Kenya @50: The need for a new social contract

The end of the Cold War saw Kenya’s leverage as the bulwark against the spread of communism in the East African region wane. Kenya until then was held up as the poster child for stability that comes with being in the Western camp as opposed to being in the Eastern bloc. Kenya was often referred to as the “island of peace” in a region bedeviled with internecine conflict. But in order for Kenya to retain its “preferred nation” status, it had to democratize or the western aid underwriting most of its development projects would stop.

When the state refused to accept multiparty democracy - although it did begrudgingly after protracted domestic and international pressure - the donors started funneling their money through civil society. This inaugurated a “New Deal” between civil society and the donors - a move away from a state-oriented compact to a more non-state-centric focus. The endgame of this accord was to unseat the incumbent and replace it with the opposition party/parties. The media and civil society became a critical accessory to this goal.

However, through use of many nefarious tricks, including violence, the “deep state” defeated any attempted regime change, especially since the introduction of multiparty politics. In the first two elections, 1992 and 1997, opposition disunity combined with state orchestrated electoral violence handed the incumbent victory. But in the subsequent elections in 2002, a united opposition triumphed. This was a major victory for the group; counter-intuitively, it also inaugurated the end of their unity.

After the 2002 election, civil society ended their adversarial relations with the state, with some of them joining government; the media went slow on the government and the donors, albeit for a short period, welcomed the state as a “partner”. The unity amongst these was done a severe blow in 2007, when some of them took sides .But any residual vestige of unity of purpose evaporated in 2013, when the donor-supported civil society became a dirty word- evil society, and the donors the imperialists.

But the process of evisceration of these institutions singly and collectively, as well as their unity, happened over the course a decade, and 2013 was just a logical end. Remarkably, the fulcrum around which these groups’ unity was built, the constitution, was passed in 2010; instead of strengthening their fellowship, its passage also coincided with the end of their unity.

I. THE MEDIA
The crisis of confidence, rich media and poor democracy and the need for a reboot

Post-Moi, the media was keen to cash in on the fruits of their labour - the media had been in the trenches with the opposition and reform movement fighting against Moi’s state, and that opposition formed the government in 2002. During that fight, the media expended a tremendous amount of its capital in defeating Moi. When Moi left the stage, the media was running on an empty tank in unchartered territory without a real plan for what to do next. Thus, the entire anti-Moi brigade entered a new phase under President Mwai Kibaki where they naively assumed the “end of ideology” and uncritically embraced Kibaki.

But the honeymoon between the media and the administration didn’t last, and thereafter, the media saw the state for what it was rather than what they thought it was. From there, the relationship between the media and the Kibaki administration assumed an adversarial posture. It hit rock bottom when Kibaki’s personal life became a serious national interest story, and the low point came when the president’s wife slapped a journalist at Nation Centre.

The raiding of the Standard Group premises and the closing down of the media by Minister John Michuki over the live transmission of the 2007 election results forever defined the relationship between Kibaki’s administration and the media. After that, any residual lingering faux Manichean dichotomy where Kibaki’s government was seen as good as opposed to Moi’s quickly dissipated.

While the human cost of the 2007 election violence is openly acknowledged, what is often less acknowledged is its impact on the critical institutions, the media included. The violence more than anything else revealed serious deficits and systemic weaknesses in many institutions. But whereas the police force is undergoing some reform, albeit painfully slowly, and the judiciary under the stewardship of Dr Willy Mutunga has slowly begun gaining public trust, and the church sought forgiveness for misleading their flock after 2007, and the electoral management body was reconstructed, although old problems persist, in the media there was no soul searching. The default setting was collective amnesia.

If in the 2007 elections the media’s sin was that of commission - overzealous reporting - in the 2013 elections, it was that of omission - being complacent. The passivity was part of the larger posture of “peace at any cost”- peace-ocracy - which prevented not only the media but also most of the institutions from asking critical question lest they were deemed to be anti-peace. The ubiquitous peace messages online and offline paralyzed the once vigorous press, before, during and after the elections. A vigorous media benefits the public and often threatens the powers that be. In Kenya in 2013, the criticisms were over the media’s willful ignorance of this reality.

At a time when the consequence of unparalleled youth unemployment is all too evident, the cost of climate change and the rise of extremist trans-border radical group is on the rise, the mainstream media needs to be ahead of the curve in challenging not only the existing orthodoxy, but also be part of the process of finding cutting edge solutions to some of these problems. Otherwise, we shall have a rich and comfortable media, and a poor democracy.

Media managers’ eternal battle is a delicate balance of the trifecta of the audience, the advertisers and the government. It is a miracle if ever an optimum balance of the trio is achieved. At any one point, the interest of any one of these will be underrepresented. Previously, the government was an existential threat to the media, but that is no more, the advertisers - the goose that lay the golden eggs - have emerged as the insidious threat, the media’s attempt to satisfy their needs is while the audience’s are hardly contemplated. This is manifested in the empty content peddled by the media. Print suffers from empty content syndrome - selling screaming headline with empty contents. But the biggest culprit of the dearth of content is broadcast media.

The expansion of the democratic space saw the proliferation of radio stations, especially FM stations. This expansion witnessed a growth in the variety of outlets giving the audience choice; however, there was no natural improvement in the media content, if anything the quality of the content deteriorated. One can switch from one radio station to another, but find no significant difference. The competition for the same ad shillings and audience instead of creating competition spurred uniformity. The emergence of top100 programming format saw each station trying to create a niche audience without necessarily improving the quality and content of programming.

Instead of radio becoming a serious news medium, we now have top hit music and comedians, as well as the use of musicians as the hosts of radio broadcasting. Radio has handed off news reporting to newspapers and TV. Thus radio managers now hire “talent” not based on journalism training or inclination but based on fake British and American accents backed up by goofy comedians.

Arguably, TV’s golden age was the 2007 elections, when live broadcasting, which was already vogue, was given a new push via live broadcasts of the elections; this was hugely helped by helicopters transporting journalists easily from one event in Turkana to Lamu, Mandera to Malaba. Suddenly, what was traditionally regarded as a preserve of international news outlets - BBC, Sky and CNN - was now a staple of local TV stations, NTV, Citizen and KTN.

But in between live broadcasting and occasional breaking news, TV was struggling to fill the air time with anything remotely useful. Just like radio, importing cheap soap operas and Naija movies, hour long interviews where punditry has replaced reporting as journalism’s highest calling, where the presenters are the content, where competition for faux accents has become the currency. Sometimes, even the live reporting and long hour news shows leave a lot to be desired. Few, if any locally originating news shows can be called informative, seasoned reporters like Denis Onsarigo, Mohammed Ali and John Allan-Namu being the exceptions. In the end TV outside the news hour is a “celebrity” industrial complex circus where interviewers are infatuated with their guests.

Another issue that gets little attention is the death of diversity because of cross ownership. Almost all major media outlets own a newspaper, radio stations and a TV station. The main culprit of this is the Nation, which not only owns them in Kenya, but also across the border in Uganda and Tanzania. Any effort at addressing this has always been met with righteous indignation from the media, invoking the well-rehearsed line: the government wants to regulate the media for nefarious ends, conveniently ignoring the deleterious consequences of content uniformity when owned by a single corporation.

II. THE CIVIL SOCIETY

Could the Kenyatta presidency be an opportunity for civil society to rediscover their mojo?

President Kibaki’s decade of a “benign” presidency, as opposed to the turbo-charged paranoia-driven Moi regime, lulled the civil society into losing their sharp edge and focus. The less confrontational atmosphere between the civil society and the government was fostered in part because the civil society fought in the opposition’s side during the struggle for multiparty politics, and Kibaki had been a key opposition leader.

Additionally, during Moi’s era, the Manichean dichotomy of the “good” and the “bad” was clearly demarcated: Moi’s state was bad and the opposition was good. Post-Moi, that line has been blurred, and many institutions have struggled to for identity.

Undoubtedly, civil society’s golden age came during their antagonistic relations with the state. The Kenyatta presidency, because of the ICC cases, civil society’s bread and butter, has put the civil society in the inevitable collusion with the new administration. In fact, team Kenyatta made bashing the civil society their campaign fodder, even post-election nothing has abated. In the lead up to the 2013 elections, Kenyatta’s campaign team successfully made civil society a dirty word; located in the anti-ICC/imperialist discourse, the civil society were portrayed as Western lackeys, a throwback to Moi’s days, when the opposition was termed vibaraka , foreign agents. And if anti-state opposition was a badge of honor under Moi, now civil society seems to be unsure about its place.

The crafting of Public Benefit Organization Act by the government is another clear sign yet the government is keen in regulating non-government organizations, under which the civil society falls. The plank of the law is to keep a close tab on both local and international organizations, and as permissibly possible prevent them from participating in or influencing politics.

The passage of the new constitution, one of the signature achievements of civil society groups, provided them with another opportunity to reboot. Not only because it has generous provisions, but because some of the people surrounding Kenyatta have suspect reform credentials. Some powerful people in his government are in fact uninterested in implementation of devolution, the centerpiece of the new constitution. The new constitution provides broad checks and balances, and the civil society can use them to keep the government accountable.

Additionally, the Deputy President, William Ruto, has a history of vigorously opposing the constitution. In the lead up to the referendum on the new constitution, Ruto cleverly disguised himself as a “morality warrior” and waged a strong campaign against the constitution. Additionally, his past record of involvement with Moi coupled with several court cases makes him an ideal fodder around which the civil society can build their activism.

ACTIVISM FOR ACTIVISM SAKE?

One of the constant accusations against civil society, of course it is convenient for those suing it, is that civil society are in a perpetual state of activism for the sake of it. There is some element of truth to it. The philosophy, strategy and tactics of civil society need to change if they are to remain relevant in the next dispensation. There is a need for a new brand of activism that doesn’t rely purely on demonstrations, press conferences and editorial pages of the newspapers. While these methods have served the civil society in the past, fatigue amongst their core target audience as well as the efficacy of these methods needs to be evaluated.

Further, civil society has also been accused of living in an elite bubble on Lenana Road - where many of them are located. They need to break out of this bubble and be engaged with the broader public through other means other than through the media.

If they want to remain relevant, they need to diversify and decentralize - less urban/Nairobi and more rural. Further, civil society needs to go beyond activism for activism sake, and be hugely involved in three things: participate in the court system actively, invest in the policy arena and focus on social-economic and environmental rights.

The judiciary is the next frontier of contest and if previously the excuse was that the judiciary was not reformed, that excuse is no longer applicable; the judiciary is reforming, although, there is plenty of room for improvement. Invest in policy. With the passage of the new constitution, many of the issues the civil society have been agitating have been passed, at least on paper. Their implementation in reality is where the civil society needs to invest. Granted, resource wise, they are thinly spread, it would be cruel, if a movement that valiantly fought for the enactment of the new constitution fails at the critical stage of its entrenchment. Move towards social-economic and environmental justice issues.

III. THE DONORS
Elections have no consequences, let’s build indigenous institutions

Before the elections, the donors’ constant refrain was, “choices have consequences”, “we shall maintain only essential contacts”, an implicit warning to the Kenyan voters to think hard before electing Kenyatta and Ruto, both indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. Many Kenyan voters chaffed at what they deemed as unwarranted interference and voted in protest for the two candidates.

After the elections, there seems to be a change of heart by the Western countries, where realpolitik trumps principles. Immediately after the elections, Kenyatta was invited to the London Somalia conference by the British Prime Minister – although it was claimed David Cameron refused to be photographed with Kenyatta and did not personally receive the Kenyan head of state. Either Britain felt Kenya was a key partner in the war on terror in Somalia, or, with elections over, it was time for a reset - British relations are restored after a bruising campaign in which most of the local civil society organizations receiving funding from Britain were demonized as lackeys.

The rejection by the voters, especially young urbanites, is a clear manifestation yet that the donors’ place, just like other institutions, is not as assured as it has always been. Never mind they underwrote most of the “reform” - political hygiene projects over the last two decades. Two reasons account for this: the Western duplicity is slowly being unmasked; with the expansion of information and communication, people are more literate about the real goals of western countries. The presence of China has changed the Western leverage over Kenya, coupled with the decline of the West post the 2008 economic crash has made some Kenyans, albeit, sometimes uncritically, to say let’s face East.

Further, the mind-numbing bureaucracy involved in getting any project funded by the West as opposed to other rising powers, has made many to opt out. The paper work in involved in accounting for nickels and dimes, takes more time than actually implementing the projects. For tied projects, the cost-benefit analysis favors not receiving the money at all. This has been execrated by the 2008 financial crisis where the donors are extremely sensitive about their domestic constituencies.

The aid has never been purely about altruism - it is an appendage to foreign policy. Most projects funded have specific foreign policy objectives, and in many cases are not necessarily aligned with the people’s specific needs. These double standards, even at the rhetoric level, have been hard to run away from. The transformation to partners, the evolution of private-public partnership, sound hollow.

The triumvirate of donors, the civil society and the media seem to be blinded by their sense of importance and are too proud to change course. Their significance has been eroded, their impact as agents of change diminished, and role taken over, albeit with limited success, by alternative institutions. It will be cruel to see such useful agents of change be impotent after what they have fought for is now in fruition- the constitution. But if they want to reserve their legacy, and continue to play a significant role, they need to rediscover their mojo.

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