allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Kenyan Crisis And the Neo-Liberal Fallacy (Page 1 of 3)

At the last African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Kenyan post-election violence came up for discussion amongst African foreign affairs ministers. But, they gave it a short shrift. The ministers preferred to await the presentation of the report by President Kuffuor of Ghana to the Assembly of Heads of States and Government before they can deliberate on the 'ethnic cleansing' in Kenya. Unfortunately, the Heads of States did not get to dwell much on the issue. But, former President of the African Union Commission, Professor Alpha Konare spoke passionately on the need for African leaders to take firm position on the Kenyan crisis. At the end African leaders restated confidence in the Kofi Annan panel of wise elders.

During prefatory statements on the Kenyan election crisis, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, Nigerian foreign minister, made a very radical, profound and unexpected statement. He urged his colleagues to drop all other businesses and discuss the grave tragedy playing out in Kenya. According to him, it would simply amount to depressing shortsightedness and failure of leadership if African leaders turned blind eye to the ethnically-motivated violence and killings in Kenya. Then the Ojo's bombshell: according to the foreign minister, the crisis in Kenya reinforces the fact that as African countries begin to grapple with the demands of multiparty democracy its ethnic and religious fault-lines will become more and more frayed. This statement caused considerable stir, but I doubt if its implications and transformative nuggets were fully realized by African foreign ministers.

The major tragedy in Africa is that these fault-lines, be they fault-lines of class, gender or ethnicity, are being papered over instead of being transformed through social actions. Chief Maduekwe counseled his colleagues not to look condescendingly on Kenya. Kenya is not exceptional in its embarrassing tragedy. It could be said of any other African country: "Here but for the grace of God goes Nigeria or Senegal, etc". The fact that the violence in Kenya could have occurred in many other African countries underlines the similarity of objective conditions and institutional failures that caused the crisis. It also emphasizes the commonality of the interventions and initiatives that will redress Africa's crisis of development and democracy.

It is interesting to observe the pathology of western media and commentators on the disgraceful crisis in Kenya. From the Economist to the New York Times, the dominant mood is that of lament that a buoyant democracy has suddenly come to ruins. These commentators describe Kenya in the best colors as one of Africa's countable stable democracies with a growing economy. The idea is that if Kibaki and Odinga did not lose their nerves, Kenya would have remained a stable democracy offering recreation to overworked and bored Anglo-Saxons. But, is this picture true? Did instability suddenly descend on Kenya? Was Kenya as democratic and stable as western media and their political analysts made it up?

The Superficiality of Neoliberal Economic Reform:

The crisis in Kenya should move Africans and their co-travelers on the road of neoliberal economic reform to deeper thoughts. It is time to rethink neoliberal assumptions about development. Why did Kenya, Africa's tourist haven, go up so soon in flames? It is obvious that Kenya was undone by strong unresolved and simmering ethnic conflicts. Like Nigeria, elites in Kenya have manipulated ethnicity for political leadership. Like Nigeria, Kenya since independence has been ruled by dictators, autocrats and aristocrats- civilian or military- of differing stripes and hues. Like in Nigeria, the people of Kenya have rarely mattered in an election; they have not been accorded the full rights and powers of citizens. All these were lost on neoliberals who praised its economic reform.

The political and social conditions in Kenya before and after Arap Moi are best summarized in the thesis of Professor Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan sociologist cum historian, as 'late colonialism'. Kenya, like every other African country, retains the social structures and institutions which defined and characterized colonialism. These institutions are simply those that either negate or attenuate robust citizenship and democratic accountability. These institutions make it difficult for popular ownership and participation in democratic governance. As Mamdani perceptively opined, where African countries have embraced 'democratic' rule, either in the Nigerian case of transiting from military to civilian rule, or in Kenyan case of moving from one-party to multi-party state, the institutions, structures and norms of governance remained the same. Instead of institutionalizing transformation and democratization these countries succeeded in decentralizing or pluralizing disempowerment.

This is not just a theoretical construct; it is a political reality. The rash of reform programs in African countries fails woefully to connect Africa's economic future to the political crises that afflict the African state. Reforms tend always to focus on African countries as potential factories or extractive sites for raw materials and finished products without paying attention to these countries as human societies. The inability of millions of Africans to be part of meaningful conversation and activities on governance in their countries does not concern the authors and proponents of these reforms. Although they may talk endlessly and romantically about social capital and the culture of development, they overlook the role politics plays in sustainable economic development.

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