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto were, all the pro-ICC voices backtracked, claimed that Kenya's reforms had proceeded far enough to guarantee justice for the victims (and the suspects), and demanded that the ICC suspend the process, refer the cases to Kenya and prove to the world that Kenya 'is not a failed state'.

Recent developments, however, raise the stakes to unimaginable levels. Uhuru Kenyatta's supporters, led by the ill-disciplined Kiraitu Murungi, have revived a hated association from Kenya's dark and corrupt past, GEMA, as have the supporters of William Ruto with the revival of KAMATUSA. In 2007, church leaders were content to peddle hate messages from the pulpit; in 2012 they have decided to join the campaign bandwagon by becoming closely associated with the politicians, and the politicians' messages, of their choice. The presence of so many god-men at the relaunches of GEMA and KAMATUSA should serve as a warning. When the results of the 2013 general elections are challenged, as they surely must, and the violence spontaneously erupts, the tinder will have been laid by church leaders even when the spark will have been lit by calls to resist the unacceptable results. History repeats itself; first as farce, then as tragedy. We have been warned.