Kenya’s Post-Election Violence and History of Impunity

Abstract

On 27 December 2007, Kenyans went to the polls for just the fourth time since the reinstatement of multi-party politics in 1992. Incumbent Mwai Kibaki, representing the Party of National Unity was controversially declared the winner and hurriedly sworn in as President. Within hours of this announcement, supporters of Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement protested this result through violent attacks upon suspected PNU supporters. Hostilities escalated when ethnic leaders from both sides of politics organised, funded and incited youths to commit acts of brutality against opponents. By the time that this 2 months of bloodshed had ceased, at least 1,113 persons had been killed, more than 350,000 forcibly displaced and countless more subjected to sexual violence and other inhumane acts. A peace settlement was negotiated by an international mediation team, led by Kofi Annan, which culminated in the formation of a power-sharing government with Kibaki as President and Odinga as Prime Minister. The Government of National Unity was entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the violence did not recommence and that the next elections were held peacefully. This included, inter alia, addressing the country’s history of impunity and ensuring that those responsible for the post-election violence faced criminal prosecutions.

This chapter provides an overview of the disputed 2007 presidential election, the four phases of the post-election violence and the causes of this violence. It identifies the institutionalisation of impunity as one such cause and provides a history of this, from the colonial era until the 2007 elections. This brief history reveals a pattern of killings, torture, involuntary detention and corruption, either sanctioned or condoned by governments, both colonial and post-colonial, without perpetrators ever being held accountable. Often no investigations were conducted into the atrocities (as in the case of the Mau Mau counter-insurgency, the Wagalla Massacre, Moi’s torture chambers and the Anglo-Leasing Scandal). On other occasions, investigations were conducted but the reports were not made public for a substantial period of time (such as the Akiwumi report into electoral violence) or the report was never released (the inquiry into the Garissa Massacre). Where the reports were released, they sometimes failed to name suspects (as occurred for the three inquiries into the assassination of Robert Ouko). Even when perpetrators were named (as was the case with the reports into electoral violence and the Goldenberg Scandal), the respective governments took no steps to hold such persons accountable. In total, successive presidents established at least 25 commissions of inquiry in relation to these excesses of state power. Although valuable reports were produced and recommendations made, they were regularly ignored or, in the words of human rights advocates, ‘left to collect dust’. It is this history of impunity that allowed the organisers and perpetrators of the 2007 post-election violence to commit atrocities with the confidence that they would never be investigated or prosecuted for their crimes.