The 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis was a violent political, economic, and humanitarian crisis in Kenya. The crisis erupted after incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the 2007 presidential election. Supporters of Kibaki's main opponent in that election, Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, alleged electoral manipulation. This position was widely confirmed by international observers, as being perpetrated by both parties in the election. Even the head of the electoral commission himself confirmed that he did not know who had won the elections despite announcing the incumbent as president.
In part due to the ethnic and geographic diversity of Kenyan politics, no singular narrative can explain the reaction of opposition supporters to the announcement of Kibaki's swearing-in, which was done on December 30, 2007, at night. The opposition announced a mass protest against the official results, and the violence was largely stoked by the police. Raila Odinga encouraged supporters to engage in mass protests which he announced on local television and radio stations, most noticeably in Mombasa, Eldoret, Kericho, Kisumu, Nakuru and parts of Nairobi. Police shot hundreds of violent demonstrators, including a few in front of TV news cameras, causing more violence to erupt.
Targeted ethnic violence (as opposed to violent protests) escalated and at first was directed mainly against Kikuyu people—the community of which Kibaki is a member—living outside their traditional settlement areas, especially in the Rift Valley Province. The violence started with the murder of over 50 unarmed women and children, some as young as a month old, by locking them in a church and burning them alive in Kiambaa village in the outskirts of Eldoret Town, on New Year's Day. Tribal tensions in the Rift Valley region had resulted in violence in several previous Kenyan elections, most notably in the 1992 Kenyan Elections. This issue prompted Kikuyu Politicians and Businessmen to mobilise their youth popularly known as Mungiki to start killing Luos.
In Mombasa, the Kenyan coastal residents took to the streets to protest the electoral manipulations and support their preferred candidate. Tensions rose as the landless indigenous Coastal communities felt this was a time to avenge the grabbing of their land by mainly up-country Kikuyu. Looters also struck a number of stores in Mombasa. The slums of Nairobi saw some of the worst violence, some of it ethnically motivated, some expression of outrage at extreme poverty, and some the actions of criminal gangs. The violence continued sporadically for several months, particularly in the Rift Valley.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in the country about a month after the election and successfully brought the two sides to the negotiating table. On February 28, 2008, Kibaki and Odinga signed a power-sharing agreement called the National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008, which established the office of the Prime Minister and created a coalition government. The power-sharing Cabinet, headed by Odinga as Prime Minister, was eventually named on April 13, after lengthy negotiations over its composition; it was sworn in on April 17.
Background
The post-election demonstration and violence stemmed from a mixture of motives. Some included:
- Voting in elections has widely been along ethnic lines in many Kenyan communities
- Widespread perception that the count of the presidential election was modified in favour of Kibaki
- During colonial times Kikuyu people were displaced from their fertile highlands and after independence they were settled outside their traditional areas especially in the Rift Valley, where the ethnic Maasai people had populated originally before Kenya's colonization by the British.
- A belief among members of several other tribes that the Kikuyu community in Kenya has dominated the country's political leadership since independence
Reports by international observers about manipulations and admissions by members of the Electoral Commission of Kenya that their staff provided them with incorrect figures have further fuelled this anger. The violence was directed mainly against Kikuyus, belonging to the same ethnic group as Kibaki.
The violence against Kikuyus occurred all over the country but was higher in areas like the Nairobi slums, Nyanza Province, the Rift Valley, and the Coast, where opposition against Kibaki was particularly strong. The ethnically diverse Nairobi slums have also seen violence by Kikuyu-dominated groups—amongst them the infamous Mungiki—against neighbours hailing from western parts of Kenya.
Timeline
A BBC reporter saw 40 bodies with gunshot wounds in a mortuary in Kisumu, which was the opposition's main base. A witness also told them that armed police shot protesters at a rally. There were running battles in the Nairobi slums. The local KTN television station said that 124 people died nationwide in the first two days of unrest.
On December 31, 2007, police reported that 40 people were killed in Nairobi and 53 in Kisumu, a major support base for Odinga. Four bodies were discovered in Mathare, in Nairobi, seven people were killed in Nakuru, and four people found dead in a village near Kapsabet.
Disputed results
Early results tallied indicated that Odinga held a strong lead on December 28, the day after the election, and the ODM declared victory for Odinga on December 29; however, as more results were announced on the same day, the gap between the two candidates narrowed, and with almost 90% of the votes counted (180 out of 210 constituencies), Odinga's lead shrank to only 38,000 votes. At a press conference on the morning of December 30, Raila Amolo Odinga accused the government of fraud, urged Emilio Mwai Kibaki to concede defeat, and called for a recount. He said that the Orange Democratic Party would not take the matter to the courts claiming that the courts were controlled by Emilio Mwai Kibaki. The Electoral Commission declared Kibaki the winner on December 30, placing him ahead of Odinga by about 232,000 votes. According to Odinga, as many as 300,000 votes for Kibaki were falsely included in his total. The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Samuel Kivuitu, said that while irregularities affecting the entire exercise did occur, they were a matter for the courts, not the Electoral Commission. Supporters of Kibaki, meanwhile, said that discrepancies had actually worked in Odinga's favor, arguing that discrepancies between polling station tallies and Electoral Commission results meant that Odinga had gained 53,000 votes while Kibaki had lost 106,000. Following the commission's declaration of his victory, Kibaki was promptly sworn in for his second term late in the evening on the same day, calling for the "verdict of the people" to be respected and for "healing and reconciliation" to begin.
Kivuitu said that there were some problems in the vote counting, noting that in one constituency the reported turnout rate was 115%. According to the European Union's head observer in the election, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the election was "flawed" and the Electoral Commission failed to establish "the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties and candidates"; he said that in some places EU observers were not allowed to see vote tallies until the Electoral Commission announced them: "the whole point...is to verify that the results are the same". The United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said that his country had "real concerns" about the election. While the United States initially congratulated Kibaki and called for the results to be respected, it also expressed concern, and on January 2, 2008, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department declined to confirm U.S. recognition of Kibaki's victory. In a telex from then US Embassy in Nairobi to the State Department in Washington DC [released in July 2012], US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger set out five scenarios as to who really won the election. He wrote, 'In all cases the margin of victory for either side is slim and ultimately unknowable'. The telex also noted that there was 'evidence of rigging on both sides' and Kivuitu said on January 2, that he had been pressured by PNU and ODM-K (Kibaki's and Kalonzo Musyoka's parties) into announcing the results without delay, and he claimed that he did not personally know who really won.
Within minutes of the commission's declaration of Kibaki as victor, tribe-based rioting and violence, primarily directed against Kikuyus, broke out across Kenya, and the government suspended live television coverage for some days. Odinga alleged that "a clique of people around Kibaki" sought to rig the election, but said that democracy "is unstoppable like the flow of the Nile". The ODM announced its intention to hold a ceremony on December 31, in which Odinga would be declared the "people's president", but police said that this could incite violence and that Odinga could be arrested if the ceremony occurred. Odinga then delayed this, but called for a million-strong rally on January 3, 2008 and for his supporters to wear black armbands as a show of mourning.
Odinga said that the ODM would not negotiate with Kibaki unless he resigned, because to do so would, according to Odinga, mean acknowledging Kibaki's legitimacy; he also said that, unless stopped, the "ruling clique" could rig the next election in five years as well, and that he was not afraid of being arrested, having been jailed many times in the past. For his part, Kibaki emphasized the importance of peace, stability, and tolerance in his 2008 New Year's message, speaking of the election as a concluded event and warning that law-breakers would be punished.
Rallies
Odinga said that the million-strong rally in his support planned for January 3 would take place in spite of a government ban, and he accused the government of being directly responsible for "genocide". Electoral Commission Chairman Kivuitu said on January 1, that he had been pressured by the PNU and ODM-Kenya to announce results immediately, despite the urgings of Western ambassadors to delay the results so that concerns about irregularities could be addressed.
On January 3, opposition supporters attempted to gather for the planned rally in Uhuru Park, but police fought them off with tear gas and water cannons. Another attempt to hold the rally was planned for January 4. Also on January 3, Kibaki said that he was willing to engage in dialogue "once the country is calm", and he described the continuing violence as "senseless", while Attorney General Amos Wako called for a recount, an investigation into the election, and the formation of a national unity government, saying that the situation was "quickly degenerating into a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions". Finance Minister Amos Kimunya said that if the ODM did not allege fraud, that would make it easier for the two sides to talk; Kimunya also said that the government wanted to mediate through Kenyan elders and did not want international mediation involving the African Union. KANU's Uhuru Kenyatta said that it might be possible for the two sides to work together, but that the ODM's position that Kibaki should resign before any talks took place was unacceptable, because then there would be "no government".
On January 4, ODM Secretary-General Anyang Nyongo called for a new presidential election to be held, without the involvement of the Electoral Commission. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said that this would be possible only if it was decided by the courts.
After meeting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, Kibaki said on January 5, that he was willing to form a national unity government, but Odinga, who also met with Frazer, rejected this, saying that Kibaki "should not come to the negotiating table as the president" and calling for the creation of a transitional government leading to a new election in three to six months. However, after Odinga met with Frazer for a second time shortly afterward, Odinga's spokesman said that the ODM would not demand that Kibaki resign or admit defeat if he accepted an international mediator. At about the same time, while violence continued, it was reported to be decreasing in Nairobi.
On January 6, Odinga called for rallies to be held on January 8, despite the government's insistence that the rallies would be illegal. Odinga's spokesman said that while the ODM ruled out a government of national unity, it could discuss "a coalition government with genuine power sharing" (which it said would leave less power for Kibaki than would be the case in a national unity government) or establishing an interim government to hold a new election. Odinga subsequently cancelled the rallies planned for January 8, saying that the mediation process, facilitated by Ghanaian President and African Union Chairman John Kufuor, was about to begin, with Kibaki having officially invited Kufuor, and that negotiations needed to take place in a peaceful atmosphere. Odinga said that he anticipated direct talks involving both himself and Kibaki, with Kufuor's participation. Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju said that by calling off the rallies, Odinga opened the way for negotiation and reconciliation.
There exist doubts that Kibaki really invited Kufuor (as opposed to him having come as a result of international concern for the worsening situation in Kenya). PNU members of parliament, newly appointed cabinet ministers and even the government spokesman, Dr Alfred Mutua, are known to have said Kufuor "was coming to take tea", and not to "negotiate with the warring factions regarding the elections"; this was captured both on TV and print media. In addition, the PNU side was actively downplaying the seriousness of the post-election crisis, saying that this was a local problem that would be dealt with locally. It even urged the displaced people at various police stations and camps to 'return home' and generally tried to dissuade international attention to the crisis. It is also worth noting that there were conflicting reports from Ghanaian weblogs about President Kufuor's visit. Some weblogs said he was not going to travel to Kenya, since the government did not view him as a welcome visitor, others saying he was required by his official responsibility as AU chairman to try to resolve the crisis in Kenya. Just before Kufuor's travel to Kenya, Moses Wetang'ula, the new Minister for Foreign Affairs travelled to Ghana to 'brief Mr. Kufuor' on the situation in Kenya, ahead of his trip to Kenya. These actions were perceived to be an indication of bad faith on the part of Kibaki and his team, and they preempted their bias against the talks between President Kibaki (and his PNU side) and Raila (and his ODM side). There were also indications that PNU did not want the discussion to be mediated by an outsider.