LETTER TO SOUTH AFRICAN PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI

[On the occasion of the swearing in of Thabo Mbeki as the second democratically elected President of South Africa, in my capacity as leader of the Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa (KENDISA), I wrote the incoming President a letter objecting to the invitation of President Daniel Arap Moi to attend the swearing in ceremony and urging President Mbeki to intervene to halt the human rights abuses of the Kenya Government and help hasten the coming of a new democratic order in Kenya. ]

16^th June 1999

The Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa

P.O. Box 30942

Braamfontein

Johannesburg

President Thabo Mbeki

Office of the President

Union Buildings

Pretoria

Dear President Mbeki,

Please receive our warmest congratulations on your election as South Africa’s second democratically elected President. Your overwhelming victory is a sign of the faith that the people of South Africa have in your leadership and an extension of the mandate that they gave the African National Congress in 1994 to continue leading the transformation of South Africa into a modern democratic state and creating a new legacy of freedom and democracy.

We also wish to take this opportunity to commend the people of South Africa for peacefully organizing and conducting a successful election and in so doing for continuing to entrench democracy and the rule of law at home and showing an example to the rest of the continent.

The challenges you and your government face in the next five years are daunting. But we trust that under your able leadership, the people of South Africa will continue to do what they have done so well in the last five years – to act together, as the ANC election manifesto bids them, further to give birth to a South Africa of freedom, prosperity and security for all, committed to act together to solve the national problems that confront all South Africans.

As Africans, we rejoice in the strides that South Africans have made since they ended apartheid minority rule five years ago and we join you in looking forward to a future full of hope for this country and for the continent of Africa. As Kenyans residing here, we express our gratitude for the hospitality that has been extended to us by fellow Africans.

Kenya and South Africa share a common history of struggle against colonial rule. President Mandela has gone on record as saying how our own struggle against colonialism inspired the ANC in the 1950s, and how the Mau Mau Freedom Fighters provided part of the inspiration for the formation of Umkonto we Sizwe. And although Kenya was not one of the frontline states, some of South Africa’s exiles during the days of apartheid found a welcoming home in our country. We imagine that it is in light of these shared historical ties that President Daniel Arap Moi has been invited to attend your inauguration.

However, we find it ironical that President Moi can be present at what is, in effect, a celebration of democracy and respect for human rights less than a week after his government violently disrupted Kenyans who were peacefully demonstrating in Nairobi. Their only crime was to ask for a people-driven process of much needed constitution reform – a process that will ensure that the people shall govern.

Mr. President, we remind you that the ANC election manifesto places a high stake on the African Renaissance and emphasizes South African’s role in bringing it about. It says in part:

“Our challenge is to promote peace and development, to foster democratic systems of government, respect for human rights, and an end to corruption throughout the continent.”

But while the days of dictatorship are decidedly over for South Africa, the Kenyan government, under President Moi, seems committed to swim against the current and to march against the spirit of the African Renaissance. The following are but a few examples of how the Kenyan government has failed its people:

Basic rights:

President Moi’s government continues to abuse basic rights of citizens at will and trample the people’s legitimate aspirations at whim. This was most recently demonstrated by last week’s events in Nairobi. Kenyan citizens cannot express their views without inviting brute violence from the police. Ironically, the same police force that is so efficient in disrupting peaceful demonstrations is unable to guarantee security to the majority of Kenyans, especially those that are suspected of holding views contrary to those of the establishment. Torture in police cells is endemic. The labour movement – so instrumental to the liberation of South Africa – is virtually dead in Kenya, as the government will not let it operate and organize independently.

Corruption:

President Moi has over the decades presided over one of the most corrupt systems on the globe. State coffers have been looted bare by people in government and their close associates.

In the last week alone, the official report of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has revealed the theft of millions of shillings from the taxpayer by people in power. The Vice President and a senior Cabinet Minister in Moi’s government have been implicated in a Kshs 850 Million (85 Million Rands) scam, while the President’s son is alleged in the same report to have imported six luxury cars without paying duty.  Impunity is the name of the game as year after year the Auditor-General reveals massive corruption implicating individuals whom, in spite of overwhelming evidence, the state does not prosecute, because they form an integral part of the ruling cabal.

In the meantime, the state in unable to provide basic services such as medical care to the most needy, education and security. The number of people who die in hospitals for lack of drugs and facilities, and in preventable accidents on roads that have not been repaired for years as the money has disappeared into private accounts, is fast approaching genocidal proportions.

Constitutional reforms:

Virtually every sector in Kenya is facing imminent collapse, yet the government refuses to listen to any voice but its own deafening self adulation. After a long struggle for meaningful liberation that will enable the people to govern through a new democratic constitution, the Kenyan government has recently thwarted genuine efforts at making such as a constitution a reality. Ignoring a national outcry, President Moi now insists on using a Parliament which is neither wholly legitimate nor truly representative to rubberstamp a document of his own making whose only aim will be to perpetuate the 36 year reign of the ruling party in power.

Mr. President, Kenya has many problems – their name is legion! South Africa too has its own problems, and one might well legitimately ask why we should burden you and your new administration with our problems while there is so much that needs your attention at home. We seek to involve you in the affairs of our country for three main reasons:

First, you will agree that, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The problems in Kenya are causing a major exodus of desperate people seeking a better future and many are ending up in South Africa. It is in the interest of South Africa to help Kenya to resolve the issues facing us and thereby make our country habitable again. We would respectfully remind you of your words in your address to the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan, on 9 April 1998, where you said:

Such are the political imperatives of the African Renaissance which are inspired both by our painful history of recent decades and the recognition of the fact that none of our countries is an island which can isolate itself from the reset, and that none of us can truly succeed if the rest fail.

Second, while the problems facing Kenya may be similar to those of South Africa, the distinction should always be made that South Africa’s problems are a legacy of apartheid which the people have together embarked upon dismantling. Kenya’s problems on the other hand are a creation of a handful of selfish and corrupt individuals who have entrenched themselves in power and seem to be on a crusade to impoverish the rest of the citizenry and deny them their basic human dignity.

In your speech in Tokyo, you committed to fighting neo-colonialism in Africa to ensure that the people did indeed get to govern themselves. You said that the exit of Mobutu Sese Seko from the African stage represented the death of neo-colonialism on our continent. But we hasten to point out that African kleptocracy did not die with Mobutu, for there are still some leaders with mobutu-esque tendencies who preside over the hopeless impoverishment of their own people. The African Renaissance shall not dawn on our continent  as long as enlightened African leaders continue to turn a blind eye on their wayward brethren and the consequent suffering of millions of their fellow Africans.

Third, the recent South African elections are a glowing testimony to a young constitutional order that is working. South Africa is blessed with one of the most liberal constitutions in the world and one which the South African people themselves drafted in a truly participatory process through the Constitutional Assembly. These lessons in constitution-making are still fresh in the minds of South Africans and can be shared with Kenyans as we seek a way out of the quagmire into which we have sunk.

In this regard, our plea to you is easily captured by paraphrasing your own plea to your Japanese audience, with reference to the Meiji Restoration, in your speech of April 1998:

We are moved by the conviction that the last five years of South African history and the  transformation from the troubled days of apartheid to the point, today, where you have a vibrant, modern, democratic state, has a multiplicity of lessons for us Kenyans, which we cannot afford to ignore or, worse still, not know. If we as students are badly informed and badly governed as we are, you have a responsibility to be our teachers. The people of Kenya are ready to learn, even if their leaders are not.

Mr. Mbeki, as we share in the joy of South Africans today when you are inaugurated as their new President; and as we join in marking Youth Day – a day when so many fell in order that the people might govern – we humbly seek to remind you that elsewhere on this continent, life is a daily struggle that is quickly becoming a meaningless search for meaning. We ask for the intervention of your government in a multiplicity of fora to help us hasten the day when our own “dark days of despair shall give way to the season of hope.”

We thank you for your kind attention, Your Excellency, and take this opportunity to convey to you the assurances of our highest consideration.

Yours faithfully,

Njonjo Mue

for The Kenya Democratic Initiative in South Africa