NAIROBI—“Smile, it’s a New Kenya,” read the Wednesday headline of Kenya’s largest newspaper, the Daily Nation. Raila Odinga, the probable winner of the Christmas election, last week agreed to call Mwai Kibaki president; in exchange, the post of Prime Minister was created for Odinga, along with an agreement to split the cabinet 50/50 between the two rival parties. Now that the notion of cooperation has had a week to sink in amongst the belligerents, it’s okay to say it out loud: peace has returned to Kenya.

Just how close a brush Kenya had with civil war is a question that will feed barroom debates for the next generation or two. In the meantime the country’s newfound optimism is a welcome change from the first few weeks of 2008, whose spirit was captured the day every newspaper in the country ran a simultaneous front page banner begging Kibaki and Odinga to “Save Our Beloved Country.”

Now the saving can begin, and not a moment too soon. The damage done over the past two months is breathtaking: Some 300,000 people displaced, about 1,500 murdered (a disturbing number of them by police – one study suggested up to 40 percent), a decimated tourist industry (Kenya’s mainstay), and just about every other industry crippled, too. The incidence of rape tripled—600 were reported in Nairobi alone during January and February, where the youngest victim was a nine month old girl. She died. Many of those who survived will now have HIV, which will be translated into another statistic in a few months’ time.

One question few people care to ask about all this is, why should we non-Kenyans care? Or more to the point: Do we, really? Another African disaster—both the Kenyan example and its continental precedents call to mind Stalin’s famous dictum that one death is a tragedy, a thousand are a statistic. Ultimately, the empathy we feel for the victims of a disaster has more to do with the talent and number of their chroniclers than the scale of their tragedy.

In that regard, Kenya is lucky. Virtually every international news agency has a bureau, if not its African headquarters, in Nairobi. During the violence, journalists could simply walk from their offices to the nearest riot. This was a made-for-TV catastrophe, in the same way that 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina were. The BBC, Al-Jazeera, CNN, Canada’s own CBC—all these and more were able to start broadcasting the images with which Kenya is now associated the same night they started happening.

It also helped that the US regards Kenya as a strategic outpost in their hyperbolized fight against terrorism. Neighboring Somalia has been churning out jihadists for years, and Kenya’s own heavily Islamic coast is thought to harbour quite a few as well. Condi’s personal visit, followed by some strong words from Dubya, showed just how important it is to America that Kenya stay on the right side of the tracks. It’s domino theory all over again.

Whether you agree with them or not, the politics of self-interest seem to have worked in Kenya’s favour this time around. They also suggest a reason to care that goes beyond morality or catharsis. Chaos breeds chaos, and there’s no telling how a tiny seed sown in a distantly troubled country might blow across the ocean to take root in your own. The Kenyan saga provided two of the most appreciable examples: HIV and terrorism. But of course there are others, most of which we never find out about until it’s too late. In a world whose economies, citizens, crops and cultures are increasingly mingled, it’s no longer possible to consider what happens in Kenya (or Tibet, or Burma) as purely an ethical problem—a disaster abroad poses tangible risks to health, stability, and income at home.

The seeds of Kenya’s most recent drama were planted at least as far back as independence in 1963, with fresh kernels tossed in over the decades. Preferential access to land, the tribal politics of a 24-year dictatorship, breathtaking corruption that culminated in a rigged election all these and more laid the groundwork for this latest of African let-downs.

There is a huge opportunity now to address these long term issues. Among other things, a new constitution is in the works (admittedly, not for the first time) that has the potential to put Kenya, and by extension her neighbours, on the path to a better place. There was a lot to love about the old Kenya, but for everyone’s sake let’s hope this new one doesn’t resemble it too closely.

Tags: international, kenya

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Posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.