NAIROBI, KENYA -- The streets were nearly deserted in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi last Friday evening. After voting in the country's most important presidential and parliamentary elections in nearly a quarter-century, most people retreated to their homes. The brave went to their local bars to watch the results come in on national television. A handful of popular clubs were sprinkled with the normal crowd of young professionals, expatriates and Asians. Yet amid the prevailing silence in this normally bustling East African metropolis of 3 million, where mansions abut slums and Mercedes swerve among street kids, was a sense of anxiety at what the election results might bring.
The events of the next three days brought the answer: a sweeping victory for a coalition of opposition parties united primarily by a desire to prevent President Daniel arap Moi's hand-picked successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, from taking power. The National Rainbow Coalition, a ramshackle alliance of more than 10 political parties less than three months old, won an overwhelming majority in both parliament and the state house.
Yesterday, the new president, Mwai Kibaki, a former finance minister and leading opposition figure who quit Moi's government in disgust in 1988, addressed a crowd of nearly a million ecstatic supporters during an inauguration ceremony in the capital many could not believe was taking place. Among those gathered were slum dwellers, civil servants, day laborers, businessmen and military personnel. Many had waited on nearby rooftops, climbed lampposts or ascended trees to catch a glimpse of Kenya's new leader, only the third president in the country's history. They endured up to six hours in the blistering equatorial sun."This is just like independence -- it's the beginning of a new era," said Dan Murithi, a 37-year-old police officer who watched the inauguration ceremony on TV from a downtown restaurant.
"It is historic, it is a national day . . . a lucky day!" said Peter Njenga, a 35-year-old farmer and father, as he left the ceremony.. "We never thought the Moi era would come to an end."
Indeed, the end of Moi's 24-year rule is an important turning point for the country and, potentially, for the continent. Kibaki's victory marks the first time one president has handed power to another in this East African nation of 30 million, most of whom live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day.
The 78-year old Moi is one of Africa's longest serving heads of state and one of the richest men in the world. He had ruled Kenya since the 1978 death of the still-legendary Jomo Kenyatta, the country's first president. Constitutionally bound to step down this year by term limits (set in 1991 after intense international pressure and domestic unrest), he managed to win the country's first two multiparty elections in 1992 and 1997, as a divided opposition split the anti-Moi vote. He oversaw more than two decades of economic decline, cultural malaise and crippling corruption -- and is widely considered one of the last of the old-school African autocrats, which also include the late Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Some point out that, to his credit, Moi led one of the few countries in the region -- and indeed, on the continent -- that did not descend into civil war, genocide or border conflict in the last quarter-century. Kenya, in fact, remains one of the only countries in Africa that has never been involved in a war of any kind; it has likewise never suffered ethnic unrest on a catastrophic scale since achieving independence from Britain in 1963.
Still, those who have long fought to end Moi's rule weren't mincing words as the opposition's victory became clear over the weekend. From his plush residence in one of Nairobi's richest neighborhoods, the 71-year old Kibaki declared victory on Sunday. He has been largely confined to his home after a car accident on the campaign trail in early December left him with a broken arm, a dislocated foot and a hairline fracture in a vertebra in his neck. Wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt, khakis and a sandal on one foot, Kibaki informed a gathering of Kenyan and foreign journalists that the country no longer wanted "a president whose job it is to bully others." On Monday, with an expressionless Moi sitting next to him, Kibaki continued his blunt denunciations of the previous regime. "We have inherited a country which has been ravaged by years of misrule and neglect," he said. "Corruption will cease to be a way of life in Kenya."
Those gathered in Nairobi's Uhuru Park and nearby streets to witness the historic handing over of power yesterday cheered such statements, taking advantage of the first opportunity of their lives to heckle Moi in his presence. The anti-Moi sentiment was so strong that he was delayed for hours from departing the state house because of fear that crowds would pounce on the vehicles that were to accompany him to the inauguration ceremony. Upon his arrival at the park shortly after midday, Moi was bombarded by a hail of stones as he made his way to the main stage. His last speech as Kenya's head of state, witnessed by a number of other African presidents, was nearly inaudible as Kibaki's supporters hissed and booed with two fingers raised in the gesture that has come to represent the rainbow alliance.
"This is a historic day in the life of our country," said Moi. "We have demonstrated to the whole world that Africa can determine its own destiny without destruction." The peaceful transition is a credit to Moi -- though this is a continent where leaders must frequently be lauded for doing what they should.
Even though pre-election polls showed Kibaki's party well ahead, the elections, deemed largely free and fair by international and domestic observers, were a startlingly swift defeat for Moi's Kenya Africa National Union (KANU), which has controlled the presidency and the parliament since 1963. With 206 of 210 parliamentary seats determined as of 8 a.m. Kenyan time today, Kibaki's party had captured 126 seats to KANU's 61, the remainder being divided among a handful of smaller political parties. Fourteen former KANU cabinet ministers also lost their parliamentary seats, as did Moi's vice president for the last two months, and 86 of those seats so far determined went to candidates who had not previously served as members of parliament.
In this way, in a mere matter of days, one of Africa's longest-ruling parties was relegated to the opposition. Uhuru Kenyatta, who won a seat in parliament but lost by more than 30 percent in the presidential race, is now left the momentous task of, as he put it, rebuilding "from where we are, and from those ashes."
Though much more peaceful than Kenya's two previous multiparty elections, the weeks and days before the vote were not completely violence-free. A former parliament member was killed, seven members of one incumbent candidate's family died in a suspected arson attack and one legislator had his eyes gouged out. Still, these and other largely isolated incidents of violence pale when compared with the ethnic clashes that left at least a thousand dead, tens of thousands displaced and millions of dollars in property destroyed during the last two elections. (Subsequent investigations by the judiciary and the legislature implicated senior ruling-party officials and local law-enforcement agents in those clashes.)
Yet the euphoria and relief over this rare African instance of a peaceful transfer of power could, for Kenyans, quickly fade if Kibaki's coalition government fails to deliver swiftly on its many campaign promises. These include pledges to jump-start the economy, provide free primary education to all children, improve health-care services and end corruption. Though Kibaki is set to announce his cabinet appointments today, a number of observers question whether the new government will be able to institute fundamental changes.
The newly formed opposition contains many former KANU strongmen who defected merely because Moi picked the untested Kenyatta to succeed him rather than themselves. George Saitoti, for example, Moi's longest-serving vice president, was implicated in the biggest corruption scandal in Kenya's history (in which money was paid to a company exporting gold from the country -- which doesn't have any known deposits of gold). Kibaki, for his part, enacted legislation outlawing a multiparty system in 1982 while serving as Moi's vice president.
"This coalition is first and foremost a coalition of convenience," said Philip Nyinguro, a professor of political science and senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi. "Though this election will mark an important period of transition, it probably won't lead to fundamental change in terms of public accountability . . . You can't clean up without teaching past evildoers that corruption doesn't pay."
Alex P. Kellogg is a freelance writer in Nairobi, Kenya.
