We are in this together

At this time, as we close the year, memories of what happened in 2007/2008 come back, at a time when Ivorians are facing tough times, after casting their votes for the candidates of their choice, I thought of sharing the following article. 

One late afternoon, in February 1995, sitting having tea in the lobby area of the then Monomatapa Hotel in Harare, I remember this conversation with a young Zimbabwean man. Having told him that I was a Kenyan, attending a workshop, he commented that we Kenyans were brilliant, hardworking, with a lot of initiative but our problem was our leadership and particularly the President. Immediately he finished his sentence, I burst out laughing (as usual loud, with no inhibition). He wondered what he could have said that had made me laugh so loudly. I quickly asked him to forgive me, but that was me and it wasn’t meant to be rude at all. I had laughed because that is something I had heard before; with all the good things said about Kenyans except their leadership. I took the compliment but explained that there was no way we could have all those positive attributes, yet have a leader who was not up to our level. My argument was that people get the leader they deserve, and we as Kenyans must share a lot of characteristics with our leadership. Zimbwabwe was doing very well then, with an exchange rate of 8 Zim$ to 1US$.

Thirteen years later, Kenya and Zimbabwe found themselves in the same soup; albeit different tastes but basically the same. We both had had national elections whose results were questionable. Fifteen years down the road, former ‘enemies’ are working together in Grand Coalitions, brokered by external mediators, and the opposition (if this ever existed) have become part of government.

Both countries lost many lives through preventable circumstances. While in one country people died and were displaced because of what has been referred to as Post-Election Violence or PEV in NGOspeak, the other has had many people die of diarrhea related epidemic, which cannot be publicly called cholera. To address this problem a cure has been prescribed, putting together previous contenders in one government, for the sake of peace and tranquilityThe sufferers of cholera and PEV in countries where the effects of bad governance have had serious ramifications on the economy have had to dig deeper not only to stay alive in an environment of rising costs of basic food but to maintain large governments, whose effectiveness is reflected in sizes of the motorcades and security details, extra and well furnished offices, not to mention proposed official residences of the ‘big boys’. As for the coalitions, the big question has been whether, if we really had true democracies, especially of the multi-party type, we needed the grand ones and are they working.

Ironically, it would seem that the ‘one fits all’ approach to solving the problems won’t work as well as would have been thought. The same prescription (or is it instruction?) that was used for Kenya and Zimbabwe doesn’t seem to be suitable for Cote d’Ivoire, where there is a struggle for power between the ‘winner’ and the winner. Unlike Kenya, where we had conflicting information, including the Electoral Commission admitting that they didn’t know who had won the elections, and at the same time the winning party was announced, but the vote ended up being a stolen election; in Cote d’Ivoire, there was a run-off of the election for the two leading contestants. Alassane Ouatarra was declared the winner by the Electoral Commission while Laurent Gbagbo was the winner, according to the Constitutional Council.

But how did the three countries which in the first 10 years of independence, under the rule of their first Presidents were the show cases of successful countries in Africa; end where they are now? As our leaders fight for power, even the use of physical force, Cote d’Ivoire beats the two other countries at it. It has had the country divided into two; with the north (supposedly Muslim) supporting Ouatarra and the so called Christian south backing Gbagbo. In Kenya, there is a big effort of co-existence and the line between the political parties appearing to become thinner and thinner. In Zimbabwe, it is more of a marriage where rape is the order of the day.

Looking back, I can only say that we are in this together and as we say in my mother-tongue, ‘rũrĩ ĩtara rũthekaga rũrĩ riiko – translated in English to mean that a piece of firewood cannot laugh at the one burning in the fire. At some time in our short history after independence, each of our three countries must have thought themselves as unique from all the other African countries which were either fighting or had become basket cases – to use the donor language. Now even as the threat of civil war looms in Cote d’Ivoire, we can say ‘we been there’, but have our circumstances changed dramatically? We continue to exhibit to the whole world that impunity persists.

The main issue is that there really is a big gap between the leaders and the led, which has been exploited by the leadership? Maybe in Zimbabwe and Cote d’Ivoire, things are different but for sure in Kenya, we suffer from a common disease which I call the triple U syndrome, in Kiswahili; ‘Ukubwa’, ‘Ubinafsi’ na ‘Ulavi’ or in English – Big Man, Selfishness and Greed. We are represented by people we elected and we elected them because they represent our interests. The sad thing is Zimbabweans, Kenyans and Ivorians can’t walk as tall as they did in the first two decades after independence. Indeed,

In the next few posts, I will share my thinking aloud on why we have found ourselves where we are.