|
'The postcard Kenya is gone'
Anti-corruption fighter says violence has exposed urban reality
of slums, need for `reconstruction'
Feb 09, 2008
Les Whittington
Ottawa bureau
OTTAWA - Canada and other countries must realize Kenya has changed
forever and helping the troubled East African nation will require
a major new commitment of assistance from abroad, says renowned
Kenyan anti-corruption fighter John Githongo.
"The postcard Kenya that everyone sees with elephants and nice
sunsets is gone," he said in an interview. "We have to now deal
with the reality of Kenya, which is the majority of people who
live in slums with no toilets and have a very hard life."
The current violence in Kenya reflects deeply embedded problems of
corrupt government, poverty and out-of-control urbanization, said
Githongo, who fled his country in 2005 after being threatened for
exposing misdeeds at the highest levels of government. He is on a
research fellowship at the Ottawa-based International Development
Research Centre.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and 300,000 uprooted from
their homes in the rioting that erupted after it was announced
that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki had narrowly won a Dec. 27
election widely seen as having been rigged.
"We should not consider what has happened an aberration that can
be corrected," Githongo remarked. "We need to realize that the
elections were merely a trigger for problems that have been there
for a long time."
Speaking of Canada and other countries that assist Kenya, he said,
"The development partners need to have a complete shift about the
way they think about Kenya and go really into reconstruction
mode."
Rather than traditional, targeted development programs, donor
countries should consider large-scale assistance plans to help
rebuild a country whose economy and social fabric have been badly
torn, Githongo said.
He also praised Ross Hynes, Canada's representative in the Kenyan
capital, Nairobi, saying he has been a leading figure in the
international diplomatic efforts to halt the cycle of
post-election violence.
"I think Canada has to be commended for the clarity and
forcefulness of its high commissioner on the ground and for his
leadership."
In the aftermath of the vote, Hynes has shown support for
opposition leader Raila Odinga, condemned the deteriorating human
rights situation and warned that Canada would review its
development aid projects in Kenya unless a solution to the crisis
was found, according to reports from Kenya.
Hynes has also joined with the United States to warn that Kenyan
politicians and business people who fuelled violence and held up
mediation talks could be blocked from obtaining visas to Canada or
the United States.
"The message I want to pass to politicians is that the ban is real
and will happen," Hynes said.
And, along with other countries, Canada has urged a restoration of
stable democracy through negotiations led by former United Nations
chief Kofi Annan.
Yesterday, Annan said the negotiations are making progress, with
Kenya's rival political parties moving toward an agreement to
share power, but no deal has been reached yet. He said he hoped
they would complete their work by early next week.
Githongo praised Annan's efforts but warned that "there's no quick
solution that can be hammered out overnight and then everything
returns to normal."
Though the disputed election triggered the upheaval, it has been
fed by decades-old friction over wealth, land ownership and
political power.
To help Kenya, outsiders need to grasp how fast Africa is changing
from a rural to an urban society:
"People think of Africa as small populations living in the cities,
mainly English-speaking sort of modern people with computers and
cars and electricity, with the majority living in the rural
countryside digging in the land. That's no longer true. The
majority are now living in cities and, of the people who live in
cities, 70 per cent live in slums with no toilets, no electricity,
and they're the ones we see carrying machetes on TV."
|
