It is very simplistic to argue that the post-election crisis in Kenya was caused by the “stealing” of the general election by the Party of National Unity (PNU). The allegations of a rigged election by Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) simply sparked off economic, social, political and cultural grievances that had been swept under the carpet by the post-colonial regimes.

These grievances had been verbalized by various social groups in Kenya, including the Air Force that tried to overthrow the government of President Moi in 1982. Underground movements in the 1970s and 1980s had raised these grievances, and the leaders of those movements were detained, jailed or murdered. Radical members of parliament had raised these issues, and some of these members ended up assassinated. The so-called “Second Liberation” in the 1990s raised these grievances when that movement agitated for multi-partism. Those who came to power as a result of the second liberation quickly forgot these grievances and did nothing to address them. Since the 1990s very vibrant social movements from the civil society have consistently raised these grievances using the agitation of a new constitution as the entry-point to resolving these grievances. Yet again, the civil society agitation has always been resisted by the state with only token reforms being undertaken since the 1990s.

During the entire period after Kenya’s independence, the ruling class in Kenya, which is multi-ethnic and multi-racial and which has always had solid support from foreign interests, particularly from the West, did not take the resolution of these grievances seriously. Indeed, the Kenyan ruling class did not seek to diffuse the tensions by carrying out reforms, but instead created conflicts among the citizenry based on ethnic, regional, religious, generational, gender, racial and class divisions. The ruling class, through its policies, enhanced corruption. Its policies did nothing to stop the shrinking of the middle class base in the country, thereby undermining the stability of the nation. Its policies did nothing to equitably distribute national resources- the major part of these resources going to pay off foreign debts. Its policies towards the West confirmed the ruling class’s interest in reinforcing the economic, social, military, cultural and political interests of the West. While poverty among the majority of the people worsened, the ruling class basked in corruption, enrichment and impunity, creating a glaring economic gulf between the poor and the rich while the middle classes were continually knocked down the economic scale to join the ranks of the poor.

The post-election crisis in Kenya, therefore, calls for difficult national dialogues on all these grievances. For the purposes of this address I will confine my comments to the issues of land, ethnicity, marginalization of women and the youth, and national sovereignty. I conclude by reflecting on what the Kenyan lessons mean to the South African situation.