Ethiopia's muscular regional security policy could turn it in to East Africa's new hegemon.

Recent news that the Republic of Somalia and newly independent South Sudan have applied to join the East African Community (EAC) has elicited uncharacteristically heated debate on the hitherto rather sedate and lacklustre dialogue on the region’s economic and political integration process.

Predictably, reactions include a rehash of conventional anti-integration rhetoric about the potential threat of increased insecurity, cross border crime and terrorism. The most virulent pessimists -often associated with Tanzanian – predict a cataclysmic trajectory of regional instability and possible war. The more sober observers see increased trade volumes, market expansion and free movement. These positives will be facilitated by a resurgence of regional mega-infrastructure deals including the recent launch of a US$26 billion port, oil pipeline, rail, highway and fibre-optic regional infrastructure deal (LAPSSET) inaugurated by the presidents of Kenya and South Sudan and Ethiopia’s Prime minister.

Game-changing scenarios

The most interesting and more optimistic analysis is rendered by veteran Ugandan journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo who cites three potentially game-changing scenarios in the region’s geopolitics: One is the likely shift of the region’s ‘centre of power’ from traditional states (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) northwards as Ethiopia, the region’s military and economic hegemon, eventually joins the EAC. Ethiopia’s entry, it is argued, is just a matter of time considering the country’s military engagement in Somalia and its new ‘look south’ policy evidenced by the infrastructure and energy deals with Kenya as well as security and development pacts with South Sudan and possibly Uganda.

Second, a major stumbling block to a more comprehensive deepening of regional integration in Africa (and the EAC more specifically) is its infrastructure deficit. This perception seems to be the motivating factor for those arguing for the scaling down of EAC integration to the three ‘parent’ states (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania). Conversely, the expected and eventual stabilization of Somalia and the rapid progress of the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor will undoubtedly intensify the pace, depth and geographic expansion of the EAC. Additionally, the presence of a large, commercially successful and highly diversified entrepreneurial Somali community in Kenya and Ethiopia, with established links with major trading posts in the region, will catapult already existing relations to a new level.

Perhaps most importantly, the politics and policies of integration will significantly shift from purely economic objectives to security imperatives. The East and Horn of Africa region  is comprised from a group of states whose peace and security dynamics are so intertwined that they cannot be resolved independently of each other. The intricate nature, spread, impact and intensity of the myriad conflicts ranging from the great lakes, Uganda-Sudan-Central Africa Republic triangle as well as the Horn of Africa, exemplify this.

The heavy military presence of Uganda, Burundi (and latterly Kenya) and perennial Ethiopian incursions into Somalia demonstrate how nations in the region are responding to perceived common security threats and cooperating as a security block, despite the lack of a common Peace and Security Policy. The recent spike in military spending associated with the frontline states’ intervention in the Somali conflict underscores the increased importance in regional security. But the security focus in regional cooperation is not new – the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has long transformed from a drought and disaster response initiative into a fully-fledged peace and security entity.

Towards a Regional Security Community

Peace and security is emerging as the most pressing concern in the region and may be the driver of the future direction of integration. This is happening despite, or perhaps precisely because of, the flurry of activity in oil drilling and press reports regarding new energy resource discoveries in the region. While proponents predict an economic boom, detractors already foresee negative scenarios of potential regional conflict over resources.

No wonder then that the EAC is scrambling to catch up by fast-tracking the development of a Peace and Security Policy. According to its Deputy Secretary General responsible for political integration Beatrice Kiraso, the draft protocol on peace and security would need to go beyond traditional security concerns and address new security threats including cyber-crime, human trafficking, terrorism and yes, piracy. However, such a significant document that binds states towards mutual defence and the ceding of significant sovereignty powers to a supra-national entity is causing jitters in traditional laggard Tanzania. This doesn’t however mean that a regional bloc need necessarily be either an economic, security or even social community. These imperatives are not mutually exclusive as has been erroneously argued elsewhere, but are indeed often jointly necessary and mutually reinforcing.

All these rapid developments pose significant potential challenges if the region is not prepared politically, socially and economically. For starters, Tanzania’s alleged intransigence may lead to it being further isolated in the inevitable jostling for influence and power with new players moving in. Tanzania’s dual membership in the South African Development Cooperation (SADC) regional bloc is also likely to diminish its influence in EAC decision-making. It’s likely that Tanzania will have to make a choice whether to fully embrace the EAC or adopt a partial position such as the UK has done in EU.

For Somalia and South Sudan, membership in the EAC with a new security infrastructure will have mutually beneficial results in helping stabilize their fragile internal politics. The security umbrella provided by a revamped and stronger EAC may act as a deterrent against Khartoum’s aggressive stance towards Juba, while neutralising Eritrea’s meddlesome policy towards Somalia. Ethiopia would benefit significantly though access to a large regional market and will likely reap peace dividends in the resolution of long-running separatist tendencies in the Oromia and Ogaden regions in the south. As the largest and predictably the fastest growing regional economy, Ethiopia would be the regional hegemon, reaping unprecedented geopolitical gains (and responsibilities) such as Nigeria enjoys within ECOWAS.

Peer pressure

By enhancing trade links, increased investment, access to regional education institutions, civil society interaction, political will and a common market, the post-conflict societies will have a better chance at faster and more sustainable transitions towards stability and development under a new security umbrella offering assurances against potential internal insurrections. Similarly, peer pressure akin to the NEPAD peer review mechanism would lead to the fostering of a democratic political culture through election monitoring, political party exchanges, civic education and neighbourly pressure towards accountable governance and civic responsibility.

Granted, these goals could be a long time coming. The EAC still suffers from significant institutional weakness, lack of political will and the absence of a shared common vision for its future integration. In light of the potential gains, this is the time to seize the immense opportunities offered by strong economic indicators, the discovery of new energy resources, a positive investment climate, entry of new global actors such as China, and a real chance to resolve the Somali conflict and advance nation building in South Sudan. Anything less, would be to squander a rare opportunity for the region to forge a new social, economic, political and civic architecture for the general well-being and welfare of all its peoples.

Josh Maiyo is a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds, UK and VU University Amsterdam.

Ruto and Kenyatta will both stand trial at the The Hague, but may survive politically.

On 23^rd January 2012 a panel of judges at the ICC (International Criminal Court) announced a majority decision that four Kenyans, part of the so-called Ocampo Six, will face charges of crimes against humanity, murder, rape, forcible expulsion and other inhumane acts. The four include Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, suspended Higher Education Minister William Ruto, the head of the public service Francis Muthaura and radio presenter Joshua Sang.

Announcing the decision, Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova of Bulgaria was quick to point out that this is only the beginning of an elaborate trial process, with the accused still presumed innocent and not barred from holding public office in Kenya. The first pre-trial hearing will be in September 2012. The four accused have the right to appeal the decision of the three person pre-trial chamber.

The reactions of Kenyan politicians to the ruling were predictably quick. All four  accused issued statements expressing their intention to appeal the ICC ruling. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, two declared presidential candidates, reaffirmed their intention to run for the top job in the next general elections. In his reaction to the ruling, President Kibaki asked the Attorney General to form a legal committee to draft a coherent government response. Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka expressed solidarity with the accused (Musyoka was the face of the ill-fated attempts last year to lobby the Africa Union and the United Nations Security Council to refer the cases back to Kenya.[i]) Prime Minister Raila Odinga stressed that the accused remained innocent until proven guilty, expressing hope that justice will be served for the victims of the 2007-2008 post-election violence (PEV).

The Political Consequences

The ICC ruling will no doubt have a significant impact on Kenyan politics, especially as the country gears up for a general election in December of this year or in March of 2013. Both Ruto and Uhuru have expressed their desire to contest the presidential election. The ruling also presents important legal questions that will test the temerity of the new captains of the Kenyan judiciary, which is currently undergoing significant reforms.

Firstly, there is the question of whether or not the two of the four accused, Kenyatta and Muthaura, should resign from public office. There is an almost even split among legal experts over whether or not the constitution requires those accused of crimes such as the two are facing to vacate office. Their supporters insist that the law only bars suspects of economic crimes from holding public office. Most of Kenyan Civil Society thinks otherwise.

Related to this is the fact that on receiving the Waki Report on the PEV on 16 December 2008, Kibaki and Odinga signed an agreement mandating that those charged with crimes related to the PEV should neither hold public office nor contest for any elective office. Civil Society groups will no doubt also refer to this agreement in their calls to have the two to be let go by the president.

Secondly, come the time to nominate presidential candidates, the Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will have to decide whether or not both Ruto and Kenyatta can run for president while facing charges of crimes against humanity. The IEBC Chairman, Mr. Issack Hassan, has so far avoided dealing with the question, insisting that it would be presumptuous to give an opinion before the two submit their candidacies. This decision point will present yet another opportunity for the country to debate the importance of personal integrity among holders of public office.

These two legal contestations will most certainly wind up in court. It is telling that immediately after the ruling was announced President Kibaki instructed the Attorney General to form a committee to draft the government’s official response. This might merely be a stalling tactic to cool down Civil Society groups (which are already calling for the dismissal of Kenyatta and Muthaura) while the president’s camp formulates a coherent and legally tenable reaction.

It is important to note that the vagueness of Chapter 6 of the Kenyan Constitution on the integrity of holders of public office will afford the judiciary immense discretionary powers in providing a ruling on the matter. Given recent spats between the executive and judiciary on ICC related issues, this must cause the latter a good deal of discomfort. [ii]

How will this affect the next general elections?

The simple answer is that it is too early to tell. The important thing to know is that given Kenya’s ethnic arithmetic and the new electoral rules it will be hard for any of the major presidential candidates to win on their own. Presently the man to beat is Odinga, who is polling at around 32%. Kenyatta is second at 22%.[iii] Kenya’s electoral law requires an elected president to garner over 50% of the vote and have majorities in at least half of the country’s 47 counties.

Given these requirements, it is very likely that the presidential election will go to a runoff between the top two candidates. Many believe that Odinga will make it past the first round. As a result, politicians united in common opposition to Odinga are working hard to form alliances with a view of beating him (Odinga) either in the first round or in a runoff.

The unfortunately named KKK (Kalenjin, Kikuyu and Kamba alliance – formed by Ruto, Kenyatta and Musyoka) and its successor, the G7, is such an alliance that has been formed by various regional politicians with a view of having competitive primaries and then fielding a joint candidate against Odinga. The other major alliance is the Party of National Unity (PNU; the party Kibaki used for his re-election bid.) But antagonisms within these alliances make unity in the anti-Odinga bloc highly unlikely. As is the case across most of Sub-Saharan Africa, incentives abound that hinder party unity.[iv]

The alternative that has been mooted is for each major candidate to go it alone in the first round (thus preventing an outright Odinga win) and then support whoever emerges second against Odinga in the runoff. But even this choice has received little enthusiasm because it effectively guarantees Kenyatta the anti-Odinga candidacy in the runoff.

So how might the ICC ruling affect alliance building ahead of the elections? Firstly, the ruling will most likely bring Kenyatta and Ruto closer, at least in the short term. While for now the two have self-interested reasons to be together, it is not guaranteed that their grassroots supporters will play along in the long run. After all the question of land, which was at the heart of the clashes in the Rift Valley between Kalenjin supporters of Odinga/Ruto and Kikuyu supporters of Kibaki/Uhuru, remains unresolved. Indeed Ruto has already witnessed a mutiny in his own backyard in which he was prevented from taking over a party that he wanted to decamp to (he is still technically in Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, ODM.)

Secondly, there is speculation that should the two be barred from running for president they might settle for a compromise candidate in the likes of Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, MP Eugene Wamalwa or former cabinet minister Raphael Tuju.[v] But such an eventuality is also fraught with uncertainties. For one, it is unclear that the old establishment behind Kibaki and Kenyatta would settle for the untested hands of the two newcomers – Wamalwa and Tuju. Nobody, especially if you may have some ill-gotten wealth stashed away, wants surprises in the presidency. In addition, many of them already deeply distrust Musyoka whom they see as an opportunist out to benefit from Kenyatta and Ruto’s woes. In the end they may settle for the devil they know, Mr. Odinga. It is telling that a section of the Central Kenya business elite, Mr. Uhuru’s backyard, have started warming up to Raila. [vi]

While it might be too early to ascertain the full political impact of the ICC’s ruling, there is no doubt that it will provide a real test to Kenyan institutions – especially the judiciary. The courts will have to decide, amid intense political pressure, whether or not the accused are fit to hold public office and by extension whether those that want to can run for president.  Ultimately, however, a lot will turn on the decisions made by President Kibaki. Will he stand by his trusted lieutenants in Muthaura and Kenyatta or will he bow to public pressure and ditch them in an attempt to secure his legacy?

Ken Opalo is a a graduate student of Political Science at Stanford. His research interests include the political economy of development, ethnic politics and leadership accountability, and legislative development in eastern and southern Africa. He blogs at http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/

Ruto, Kosgey and arap Sang - Ruto and Sang are to stand trial in The Hague under the ICC.

The presiding judge in the cases of crimes against humanity committed during the post-election violence (PEV) in Kenya in 2007-8 have decided by majority verdict that William Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang will face charges of crimes against humanity, murder, forcible deportation and persecution.  Uhuru Kenyatta and Francis Muthaura will face charges of crimes against humanity, murder, deportation or forcible transfer and persecution, rape and other sexual violence and inhumane acts.

Henry Kosgey and Mohammed Hussein Ali, former Chief of the Kenyan Police, were told that the evidence at the pre-trial hearings in 2011 was not sufficient to charge them.  Kenyatta, Ruto and Muthaura are all charged as indirect perpetrators of the crimes of which they are accused, while Sang is being charged as a contributor to the crimes.

The decision, announced on 23rd January at the court in The Hague, was broadcast live in Kenya via the internet.  The judge reading the court chamber’s decision, Ekaterina Trendafilova, said that the decision was a majority one and that Judge Hans-Peter Kaul had dissented, believing that the crimes committed were serious ones but that they could be prosecuted under Kenyan law and did not constitute crimes against humanity.

Those charged will now await a further announcement about the timing of the trial, which will be held in The Hague.  They are at liberty to return to Kenya but with the proviso that the court would reconsider this if those to stand trial engaged in incitement to hatred or other serious crimes.

The announcement will throw Kenyan politics into turmoil, with elections due in March 2013 (the result of a recent High Court ruling).  Kenyatta and Ruto have both said they will stand in the presidential election.  The former would be the natural successor to President Mwai Kibaki, who cannot run for a third term in office, and would be likely to harness the overwhelming support of his own Kikuyu community.  They voted en masse for Kibaki’s PNU (Party of National Unity) in December 2007.

Ruto was a key ally of Raila Odinga in 2007 and rallied the majority of votes in Kalenjin areas of the Rift Valley behind Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).  Ruto and Odinga have since fallen out violently, with Ruto campaigning fiercely against Odinga during the constitutional referendum in 2010 and vowing to oppose him in the presidential elections.  Talks between Ruto and Kenyatta in recent months have suggested a possible electoral alliance – the sticking point will be that only one of them could run for president if they become allies.

It remains to be seen whether the ICC decision will count them both out of the race – either through legal challenges by opponents to them standing for office while facing such serious charges, or through potential allies seeing the charges as electoral liabilities.  Kenyan politics at election time is about shifting political alliances rather than competition between established parties, with key politicians throwing their weight behind candidates according to political expediency and likely material gain from office rather than permanent community or party allegiances, let alone thoughts of policy or ideology.

Media on trial

The decision of the court to put Joshua arap Sang on trial is an interesting one that may have repercussions for the vernacular media network in Kenya.  While the other accused held high political or government office, Sang was the chief of operations and the most popular broadcaster at Kass FM – a Kalenjin-language radio station with a strong following in the Rift Valley and among Kalenjin communities throughout Kenya.  When originally charged, the ICC indictment included reference to his use of his “radio program to collect supporters and provide signals to members of the plan” for attacks against communities supporting the PNU.

Sang has always denied this, both before and after the ICC released its indictment.  When I interviewed him in Nairobi in February 2010 he was adamant that while his station broadcast criticism of the election results and of the PNU, it did not incite violence.  Transcript evidence of Kass’s output is thin and there are just a couple of examples when the station’s output appeared to urge attacks against others – none of them directly attributable to Sang himself (though he was the best-known and most popular of its presenters).  He admitted that phrases like “the mongoose is at the chickens” and “the people of the milk should clear the weeds from the grass” might have been broadcast, but denied that they meant Kalenjin-speakers should attack people from communities like the Kikuyu, Kamba or Kisii, which had supported Kibaki’s PNU, and drive them from the Rift Valley. He said they were popular colloquial expressions and that all his station was doing was broadcasting in a language that the audience would understand and appreciate.

Media observers in Kenya (and other Kenyan journalists) would not necessarily agree – several told me that the expressions were instructions to attack Kikuyu and others and drive them from the Rift Valley, precisely the charges against Ruto and Sang in the ICC decision.  It should be noted that other vernacular radio stations – Kameme FM and Inooro (both Gikuyu-language stations) and Lake Victoria FM (Luo) – were also accused of biased and inflammatory broadcasting during the violence.

Supporters of Kass and of Sang unsurprisingly ask why he was singled out by the ICC. That might become apparent once the trial commences, as the ICC must have more evidence than the dozen or so transcripts in the public domain, which seem too insubstantial to be the basis of such serious charges.  The charges against Sang (and Ruto) relate not only to radio broadcasts but the organization of a network of supporters to gain power in the Rift Valley Province and to “punish and expel from the Rift Valley those perceived to support the PNU”.  The indictment suggests that Joshua arap Sang was much more than a radio broadcaster.

The Hague trial will not only be of crucial importance to the elections next year, but could also have a major effect on the future of vernacular radio, if the trial were to reveal extensive hate broadcasting.   The behaviour of radio stations in 2007-8 and again during the constitutional referendum was widely criticized – some media commentators and monitors going to the unsupportable lengths of comparing their output in 2008 to Radio-Television des Mille Collines during the Rwandan genocide.

Inappropriate comparisons aside, there is clearly a problem. During the PEV and the referendum of 2010, there were broadcasts by a number of stations, including Kass, which were deemed to be inciting violence and to be a threat to peace.  Then  in June and July 2010 Kenyan National Cohesion and Integration Commission warned a number of stations about hate broadcasting during the referendum campaign.  In 2010, the chief Kenyan government press officer, Albert Mutua, told the author that successive governments had been unhappy about the role and behaviour of vernacular stations, believing them to be a danger to national unity and a source of community tensions.  It will be instructive to monitor output as the political campaigns for parliament and the presidency get underway later this year.

Keith Somerville is lecturer in the School of Politics and International relations at the University of Kent. He worked at the BBC World Service from 1988 to 2005.

William Ruto - former Minister of Higher Education and key ODM figure - attends the ICC pre-trial hearing at The Hague

It has been argued that Kenyans are interested in the ICC trials¹ because it’s the first time any senior Kenyan has been held to account for serious wrongdoing.

This is usefully wrong. Throup and Hornsby² once said, more acidly than was absolutely necessary, of Kamlesh Pattni’s activities that “the chance of his not having had top-level political support for [them] is nil.” Their view was confirmed by the Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Goldenberg Affair, paras. 845 and 847, which proposed investigation of President Moi, and held Professor George Saitoti, who at the time of the scandal was Vice-President and Minister for Finance, responsible, with others, for it. Professor Saitoti went to court; in a landmark decision,³ he achieved a reversal of the report’s recommendation. This latter better explains Kenyan public interest in the ICC: it’s the first time that senior Kenyan politicians have faced the consequences of being held responsible for wrongdoing.

Public interest is also heated by the debates which caught fire in the aftermath of the violence: was it planned? When did it start? Who were its targets? Who was involved and why?⁴ The findings of the court so far confirm answers to those questions that many Kenyans have long suspected but have been unable to show for fear, ignorance or party spirit. The pre-trial chamber, for example, found that the prosecutor’s evidence justified the view that significant portions of the violence, and consequent death and forcible transfer of population, were perpetrated as part of ODM’s political program:⁵

41. The Chamber finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that from 30th December 2006 to the end of December 2007, Ruto, Kosgey and Sang, held a series of meetings in which they agreed on a common plan to punish PNU supporters and evict them from the Rift Valley, with the ultimate goal of gaining power and to create a uniform ODM voting block.

It also found that the murders in Naivasha and Nakuru were planned, and that they rose to the level of crimes against humanity:⁶

25. With respect to the alleged underlying acts constituting crimes against humanity, the Chamber is satisfied, on the basis of the examination of the facts referred to in paragraph 17 above, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that murder and forcible transfer of population as acts constituting crimes against humanity were committed as part of the attack against the civilian population in Nakuru and Naivasha.

Together, these findings tear apart the exculpatory stories that have been spun since these events. In the first case, a variety of ODM partisans have attempted to justify, or at least excuse, their share of the violence on the ground that it was a spontaneous – hence unplanned – response to the Electoral Commission of Kenya’s declaration.⁷ This was always extremely unlikely, and we now have something approaching legal confirmation of the point.

In the second case, the main justificatory argument heard from PNU partisans for the counterattacks in the Rift Valley and elsewhere was that they were justified attempts at self-defence. The chamber’s finding that they constituted crimes against humanity, on account of their planning and the selection of victims, shows that they were unjustifiable. Since they were directed against civilians who had nothing to do with the preceding violence, they were not acts of self–defence.

All this in a public and neutral forum, so that there can be no serious argument that the finders of these facts are biased.

The political consequences are less obvious; perhaps the clearest is the de-communalisation of responsibility. Much of the harm of the crimes consists in the hatred they stirred, since, in the absence of clear evidence of individual responsibility, entire groups were assumed responsible for the acts of a few of their own.⁸ ⁹ The court has now credibly singled out individuals— the right ones, let’s hope—as the main perpetrators; attention has turned to their personal culpability.

The majority’s rejection of Judge Hans-Peter Kaul’s understanding of the network that committed the crimes has also helped. He had seemed to argue¹⁰ that the network was an  ethnic one, which could not therefore constitute an organisation for the purposes of Article 7 of the statute governing the prosecution of the crimes with which the suspects have been charged. The majority preferred the view that the network which committed the crimes constituted an organisation within the meaning of Art. 7. Presumably, it follows that the network wasn’t simply an ethnic association—a finding of some political importance, since it’s not hard to imagine what damage would have been done had the decision gone the other way.

But the decommunalisation has begun¹¹: much of the informal argument, online and off, asks who, rather than which community, was responsible for what. Admittedly, that’s a crude measure; a recent set of interviews¹² shows it’s not completely hopeless. A less crude metric is the recent poll which reported growing approval for the proceedings in the ethnic constituencies of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.¹³ Both candidates are now the leading politicians in their communities, which might be expected to oppose the trials and the court, since, given latent mistrust, a decrease in one’s patron’s power leaves one more vulnerable to (presumed hostile) ethnic others.¹⁴ Instead, both Uhuru and Ruto have found renewed support as has the court.¹⁵ Their communities are now discounting the consequences to themselves of their champion’s guilt; a turn best explained by a decline in mistrust.

Finally, it seems that post–election violence will be a key issue at the next general election. This will be the case whether the charges are confirmed or not. If confirmed, there will be further revelations, as the Prosecutor appears to be holding back evidence; its impact is hard to estimate, but impact there will be. If not, then those candidates who escape the reach of the court can be expected to make the most of it: perhaps by blaming the Prime Minister for their misfortune.¹⁶ Either way, the ICC will matter at the polls, whenever they are.

Daniel Wawaeru is a commentator on Kenyan politics.

References:

¹The cases are numbered ICC-01/09-02 and ICC-01/09-01. Public materials are collected online at http://www.icccpi.int/Menus/ICC/Situations+and+Cases/Situations/Situation+ICC+0109/Situation+Index.htm.

²Throup and Hornsby, 1998 p. 563

³See the judgement in Republic v Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Goldenberg Affair &  others ex-parte George Saitoti (Misc. Civ. Appl. 106 of 2006).

⁴Murunga (2011) is instructive.

⁵Trendafilova (J) and Tarfusser (J), 2011a, para. 41.

⁶Trendafilova (J) and Tarfusser (J), 2011b, paras. 25 and 19.

⁷It has also been argued that the violence in the Rift Valley did not constitute ethnic cleansing. But it is clear, from para. 31 of the pre-trial chamber’s Decision on the Prosecutor’s Application for Summons to Appear for William Samoei Ruto, Henry Kiprono Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang, that the evidence supports the opposing view.

⁸But see Njogu (2009) whose testimony from victims, many of whom were willing to forgive their attackers and their communities even before the court process, is encouraging counter-evidence.

⁹Kasara (2011, p.10), relying on Afrobarometer survey data, finds that even before the elections, interethnic trust was very low: only Nigeria, of 17 African countries sampled, did worse. Dercon and Gutiérrez-Romero (2010, p. 19, and Table 4 on p.35) found sharp declines in trust across and within ethnic groups after the elections. Their survey was taken before the ICC process began.

¹⁰Dissenting Opinion by Judge Hans-Peter Kaul to Pre-Trial Chamber II’s “Decision on the Prosecutor’s Application for Summons to Appear for William Samoei Ruto, Henry Kiprono Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang”, paras. 45–51.

¹¹Muga has a very different view.

¹²Standard Team, 2011.

¹³Synovate IPSOS, 4. Nov. 2011. at http://www.synovate.co.ke/.

¹⁴The point is sometimes made fairly explicitly, as in Uhuru’s campaign speech in Murang’a: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWfPqokno.

¹⁵I’m relying on the presidential polling: http://www.synovate.co.ke/.

¹⁶You’ll notice my assumption that at least some of the charges will be confirmed. Their inevitable politicisation is substantially eased by the Prosecutor’s recent admission that political considerations matter for his selection of cases: see http://opiniojuris.org/2011/11/07/there-is-a-double-standard-at-the-icc/.

Isaias Aferwerki - President of Eritrea - denies funding Al-Shabaab in Somalia

The Kenyan government’s decision to invade Somalia was preceded by an ambiguous encounter that received comparatively little coverage. In mid-October, a supposed member of Al-Qaeda, curiously claiming to be from the USA, was seen to be handing out food, clothing and copies of the Koran to famine refugees in the Ala-Yasir camp south-west of Mogadishu. Such an obvious ‘diplomatic’ gesture was certainly a rare one. Given that Al-Qaeda also operates on a somewhat fractured basis, one might also speculate as to whether the figure (who claimed to be in Somalia on behalf of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri) might have merely been inspired, rather than directed, by the organisations leadership. Links between individual fighters can’t strictly be said to always point to a major sense of organisational unity between the two at the highest levels.

Yet in many ways this was rather predictable – not just because since 2007 al-Shabaab have done little to hide their ideological sympathies with their brethren across the water, but also because it points to the increasing usage of smaller groups in the Horn by larger players both within and outside East Africa.

Al-Shabaab’s priorities may be inward-looking, concerned with wrenching full control away from the UN-backed government in Mogadishu, but those of their financiers frequently are not. The remnants of the beleaguered regime in the Somali capital trying to resist al-Shabaab claims the country contains many from abroad providing the latter with military aid, including the training in previous years of Somali fighters in Afghanistan.

On one level, Al-Qaeda has an obvious motive for forging links with ideological allies in the Horn. However, there has been little evidence that the Somalis’ aims go far beyond the country’s borders, compared to the former’s more global vision.  The appearance of an Al Qaeda fighter may play into the al-Shabaab strategy of denying access to Western aid groups and instead promoting their cause via militant propaganda. But as an organisation formed with violent intentions stretching across East and West, Al Qaeda’s ideological priorities are unlikely to be rooted so deeply in the Horn, particularly with the inter-ethnic wrangling and clan rivalries that plague Somalia’s militants. So the links for the most part seem sporadic; but they point to an increasing trend for extremist networks in the Horn to draw on the support of those with larger vested interests outside it.

The Kenyan government’s high-profile invasion of Somalia on in mid-October was prefaced by accusations that a government minister had been funding Somali terrorists. Tourism minister Najib Balala was accused in a UN report released in August of lending money to al-Shabaab in 2009 supposedly for the purpose of mosque-building, along with accusations that in February this year he sent money to an account held by an individual known to be a financial backer of the group. He refused to accept the conclusions, pleading ignorance over the money’s use.

Other speculative reports to have emerged include claims that high-profile lawyer Amina Abdalla was also involved in channelling funds to Somalia, coupled with suspicions that young people recruited for the al-Shabaab cause have predominantly been drawn from non-Somali communities. Much of this remains contested, but it does mean the Kenyan government’s invasion of Somalia suggests a deep insecurity about how widespread and entrenched the country’s links with militants might be.

More attention has been focused on recent months on the suspected alliance between the Eritrean government and Somalia’s more militant contingent. Much of it is rooted in Eritrea’s drawn-out and bloody relationship with Ethiopia, whom it accuses of violently imposing its imperialist agenda on minorities within and outside its borders. As part of an ongoing proxy war against Zenawi’s regime, Eritrea has been mobilising the resources of other groups in East Africa, including those in Somalia and among minority groups within Ethiopia.

The recent allegation (vehemently denied by President Isaias) that al-Shabaab receieves funding from Asmara prompted calls for sanctions to be imposed on Eritrea. Although weakening Ethiopia seems to remain the aim, if true then it would seem this much smaller state is drawing on militants in the region to create a larger support network against Addis Ababa. The accusations remain speculative, but significant.

Yet the Somalis are not the only ones thought to have been enlisted. The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) were thought to be heavily involved in a plot to bomb the African Union summit held in Addis Ababa earlier this year. The group are largely concerned with weakening the Ethiopian state and, in the process, furthering the interests of the minority Oromo-speaking peoples that currently reside within its borders. For the OLF to team up with Eritrea thus makes sense, as the two employ a common discourse in relation to Addis Ababa.

In 2010 Ethiopia also accused Eritrea of harbouring members of the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front, another subversive splinter group that the Ethiopian government labelled as ‘terrorist,’ including the group’s founder Col. Tadesse Muluneh.  Accusations of this nature are often vehemently denied by the government in Asmara. Yet if true they support suspicions that Isaias Afewerki’s government continues to reach out to other militant factions on its doorstep.

All this shouldn’t detract from the fact that for many extremist groups in the Horn their concerns are comparatively narrow. But given the flagging popularity globally of both Al Qaeda and Eritrea to say the least, bolstering support in the region is an understandable move for any pariah – big or small.

Maddy Fry is a freelance journalist specialising on the Horn of Africa

Kenyan troops advance into Southern Somalia

Kenya has sent over 2,000 troops into Somalia to fight the Islamist rebel movement al-Shabaab in the South of the country. The incursion comes as a response to the increasing instability on and within its own borders, most clearly shown by the recent abduction and killing of several tourists and aid workers from the refugee camps on the Kenya Somalia border, and more worryingly, the coastal resort island of Lamu – a favourite with western holiday makers.

Internal instability in Somalia has long been a worry for Kenya, although previously the government seemed to prefer to militarising its North Eastern border rather than venturing into its neighbour’s territory. However, attacks on Kenya’s tourist industry were the final straw, and the way Lamu Island became rapidly deserted seemed a psychological blow to a country that is still getting over the PR nightmare that was the post-election violence of 2007/08. Kenya is not known as a big regional military player – its armed forces have not been deployed aggressively outside their own borders since the 1967 Shifta war where the target was instability in the predominantly Somali North Eastern Province which spread into Southern Somalia.

Whilst this response is understandable, partially defeating al-Shabaab’s military capacity in Somalia risks splintering the movement, making it into a transnational terrorist organisation able to hit targets in cities such as Nairobi and Mombasa. Uganda has already suffered from this with the World Cup final bombing last year at a popular bar in Kampala. Uganda provides around half of the AMISOM force currently deployed in an around Mogadishu in support of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Two grenade attacks in downtown Nairobi over the last week may be a sign of things to come, with a smaller-scale insurgency fought by al-Shabaab supporters in the metropolitan capitals of their ‘occupiers.’ It would be as well for Kenyan forces to get the job done quickly and then get out, although whether this is a realistic aim is another matter entirely.

It is also important to understand that whilst Kenya may be seeking to destroy al-Shabaab in Southern Somalia, it is likely that abductions in Kenya have been perpetrated by pirates, or those seeking to sell their hostages to al-Shabaab. Kenya may in effect be fighting the general lawlessness in Southern Somalia, hoping to build up a buffer-zone between it and militarised groups now pushed further north.

Additional to the Kenyan operation, there have been reports of participation by US drones (intelligence gathering), which are already known to operate in the country and have carried out missions against al-Shabaab commanders, and even a French warship (immediately denied by the French embassy in Nairobi) rumoured to have bombarded the town of Kusmay (just South of Kismayu). There has also been a report of a military jet dropping bombs on targets near to the al-Shabaab controlled Kismayu, which appears to be the eventual target of the Kenyan advance. It is unclear whose plane this was, and where it came from.

What this shows is that there is already a creeping internationalisation of this conflict. This however may be no bad thing, as regional and international players have for too long avoided expending resources on Somalia’s complex problems. However, it does risk drawing regional players like Kenya further into the conflict when previously they have tried to keep it at arm’s length.

Binyavanga Wainaina - author of One Day I Will Write About This Place, launched at the RAS on Wed 26th Oct

This is How to Write About Africa

Binyavanga Wainaina is most famous for How to write about Africa – an essay published by Granta in 2005 that formed a cynical guide to all the clichés writers generally employ when writing about the continent. A notable instruction in this piece advises:

‘Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances.’

Wainaina’s new (and first) book One Day I Will Write About This Place is a comic refutation of the premise that this is how you write about Africa. As such, it reads like nothing I have read before, crackling with the energy of a writer who delights in revealing the multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-ethnic world of his middle-class Kenyan upbringing.

In 2002 Wainaina won the Caine Prize  –  the ‘African Booker’ -  for his short story Discovering Home (a section of which is skilfully woven into the narrative of this memoir).  The writing of the former piece is deliciously lampooned in One Day… Wainaina reveals his smart manipulation of the judges’ liberal desires – ‘I mine every sexy African theme I can think of…It is about a young girl (Girl Child, Gender!) who is questioning the world, and her mother’s values (Empowerment).’ I am wary of falling into the same trap as the Africa-entranced Caine Prize judges, but an African writer demonstrating how to manipulate the heartstrings of The West is something that brings joy to a cynical heart.

Wainaina’s book is strictly a memoir, but like all great writers of personalised non-fiction (Bruce Chatwin comes to mind) one feels there must be a fictionalised element. It is also an overtly political work, in the sense that Wainaina means to say something profound about Africa. What he is saying is both ‘this is how you write about Africa!’ and this is what modern Africa is. Wainaina’s life contains enough soap opera-like interest to satisfy the reader’s desire for plot, so we don’t get many high-octane moments of action or instances of intense excitement. Instead, the author presents his musings on what it is to be Kenyan and African through his personal experience of living these complex identities.

The great moments in the history of both Kenya and Africa in the last 20 years are dealt with lightly (much like the manner in which Wainaina deals with his own success – ‘I win the Caine Prize, and cry, bad snotty tears, and come back with some money.’) He is studying in South Africa as the apartheid regime is reaching its end, and his everyday observations of the events at this denouement place political earthquakes within a tangible personal narrative: ‘Chris Hani is dead in his driveway…and blood drips from his head and rolls down South Africa’s smooth tarmac, and you stand, dizzy. You make your way to the campus for the first time in over a month.’

And a few pages later:

‘Mandela is President…There are now new black people in suits and ties, on television, on the streets…A good chunk of my finance class is in Johannesburg, working for Arthur Anderson.’

The South Africa section of the book is disjointed and unsettling – a story of a young man far from home in an unsettled land, full of booze and the quiet unfulfilled expectation of his gentle parents back in Kenya, carrying on.

From post-apartheid South Africa Wainaina returns to Kenya where politically things are also changing. His father, long-time Director of the Kenya Pyrethrum Board, has now retired, but ‘the new people at Pyrethrum Board have been mismanaging things…The new managing director is from Moi’s tribe. A diplomat with no experience of working with farmers.’ In what seems an almost throwaway line, Wainaina recounts that ‘the 1997 elections were rigged, Moi is back in power and the opposition is broken.’ His father continues to keep things going, travelling frequently to Nairobi playing the kind of conscientious middle class role that Wainaina says is never documented when people write about Africa.

As he delves further into the psyche of his country he grapples with the dark heart of so many half-formed news reports composed by westerners on the ‘problem’ of tribalism, It is alos at this point that we most fully encounter the author’s fascination with language. Post-colonial African states are necessarily multi-lingual places, and the cast of characters that Wainaina documents includes a sophisticated range of languages -   English, Swahili, Gikuyu, Sheng, Kinyarwanda – to name but a few. It is through language – the covert whispering in office corridors in Gikuyu (the language of Kenya’s most dominant Kikuyu tribe) – that Wainaina communicates the strange resurgence of ‘tribal’ affiliation.

This is self-consciously a book about Africa that, breaking from the guidance of his earlier essay, focuses on the doctors and lawyers, teachers, civil servants, students – a profile of confused modern Africa – of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson, Jay-Z and MTV. The people are Kenyans, but they inhabit a cultural world with which we are all familiar. It is thus doubly affecting when Wainaina talks of political strife in his own country. What he is saying is: ‘this is a mundane thing’, a struggle for power within a modern state. It is no atavistic impulse from pre-modern people. The individuals who planned the much documented 2007 post-election violence wore suites and inhabited the corridors of a modern government within a country where multinational companies operate and broadband internet and pizza are available.

However, it is within this multi-lingual space that Wainaina also sees Kenya’s salvation. In, for example, the taxi tout who can speak both Gikuyu and Kalenjin fluently, and moderates the language in which he operates according to the origin of his passengers. Kiswahili is a language ‘used to handling diverse people…perfect for revealing unreason’ and symbolic of natural brotherhood in its manner of communication. Kiswahili as Kenya’s lingua franca is a symbol that disparate tribal peoples throughout the country have, over many years, developed ways of living together. Political strife is a base anomaly when placed next to the intricate manners of the shared national language.

‘Words carry such pungent worldviews’ says Wainaina as slowly he appreciates his talent for shaping them, ultimately drawing an utterly convincing and radically original portrait of 21st century Africa.

Magnus Taylor is Managing Editor of African Arguments Online

Michela Wrong - writer and journalist

Michela Wrong is the author of 3 books on Africa including It’s our Turn to Eat: the Story  of a Kenyan Whistle Blower

This is a very exciting time in Nigeria’s history, a moment full of potential and opportunity, and it’s very flattering to be asked to share my thoughts on this important occasion.

The last time I was in Nigeria, about a year and a half ago, I came to talk about my latest book, which was about a major procurement scandal, involving 18 military and security contracts, exposed in Kenya by a remarkable man called John Githongo, the government’s former anti-corruption czar.

The title of my book was “It’s Our Turn to Eat”. It’s a phrase, used all the time in east Africa, to describe the system of rule in Kenya, whereby government contracts, infrastructural investment, ministry and parastatal posts and jobs in the civil service, all get quietly carved up according to the ethnic affiliation of the Big Men in power. Under President Jomo Kenyatta in the 1960s and 1970s, this meant the Kikuyu ethnic group did rather better than others, under Daniel arap Moi it was the Kalenjin, and under Mwai Kibaki, in 2003, the Kikuyu again. The “eating” goes all the way down through the echelons, and as a result, 30 per cent of the budget in Kenya today – a permanent secretary at the Finance Ministry recently revealed – cannot be accounted for.

When I talked about this syndrome in Nigeria, there was instant recognition from the audiences, and some hearty laughter. “We have a slightly different phrase, here, but it means the same thing,” I was told, “We say: ‘it’s our turn to chop’”.

But I sensed a different reaction in the two countries.

Kenya came close to the brink of a civil war after its 2007 elections, largely because opposition supporters became convinced that Kibaki’s crowd had rigged the elections to ensure the Kikuyus got to “eat” indefinitely. Kenyans were frightened by just how close they had come to disaster. They were determined to change the system. By the time I visited Nigeria, they were working on the introduction of a new, decentralised constitution, a radical experiment in restructuring the state and neutralising the explosive issue of ethnicity. They are trying to repair and rebuild the social contract between citizen and government, a contract they realised had come close to breaking down completely.

In Nigeria, it seemed to me, yes, people were exasperated with the “It’s our turn to chop” syndrome. But they shrugged their shoulders. I sensed a cynical, weary resignation, an acceptance that this was the way things had always been and always would be. Not nice, but what could be done?

I think that resignation takes two forms, depending on how well off you are as a Nigerian.

For members of the elite, there’s a belief that you can use your financial heft to buy yourself out of the system, to bypass altogether all the chaos and nastiness. If the electricity isn’t flowing, you get a generator. If the water doesn’t run, dig a borehole. If the police aren’t doing their job, move to a gated community. If the local TV stations are awful, get a satellite dish. If the roads are terrible, buy a fleet of 4WDs. And so these gated communities turn into what are essentially autonomous mini-governments, supplying the services the state isn’t providing. So who needs the social contract? We’re all rugged individualists.

For the ordinary Nigerian, the psychology is slightly different. Poor Nigerians are mad as hell at corruption, both grand and petty, at nepotistic job appointments, at rigged tenders, unfair allocations of contracts and the constant bribe-paying they have to do. Unless, that is, they are the ones to benefit. And then it’s not corruption at all. It’s a cousin or uncle or brother doing the right and decent thing. The mental connection is not made. Corruption is what OTHER people do.

That approach leaves them without a moral leg to stand on. As a Nigerian friend told me before coming here: “We’re all lost on a sea of moral relativism, in which every thing is understandable, everything can be forgiven, everything is justifiable and the only criteria of whether something is good or bad is whether you can get away with it.”

I think there’s something else at work, too. Nigerians, as we all know, are the most confident people in the world. No Nigerian can bear to be thought a fool. Many people, even those who are doing worst from “it’s our turn to chop” syndrome, believe in their hearts that this is a game the man with chutzpah and guts should be able to play and win. If he loses, it’s only because he didn’t try hard enough, work those connections energetically enough and take the necessary risks.

To those Nigerians I would say: look at the figures. Nigeria’s statistics on poverty levels, infant mortality and maternal deaths contradict you. How is it that my own country, recession-hit Britain, feels the need to spend £250m a year in aid on health and education in this oil-rich land? Believe me, it’s not you, it’s the system. It’s dysfunctional.

And the stakes are higher than you think. If I can pass on a lesson I gradually learnt while researching my book, corruption, when it is sustained and greedy enough, does more than merely undermine and leach away at an economy. It destabilises what once seemed like strong states. Because over the years it creates a perception of “us and them” that eats away like acid at a society’s existing fault lines and pressure points, whether based on ethnic difference, religion, or geography. Kenya had a lot of fault lines, but Nigeria has more.

John Githongo, the Kenyan whistleblower, argues that inequality, and the perception of inequality, actually matters far more than actual poverty. I think he’s right. Kenyans had actually experienced a five year economic boom before it experienced its most violent elections in history in 2007. People gradually adjust to privation, what makes them snaps, like a stretched elastic, is the realisation that not everyone is suffering equally.

I would suggest there are already signs of that elastic snapping in Nigeria. When I first used to visit this country in the late 1990s, as a journalist for the Financial Times, it was impossible to imagine that the groups protesting at the underdevelopment of the Niger Delta might one day be transformed into armed rebel movements capable of holding the government to ransom. Now I get their statements on Facebook. And then there’s the Boko Haram movement, as explicit expression of exasperation at Nigeria’s widening north-south divide as it is possible to imagine.

These are warning bells. What they tell the Nigerian elite that believed it could withdraw inside its gated utopias is that you simply cannot build the fences high enough. You cannot unilaterally decide the social contract does not concern you. You cannot indefinitely tolerate a system which fails, decade after decade, to invest in schools, hospitals, roads and basic utilities. The Boko Harams and Niger Delta militants and the gangs of armed criminals that are becoming an increasing problem can get to you. As we have seen, with tragic results, they can now reach as far as the UN compound in Abuja itself.

We experienced a similar wake-up call in London just recently, when  middle class Brits suddenly noticed they were living next to run-down council estates whose residents deeply resented not being able to buy the fancy trainers and mobile phones they saw displayed on the High Street. So those residents broke the glass and took them. Boy, were we in the middle class surprised.

So as Nigeria enters its 51^st year, with a new team at the top whose makeup has got excited and hopeful tongues wagging around the world, what can be hoped for? I am well aware that most people in this room are better educated and boast more life experience than me, so I will ration myself to just a few ideas.

When I’m asked how to tackle the corruption that are crippling economies in other parts of Africa, I usually find myself talking about shoring up the independence of the judiciary and the chief prosecutor’s office, bolstering the police, safeguarding the independence of parliament, and warning that setting up anti-corruption units is not the  answer it sometimes seems. These are all hugely laborious tasks in themselves, but in Nigeria’s case, I think it’s clear that they merely skim the surface of the problem.

If the new government is to challenge the “It’s Our Turn to Chop” syndrome and its impact on ordinary citizens, it must examine, at a very fundamental level, the principle upon which power and money are distributed in this country.

Nigeria’s unwritten agreement on the rotation of power has, interestingly enough, some admirers in Kenya. They argue that the first past the post electoral system left behind by the British has turned political contests into zero sum games, with no consolation prizes for communities that come second. They praise Nigeria’s rotational system as a kind of tacit  codification of the “it’s our turn to chop” philosophy, taking the sting out of ethnic, geographical and religious differences.

I would suggest that the opposite may actually be true. That the rotation  system of government enshrines and legitimises the differences between Nigerians, constantly reminding them not of their common humanity, but of how little they have in common with one another. It does nothing to create a more heterogenous society. It rewards mediocrity, penalises high-minded effort and encouraging procrastination as players complacently wait for their “turn” at the table to arrive. And the main point, surely, is that “eating” – or “chopping” – should not be the main ambition of those entering the political sphere in the first place.

It was Sir Ahmadu Bello who said, as far back as 1963: “Let us not be blind to our differences. But let us also direct our attention to our common interest and the means by which those differences can be solved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help to make the world safer for diversity.” As a Nigerian acquaintance said to me recently: “no one will mind if a president or minister is Christian or Moslem, so long as he actually delivers.”

Only Nigerians can decide this magnificent, vibrant, overwhelming country’s future. I note in the media that even those who have benefited most from the system are now saying a “revolution” is due. They are surely in part responding to the statistic that is as terrifying as it is hopeful, and which certainly can’t be ignored: the 70 per cent of the African population that is under the age of 40. This demographic tsunami can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on what the leadership decides.

That brings me to my last, point, which may sound like a statement of the obvious. Societies only make substantive change when their members insist upon it. You have to want it. Kenya so frightened itself in 2007, it reached that stage, and its new decentralised constitution is the result. It’s not yet clear if it’s done so in time, or come up with the right answer, but it has taken a radical step towards a new future.

The old joke, it seems to me, applies rather well to Nigeria: “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” “Only one, but it really has to WANT to change.”

It’s over a month since famine was declared in Somalia and alarm bells clearly rung about serious food shortages across Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in desperate need of food, clean water and basic sanitation and we are all asking: how can this be happening again? In this past month we have seen differing responses locally, regionally and globally to the crisis.  Already there are lessons we must learn about how to stop famine happening again.

As Richard Dowden noted previously on this blog there are many political factors that complicate the situation in Somalia. Any lasting solution will require a regional roadmap out of the Somali cycle of failed statism. Eritrea and others must be brought around a table with other regional governments, and representatives from wide cross section of Somali civil society. Maybe this famine will reenergise the too often stalled process.  However politics is not the only factor here and there are other lessons to learn.

The response from the international community has been slow. As my colleague Adrian Lovett explained, in a recent Huffington Post blog, leaders such as the UK, US and Sweden have made substantial contributions to the appeal but other governments languish behind. The UN appeal remains $1 billion short of what is needed. Traditional European donors such as France and Germany are not pulling their weight. Nor are many of the Gulf States who have tremendous wealth generated from high oil prices and could fill the appeal gap with ease. That these global players drag their feet while children die is shameful, though the recent pledge from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to the Somalia appeal is a step in the right direction.

The response from Africa has been mixed. Last month ONE and Africa Gathering hosted an informal discussion with African diaspora leaders and international NGOs about the adequacy of the response to the crisis. The participants called for African leaders to step up more to lead the response. African countries and institutions including South Africa, the African Union (AU) and Kenya are contributing and yesterday’s AU pledging conference was unprecedented and raised a decent sum – though some nations could still do more. Donations from many African governments – Nigeria for example – or wealthy individuals have been modest. Africa has a number of billionaires these days as the advocates of the ‘Africa rising’ narrative rightly keep reminding us.  African civil society also has a crucial role to play. Influential figures, not just from faith communities but also from the artistic, musical and sports world have real sway over the youth. The group AfricansAct4Africa is already bringing together many musicians and artists to bring attention to this issue, and leaders like Youssou N’Dour and Somalia’s own hip hop artist K’Naan are leading a new generation of African artists in this effort. This is a hugely positive development.

This is an assessment of the emergency response but if we are to stop starvation returning we must find long-term solutions. The famine early warning system should have been noted earlier higher up the political food chain. Plainly it is media attention that gets political attention, and the media only tune in once the images are shocking enough – which is too late.  Any review of this crisis has to factor in the role of the international media as watchdog in these situations and help them play a more proactive role. I could imagine an emergency-prevention TV team charged with finding ways to tell the stories of slow-burning crises for prime time, in ways the audience won’t tune out but before the children start dying. This may seem far-fetched but it’s a creative challenge many in the media industries might relish. Call it a global community service for recovering media hacks.

Long-term investment in agriculture is also vital. At L’Aquila in 2009, G8 leaders promised $22 billion to agricultural development but with just one year to go until the deadline only a fifth of the money has been delivered.  African governments also made pledges at Maputo in 2003 to invest 10% of their budgets on agriculture. So far only seven African nations have kept the promise, including Ethiopia. This is part of the reason why the situation in Ethiopia while very serious, is not as bad as it could be, or as bad as it was back in the early 1990s or mid 1980s. If we are to prevent future droughts becoming future famines long term investment in farming and food security infrastructure across the continent is essential.

The famine we see today was avoidable but it could also have been even worse. While it is too late for tens of thousands of children, there are hundreds of thousands more who need our help right now.  We can’t just blame politics for their fate while sitting by and doing nothing. We must deal with the politics embedded into the way we deal with the crisis – the local issues that turn drought into famine, the regional complexities that make response slow and difficult, and the global neglect that means promises are rarely kept. We must learn these lessons and in the name of those who have died, declare this time for real: never again.

Jamie Drummond is Executive Director, ONE

Last December, the Kenyan media quickly branded the indicted Kenyans as the “Ocampo Six”—but a more apt title may have been “Ocampo’s Six,” given the Argentine prosecutor’s level of involvement in the investigations. Ever since the prosecutor untied the ribbon on Kofi Annan’s mysterious envelope, the proceedings, and the six men involved, have been his for the keeping.

Across the continent and in Kenya specifically, it’s well known that the Court and Moreno-Ocampo have image issues. Many in Africa claim the Court smacks of neocolonialism: all of the ICC’s twenty-six indicted individuals are indeed African, and all of the current investigations and/or trials involve atrocities committed on the continent. Unfortunately, the objections do not come solely from corrupt politicians who invoke hackneyed sovereignty claims, either. Credible polling from Synovate last month indicates that only 56 percent of Kenyans favor the ICC process, down from 68 percent during October 2010.[ii] More importantly, declining support in specific provinces may demonstrate that some of the Ocampo Six have swayed opinions over their alleged plight at the hands of the ICC. In Rift Valley Province—home to the lion’s share of William Ruto’s supporters, not to mention land conflicts dating back decades—36 percent of those polled now favor the ICC trials, compared to 73 percent last year. [iii] In Central Province, home to many of the Kikuyu who have generally rallied behind Uhuru Kenyatta, ICC support now hovers around 37 percent, down from 61 percent earlier last year.

The precipitous decline in approval of the ICC process may also derive from the ways in which the Ocampo Six have branded themselves vis-à-vis the prosecutor. The indicted men have not only hired a London-based PR firm to mend their bruised public personas; more broadly, they’ve attempted to couch the investigations as “Ocampo vs. the Kenyan state.” Tens of MPs attended the last ICC appearances in April—all sporting baseball caps bearing the red, green, black, and white of the Kenyan flag. The attempts to link the Ocampo Six with Kenya writ large do not end with coordinated attire at The Hague, either. Last May, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka’s “shuttle diplomacy” was a blatant attempt to delay the proceedings using formal, inter-state diplomatic channels. When Musyoka travelled to the United States and the UN Security Council to delay the trials, he did it on behalf of Kenya.[iv]

With dwindling popularity and a growing sense of “Ocampo vs. Kenya,” pressure has mounted on the prosecutor—and it should. Of the six active “situations” under review at The Hague, the Kenyan proceedings are the first in which Moreno-Ocampo has invoked a clause in Article 13 the Rome Statute that allows him to refer the cases proprio motu. (In the five other situations, the UN Security Council or a signatory state to the Rome Statute has referred the case to the Court.)

Just as Moreno-Ocampo started the investigations, he also has followed up in person to underscore his commitment to the cases. He arrived in November 2009 to announce the commencement of the ICC’s involvement; returned to Nairobi in May 2010 to conduct investigations during a five-day tour; and appeared in December 2010 prior to announcing the much-anticipated indictments of the Ocampo Six, which he doled out evenly among ODM and PNU. Moreno-Ocampo has not merely attended behind-closed-doors meetings at the State House; rather, he has made a point during his trips to focus on victims of the violence. In December 2010, he attended the second National Dialogue and Reconciliation Conference coordinated by Kofi Annan. During his visit last May, Moreno-Ocampo also spent time in Mathare, where he heard insights from those who experienced the post-election violence firsthand and met with local NGOs operating in the area.

Nonetheless, two challenges face the prosecutor and, by extension, the Court. First, given the debate about the evidence in the Kenyan cases, there is a paucity of coverage regarding one indisputable fact: in 2012, Luis Moreno-Ocampo will retire. The Assembly of State Parties will convene to select a new prosecutor later this year. However, it’s unclear whether the new appointee will be able to continue the Kenyan investigations with the same conviction and rigor as Moreno-Ocampo. Similarly, if the evidence presented at the confirmation hearings does not warrant full-fledged trials, the next prosecutor will have a difficult time resuming indictments and following other avenues to try suspects. Second, reports indicate that specific Mungiki attacks during the post-election violence may have been planned at the State House.[v] If true, Kibaki may be called to testify; Raila Odinga may also have to appear. Their testimonies will engender broader speculation about the necessary scope of any ICC prosecutions. Put simply, were the indictments far reaching enough? It remains to be seen how the new prosecutor will handle the thorniest issues surrounding Kenya’s current and perhaps future investigations.

Kenya’s ICC confirmation hearings represent a test not merely for the country’s political leaders but—perhaps more importantly—for the Court and its soon-to-depart prosecutor. Expeditious proceedings and, if the evidence warrants it, fair trials will prove that the Court can answer lingering existential questions about its ability to mitigate future African conflicts. More importantly, successful investigations, which will likely involve the United States’ continued pressure on Nairobi, will bring much-needed justice to Kenya’s notorious impunity and ensure that its leaders comply with the Court’s decisions. That way, even when Ocampo departs, his can be sure his “six” will not.