When that day comes.

One wall of the Parliament of Rwanda, all the way to the top, is still pockmarked with bullet holes. Some of the holes look like mortar rounds. It set me thinking: the 100 days of the Rwanda genocide were a nation destroying itself. That Rwanda recovered and rebuilt is testimony to twenty years of patience and commitment to peace at all costs. 

Kenya didn't come even close to the Rwanda situation. And yet we behave as if the post-general election violence of 2007 was Kenya seeking to destroy itself. Almost a million people died in Rwanda in 1994. In Kenya, the number barely broke through 1,500. I am not downplaying the impact that the dead of 2007/2008 had on Kenya's psyche; but can you imagine the psychological trauma of losing a million fellow citizens?

Rwanda coalesced around a a strong national desire to atone for the dead. It took a civil war to get them there, but no one doubts that Rwanda wants to succeed at all costs, to remain united, to remain at peace. You don't even get the sense of desperation or anxiety now that there are moves to do constitutionally do away with term limits so that Paul Kagame can serve another term. He is not exactly revered in Rwanda - not the way some autocratically-minded politicians in Kenya revere him - but he is respected, in large measure because he doesn't live like a Roman potentate, surrounded by flunkies, arse-lickers or tenderpreneurs.

Kenya emerged from the post-2007 situation with even more baggage. Inequities between the haves and have-nots have gotten worse. The disparities between our constitutional ambitions and our political realities are glaring. One of the strangest things about post-2007 is the manner in which we have attempted to rewrite the history of the events themselves. Moses Kuria and the leading vocalists of the Jubilee choir are only the latest manifestations of this phenomenon.

Two Commissions of Inquiry enquired into the events; their reports are public documents for those that would wish to refresh their memories. The manner in which Mwai Kibaki's administration dealt with the investigations into the allegations raised by the commissions is linked directly to who was and who wasn't indicted at the International Criminal Court.

The violence was unique for the fact that many of the people shot dead were shot dead by the security forces, unlike in Rwanda, where the Parliament bears the proof of that dark time. Kenyans preferred a more personal way to despatch the near-1,500 to their makers: fire, mob violence, bows and arrows, simis and rungus. What many of the perpetrators of the violence really wanted was land: and they got it all. The displaced have never returned to their lands, whether they were rich or not. They were all "resettled". It is for this reason that Kenya cannot turn up its nose at Rwanda; we have not solved the reason why we fought in 2007. We have simply postponed the day of reckoning and new constitutions, devolution and all that jazz won't be worth a bucket of warm piss when that day comes.