HALF A MILLION RWANDAN GHOSTS: CRISIS IN KENYA

“Mr. President, over one thousand people are dead. It’s time to make a deal,” I said.
I was meeting privately with Mwai Kibaki, the president of Kenya. My body was exhausted, fatigued by an interrupted recovery from a microbial infection and a fever that had bowled me over a few weeks before. This was almost my last play. The game now had to end. We needed an agreement on the transformation of the Kenyan political system. Otherwise, the country would be unable to bear what seemed sure to come.
It was early 2008, over a year since I had completed my second and final term as head of the UN—a time when I thought my days of hammering out bargains between presidents and prime ministers would surely be over. But I had now been in Kenya for a costly and bloody thirty-nine days in an attempt to mediate a peace deal.
It had all begun with the presidential elections in December 2007, the fourth since the establishment of multiparty politics in the country in 1992. These were held simultaneously alongside parliamentary and local elections—and the stakes were high. But the voting was carried out in a remarkably peaceful fashion. Voting on December 27 contrasted brightly with previous elections marred by bloody fits of local violence. In this peaceful election, many saw Kenya taking another stride forward with an increasingly functioning democracy underpinned by a growing economy. Kenya was sustaining its reputation as one of the more successful of African states.
But when the election result was announced and foul play was called, a dark side of Kenyan society erupted. Beneath the vision of a peaceful Kenya there was a different reality buried deep in its economic and political structures. Twin blades of inequality and crony-capitalist politics had long combined to shear deep grievances, resentment, and desperate competition along Kenya’s ethnic contours. Corruption among politicians and the civil service had become a monster in Kenya. Since independence, Kenya was ruled by interchanging ethnic cliques who, copying the self-enrichment of the white settlers before them, used public office to accumulate wealth for themselves, their kin, and their tribe. At a changeover of power, such unfairness seemed to justify a redirection of resources in equal measure to the tribe of the new rulers. Corruption grossly pretended to be righteous, and swelled with every passing government.
That was the situation for the elites at the top. The view from the bottom was of a system built on an immense pile of corruption that crushed the opportunities of ordinary people. By 2007, this corrupt consumption of state and business resources meant little trickled down. The typical Kenyan senior civil servant or CEO, for example, used his position to pay the school fees and hospital bills of around fifty of his kinsmen. This was in contrast to the 55 percent of Kenya’s population who now lived on less than a dollar a day. So deep were most people in the pool of poverty that it would take just a ripple in the economy for them to succumb. Only the corrupt distribution of wealth via bloodline and ethnic kinship could provide the guaranteed, sustained means for survival. But in the winner-takes-all dynamic of Kenyan politics, until your tribe had power, you had to wait.
In so moribund a system, corruption was essential to livelihoods across the board. For most Kenyans, life was a bitter struggle through the narrow, fixed avenues cast by the silhouette of tribe. But this was usually a hidden struggle. It was so ingrained in Kenyan life that to most outsiders it was invisible; indeed, Kenyans themselves barely mentioned tribe or tribal affiliation in day-to-day interactions.
This was why, despite the warning signs, few saw what was coming. The long-held preeminence of Kikuyu elites in Kenyan politics meant that, in the run-up to the 2007 election, the opposition campaign positioned itself as geared to overthrowing this inequality. At the local level, particularly among the many poor communities, this political framing of the campaign increasingly developed into a sense of a coming reckoning, of “41 against 1”—referring to the forty-one Kenyan tribes other than the dominant group, the Kikuyu.
The polls put the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), led by Raila Odinga, of the Luo tribe, far ahead of the Party of National Unity (PNU), led by President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu. This expectation of change, it emerged later, was accompanied not only by a sense of entitlement for the disadvantaged tribes but also a sense of imminent justice on the ground, where the entitled, in their view, would soon have their resources rightfully taken from them. This was particularly so for the Luo, one of the three largest tribes, who had repeatedly been left out of the rotating ethnic hegemony of Kenyan politics that had most benefited the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin.
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But on December 30, President Kibaki was pronounced the unexpected victor, and now the thunder struck.
The result flew in the face of the polls and the results of the parliamentary elections, which had put ODM well in the lead. Most were sure the vote had been rigged. The ODM and their supporters declared the election a sham, demanding redress, while the president was hurriedly sworn in at night, at a ceremony attended by a handful of people on December 30. Denying any wrongdoing, he demanded the opposition acquiesce in defeat.
A vast number of Kenyans were in desperate poverty, and their fate was being won or lost in what seemed a cheater’s game of tribal musical chairs. The ultimate governor of life in Kenya was not any rule by law but the rule of bloodline—and it was along these same tribal veins that blood now poured.
It started with looting by Luo of Kikuyu businesses and homes—as if in recompense for what they had been denied—and then grew, in an escalating cycle of insecurity and tribe-on-tribe violence that dragged in all of Kenya’s ethnic communities. Fear of being disallowed a turn at the feeding station of state resources was met with the equal fear of falling into the deprivation of those barred from it. Anger turned to looting. Looting created insecurity. And insecurity then drove violence, brutality, and, very soon, systematic mass murder. Among other atrocities, there were reports of buses being stopped by gangs armed with machetes, forcing passengers to show their identification cards. These revealed family name and paternal birthplace, thus indicating tribe. If your card gave the wrong answer, you were then beaten or killed.
Before this all started I was in Accra, Ghana. No longer subject to the grueling calendar of a secretary-general, I was visiting my home country for the Christmas period. Like most, I was entirely unaware of the storm brewing in Kenya. Nane reminded me that the Kenyan elections were being held that day. We switched on the television to catch the results. In a short space of time, we then watched the spread of violence across the country, accumulating in intensity all the way. Thirty people were trapped and murdered in a church on New Year’s Day; schools were set on fire and whole villages attacked. Murder and rape were wrought on Kikuyu by Luo or Kalenjin, and vice versa. Tribe-on-tribe conflict that ran too deep, some had started to say, for there to be any hope of stopping it. Planes flying into Nairobi were almost completely empty, while vehicles leaving the country were heaving with passengers.
In the images of civilians butchered on the streets and in churches I saw Rwanda and Bosnia. In a country with a majority in extreme poverty but divided across forty-two ethnic groups, the potential for a disintegration into civil war was exposed, and across divides of a complexity akin to Somalia.
Outsiders sensed this, particularly other African leaders. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu flew in from South Africa on January 2 to attempt to mediate between Odinga and Kibaki. But despite the bloody chaos unfolding around them, they weren’t ready to talk. The Kibaki camp was too obstinate in its victory, and Odinga’s ODM angered that the ascent to power had been denied them. Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, was sent by President Bush to visit Kenya on January 4 with similar intentions, but she, too, met with the same brick wall.
The chair of the African Union at that time was the president of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufour, and he called me over to his house in Accra to discuss the crisis. I agreed with him that he should go to Kenya as chair of the AU to see if he could trigger a break in the deadlock. Due to the Kibaki government’s initial public opposition to any external mediation, Kufuor’s trip was delayed for several days to ensure his visit was fully accepted by the Kenyan president. Kufour then arrived on January 8, coinciding with the visit of Benjamin Mkapa, Joachim Chissano, Ketumile Masire, and Kenneth Kaunda, the former presidents of Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana, and Zambia, respectively.
While there, the former heads of state visited the town of Eldoret, where whole communities had already been devastated by violence. Kibaki and Odinga, however, still refused to even meet. But with the violence showing no sign of abating, Kufour managed to get them to agree to a team of African leaders who would come and help broker a solution.
The first I knew of this was on January 10, when Kufour called. “They have agreed to a team of Africans to mediate,” he said. “The team I’ve gotten them to accept is one made up of three: Graça Machel and Benjamin Mkapa. Under the lead of Kofi Annan.” After mentioning Mozambique’s former minister of education and wife of Nelson Mandela, as well as the former president of Tanzania, Kufor dropped the last feature in. “Will you do it?”
I was well versed in the successes and failures of previous mediation efforts, so I agreed—on the condition that ours would be the only process involved to prevent the parties from indulging in “mediation shopping.” I was drawing on my Africa Report from ten years before. African crises needed a full range of instruments for their alleviation, including the interventions of groups of friends and special mediators “to tackle new conflicts before they can expand and escalate beyond control.” But the report had also stressed the danger of “rival or competing efforts, once a framework for mediation has been established.” This was a common problem, which I had witnessed many times, where faction leaders gamed the situation, seizing on and switching between the opportunities presented by alternative mediators and negotiating plans, dragging out the process in their favor and at the expense of peace. With the obstacles we faced in Kenya, if this happened we would have little chance. The choice was simple, and I wanted it conveyed to the other parties: if we were not the unquestionable leaders of the process, then I wouldn’t go to Kenya.
I figured then that it would probably take around two weeks to dampen the tensions and get a breakthrough in the negotiations. I told Kufour that I had to return to my home in Geneva and the office of my foundation to put my situation in order and ensure the way was clear for our mediation.
I was set to leave for Kenya on January 16, but I felt myself coming down with a fever the day before. Having just returned from Ghana, I went to the doctor to check against malaria, but I was told I was fine. Then the next day, in the car on the way to the airport, accompanied by Ruth McCoy, my resourceful and experienced aide at the foundation, my condition deteriorated suddenly. My temperature rocketed and I started shaking with fever. “Take me to the hospital,” I told the driver.
I was taken to the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital. They told me I needed to complete a minimum ten-day course of drugs, administered intravenously in the hospital. “I can’t wait that long,” I protested, “I have to go to Kenya immediately.” They said this was impossible. By now the doctor and the whole medical team had gathered at my bedside, and we were engaged in full negotiation mode. “What if I at least rest at home while I organize myself?” I suggested. They said this was also impossible. I had to stay and have the drugs fed intravenously. I stressed that there was no way I could stay ten days. What if I stayed five days, and then took the rest of the high-dose antibiotics orally? They reluctantly agreed, and five days later I was on my way, with big doses of antibiotics in my pocket.
It was not ideal. As a result of what turned out to be a microbial infection, I was in a rotten state. My body was wracked; I could feel the grip of deep fatigue settling in behind the fever alongside the impact of the antibiotics, and I slept for most of the flight. But the time in the hospital had given me some advantages. I was able to continue making a series of calls to important international parties, to ensure full and undivided support for our mediation effort—to the AU; the EU, especially the UK and France; the United States; and the UN, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who gave me his full support and allowed me to draw staff from the Secretariat. I found more staff at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, including its director, Martin Griffiths. And I brought on board the former legal counsel of the United Nations, Hans Corell. I would be arriving with the fully expressed backing and authority of all the major voices of the international community behind me, so the parties would have to accept my mediation. Furthermore, the situation had become much more violent during this time, making it clear to all that an agreement was essential.
The mediation process of what was now called the Panel of Eminent African Personalities officially began with our arrival on January 22. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda also chose this day, unexpectedly, to visit Kenya at the invitation of Kibaki. The incumbent Party of National Unity (PNU) camp was against any internationalization of the election dispute. They held power and did not want to change the status quo. So they were trying to bring in a negotiator who would dance to their tune—and Museveni was an ally of Kibaki.
Museveni called me at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi, where I had just arrived. He said he had a peace plan that both the government and the ODM were willing to work with. It was based on their first accepting the results of the elections. He then asked me to come to State House, the residence of the president of Kenya, to meet and discuss the plan.
I had seen too many ploys in my career to be caught by this. It seemed to me that Museveni and Kibaki fancied a scheme that demanded that all accept the election result, and to publicly spin my visit as endorsement of this plan. I made my excuses that I still had to call all the parties before I could make any visits. When I then called Odinga, my suspicions were confirmed. He said there was no chance they would accept Museveni as a mediator, whom they saw as biased toward Kibaki. Nor had they been consulted on this. The Museveni initiative ended there, and he left two days later.
It was estimated that over five hundred people had by then died in the violence, and the atmosphere was fraught across the country. I had no illusions: neither party wanted to deal with the other. But we needed a confidence-boosting measure quickly that would calm the mood and give the impression progress was now being made. Even if they only met in public briefly, this would be a breakthrough that we could sell to the media.
However, neither party wanted to even be seen near the other. The ODM demanded that the PNU admit fraud in the elections, while the PNU demanded that ODM accept Kibaki as president first. It was at the same time that Museveni was meeting with Kibaki that I then went to see Odinga.
“I encourage you to work with your opponent to heal and reconcile the nation,” I said. “I’m meeting with the president next. I’m going to ask him to meet with you. If he agrees, I don’t want any hesitation from you.”
“We won’t go to State House to meet him,” Odinga replied. “If we do, it will appear as if we are recognizing him as the legitimate president, which he is not.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, keen to avoid the firm no that always then becomes a devil to shift. “Let’s just get the appointment scheduled, and then we’ll worry about the protocol side.” Odinga gave an accepting nod. I then saw Kibaki the next day, and told him Odinga was willing to meet with him publicly. I asked him if he would match Odinga’s gesture. He agreed. I called Odinga to organize it straightaway.
Once the three of us arrived at Harambee House, the office of the president of Kenya, we met alone in one of the rooms. The country was burning, but they were reluctant to even be there. We sat for over an hour, drinking tea, and they attempted no discussion of a solution. We then walked outside to greet the press and ensure photographs were taken of their shaking hands and agreeing to launch a process of dialogue. I was acutely aware of the importance of this step: it was a confidence-building measure to send a message that the leaders were negotiating and on track toward a solution. I was offering something to quell the desperate atmosphere prevailing across the country.
This was a deliberate mask, however. The truth was they weren’t ready to talk. The tension was far too deep. An attempt at negotiations directly between them would just mean personal confrontation. This could kill the whole process. After the handshake, I told them each to give me three names of those who would form their negotiating teams. This seemed to be the only way we were going to get things moving.
The two leaders agreed to launch the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR), and the negotiations between their teams began on January 29. In the five days prior to this, I had a chance to reflect on where the process had to go. I already realized the problem was not just one of disagreement between political leaders over an election result: the countrywide violence meant the problem was more fundamental, arising from the makeup of the Kenyan political system and its relationship with society. We needed a process that would address the root causes of Kenya’s problems, otherwise any agreement would constitute nothing more than a delay before the next violent crisis. Our job had to be more than just to move the chairs around on behalf of the political elites. The resolution was going to have to come from an engagement with all of Kenyan society. Our mediation needed to be the beginning of a true process of political reform.
In this interim period I also began a series of meetings with representatives from Kenyan NGOs, civil society, churches, businesses, and others, promising them a transparent process in which they would be involved. It was a further calming measure, to encourage the public perception that a process was in swing that was in their interests, not just the politicians’. To all of these parties I promised that any decision or agreement between the parties would be made public as soon as it was signed. Not only did the people have the right to know what was going on, but they had to also own the mediation process if we were going to see reform.
But rearranging chairs was literally how the first negotiation session began on January 29. The plan was that Odinga and Kibaki would come together once more at a meeting to initiate the process between the negotiators. As was standard for such matters, my team arranged the table. I would sit in the middle, with Kibaki on the right, Odinga on the left. But one of the Kibaki team then came in and rearranged the chairs, bringing in the special presidential chair, which he placed in the middle. I walked in to find this scene.
“This isn’t a presidential meeting,” I said softly. “I’m dealing with two protagonists. Put the chairs back.”
“But that’s undermining the president,” Francis Muthaura, the head of the public service and permanent secretary to the president, argued. Uhuru Kenyatta, Kibaki’s minister for local government, then chimed in behind Muthaura, “He never goes anywhere in this country without his chair. And it always sits in the most prominent position.”
“This is a political mediation. It’s not business as usual,” I retorted. “I’m chairing the meeting and they’re to go on either side.” I knew that if the ODM saw the presidential chair sitting in the middle, they would probably abandon the event. To stop a rebellion from PNU, however, I accepted that the president could still keep his chair, albeit to one side.
The lack of urgency and childish nature of these obstacles were something to behold. This was in the middle of a four-day incident of fighting in the Rift Valley that had left sixty dead. Rumors had spread of hardline PNU leaders ferrying funds to criminal organizations, including the notorious Mungiki, a Kikuyu gang. The Mungiki were now coming out of the slums and into the towns to send a brutal message to those who would threaten Kikuyu. The politicians, meanwhile, were playing with chairs.
After the principals had launched the session, we put it to the two negotiating teams that while there were fundamental differences in their positions, they could at least agree on some basic things: action had to be taken to stop the violence and to address the humanitarian crisis, and measures of some kind needed to be taken to resolve the political crisis in the disagreement between the PNU and the ODM. We also said there were clearly long-standing causes to the nationwide crisis that needed to be examined, followed by recommendations for reform to address them. The parties agreed, and we turned this into a four-point agenda for the entire KNDR process, with the fourth item of the agenda being a long-term reform program for the Kenyan political system.
We took the document outlining the four-point agenda of the KNDR and had it signed and publicly distributed on February 1, as we did with all the other agreed statements that emerged over the coming days. Kibaki was at the AU summit in Ethiopia that day, where he repeatedly attacked the stance of the opposition and only proposed positions that had been rejected outright by the ODM. Our document was a thoroughly basic agreement for talks, but we were continuing with our strategy of building confidence through feeding an image of progress to the press.
Doing anything we could to promote a sense of calm was crucial. The comparisons with Rwanda were not overblown to any that were in the country—far from it. The sense of fear among the public for a looming episode of bloodshed of a similar scale was palpable throughout the mediation process. This fear added further danger: while it gave incentive to succeed in the quest for a political solution, it also gave incentive to prepare for a coming collapse of the country’s institutions. Any inflation in this morbid pessimism could itself trigger further violence as groups made efforts to aggressively protect their interests in light of increasingly bloody prospects, creating greater and greater opportunities for antagonism, clashes, and death.
After the reintroduction of multiparty politics in Kenya in 1992, every general election—with the exception of one in 2002 when there was no incumbent running for office—had witnessed some form of political violence. Yet the magnitude and scale of the latest violence shocked Kenyans and the world as a whole. The political violence was of a different character than before, shaking the foundation of the country to a point where it posed an existential threat to Kenya itself. Consequently, the public mood throughout the mediation was one of anticipation, anxiety, and fear of the unknown if mediation failed.
On February 8 an open letter to me was published in a Kenyan newspaper by a chief subeditor. She began by citing widespread fears that I might abandon my mission in Kenya because of the deep intransigence of the leaders involved. She then went on in words that well captured the fearful public mood:
You have seen the uncertainty that has left Kenyans this vulnerable. I, for instance, feel like a little girl again, begging daddy not to leave her alone in the dark, because a monster will eat her. Annan, you have seen the monster in this country ravage its own. You have seen the degree of violence . . . You and gracious Graca—whom I nominate as the Mother of the Continent—have struck a chord with Kenyans . . . You have made political leaders commit themselves to promote peace. You must not relent in ensuring they keep their word. But being human, you are bound to be fatigued by leaders’ doublespeak. We have seen the evident frustration on your face . . . This week, you have steered the talks to delicate waters—the disputed election results. This stage is described as “make or break,” which triggers another bout of cold sweat. If the situation prevails, communities might be reduced to just conscripting their school-age children into their militias, to fight for survival. We shall only be driven by base instincts . . . Remember you said that every Kenyan must feel “the cloak of government.” Leave us on a solid foundation for real change.

I was moved by these words when I read them, and in response I issued a public statement: I would be neither frustrated nor provoked to leave my work until the job was done. But privately for myself, Graca Machel, and Benjamin Mkapa—as well as for the other members of the overworked team that we were leading—the message only reinforced that we desperately needed real progress to calm the situation before it spiraled out of control.
Yet, despite the heat of the situation, careful and deliberative calculations still had to be made. What the official response to the contested election should be had to be decided. Should there be a full recount or a retallying of valid forms, a rerun of the presidential elections, or a forensic investigation into the results? I had already decided that any kind of rerun or recount of the election was not going to work. There was too much opportunity for further dispute and fiddling of the system. In the violent climate, such a route would also almost certainly make things worse. Nor was a rerun or recount going to solve any of the root causes of the crisis. By now I had come to the conclusion that a power-sharing deal and an amendment to the constitution was going to be the only way to get Kenya out of this bloody quagmire.
But the atmosphere in the meeting rooms and the instructions coming in from Odinga and Kibaki gave no scope for such a deal at this stage. I feared that if we went to the negotiators with the recommendation for a political deal, it would be shot down and killed straightaway. I knew that I could not directly lead them to this choice, proclaiming my preferred route at the outset. These were fiercely intelligent, independent negotiators we were dealing with, suspicious of any solution another might impose upon them. I decided, instead, that the best thing to do would be to take the negotiators through a deductive process. On February 12, I moved the negotiations to Kilaguni Safari Lodge, in the beautiful wild surroundings of Tsavo National Park. In this tranquil new location, as per my instructions, we would weigh together, as a group, the costs, benefits, and risks of each of the options available: a complete rerun of the election; a complete recount; a retally; a forensic audit of the election result; or a political settlement involving a negotiated agreement for power sharing between the parties. For this discussion I brought in Craig Jenness, director of the UN Electoral Assistance Division of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), to present in expert detail what each option would mean in practice. We then conducted a joint evaluation of these options, with the negotiators taking the lead in weighing the implications.
As I had hoped, when the likely impact of all the options were laid out in stark terms, it was clear that anything other than a deal to share power had little to no chance of calming the situation and resolving the crisis. The other options would take too long, be too dangerous to attempt in such fraught circumstances, or would be too likely to lack credibility in the eyes of the public or the respective parties to the dispute. But the prospect of a power-sharing deal was still daunting to the negotiators—it was alien to Kenyan politics. With this in mind, on February 13 I invited Gernot Erler, a German minister of state, to speak to the negotiators and share his experiences of coalition government, which had come to form a very effective basis for German politics and was a well-established solution there to political crises.
The negotiators then came to an agreement and signed a statement on February 14. It noted that, given “there is a serious crisis in the country, we agree a political settlement is necessary to promote national reconciliation and unity.” In addition to this groundbreaking consensus, the statement laid out plans for reforms that included the identification and prosecution of perpetrators of the violence, and also a truth, justice, and reconciliation commission among other judicial reforms—all of which were, in my view, essential to the longer-term process of healing required to recover from this traumatic episode. In the simple February 14 document, therefore, there were not only the beginnings of an agreement for the cessation of the immediate crisis but also the seeds of a major political and societywide reform process.
According to the Red Cross, the death count in Kenya had risen above one thousand by this time, with mass displacement alongside due to the burning of villages and the threat of armed gangs, the looting of farms and homes, as well as widespread sexual violence against men and women. Meanwhile, there was still no movement on what shape the political deal would take, but at least we now had a full agreement on the way out of the crisis: a coalition government. It was a great relief to me, not least because I was sure the other electoral options on the negotiating table would have likely triggered an escalation in the violence.
By now, I had been in Kenya much longer than anyone had planned, and there was still no end in sight. I was physically drained after my heavy course of antibiotics, but there was no chance for any respite. It was like being a hunter: as you attempt to corner your quarry, any lapse in your endeavors may allow it to slip through and escape for good.
By February 25, however, the negotiations were still deadlocked. Patience had been essential in getting us this far, but we now needed more. That morning the negotiators and the mediators, myself included, spent four hours in talks to push for the final agreement on the distribution of power in the coalition, and we got nowhere. By now it was clear what the power-sharing deal required: Kibaki would remain as president; an executive prime minister’s position would need to be created, which would be occupied by Odinga; and there would need to be a coalition cabinet shared between the PNU and the ODM that reflected the balance in parliament. But there was no movement on the question of the prime minister’s powers. The PNU side, in particular, was holding things back, continuing to project the argument that the power of the president could not be fettered and that the ministries should not be shared.
I was frustrated and decided it was time to throw the PNU and the ODM to the people. So I went to the press and publicly explained that I had concluded the negotiators were “not capable of resolving the outstanding issues.” I said it was time for Kibaki and Odinga to conclude the negotiations face-to-face, as it was now their responsibility alone to break the deadlock.
It was a risk, as this move could have triggered an expectation that the talks would fail, inflaming the situation on the streets and in the slums. But the alternative seemed to be no deal at all, which would almost certainly then lead to a much bigger round of bloodshed, and this would take the crisis into the next stage of conflict. I had to scorch the feet of Odinga and Kibaki somehow.
I privately visited Odinga first and then Kibaki. They were not expecting this sudden move, and the prospect of negotiating face-to-face surprised them. Speaking to Odinga, I reminded him that he had all to wait for. If he worked through the compromise now, he would likely be set to become the next president. This message seemed to resonate. It was Kibaki’s willingness to compromise on the powers of the president, however, that represented the real obstacle and the chance for a Kenyan peace deal.
In my meeting with Kibaki, I pressed him, explaining I was in regular contact with key members of the international community, Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush of the United States, leaders from the EU, and elsewhere. “The international community is picking up that this failure to make a deal is because of the PNU’s unwillingness to move. There will be consequences from them if this fails.”
I also tried to make Kibaki think about the long term, and presented this not as a threat to his rule but as an opportunity for him. “Raila is a younger man, Mr. President. But you are the elder and, right now, you are the president. It is you who has the power to change Kenya. This could be your legacy: a reconciled nation and a reconciled people.” He listened in his usual quiet and unemotional way, but replied there were technical issues with a coalition government and questions as to the validity of an executive prime minister in the Kenyan constitution.
“You’re the one in charge here,” I reminded him. “Save your country. Otherwise you are going to have a lot falling on your head.” I studied his face carefully. “Mr. President, over one thousand people are dead,” I said in closing. “It’s time to make a deal.”
The coming meeting between Odinga and Kibaki was our last chance. But I thought we now had it. My public exposure of the deadlock had made it clear that one side was holding things up. If I walked away now without a deal, it would be clear that Kibaki was to blame. He was exposed. Furthermore, I had called the U.S. administration to inform them of what was going on. Condoleezza Rice had then announced that any future relationship between the United States and Kenya depended upon them agreeing to the compromise now on the table. With the deck stacked in this manner, I thought he had to budge.
Kibaki, Odinga, and I then entered into an intense five hours of negotiations on February 28. Other than the three of us, the only people I brought in were President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and his predecessor, Benjamin Mkapa. I wanted them to counsel Kibaki on the Tanzanian system, which also includes a sharing of power between the president and a prime minister. Kikwete, Mkapa, and I had discussed and agreed on this approach the day before, at a meeting in the Grand Regency Hotel. They were now very effective in demonstrating to Kibaki that it was more than feasible for a strong president to operate in such a system, erasing the validity of his last substantive argument against the agreement.
The quarry was now cornered. I had told the leaders that this was the final negotiation, that we would not leave until the deal was complete and we would sign it on the steps outside, in public, as soon as we were finished. Odinga was not going to back out now: this was a compromise to which he was already committed. But for Kibaki the choice was now either shift or walk out alone into the sunshine of derision at his failure to move—in the face of both the Kenyan people and the most powerful actors in the international community.
Kibaki then, finally, agreed to the power-sharing deal. I made sure there was no chance of backing out. I walked them out onto the steps of Harambee House to publicly and immediately announce the deal to the world and sign the document: the Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government. But it did not feel triumphant. It had taken far too long. As they say in a Swahili proverb, “When the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.” This was what had happened with all the people killed around us.
But with confidence restored, the bloodshed now ended. A process of political reconciliation could now begin, as would the difficult job of healing. Despite the tragic number of people already dead, we had averted a disaster of far greater potential. We had achieved something far too elusive in the history of peacemaking—halting a spiral of violence before too many of either side have little left to lose and live on only for vengeance. The signing of the accord on February 28 brought with it a sense of immense relief across Kenya: Kenyans wished each other “Happy New Year” in reference to the New Year celebrations they had been deprived of by the violence since late December.
The amendment to the constitution in the agreement, approved by the parliament shortly after, was a transitional arrangement that was to lead to a full process of root-and-branch constitutional reform. With that provision my role in mediating the Kenyan political crisis would continue. I had come for two weeks and I would still be working with them four years later. Agenda item four of the Kenyan National Dialogue and Reconciliation process, agreed on by the parties on February 1, was to deal with the fundamental causes of the violence, much of which lay in the political system. Over the months and years that followed, with Nana Effah-Apenteng leading my team on the ground, further negotiations took place to create a new Kenyan constitution. It would redistribute power through a system of devolved government, built also around land reform, a bill of rights, and a permanent reduction in the president’s powers. Through this, each constituent county of Kenya and each community, including all its tribal and regional groups, would have representatives with access to a piece of power, negating the destructive winner-takes-all politics of the previous system.
On August 4, 2010, a national referendum was held, and the new constitution, which would change the face of Kenyan politics countrywide, was approved. Working to curb his own authority, Mwai Kibaki also campaigned for the yes vote.
One of the salient features of the mediation in Kenya, and implementation of the agreement thereafter, has been the active and continued engagement of all stakeholders—not only Kenyan politicians and the international community but civil society, religious groups, and the business community. Kenyan society as a whole provided a source of constant pressure on the political leadership. For instance, a commendable role played by the business community was its message regarding the negative consequences of the political crisis on the country’s economy—particularly the threat to Kenya if it lost its image as the business center and economic powerhouse of the region. The many facets of Kenyan civil society continue to play an active role in the peace process, helping in diverse ways to ensure the successful implementation of the agreement.
Alongside the reformation of the Kenyan political system, other innovations came out of our mediation. In line with plans set down in the February 14 agreement, on March 4, 2008, the creation of two bodies was formally agreed to: the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election Violence (CIPEV); and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). The TJRC, which began its work in 2009, is mandated to investigate not only the recent violence but the patterns of human rights violations and abuses since December 12, 1963, the date of Kenya’s transition to independence. In the TJRC, therefore, is bestowed the understanding that the resolution of the 2008 crisis means confronting the entirety of Kenya’s troubled past, not just the recent turmoil. Together with the TJRC, a National Cohesion and Integration Commission was created in 2008 to investigate, outlaw, and eliminate all forms of discrimination in Kenyan society, which have served to create so dysfunctional a system of ethnic inequality. These bodies are manifestations of our attempt to foment root-and-branch social and political change—nothing less than the leadership required to bring about enduring and prosperous peace and stability across the troubled heartlands of Africa.
Another important feature of the reform process, particularly given our emphasis on the importance of affirming and strengthening the rule of law, has been the involvement of the International Criminal Court. The CIPEV included among its recommendations that the prosecutor of the ICC be forwarded the names and information of those suspected to bear the greatest responsibility for the violence. Justice Philip Waki, who led the commission, presented me with the final report of the CIPEV, along with a sealed envelope containing a list of suspects at the highest level, which I would hold and pass on to a prosecutor in a special national court that had been proposed. The recommendation of the Commission was that if the Kenyan government failed to take due steps to hold suspected orchestrators of the violence to account then the envelope should be passed to the prosecutor of the ICC.
By July 2009, it became clear that the Kenyan government was not going to take these steps. As I said then, “Justice delayed is justice denied. The people of Kenya want to see concrete progress on impunity.” As demanded by the CIPEV report—which had also been certified and approved by the Kenyan parliament—I then passed the sealed envelope on to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the ICC.
After a period of investigation, in December 2010, Ocampo released the names of six prominent Kenyans, including three government ministers, suspected of bearing the greatest responsibility for the violence. In January 2012, the ICC then confirmed that there was sufficient evidence against four of those suspects for them to stand trial. These included prominent figures in Kenyan politics, and the willingness to prosecute suspects of this level, regardless of the outcome, stands as an important marker in Africa’s battle with impunity for human rights violations.
In the wake of the Kenyan dispute over the election result and the ensuing violence, the inadequacy of a growing economy and an electoral system alone as a shortcut to prosperity, peace, and stability were once more revealed. If we had brokered only a deal between leaders, our intervention would have been a plaster on a wound that would weep again tomorrow. We had to look, in the truest sense of the word, for a resolution. A peaceful, stable, and prosperous Kenya was one that could be delivered only through responsible, accountable leadership, a culture of respect for human rights, institutions for good governance, the fairer distribution of wealth and power, and, most important, the sanctity of the rule of law. Kenya’s future relies on this. Whether it will achieve these things remains to be seen, but it has pointed itself in a direction that all of Africa must take.

AFRICA EMPOWERED

My role in mediating the violent 2008 Kenyan political crisis, backed by a remarkable international and African support network, was one for which, in some ways, I had spent my entire decade-long tenure as secretary-general preparing. It was perhaps the hardest, most intensive, and enduring of all my interventions in the affairs of another country, and a deal that required me to draw on every aspect of my experience of diplomacy and energy for peacemaking—this time at the heart of my own continent.
As flawed as the commitment of the parties might have been to the Kenyan power-sharing deal, the events following the intervention in Kenya represented a broader turning point, a continentwide change that came from within, conjured from a vision for all Africa. This was a vision that resurrected old dreams for the continent that had been dashed in the aftermath of independence—a vision dedicated to transforming Africa into a place where all people can achieve their aspirations. A future of peace and stability through institutions for good governance; respect for human rights; responsible, accountable leadership; and, above all, the rule of law.
This all came together in Kenya, in an intervention that relied on a deeply changed continent to the one I knew before I took office as secretary-general. The foundations for these changes were laid in the years before 2007, through hard and innovative efforts in African diplomacy by Africans to change the political fabric of the continent. It was a long way from where I had stood and observed the continent in January 1997.
Africa is now on the move. Much has changed on the continent. It is now rightly seen as a place of opportunity, with economic growth strong in recent years. Countries and companies are even queuing up to invest, and, increasingly, the fruits of economic progress are being used to create jobs, raise incomes, and to invest in the future—in education, in health, and vital infrastructure. Good governance is growing, enabling investor confidence and increasingly freeing the ambitions of Africa’s people. The eleven years since the Millennium Declaration and the subsequent establishment of the MDGs has been one of the most promising periods in Africa’s postcolonial history. Now approximately half the continent is enjoying strong economic growth, as well as rapid improvements in human development. But if African countries are to achieve the new future within their grasp, there needs to be a new focus on the daunting obstacles still to be overcome.
High on this list is agriculture. There are 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who do not eat well enough for their health and well-being. Africa is the only continent that fails to grow enough food to feed its own citizens. On average, cereal yields in Africa are a quarter of those of other developing regions—and have barely increased in thirty years. Meanwhile, per capita food production and agricultural labor productivity also remain remarkably low. This is not because of a lack of effort by Africa’s farmers but a lack of knowledge, resources, and infrastructure to support their hard work. A uniquely African “green revolution” would have a positive impact not only on food security but also on many of the other challenges facing the continent. It will, for example, reduce poverty, accelerate wider economic and social development, improve health and education, slow migration into Africa’s already overcrowded urban areas, boost women’s influence within their societies, and provide new opportunities for business.
But there also needs to be a focus on infrastructure and the distribution of energy resources, which have always been two of the main obstacles holding back Africa’s economies. Furthermore, considerations of growth need to be held in tandem with concerns for employment, particularly youth employment. If growth does not benefit youth employment, it benefits little about the future. Finally, a bright African future is also one that requires gender balance in all areas of life. An empowered and successful Africa requires all the talents and the fair mobilization of all its resources—it can exist only with equally empowered and successful women.
Africa’s people are the central agents, but outside actors have essential supporting roles. At certain times they need to respond with peacekeeping; other times, with intervention or preventive measures and mediation, or through attempts to shape the rules of regional organizations. But in all of this we are seeking a peaceful and prosperous Africa, and one that favors the aspirations of all African men and women.
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At the promulgation of the new Kenyan constitution on August 27, 2010, we joined in a crowd of countless thousands in the grounds of Uhuru Park to applaud the referendum result. It was as if we were going back in time with wisdom to our youth. We were finally stepping onto a path we should have taken long ago at independence. Kenya’s people had peacefully come together to affirm a new road forward: and they were leading the way for the continent.
While in the crowd cheering the new Kenyan constitution, I caught a glimpse of a face I did not expect to see: Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan—a leader recently indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. He had been invited to the event by the Kenyan government? I could not quite believe it, but there he was: an honored guest. His lurking figure at the progressive event was a symbol of the danger Africa lives with today. Huge advances have been made for Africa by Africans. But there can be no complacency. Equally huge challenges remain, and the potential to revert is always there in the background, as Bashir’s presence reminded me.
We Africans still have much to do.