Regrets Only: An Africa Journal: What About Kenya?

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

What About Kenya?

Amidst all the attention of late focused on Somalia, Sudan and Congo, it is easy to overlook the fact that Kenya, long a symbol of stability on the continent, is still seething with unsettled issues that could lead to renewed violence and even, in the estimation of some very concerned analysts, Rwanda-like bloodshed.

I have for some time been looking for a report on the situation there and it came today in the form of an update from VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu in Nairobi. She writes that Kenya's fragile eight-month-old coalition government is in deep crisis amid accusations that President Mwai Kibaki is trying to sideline and undermine the authority of the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

She goes on: Months of tension between the two leaders peaked last Friday after Mr. Kibaki signed a controversial media bill into law despite opposition from the prime minister. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is said to be in crisis talks with key leaders in his Orange Democratic Movement political party to assess whether he and the ODM, as the party is widely known, are being deliberately sidelined by President Kibaki and his Party of National Unity or PNU.

High-ranking ODM officials have publicly complained about several decisions announced by Mr. Kibaki and his allies in government in recent weeks. ODM says the decisions were made unilaterally and have had the perceived effect of diminishing the role of the prime minister in the coalition government.

The growing rift between ODM and PNU reached a crisis point Friday when President Kibaki signed into law a media bill that has been condemned by journalists and human rights groups as a move to muzzle the media.
The law, if implemented, gives the government broad powers, including the right to raid media offices, wiretap journalists and control broadcast content and restrict licenses.

Prime Minister Odinga, who vehemently opposed the bill, says he had been given assurances by President Kibaki that it would not be signed into law. One Kenyan newspaper described the president's unilateral action as a slap in the face for Mr. Odinga.

ODM officials say despite the current crisis, they are not about to pull out of the coalition or call for its dissolution. But analysts say they fear the renewed political bickering could lead to more violence and instability in Kenya.

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Why?

It is October, 1997. I am standing in a rubble-strewn Brazzaville street as the city returns cautiously to life after a bloody civil war. Armed men are all around me, most of them looting, occasionally firing off bursts of bullets in celebration. But I am not concentrating on this anymore. Instead, with the hand holding my microphone limp by my side, my tape running senselessly. I am looking at another corpse -- this one of a man, perhaps in his 20's, his legs charred. I know there will be no voice to record. But his lips are apart, his arms outstretched, fingers together, as if in prayer. It seems another one of Africa's dead is trying to speak to me. And I feel I owe him this one last consideration. I think maybe he wants to share his anguish, his despair, his pain. Or maybe a last word to a parent or a wife or a child. I feel badly -- because I do not know for sure. I do know though that I have seen corpses like this before -- victims of war, or of genocide, or of famine, or of sickness. A symbolic path of the dead now runs through my mind -- a personal collection reflecting the real path their corpses have left across much of Africa: from arid Somalia in the northeast, across Sudan and into northern Uganda, down through steamy Rwanda, Burundi and Congo in the center of the continent. Some have been young men in uniform, their bodies shattered by a bullet or a shell. Some have been old men, thin beyond belief, weakened by hunger or disease. Some have been women, their dresses in tatters, their faces etched with silent agony. Some have been children, too young to die, their skulls cleaved in half. Some I have met in battle-scarred streets, some in burned-out buildings. Some I have seen sprawled amidst flowers in an open field, some floating, limbs bound, in muddy water. Some I have found in groups thrown into a dirt pit, some alone in the aisles of a gutted church. I have, at times, had imaginary conversations with these dead of mine -- their unrecorded voices playing on endlessly inside my head, sometimes loud, sometimes just a whisper. I tell them I am sorry and if it were in my power, I would restore them to life. But I can't. It's not in my power. Perhaps the only help I can give is to try to tell their story.

The Reporter

Alex Belida has been in international broadcasting since 1971. He spent nearly eight years in sub-Saharan Africa as a correspondent for the Voice of America, based first in Nairobi (1993-1996) and then in Johannesburg (1996-2000). He covered conflicts and humanitarian crises in Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, northern Uganda, Angola and Lesotho as well as political unrest in Zimbabwe and catastrophic flooding in Mozambique. He suffered gunshot wounds while reporting in Somalia.
While in Africa, he was elected Chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association in Nairobi and served as Treasurer of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Southern Africa during his Johannesburg assignment.
Before going to Africa, he served as VOA's Senior White House reporter for four years following stints as coordinator of the 1988 Presidential Election coverage and as National News Editor. Before those Washington assignments, he was based in Germany, where he served as Soviet affairs, East-West security and German affairs correspondent (1982-1985).
Following Africa, he served as Pentagon correspondent. In 2004 he was named Managing Editor and in 2007 became Senior Advisor for News at VOA. He retired in 2011.
Before joining VOA, he worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in both New York and Munich, rising from reporter to Assistant News Director. He has a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and a MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. In 2006, he received the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. He also has an honorary doctorate in communications from the Somali National University.

The views expressed here are his own.

Regrets Only: An Africa Journal

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

What About Kenya?

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