Liberia: a virginity that was De-flowered

The journey to the country-side was what I looked forward to most this time. Abraham Odoom, my fellow traveler to Liberia had been District Chief Executive (DCE) of Twifo Herman-Lower Denkyira during part of the Kufuor administration. He was later promoted to be deputy minister of Local Government and then Health . He earned these promotions because as DCE he was able through the cocoa hi-tec- to increase production of cocoa through modernization- effective use of fertilizers and other agro-chemicals such that his district registered the highest production in Ghana. The cumulative effect of this had been that production levels in the country jumped from 350,000 to over 700,000 tones by 2008. The other traveler, Kwesi Poku was based in Monrovia as a consultant of the World Bank but as agro- industrial advisor to Florence A. Chenoweth, the Minister of Agriculture. He had in the 1970s and 80s worked in Liberia where he is associated with some of the agro-industrial developments. In his sixties, he knew more about the country-its promise and its destruction through the war than many of the technocrats in charge now. Some of his consulting papers for instance, Agro-Industrial Value Chains- Development Strategy Frame-work for the multilateral institutions and government of Liberia ⁵ had been interesting. Like many others and a running theme of lamentation in This Child Will be Great, he questioned the basis of Liberia depending on a mono-crop-rubber plantation economy of Firestone whose presence in Liberia has dominated productivity out-look without any value chain addition to the lives of the peoples for decades. He asks pertinent questions and review strategic situations elsewhere- in Malaysia which like Liberia depended on rubber and tin as twin pillar of the colonial economy. “Initial primary commodity production continued to dominate the economy in the early years following independence however, in view of colonial Malaysia’s heavy dependence on rubber and tin export earnings, following sharp rubber price fluctuations during the 1950s and declining rubber prices in the 1960s, and in anticipation of the inevitable exhaustion of tin deposits, diversification of the economy after independence seemed imperative.”

He makes the same argument with oil palm whose potential in Liberia is perhaps higher than in Malaysia and again the comparison with Thailand is expressive. It rains more in Liberia than any other country in West Africa. But this rainfall pattern is also tempered with a lot of sunshine making rice cultivation (the staple food) of the people the most ideal place to cultivate. Yet for years even before the war, that was not taken advantage of as Thailand did in south-east Asia markets.

Cocoa is another crop with great potential to succeed. The industry had however never been seen as a stimulus to growth, employment and poverty reduction. In a meeting and visitation to a demonstration farm in Grandbassa, about an hour and a half drive from Monrovia, it was clear compared with operations of the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board that there had been little state investment in cocoa and its institutions. What is taken for granted elsewhere in the production process are major issues here .

The Liberian Produce Marketing Corporation (LPMC) has existed for decades. When I met with its Managing Director, Nyah Mantein he confessed that until Johnson Sirleaf suddenly focused on creating awareness of the crop, he had not seen its stimulus nature. The budget of the LPMC is low- $500, 000 per annum. It can only pay the salaries of between 50-60 workers within and outside of Monrovia, those of about 130 pensioners and recurrent expenditures. Because the industry was dead, there was no case made, over the decades for any strong budgetary support.

Here, like Ghana, there are no large cocoa plantations but small scale productions whose cumulative out-put in Ghana is very high- next to Ivory Coast. Over the years 30,000 acres of farms out of the potential 3-4 million hectares of cultivation and richer soil composition were abandoned. With a possibility to drift 200,000 people into employment (compared to Ghana’s estimated 600,000), the problem with Liberia lies in the fact that it takes between 5-6 years from planting to harvesting in the absence of requisite technology which in Ghana limits harvest to 3 years.

The Liberia situation is worst because apart from the problem of land tenure, cultivation techniques, harvest, fermentation, drying of beans are virtually unknown. Ernest Atta, an agronomist who had been part of our travelling team had noticed in this demonstration farm constraints like pruning, de-shading, and wrong chemicals for good soil fertility. He also observed that though labour and spraying-streams in and around the farm, as well as well built solar dryers were available, they were also underutilized.

That oil palm and cocoa production alone could generate revenue more than what rubber had done for this country over a century is not in doubt. A Ghanaian economist, Kwame Sarpong ⁶ ( had led in the transformation of the cocoa industry in the 2000s)who has done a detailed analysis of cocoa as a transformative crop to the economy and poverty reduction in Liberia feels it could be more than black gold. For cocoa unlike oil, gold or other natural resources is a grassroots, peasant occupation with less sophisticated skills; its wealth is a bottom-up and not top-down distribution; its multiplier effects show first in the improved social and economic conditions of rural people and their investments in other businesses.

But why this diversification has not been able to take place is not a peculiar problem with Liberia but a development puzzle on a continent of multiple and abundant resources.

We spent some time in Monrovia but for close to ten days in the rural parts of the country- observing its agriculture potential and how if that is right, it could lead to rural poverty reduction . The role of aid agencies – their influence on policy even if sometimes unrealistic is most exemplified here. They have the money. And we also had meeting on policy with them including with the IITA on the Sustainable Tree Crop programmes of assisting farmers to expand farms through nurseries. The major challenges has been procuring seeds from Ghana and Cote d’ Voire to support the programmes. The expatriates at the office were so consumed with forestation and other preservation practices and prepared to spend money on these more than on other programmes of tangible positive growth outcomes.

The Liberia programme of Assistance in Priority Areas had however been in the following which is not different from many in sub-Saharan Africa though the intensity to address the Liberia case was obvious:

1. 
   Peri-urban food production to feed 70 percent of the population as a result of post-war displacement .
   
2. 
   High technology tree crops rehabilitation, consolidation and modernization with a view to expansion of current small-holding of one acre to economic size of 4 hectares per farmer.
   
3. 
   Extension and training programme for public and private sector capacity building both in academic and on the job training.
   

But the rural ecology is agro- friendly and the cooperatives were well-organized and the availability of the youth as a labour force available.In the Lofa County we visited some of the abandoned farms and at a small town – Kolahun met with cooperative farmer group.

In Foya District, we visited individual farmers and listened to their firsthand accounts of challenges and promise- a farmer with about 47 acres which was under rehabilitation and Fofana’s 80 acre cocoa farm which according to the owner had done 30 mt annually as against present lower output of 1 mt. We also drove all the way to Bong County in total over 10 hours of rural drive out of Monrovia.

As we drove back to Monrovia with sunset almost upon us, there was as much to talk about this country- potential for investors to help with its re-constructing as the government and leadership had much work to do in convincing the investor community of prospects. We have seen some Asians- from Malaysia dotted around the ……..hotel with lap-tops and animated conversations in Monrovia. One of them from Diaby Syme told me they were interested in the oil palm industry in the country. In fact since 2006 they had done feasibility studies into oil palm cultivation . By 2010 they had acquired 200,000 hectares of oil plantation the biggest ever in Africa and are investing billions of dollars.

But the largest concentration of expatriates and foreign business people seems to be Lebanese. With tens of thousands originally born here many have also migrated from Lebanon especially the South with Shiite Islamic mentality. As merchants, they dominate the main commercial streets of Monrovia- particularly the long stretch of Randall Street. They sell imported office furniture and accessories, electrical appliances and others. Their role in the war is sometimes overlooked but they allied themselves with some of the war lords to ensure that their investments and property were protected. Some of the Lebanese- Liberians and other immigrants with social and survival beliefs not quite different from the Hisbelloah in South Lebanon, played hard against their own. The rivalry among themselves and their businesses interest was such that some of them hired mercenaries to kill their business rivals in order to take over their business and property. By 2010, their population in the country was estimated to be 100,000-120,000. Like those of their kindred in many parts of West Africa in the 1960s, they had been in the timber, gold and diamond sectors exporting to Middle eastern countries as well as imports from there. Emmanuel Akeampong,⁷ a Ghanaian historian who had looked at Lebanese –Africans and the issue of national identity (from the time they first migrated to Sierra Leone in the 1860s ; to Ivory Coast, Gold Coast/Ghana and Nigeria. Liberia was not initially a popular destination and if the numbers given are correct, it could be more of the opportunities of post-conflict societies for businesses) . There had been tension between some Africans and Lebanese-Africans as they question themselves- whether their (Lebanese) interest lies first in their profit margins for which reason they would abuse all ethical values to fulfill ( and often the victims of retribution or attacks-rape of their women, buggery) or whether Lebanese consider Africans after decades of shared identities as co-patriots. But the role of the Lebanese in the economies of Liberia as in other African countries cannot be underestimated.

But there have also been Ghanaian and other West African road contractors, educationists, engineers and other professionals in Monrovia. They may be working for multilateral institutions or their governments. Compared Liberia to their countries, they feel blessed. War itself is a destructive occurrence and for a country that has an unhappy history of elite rule for decades worst. It has been one of the ironies of human hypocrisy.

By September 2011, the challenge to Sirleaf’s leadership was imminent in the form of a general election. The country had 29 political parties. Though only 16 had been certified by the National Electroal Commission (NEC), three were considered major - the United Party led by Sirleaf, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) led by Mr Winston Tubman and the Liberty Party by Brumskine. Tension breed out of mistrust was high. From the Electoral Commission, James Framayan been accused of politically been aligned to Sirleaf, the latter had also made unnecessary pronouncements. She had said on a political platform that she would use over 500 UN-Nigerian troops to teach her opponents a lesson when in fact they were part of the Nigerian Formed Police serving with UNMIL and was most unlikely this unethnical decision could be made by the UN. Such heated exchanges in intemperate language had been normal in politics of West Africa and not surprisingly in a post-conflict country. The earlier decision by Sirleaf that she would be a one term president during the elections in 2005 had endeared her to many Liberians. Some voted for her based on the understanding that it could partly lead to peace. But her later decision not to respect her own promise was considered deceitful. The opposition certainly and understandably played on this to explain that many of the things she had said including making the country better were done in such manners.

But other legal issues came up. The Constitution requires that candidates for presidential elections should have lived in the country for 10 years. This tactily meant Sirleaf was not qualify at all to stand elections but by the middle of September 2011, the NEC overruled this Constitutional provision which paved the way not only for Sirleaf but the others- Winston Tubman, Dew Tuan Wleh of the National Democratic Coalition and the former rebel leader Prince Johnson of the National Union for Democratic Progress. A Supreme Court interpretation came to nothing. To disqualify three of the leading candiadates with control of over 70 percent of votes was not realistic under the circumstance.

That the election outcome was not clear-cut with anticipation of a run-off showed the extent to which opposition to Sirleaf had solidified. It had been so partly because of these political issues; though some achievements in socio-economic terms had been made (attracting billions of dollars into especially the mining and rubber sectors and a GDP growth of from 5% to 9.5% over the years; the IMF had even cancelled over 4 billion of 4.7 billion she owes it), a lot of Liberians were still poor and disappointed in the level of progress. If Sirleaf was internationally respected and even adored for her professional attainments by governments and western institutions, not so with at least half the people in the country. She certainly panicked in the course of the campaign and it is likely incumbency was over-exploited and bribery and corruption of opponents became some of the strategic instruments to prevent disgrace through loss. When it was announced only days before the October 11 elections that the Nobel Institute had deemed it proper to award her the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace, it did not surprise friends and foes. Tubman, her closest opponent and like her, an alumus of the UN system and a Harvard graduate, was not either. He felt irritated and equated the announcement at that time to indirect interference in affairs of his country.It meant nothing to Liberians and he said it would not let Sirleaf win on the face of it. Even though the prize committee had awarded it to three women- another Liberian political and social activist, Leyman Gbowee and the Yemeni revolutionary and rights activist, Tawakkul Karman , they explained it had decided to award it to women for that year and that the three measured up to merit.

True to Tubman’s prediction Sirleaf did not win the October 11 outright ballot outright. The hundreds of observers from the ECOWAS, Africa Union, Carter Center, the EU and others all declared the conduct of the elections as free and fair with Sirleaf obtaining 44 percent of the 1.2 million votes compared to Tubman’s 33 percent votes. The surprising decision by Tubman’s CDC not to participate in the re-run for alleged fraud and vote buying, an accusation that not only Sirleaf party’s but CDC’s involvement was a blow to the country’s democratic journey. The demonstration by the CDC against these allegations led to clashes with the Liberian police and UN forces. Deaths and injuries were recorded and the re-run affected through absention by opposition supporters; for afraid of the past ghost many stayed at home. But it was also clear that with Prince Johnson throwing his party’s support to Sirleaf, she would overcome the ballot and she did with a low turn out of ??? Though the credibility of the results and Sirleaf’s eventual swear-in was affected, the international observers backed her through and accused the Opposition of been bad losers.

Sirleaf ends This Child Will Be Great with : “ Nevertheless the challenges faced by Liberia and much of Africa are by no means in surmountable. But in confronting them we need to draw strength from ourselves and our rich past as a people, as well as from the time-honored successes and continued goodwill of our enduring partners. I am confident that Liberia can and will become a nation to be proud of once again. And Africa will rise.”

It might as well be that. Many may not see the silver lining yet and question the basis for any hope of seeing it yet but perhaps it would be long, very long to see the dreams of today come true easily and particularly with a high level of expectation.

-October 2010

Notes

1. 
   Johnson, Sirleaf Ellen, This Child Will Be Great-Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President, (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).
   
2. 
   Duodu, Cameron, “ ” in South Magazine 1989.
   
3. 
   Sanchez Enrique, Arevalo de Leon, Bernardo, Shinilue, James, Apostolidis, Kallissa, Peace in Liberia- Challenges to Consolidation of Peace in the Eyes of the Communities (published by the UNOPS/Interpeace in September 2010). See particularly pp5-12.
   
4. 
   Agyeman-Duah, Ivor, Between Faith and History- A Biography of J.A. Kufuor (Oxfordshire: Ayebia Clarke Publishers, 2007).
   
5. 
   Kwesi, Poku, Industrial Value Chains- Development Strategy Frame-Work for the Institutions and Government of Liberia. Written in 2010 and submitted to the World Bank and the Agricultural Ministry in Liberia, this is an unpublished document and working guide. See p18 especially.
   
6. 
   Sarpong, Kwame, Liberia Cocoa Corporation. A report prepared by the Optimal Consultancy Services limited, Accra in 2010 led by Kwame Sarpong, an economist who also first headed the Ghana Cocoa Board as CEO in the Kufuor administration . It was initially prepared for the development of a cocoa Nucleus Estate and a supplementary small-holder scheme. In three parts, the first- Background to Assignment gives details of the industry in Liberia.
   
7. 
   Akeampong, Emmanuel, Race, Political Identity and Citizenship in Ghana-The Example of the Lebanese (Accra: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006). This book came out of the inaugural lecture given by the author as a Fellow of the Academy. Its earlier draft was delivered in South Africa at the Race Relation conference in Durban in 2001 and later at the Centre for the Advanced Study of the African Society in Cape Town. For the general West Africa presence see in particular Chapter 2, “ Settling” Not “Sojourning”: The Lebanese Auxiliary Diaspora in Colonial West Africa”.
   

Many people have their own impressions about South Africa. Its history of apartheid had been murky and made it for years a pariah state. But many also, especially, first time visitors experience deep cultural shock. In Africa but it is not of Africa. The beauty of Johannesburg with its modern architecture. The imperial presence of Cape Town. The calm and tranquility of Port Elizabeth and beyond it, the rural and rolling hills of Grahams town in the Eastern Cape. All mixed up – to make the rainbow nation as Archbishop Desmond Tutu first described it . These presences on the surface generate cynical mental discussion about the development benefits of apartheid if compared especially to Sub-Saharan Africa . But it is another story if this wealth is measured in the well-being of the 40 million inhabitants.

Soweto-(South western collections of townships) in its previous incarnation takes you back to urban congestion, dirt and dispossession. Now a sort of a tourist attraction and for years a pantheon of apartheid because of the Soweto uprising in 1976, it has been regenerated from 1994 and is now a spiraling estate. One of its attractions is 8115 Orlando West Soweto: the Mandela House built in 1945, where he once lived with wife, Winnie. And not far off, where Desmond Tutu also lived and where Winnie to this day lives. That neighborhood sits at the feet of history. For just in front of Mandela House is an intersection-Vilkakazi and Ngakane streets - the famous streets where the Soweto Uprising started which among other things led to the partial destruction of Mandela’s house.

If you are like me who developed political consciousness in the 1980s and lived in Africa where anti-Apartheid songs like Fire in Soweto beamed the airwaves all the time and programmes were disproptionately devoted to apartheid, the images you developed of that society should be derelict. It could be Harlem in New York you bet, for the histories are similar. In the 1960s and 70s, Harlem and Soweto represented the poverty and oppression of blacks. The former in a free country and the latter in a ‘colonial’ setting. Notwithstanding the era of the Harlem renaissance-the out-pouring of great works of literature and arts by African American artists in the 1920s and ‘30s and in Soweto, the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko in the 1960s, today, there can’t be talk of a balance of progress. The transformation of Soweto at least in the congested semi-urban sense called Shanty towns under apartheid is a miracle. The state has regenerated housing for which the working class has a mortgage working payment plan. Housing is the first dignity that post-apartheid attempted to give blacks. Mandela has said of his own -8115 Orlando West in his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom that, “It was the opposite of grand, but it was my first true home of my own and I was mightily proud. A man is not a man until he has a house of his own.”¹

Other social needs like schools, health-care, unemployment and even low wages could be burdens for political leadership. But I saw more hope here in people as we drove through the quiet streets on this early afternoon when many parents were at work in Johannesburg or Pretoria than in Harlem or the South-side of Chicago years before.

Political and social identities are of essence here. In such historic places of resistance, it is the heroes and heroines of liberation whose identification with the neighborhood soars its image and gives it a price. We saw this happened when in the 1990s Bill Clinton decided to set up his office in Harlem, when Maya Angelou bought a property there as well as Henry Louis Gates Jnr.

After Obama’s victory in the election and before his inauguration I walked for hours on the streets of Harlem sampling views on what that spectacular event meant to African- Americans among idle labour, petty traders, criminals and drug addicts . The addition as I walked around the exercise was the volume of Obama T-shirts, portraits and a new hope among people which also dim the argument of lack of opportunities and possibilities if you work hard and are ambitious.

But all this is residing in the past. As the black middle class is growing and the troubled history of Soweto becomes distant affair in the minds of a new generation of blacks, people want to live in the best areas in town. It will be difficult to get CDs of the old anti- apartheid songs like Sonny Okosuns’s Fire in Soweto, those of Bellefonte and Miriam Makeba, nor do people commonly sing, Bring Me My Machine Gun or Kill the Boer. Music truly defines the issues and the times in which they were produced. Hip- Life music even a blending of lyrics of old with the current lives. Many in my generation get disappointed with the disappearing past. Societies move and people don’t remember the past everyday in their lives otherwise there will be no progress.

Over a decade after apartheid rule, many still resent the unclear polluted atmosphere- racial scars in schools, business and politics . The Xenophobia or re-emergency of what under apartheid was called black on black violence witnessed in the embarrassing attacks and deaths on African especially immigrants, illegal some of them were during the mid years of the Thabo Mbeki presidency registered on the mind of people.

The problems of underdevelopment in this 400 billion dollar economy is also a problem of human capacity development- a lack of an entrepreneurial class for years, skillful labour in the history of apartheid which was only partly addressed with the return of the ANC leadership from exile in 1990s. The return insignificant in terms of numbers to change the status quo rather rendered a rift between some of the alienated returnees and those who lived and confronted the system in their absence. That had its problem.

The issue of small scale businesses and entrepreneurial spirit which lacked in black ruled South Africa was that, at least in the reckoning of the novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ², what some African immigrants long liberated from colonial rule and acquainted with running businesses tried to do in South Africa. And that was what triggered in the long term the racial onslaught on them under the pretext of overtaking jobs that should go to South Africans.

As I say many –South Africans- blacks or whites, Africans and visitors from Europe have varying tales to narrate, tales as complex and surprising as the evolution of the country itself; about its emerging economy (now classified in the company of Brazil, Russia, India and China).

Their successful hosting of the world cup in July 2010, the capacity of displayed infrastructure, the performance of the national team of Ghana which was the unofficial team of Africa- reaching the quarter final stage somehow reconciled South Africa with the rest of the continent. But it did not or does not end tales.

For many including accomplished Africans who thought the end of apartheid was as much their cake as South Africans, it was some shocking disappointment on issues of race, immigration and post-apartheid attitude. On a March 2007 evening, I sat at the VIP Lounge with the Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka at the Kotoka International airport in Accra as he prepared to catch a flight to Lagos. I had invited him to do a book launch and also invited a South African journalist to cover the event. Soyinka was somehow reluctant to grant this journalist an interview after I had reminded him previously. He eventually did some ten minutes with him.

“ Do you know why I have decided never to go to South Africa on any invitation?” He asked me. “ No”, I responded. And then he explained in the presence of the reporter how he was detained at the Oliver Tambo International airport. Yes, he had entered South Africa soil without a visa but he had been assured he would be given on the spot visa. And not that it was an ordinary invitation. He had been invited by Nelson Mandela for his birthday celebration. Now, here was he who fought since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 and using the weight of the prize, to internationally demonize apartheid but unable, once the system had been destroyed to enter it. It had nothing to do probably with race but everything to do with disrespectful attitude. Soyinka had met Mandela several times as a friend and was one of the first international figures to meet him after his return from Robben Island. He who Soyinka calls a “sage” and had dedicated and presented him with a copy of Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems.³ Soyinka has since, after major persuasion reclined his decision and visited Cape Town in August 2010 for the launch of his memoirs and to great welcome, You Must Set Forth at Dawn.⁴

**************

I have been to South Africa a couple of times. This visit was exceptional in the sense that it had to do with Thabo Mbeki who succeeded Mandela and recognized as an intellectual president or Africa ‘s twenty-first century philosopher king. After his presidency- or been botched out of office by Jacob Zuma, he decided on the Thabo Mbeki Foundation a think tank dedicated to Africa’s renaissance at the University of South Africa. It’s basically to help eradicate poverty and underdevelopment on the Continent; building friendship and peaceful cooperation among the peoples of Africa and other fall-out of Pan-Africanism. There is also the African Leadership Institute attached to it and devoted to investing in “ Thought Leaders for Africa’s Renewal.”

His presidency had partly been blissful and partly tragic. Blissful in the sense that, he steered the longest economic growth in the country since the Second World War. Internationally, as Garcia Macheal? who represented Nelson Mandela said at the evening of the launch: “You were there to re-shape African unite, its revival, and peace… channeled the resources of South Africa in these fulfillment; that for the first time, G8 leaders invited African leaders to their meetings.”

He had also epitomized the ironies of the game and that was the tragic part. Mandela according to Alec Russell, for years Johannesburg bureau chief of the Financial Times and author of, After Mandela-The Battle for the Soul of South Africa ⁵ had rather wanted Cyril Ramahaso to be his deputy and eventual successor but it had been Jacob Zuma the populist and darling boy of the ANC who had pushed for Mbeki. No wonder Zuma became Mbeki’s deputy later on. But to show that he had massive support within the ANC next only perhaps to Mandela, it was Zuma who after been sacked by Mbeki in controversial corruption charges had the last laugh of defeating Mbeki in election and taking over the ANC.

Adekeye Adebajo who writes on South Africa and based in Cape Town has compared the two friends to the characters in Soyinka’s 1963 play, The Lion and the Jewel , Lakunle and Baroka. The former, a westernized school teacher with contempt for Nigeria and particularly the customs in its western part from which he came and Baroka, a traditional chief as they raced for the love of beautiful Sidi. As the end of the play the traditionalist won. In Adebajo’s appreciation, this classic play with meaning in post-apartheid South Africa as it was in pre-independent Nigeria is upon us again. Zuma who wears traditional Zulu dress and is polygamous is the Baroka and the westernized and sometimes arrogant teacher- Lakunle is Mbeki. The sought after love and Sidi represents the coveted ANC.

But Mbeki’s intellectualism in his early presidential years- arguments about the causes of HIV/AIDS as South Africans (with 5 million infected) died and rated one of the highest in the world and his reluctance for anti-HIV drugs usage; his much criticized diplomatic approach over Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF in Zimbabwe and methods in settling peace process in some parts of Africa were not as abysmal as especially the western drug manufacturers of HIV vaccines and the media (some with clear vested interest) made it looked. By the time he became aware that too much intellectual policy and thinking could be victims of political exigencies and sometimes senseless, it was too late. Zuma’s populism would triumph at the end. The same media especially the British that were on his tail when Zuma took over with the many peccadilloes- revival of some vestiges of Zulu traditional characteristics, his personal depiction as sex lover, contradicted urban South Africa ways and western notions of political modernity. “ What have we done?” some might have asked after the anger had gone. Mbeki, he who had been groomed by British educational institutions from sixth form to studying economics at masters level at the University of Sussex ; lover of Shakespeare, of the English romantic poets and in the process a poet himself on the traditions of the old English masters; working with another anti-apartheid icon Oliver Tambo in London and leading secret negotiations with the apartheid authorities in the 1980s. He suddenly started receiving more reflective coverage.

But perhaps and only so, it is this over 30 years of continuous absence from South Africa and the acquired educational background that has shaped his character. His biographer, Mark Gevisser with greater access to his subject tells us that the trouble lies partly in Mbeki’s role model of centuries gone by- the lead character and also title in Shakespare’s tragic play –Coriolanus. This heroic Roman soldier was eventually killed because of pride and obduracy. In fact Shakespare’s moral teaching about the play is political arrogance and the fall of man. Instead of seeing Coriolanus as Gevisser writes in his book, A Legacy of Liberation-Thambo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream, as a “tyrant driven by hubris” Mbeki interprets Coriolanus in a twentieth-century honour role being “ full of truthfulness, courage, self-sacrifice, absence of self-seeking, brotherliness, heroism, optimism.” ⁶ Mbeki even describes his hero’s critics in ancient Rome as, “rabble and unthinking mob..”

After we had settled down at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sandston, Johannesburg, Mbeki’s former chief of staff Mojanku Gumbi,⁷ told us that, Mbeki would come over to welcome President Kufuor. He did. At 68, it was not just complimentary when Kufuor told him but for his grey hair, he might have been taken to be 40 years.

“ Ah, like this young man” pointing at me and collapsing into the elongated sofa with Kufuor.”

“Mr. President I am so glad that you honored my invitation to come. When I got the response from your office , I said, “Ah! This is great news. Welcome to South Africa, my brother.” Mbeki said .

“ What else could I do. If the invitation had even said, come and be a spectator, I will have done that because of all the things you did for Africa-” Kufuor responded.

But it is really interesting how people after leaving stressful jobs, seem to have some youth restored to their presence. Facial expression changed even as I am sure he liked the compliment.

“ I have a problem, Mr. President.”

“What is it about?” Kufuor asked.

Mbeki had invited 750 people for the dinner launch of the Foundation that Sunday evening but it had been oversubscribed from within the country and outside by 200. The best thing was to personally intervene and ensure that there would not be chaos. But for now, he had come to thank Kufuor for honoring his invitation. He had selectively invited him and former President Chissano of Mozambique as speakers and as they engaged in this humorous talk of their respective past, there was a mutual feeling that people have missed in a way some form of their governance. The sudden euphoria of renaissance in the first decade of 2000 was fast diminishing. It was not only Mbeki of their generation of leaders who was setting up this Foundation- indeed Chissano has a peace academy in Maputo and Obassanjo, a huge and certainly expensive presidential library in his home-town of Abeokuta in Nigeria.

“ There must be linkages of all these foundations and centres, Mr. President.” He said as he left Kufuor’s hotel suite.

Shorter, like Chissano and overshadowed by Kufuor in height, it is an interesting observation how some medium or short size personalities in history could defy the power and glory associated with huge frame leaders.

***********************

“ I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

“My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.”

This poetic rendition by Thabo Mbeki is part of his most famous speech, I am an African given on the occasion of the adoption by the Constitutional Assembly of The Republic of South African Constitution Bill of 1996. It is also the first chapter of his collection of essays titled, Reflections on African Challenges and Prospects. ⁸ It spells out his pan-African credentials and the history of the struggle for liberation to that point. Like the late President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, also poet, cultural theorist and leader of the Negritude Movement in the 1960s, this speech, reflected in his 20 out of his 28 years living as exile in Zambia, Nigeria, Botswana, Swaziland and in between travelling extensively on the continent makes him really confident. His taking over the renaissance leadership of Africa felt like an obligation. He had in earlier encounters with the late Julius Nyerere of Tanzania been convinced that South Africa’s role in Africa should be unquestionable in post-apartheid.

During his presidency and after, Mbeki engaged in negoliating complex conflicts in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe. He also chairs, since leaving office the Africa Union High Level Panel on Darfur (AUP) to investigate how to expedite peace and reconciliation in that region. The AUP was replaced by the Africa Union High Level Implementation for Sudan. He thus played an important role in the independence of South Sudan in 2011.

There has always been this group of political black elite who feel that because of Africa’s past solidarity to South Africa there is an obligation for it to do good in return in a post-Apartheid. In the mid 1980s, I had six ANC youth South African classmates in journalism school in Accra. There were a dozen or more in near-by National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI). They had studied in other African countries, Europe and continued elsewhere because they could not return home under apartheid. They were adoptive to cultures and societies and understood by knowledge and lived experiences the continent better than many of their generation. Some had Ghanaian girl-friends and eventually one of them married a Ghanaian. The last time I heard they were living in South Africa with their two children. South Africans like these can easily share post-apartheid fruits with others. Like the Mbekis, they are the ones who talk about the renaissance of the continent. At school and especially on the day Mandela was released from Robben Island we all sang:

It was really in growing up from there that I reflected the lyrics of this national anthem, perhaps the only one in Africa which inspires continental nationalism instead of the ones with national and restricted historical aspirations. And the ANC the only party which in contemporary politics bears a continental name recognisation. Thus by its wealth, history and aspirations, South Africa could be leading Africa but it is also known that it is easier said than done.

Some cynics have questioned the basis of past leaders setting up foundations to pursue uncompleted issues and policies whilst in government. Is it a way of upstaging their successors especially if they have higher international profiles? Chissano as part of the launch of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation had disagreed in a South African Broadcasting Corporation TV interview and panel discussion and feels that if they have international profiles and are useful there should be a centre or foundation where this knowledge should be stored. As I sat through the discussions, I could not agree more with Romano Prodi, former Prime Minister of Italy, Mamphela Ramphele former Managing Director of the World Bank and Vice Chancellor emeritus of the University of Cape Town as well as Samuel Kobia, former Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches all co-panelists. If an African renaissance would take place and be useful it should be African centered in its thinking of issues.

The launch certainly had its atmosphere. Of the 300 people who attended, over 95 percent were black South African intellectuals. Not that one could expect peasant participation on such high policy thinking issues but the absence of mostly white intellectuals could be explained either in terms of the lingering of post-apartheid distrust of races or because it was of little concern to them.

But then , South Africa cannot have a mono-narrative for its past and the future ahead of it. Moeletsi Mbeki thinks that the first hurdle in South Africa post-apartheid attitude both to itself and its leadership of Africa should start with a self-retrospection. He feels the only real moment of Africa’s renaissance had fleetingly passed us by – the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of Zimbabwe which challenged the entrenched political leadership in that country. The inability of the South African government especially the one led by Thabo Mebeki to sustain it, was the beginning and end of the renaissance; a wild assessment of a concept one may say.

In his book, Architects of Poverty-Why African Capitalism Needs Changing ¹⁰ published in 2009, he uses great scholarship and deep understanding of Africa but with Marxist analysis sympathetic to peasant deprivation, to explain why South Africa political elite will be wrong. He argues that the difference between the South African economy and the rest of Africa notwithstanding the fact that with 5.5 percent of Africa’s population, South Africa accounted for 26.6 per cent of the continent’s GNI, are that:

1. 
   an abundance of natural resources;
   
2. 
   the dispossession of the black and Afrikaner peasantries;
   
3. 
   the imposition of a freehold land tenure system;
   
4. 
   the transformation of the peasantry into wage labourers;
   
5. 
   the importation of foreign capital and skills;
   
6. 
   investment in the health, education and general welfare of about 10 percent of the population;
   
7. 
   investment in a transportation and communications infrastructure;
   
8. 
   investment in agriculture, manufacturing and financial services;
   
9. 
   the establishment of rule-of-law institutions; and
   
10. 
    The establishment of an independent mass media.
    

The certainty of doom and not even as invocation of an uprising for such fulfillment is clearer then the concluding remarks of Marx in The Communist Manifesto.¹² Certainly, the behavior of post-colonial leadership in Africa has been a major problem. Some of the cases he builds against them are very true but to analysis the problems of a continent today using class analysis alone lacks some pragmatism- there are constructions and de-constructions of issues to do with ethnicity, deliberate deprivations of freedoms and types of social services in colonial past and even under apartheid which were not created by the new post-colonial African political elite. They had to still attempt to correct them because they affect social progress. Are the peasants right in everything they do in Africa ?- the rate of procreation despite advisory services of birth controls ; what about the role of international trade and the multilateral systems, geo-politics and Africa’s integration in the global economy, trade agreements, and impact on Africa?

Overlooked in the case of South Africa is that a capitalist model had already been created and infrastructure laid out – the best in the continent for growth. This is notwithstanding the ANC’s no alternative but leftist posture with which it waged the liberation struggle. Some of these postures, it is clear will be incompatible with its economy of today.

If you walk the streets of South Africa, look at its growth rate figures (not forgetting that like all economies, there are rise and fall periods and even eras of temporary collapse and re-generation); its global emergence in the corridors of the UN, you begin to ask yourself when this will happen- a century from now as Marx had written of capitalism or this will fall before our very eyes like the sudden collapse of the Lehman Brothers. Some made the prediction as Mandela was been sworn into office- based on evidence from Africa that the black man would mismanage the country. It’s been close to two decades.

The very fact that Moeletsi could challenge this way and doubt South Africa’s role in any renaissance is also a virtue for it could embolden its victims to live above expectation. It is an example of the complex narrative of South Africa exemplified in the deep thinking of twin-like looking brothers- the Afro-pessimist or a political Amos that Moeletsi could be and the retired Afro-optimist Thabo; the sons of Mandela’s contemporary and fellow of Robben Island, Giovan Mbeki.

The world is really what it is, difficult to predict its systems and twists of contour movements over the gone centuries and those to come. Hope is a pursuance but for it, aspirations die. What will be Africa’s role and what will the 21^st century hold for it? Optimism is a preferred choice. Again the feeling of Thabo from, “I am an African”:

Notes

1. 
   Nelson, Mandela, The Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela( London: Little and Brown, 1955). Also published sometimes as: Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, it has since 1956 been published in dozens of languages and under different titles.
   
2. 
   Chimamanda Ngozi, Adichie, a Nigeria novelist of among others, Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus. Though a novelist, her themes are historical reflecting post- colonial Nigeria and Africa.
   
3. 
   Soyinka, Wole, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (London: Random House, ). Was one of the early collections published after the poet’s Nobel Prize award in 1986. A copy was presented to Mandela who was inspired whilst in prison by some of such writers.
   
4. 
   Soyinka, Wole, You Must Set Forth at Dawn (London: Methuen, 2007).
   
5. 
   Russell, Alec, After Mandela-The Battle for the Soul of South Africa (London: Windmill Books, 2009).
   
6. 
   Gevisser, Mark, A Legacy of Liberation-Thambo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream (London: Macmillan, 2009). This international edition of the book had extensive global review including Adekeye Adebajo’s in Transition 103 titled Prophet of Africa’s Renaissance. Even though character profiles like these are of interest to economists, financial analysts and brokers in the speculation money and commodity markets, the book has also been criticized for lack of adequate detour of Mbeki’s foreign policies.
   
7. 
   Mojanku Gumbi for years, Mbeki’s Chief of Staff when President was also instrumental in the setting up of the Foundation. Conversations with author in 2010.
   
8. 
   Mbeki, Thabo, Reflections on African Challenges and Prospects (Johannesburg: Kyosti, 2010). The essays in five sections covering South Africa, its relations with Africa, the multilateral trading system and others. Mostly written by Thabo himself.
   
9. 
   God bless Africa, popularly known as…….south Africa’s national anthem was for years, especially during the anti-apartheid struggles the most popular protest sing in Africa.
   
10. 
    Mbeki, Moeletsi, Architects of Poverty- Why African Capitalism Needs Changing (Johannesburg: Macmillan, 2009). See chapter 3 and 4, The De-Industrialization of South Africa and the Making of a Failed African States respectively.
    
11. 
    Ibid., pp10 -12
    
12. 
    Marx, Karl, Engels, Frederic, Communist Manifesto. Originally published in 1848 as Manifesto of the Communist Party.
    
13. 
    See the essay, I am an African in Mbeki’s collection, “ Reflections on African Challenges and Prospects.” p13
    

Facing Mount Kenya

Kenya like any state has a past to reconcile with in its journey to nationhood. Political re-alignment (which has not seen much of the day since independence in 1963) and technology have shown how far this country has travelled. One of my visits coincided with what the media called the re-birth of the country in August 2010 - the adoption of a new constitution to usher in the country’s Second Republic. This was after the 2007 electoral disputes which almost degenerated into a civil war. A columnist of the Saturday Nation ¹(in its August 28 edition) shared a nostalgia which more than anything affirmed how time has passed.

Sometime in the mid 1960s, Jane then a pupil at Kenya High School had a row with her father- Jomo Kenyatta then a few years into his presidency. Jane had invited friends for a birthday party but the father suddenly had to cancel it because the whole family would go to the port city of Mombasa for a vacation. The concern and noisy protestation of Jane, as she later told the columnist, Gakiha Weru in the article, End of all-Powerful President, “was not just about the party but the embarrassment she would go through because some of her friends were not on phone and there was no way of communicating to them that the party was off.”

But the father was of course Jomo Kenyatta, the most powerful man in Kenya . To solve the daughter’s problem, “he lifted the telephone handset and simply called the then Voice of Kenya (now Kenya Broadcasting Corporation), directing them to put out an announcement to the effect that, “Jane Kenyatta’s birthday party that was scheduled to be held on Saturday has been cancelled.” It was done and Jane I am sure was relieved.

In today’s terms, critics will accuse Kenyatta of abuse of office and waste of tax payer’s money. But it will also not have been an option. Kenya has the biggest mobile phone penetration of 49% in East Africa.

I have been fascinated with which of the two has influenced Kenya’s post-colonial evolution most- the inherited Constitution from British colonial rule of 1963 the so-called Lancaster Constitution or the colossal personality of Kenyatta as it strode on the political wave-length. Unlike Ghana or Nigeria where transitional constitutions to independence reflected on concerns of the protagonists of the times, it was not the case in Kenya. Ghana had its 1951 Constitution addressing the issues of the liberal opposition to Nkrumah-the Danquah-Busia tradition, the middle class, farmers and especially the cocoa merchants in the Ashanti , the Brong and Western regions(then largest cocoa producing areas and generating the bulk of revenue) and followed it up with elections and later more amendments to the Constitution. Some scholars like Robert Bates ² have added to this the maintenance of colonial institutions such as the Cocoa Marketing Boards (even the anti-colonialist Nkrumah Government did not abolish but benefitted)which held prices of the commodity to the detriment of the producers even when the world price had gone up. The agitations and resultant movement- National Liberation Movement (1954-1957) all helped to shape the nature of the new post-colonial constitution through a form of decentralized power at least legally before Ghana’s independence in March 1957.

In the case of Kenya, the Lancaster Constitution agreed to (by the inexperienced negotiators on the Kenyan side) had sought to protect the interest of its settler colonialists with powers vested in the Governor and then the in-coming prime minister and later president. Kenyatta and others criticized these provisions during the struggle for independence as it was on these that anti-colonial rebellions were quelled including through the activities of the Man Mau. The Kenyan historian William Ochieng writing on amendment to this Constitution in 1964 in De-colonization and Independence in Kenya says that, “The October 1964 Republican Amendment gave the President enormous executive power, which enabled him to provide the so-called strong and wise government that Kenya’s leaders believed to be essential at this stage of the country’s growth.”³ The amendments would grow to thirteen and more but not much would happen because the new political class from Kenyatta’s time saw the status quo as useful instrument for their own political survival against opposition and to the nurturing of a democratic dictatorship in their favour.

The British did not want to leave Kenya only because of its wildlife environment and blessed timeless safari heaven (where in contemporary terms the British royalty could reveal themselves and where Prince William made his nuptial decision); the Britons who still lived there had their business interests to be catered for in the negotiations at Lancaster. For if there was also at the evening of these de-colonization processes any African country that knew which ideological path to follow, it was Kenya. It got independence more like a neo-colonial state with capitalist investments already high. Apart from Britain the United States had since the 1920s made major investments here. American transnational companies such as IBM, Firestone, General Motors and banks had established offices from the 1970s. The country had also signed military agreements with the US which in the 1970s allowed the former to have access to Kenya’s international airports in Nairobi and Mombasa for naval vassals. In his essay on US Foreign Policy toward Kenya, Mueni wa Muiu ⁴ explains why Kenya was getting 99% of its foreign Aid from capitalist countries.

The other factor of influence in Kenya’s immediate post-independent path was of course the emergence of Kenyatta. Born in 1894 in the British East Africa to working class traditional people, he gained political consciousness through his Kikuyu ethnic group. His formal entry into politics in the 1920s was through the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) which sought the unification of all Kikuyus, protection of their cultural heritage including lands and inherent resources; eventually becoming its general secretary and editor of their newspaper; championing where need be the ethnic superiority of his people including defence of female genital mutilation of girls. Even his first travel overseas was through the KCA to lobby for Britain to return Kikuyu tribal lands to them.

This background most likely influenced the political patronage that many Kikuyu enjoyed -choice land in the Rift Valley, access to capital for business and political office. To this day the other groups – Luo, Luhya, Kamba, Maasai, , Kalenjin, Kisii and the Somalis (like the Ewes spread across Ghana, Togo and Benin) complain of Kikuyu dominance. Sometimes, its not ethnicity but a trans-ethnic interest which convert to middle class creation among them, especially the political class.

The irony for me has been that Kenyatta was also a Pan Africanist who perhaps considered himself in the mould of Nkrumah. But whilst he was conscious of his Kikuyu ethnic roots and sought sometimes to place them above others , Nkrumah from a minority group did the opposite- to the extent that he attempted the abolition of chieftaincy, a vehicle he thought promoted ethnicity. The real true unifier, the Pan Africanist who succeeded most in this enterprise was however Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who provided a clear cut formula of ethnic unification for a post-colonial state using the Ujamaa ideology- a form of African brewed socialism of collective villiagization even if the economic dimension of it flopped and chieftaincy- still a useful local government tool in parts of Africa largely got destroyed in the process.

Kenyatta’s reaction to ethnicity and national development might however have been given a modern outlook in Europe where he later in the 1930s studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) under the influential and world acclaimed master at the time- the Polish, Bronislaw Malinowski. Many of Malinowski’s theories later defined the field including his reasoning that, “when the needs of individuals, who comprise society, are met, then the needs of society are met.” How this can work in a multi-ethnic society is difficult to appreciate. Kenyatta would move on, under Malinowski’s guidance to work on his LSE thesis on Kikuyu ethnographic matters. With a Foreword by his master, this would later be published as Facing Mount Kenya.⁵

Notwithstanding flaws in his time which still vibrates in their movement forward, Kenyans still remember him ( in the many monuments in his name)and his generation of leaders – Oginga Odinga, Joseph Zuzarte and others for what good accomplishments they brought.It was from what Kenyatta set up as standard that would be followed by others after. It was the only precedent they knew. Unlike in Ghana or Nigeria where the military intervened to no avail, Kenyans stuck to the known precedent and managed to create an artificial stability supported by capitalist interests until the end of the Cold War.

His death in 1978 brought to the throne his Vice President, Daniel arap Moi. Despotic and an allay of capitalist interest from abroad until the end of the Cold War when he was betrayed and forced to accept multi-partism by the same interest group. He may not have consciously planned of an ethnic ideology in favor of his Kalenjin people for almost three decades that he was in power but he knew of their marginalization and not much that he did was able to tilt or balance regional, generational redistribution of wealth and resources. The stability of his time again clouded the misconception of a nation at peace with itself even after he had opened up and conducted elections from the late 1990s.

But then Kenya is also one African country where from the liberation leaders- including Jomo Kenyatta to current times, turned political management and state craft into a serfdom. The problem this created was resistance to change, to other ways of doing things. One individual who symbolized this was the man who would replace Arap Moi in 2002 as President- Mwai Kibaki.

A Founding member of the Kenya African Democratic Union in 1960, he was secretary to the Minister of Finance from 1963-65; became Minister of Commerce and Industry till 1969; Minister of Finance and Economic Planning from 1970-78 (concurrently serving as MP); Vice President to Moi as well as Finance Minister till 1983. He had other portfolios till 1988 when the fall-out came and he became leader of the Opposition, Democratic Party against Moi.

One would expect that after half a century of public service to his country, he would give way to a younger generation for except been a lecturer in economics at the Makerere University in Uganda (where once an undergraduate in economics and graduate studies at the London School of Economics in Public Finance), all his life has been in public service of Kenya.

Kibaki’s disagreement with Moi had partly been because of the Moi’s appointed successor of his party, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta. Kibaki finally became leader of Kenya in his 70s and the world saw a president in a wheel chair been sworn in as he had slipped and broken legs and perhaps limps during the 2002 campaign. With a re-newed confidence perhaps not so much in his leadership but getting rid of Moi, Kibaki by 2007 had also become unpopular. His inability to reduce corruption, a flagship of his campaign and the growth of a middle class at the expense of the working and labour forces became unacceptable. His own appointed anti-corruption crusader- John Githongo who attempted to expose the rot in his government had to run to exile in Britain. The government was not only internationally ridiculed through Githongo’s many media exposes but a controversial biography on him, Its Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower by Michela Wrong did not do the government any good.⁶

It must be said however that the economy (of whose trajectory Kibaki knew more than many had done well- again how well depending on what kind of indicators and their interpretations) was in good health. Under Kibaki in 2002, the growth rate was 0.6%. By 2007 when the elections took place it had grown to 6.3%. Certain fiscal strategies might have been adopted as well as the rise in tea exports and tourism receipts. As is the case many new governments in Africa especially from the 1990s had registered impressive growth rates as they attempted to fulfill expectations of electorate only to re-lapse few years afterwards. In the case of Kenya however, growth rate and per capita income could also be deceptive. The biggest economy in East Africa with the best infrastructural development, it is also the headquarters or bureau of many multilateral institutions especially the UN, development agencies and media organizations- from CNN to CCTV (which to increase Chinese role in the development of the region chose Nairobi for its headquarters). The population of this community runs into conservative estimate of 30,000. Hundreds of millions of dollars for personal ennolments and projects are poured into the economy annually. It is most likely that a large amount of the sum is also transferred to expatriates accounts . But it is likely that in the calculations of national revenues and per capita, all these are factored into the domestic calculations which could create their own distortions of growth; growth that may be rootless or specific in the sense of productivity of the middle class and unreflective of the larger segment of the people- a non human centered type.

In a sense it is better to talk of economic development in two sets. The Nairobi economy- modern and class based(with the oldest stock exchange in sub-saharan Africa established before its independence in1954) where all these donor expenditures and government’s own circulate with its big corruption schemes and the rest of the economy which would be discussed subsequently.

This among other factors (some of which have been explained above) probably explained why most believed Kibaki lost the 2007 elections this time to a man of a different political generation- Ralia Odinga.

Born in 1945 from the Luo ethnic region, a millionaire businessman, leader of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and whose late father, the popular Vice President to Jom Kenyatta- Oginga Odinga was Kibaki’s political contemporary.

It has been established that the post-conflict electoral crisis which claimed the lives of 1,500 Kenyans and displaced 600,000 was not a one-sided instigation and that both Kibaki’s PNU and the ODM were involved as the International Criminal Court confirmed in late 2010. But it still did not dispute the fact that Ralia Odinga won the votes and not Kibaki. The power sharing agreement as we know was as a result of a panel, Panel of Eminent African Personalities, set up by Kufuor in 2008 as African Union chair and made up of three – former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan who chaired, former President of Tanzania,Benjamin Mkapa and Mrs Graca Machel. It was to “ achieve sustainable peace, stability and justice in Kenya through the rule of law and respect for human rights” with the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) .The Panel of Eminent African Personalities of the African Union, as it came to be known, agreed on the signing of the National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008 which Act marked the end of violence.The PNU and the ODM agreed to do the following:

1. 
   Immediate action to stop the violence and restore fundamental rights and liberties.
   
2. 
   Immediate measures to address the humanitarian crisis, and promote healing and reconciliation.
   
3. 
   How to overcome the political crisis.
   
4. 
   Addressing long-term issues, including undertaking constitutional ,legal and institutional reforms; tackling poverty and inequality as well as combating regional development imbalance; tackling unemployment, particularly among the youth; consolidating national cohesion and unity; and addressing transparency, accountability and impunity.