A view of the Kenyan elections

24-year-old Cynthia Jepkosgey Muge won the Kilibwoni Ward on an independent ticket in Nandi. Photo: Courtesy.

The recent Kenyan general
elections have filled the international news with contestation around the presidential
results. The legacy of the 2007/8 post-election crisis meant that these are
likely to be one of the most observed general elections globally. In addition
to national teams there were at least seven regional and international observer
groups, resulting in over four thousand observers.

Largely unexamined outside Kenya
is the fact that five other elections accompanied the presidential ballot.
These included voting for a constituency member of parliament and a series of
seats created under the current devolution governance arrangement. These are a
county governor, senator, member of county assembly and a women’s
representative that is an affirmative action elective position created by the
2010 Constitution. Four important observations arise from this.

Trust
deficit

First, it is evident that a legacy
of mistrust that emanates from the mismanagement of the disputed 2007/8
presidential elections cannot be resolved by a robust legal framework in the
form of a constitution and/or the creation of a devolved system of government.
Laws set out the principles and therefore procedure for how national
institutions and individuals within them should function. However, there is a
human factor that we assume will be disciplined by that system. Yet, experience
shows us that the human factor remains a critical stumbling block.

The clearest illustration of
this is through the disregard for the gender party provisions in the Kenyan
constitution. Specifically, that which states that “not
more than two thirds of members of elective public bodies shall be of the same
gender […] the State shall take legislative and other measures, including
affirmative action programmes and policies designed to redress any disadvantage
suffered by individuals or groups because of past discrimination”.

The last government pursued
the lowest common denominator approach to meeting this provision and found
encouragement from a Supreme Court ruling that the realization of this
provision would be progressive.

Women
gain despite resistance

Second, the number of women who
have become pioneers by being the first women to hold any elective position in the
history of their regions since independence is an important development. Notable
here are elected parliamentarians in Samburu, Ijara, Laikipia, Gatundu and
Uasin Gishu. This is in addition to six young – all in their twenties – first
time women county assembly members
in Nandi. These historical milestones demonstrate the slow destruction of
patriarchal barriers that have blocked women’s public leadership.

These gains are also bolstered
by the election of seasoned technocrats and politicians as the first three
women county governors. While these numbers pale in comparison to the number of
men that continue to dominate public and political office in Kenya, they must
be highlighted in a context where the absence of political leadership to drive
effective efforts to counter structural barriers against women remains. The
fact that these few women have been elected does not mean that affirmative
action elective seats are no longer useful as some public commentary on social
media might suggest. Rather they demonstrate their critical role in acting as a
counter balance to regimes that refuse to fulfill equality principles enshrined
in the constitution.

The
tyranny of peace

Third, the 2007/8-post
election crisis as well as a historical pattern of violence that accompanies
political campaigns has led to three dynamics. The first is the construction of
voices of dissent as instigators of violence leading to false patriotism based
on fear. Underlying this approach is the removal of responsibility from those
that escalate violence, which in Kenya’s case is the state’s security
machinery.

The second dynamic is that at
this moment, peace talk is about managing the fall out from an elite jostle for
the presidency and not the numerous women aspirants, whose houses have been
torched, bodies violated and personal security threatened prior to these
elections. History shows us that they will continue to face these threats while
in office.

Finally, the continuous cordoning
off of peri-urban areas as sites of violence continues to criminalize young,
male urban poor and in turn places women’s bodily autonomy at great risk to
sexual and other forms of violence in addition to death.  

The trust and peace dividend in
Kenya has to be calculated in a more holistic manner. That will require
transcending the tendency to examine violence as isolated events unconnected to
how society negotiates the terms on which it will live together by accounting
for gender, class and regional dynamics.

Devolution
is working

The party primaries that
preceded these elections provided the clearest indicator yet of a population
that has slowly emerged from the trauma of post-election violence in 2007/8,
which meant that the vote as a symbol of a citizen’s voice lost its purpose.

The results from the five
elective seats across the country point to voters who will not keep individuals
in office when they do not deliver access to basic goods and services and
create the necessary conditions that ensure inclusivity.

In this regard, there are
class dynamics to account for here, which are evident in the shifts that have
occurred in relation to what were considered well educated and professional
male candidates who have been jettisoned for new representatives whose social
and not necessarily economic credentials differ vastly from their predecessors.
The test for these incoming county governors such as Mike Sonko in Nairobi and
Ferdinand Waititu in Kiambu is whether they will fulfill their fairly
socialist, sometimes populist approach to transforming the structural
conditions that sustain socio-economic inequality across Kenya.

For the women candidates we
must not fall into the trap of assuming that the greatest women’s rights gains
will be achieved through them. Our task as Kenyans interested in freedom and
social justice is to offer a transformative social justice agenda that addresses
the gender, class, ethnicity and regional dynamics that foster inequality in
Kenya, for all these leaders to pursue.