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Abstract
This contribution analyses the African Union-led mediation of Kenya's post-election crisis in 2008. In little more than a month, four main factors aligned in a concert of action to deliver a successful mediation that led to the signing of the National Accord and the formation of the Grand Coalition Government. The first was a framework for mediation that emerged within the ambit of the African Union around which support and momentum grew over time. Accepted by both sides of the conflict, this mechanism enjoyed legitimacy and became a rallying point for all actors interested in resolving the crisis. Second, was the role of Kenyan stakeholders in mounting and sustaining pressure on the parties of the conflict and the mediating team to return Kenya to peace. Mobilising across party lines, Kenyans from various constituencies engaged the peace process from the start to beyond the signing of the accord. In many ways, this translated into local ownership of the peace process and built a constituency of support for it. Third, was the character of the mediating team, which embodied experience, expertise, network and mediation skills for addressing the crisis. All the eminent personalities enjoyed respect in Kenya and internationally, and hence raised confidence in the process. Furthermore, their being African diminished any resistance that could have been associated with Western or other external influence on the process. The final factor was the unrelenting international pressure and leverage that was exerted largely through the framework of mediation. The Kenyan mediation generated critical lessons for negotiations elsewhere. However, as in many other peace agreements, the process lacked mechanisms to ensure full compliance with the provisions of the accord.
Acknowledgements
In writing this article I received support from many people across the political spectrum in Kenya. Most of these have asked for anonymity and are therefore not cited directly but I would like to thank them all. I also drew heavily on Muthoni Wanyeki's perspective and analysis of the status of the accord, a year on, and remain grateful to Peter Kagwanja for his comments on an initial draft.
Notes
1. The executive council plays a significant role in the AU summitry system because it recommends decisions on various issues for consideration and adaptation by the assembly of the heads of state and government. More often than not a decision of the council is endorsed by the assembly.
2. Explanations of the Kenyan crisis leads to a lethal combination of ethnicity: see for example, Klopp Citation2002 who examines the use of ethnicity to apportion resources and political power and Gisemba Citation2008. On resource distribution and failure of governance see for example, Bii and Ngetich Citation2008 and the East African Standard, 25 January 2008. For the role of international interests in maintaining authoritarian government, including endorsing elections that are neither free nor fair see, for example, Brown Citation2001. Regarding human rights abuses and misgovernment, see Kagwanja Citation1998 and Brown Citation2003.
3. At the time of writing, the internally displaced persons were still in camps, many of them fearful of return because, as indicated in a recent opinion poll, most believed that the government of national unity had failed to address their security concerns, accentuating their fear of attack if they returned to their former homes.
4. The impact of the international actors on this crisis is discussed in depth in the contribution to this volume by Stephen Brown.
5. Significant to this claim was a memorandum of understanding, signed between the two, to create a post of prime minister that Raila could hold following the 2002 elections, which Kibaki allegedly reneged on.
6. The ODM took the view that the judicial process could not resolve their claims and did not petition in court in accordance with the electoral law and procedures. According to them they did not trust the judicial system; the problem at hand was a political one requiring political solutions, and the President had demonstrated bad faith by appointing electoral commissioners without consulting other parties; and the chief justice had sworn Kibaki in hurriedly in spite of the controversy surrounding the tallying of the presidential vote. For an analysis of the weakness of the legal option for resolving Kenya's crisis see Mwagiru Citation2008.
7. Author interview with senior politician, 5 January 2009, Nairobi.
8. Kenya has led and facilitated numerous peace processes such as those leading up to the world-lauded Comprehensive Peace Agreement for South and North Sudan (2005); it brokered the negotiations that led to the formation of the transitional government in Somalia (2005); it has hosted numerous rounds of the Great Lakes negotiations, Burundi mediation, Rwanda mediation, and the Uganda mediations before Yoweri Museveni took over power in 2006.
9. Reflecting what has come to be seen by an analyst as a crisis of governance, the 2007 influential Journal of Foreign Policy and a research organisation, the Fund for Peace, ranked Kenya at number 31 in their Failed States Index in 2007. The concept of a failed state was given a powerful boost in Chomsky Citation2007.
10. This group brought together Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat of the Africa Peace Forum, who was a member of the peace process in Mozambique in 1992, worked on the Sudan peace process in the 1990s and was the mediator for the Somali peace process that produced the transitional federal government of Somalia, formed in Kenya in 2005; retired General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, mediator of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement negotiated between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in 2005; retired General Daniel Opande, who served as a commander of United Nations peacekeepers missions in Namibia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; Mrs Dekka Ibrahim Abdi, a peace consultant who was awarded the alternative Nobel Peace prize; and Mr George Wachira, senior research and policy advisor with the Nairobi Peace Initiative-Africa.
11. The Forum of the Elders was formed on 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa, by Nelson Mandela on the occasion of his 89th birthday. Founding members of the forum are Graça Machel, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus. Explaining the nature of the group's work, Mandela noted that ‘the group can speak freely and boldly, working publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken … Together we will work to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair’. The objective of the group is to use their unique collective skills to catalyse peaceful resolution of longstanding conflicts and to articulate new approaches to the global issues that could cause immense human suffering.
12. Author interview with official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 2009, Nairobi.
13. This document identified three key points of mediation: a credible, independent and impartial investigation into the issues arising from the elections; a need to determine whether a re-run of the elections is necessary; and if so, provision of a time frame for recommendations on the structure of government up until the re-run.
14. The association of this document with outside powers heightened government suspicion that outsiders were bent on subverting and undermining it in favour of the opposition. Shortly after the controversy broke, the World Bank disassociated itself from the document. As an indication of government unease and fear of moles within its ranks, this fiasco was immediately followed by transfer of the government officers associated with the initiative out of state house. Author interview with senior government official (affiliation withheld on request), January 2009, Nairobi.
15. Significantly, and perhaps as an indication of confidence in the government, the Kenyan candidate for the executive secretary of IGAD, Mohamoud Mahajub, was elected at this meeting. When the IGAD ministers arrived in Nairobi on 8 February, they expressed their solidarity with the Annan-led initiative.
16. While Kibaki was applauded by the summit, the opposition at home argued that his speech camouflaged the culpability of the PNU side in the conflict. Nonetheless, they did not back out of the AU framework of mediation.
17. A country like the UK has been at the forefront of campaigning against the government failure to curb corruption, and has been particularly vocal since it hosted John Githongo, the former anti-corruption tsar who went into self-exile in that country in 2005.
18. At a briefing at the Kenyan High Commission in Pretoria on 15 January 2009, more than two-thirds of the nearly hundred people in attendance had been home in December 2007 and were following developments keenly. By the end of January, Kenyans in South Africa had created a mechanism for delivering humanitarian assistance across the country through the Kenyan Red Cross movement. These actions were replicated in most of the Kenyan diaspora communities around the world.
19. Author interview with UN expert who supported the mediation process, 8 December 2008, New York.
20. The Kiswahili translation of this phrase is ‘return home’. In this operation, the government encouraged and assisted those displaced persons that were willing to return to their homes. It also opened police stations in areas that had been most affected.
21. Transcript of ‘Elements of press encounter by H.E. Kofi Annan in front of the Nairobi Serena Hotel’, Nairobi, 26 February 2008.
22. After the 1998 bomb attacks of the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya has, with the support of the USA, grown to become a nerve centre for counter-terrorism programmes for the Horn and Indian Ocean regions of Africa.