Review The Sunday Monitor

8 July 2001, by: Joseph Were

Anyone passing through the Isenya Shopping Centre bordering the Kajiado Central constituency in Kenya's Masailand on December 1997 would have seen a spectacle of people lining the street, clutching their stomaching and retching away. Vice President George Saitoti was campaigning in the area and pretending to vomit was the people's way of showing their disgust. This scene and others which might interest Ugandans just recovering from the most violent election ever in their nation's history is contained in Out For The Count, an analysis of the 1997 general elections and prospects for democracy in Kenya.

Out For The Count is a collection of case studies of a real voting exercise, by distinguished scholars determined to analytically write tomorrow's history today. Its 22 chapters have dramatic titles, shocking illustrations, and profound insights that will appeal to the curious reader and inform the scholarly.

Take the story of squabbles between Justus Kendet ole Tipis and William ole Ntimama in Narok North constituency In 1976. Ntinama defeated Tipis in the district KANU elections. But Tipis was a minister and a member of an appeals committee. So the elections were repeated. Tipis lost again but in the next elections in 1979, Moi prevailed on Ntimama not to run and Tipis was elected unopposed and used his position as minister in charge of Internal Security to make life difficult for Ntimama. In 1983, Ntimama expressed his intention to stand and was arrested for holding an illegal meeting. He was released a few days later and announced he was standing down for Tipis. Typically however, when Ntimama finally was allowed to run and defeat Tipis, he used the same dirty tricks against his challengers and earned himself the nickname "Mobutu".

In another incident a prominent politician is chased from the ruling political party for asking Moi to name a successor and in another, a teacher who dares to contest Baringo Central, a seat Moi has held unopposed since 1955, is hounded out of the constituency. Chapter 15, for example, where the story above is picked from, has the subtitle. "Of Sons' and Puppets' and How KANU Defeated itself." Written by Marcel Rutten (Ph.D), who was the co-coordinator of the Election Observation Centre, it tells a hair rising tale of election gerrymandering, murder, and intra-ethnic squabbling. There is also - "By Ballot, Pesa or Rungus" and "As Biased as Ever" The Electoral Commission's Performance, and 'Fresh Killing'.

Out For The Count is the outcome of a three-day conference to review the elections held at the African Studies Centre in the Netherlands and involving over 20 specialists on Kenyan politics, local and international election observers, diplomats, NGO representatives and Kenyan scientists since the 1960's. Since the 1960's Kenya has had several post-election evaluations and Uganda might be interested to study some of their conclusions, hold a similar conference, and make informed talks about their own experience.

Of course Kenya is not Uganda. It is a multiparty state where Uganda is a de jure no-party state. However, the focus on the politics of patronage, the 'big man' syndrome, and the concept of 'election without choice' are just a few similarities.

Also, Kenya's president Daniel arap Moi in 1997, like Uganda's Yoweri Museveni in 2001, was running for his last constitutional term and the book studies the attendant succession posturing. Both Moi and Museveni won, but Out for the Count shows that the 'no change' at the top is illusionary. It shows that every election, however bad, changes the outlook of civil society, the political society, and the masses. Every election removes the culture of immunity among leaders. The Kenyan politicians' tendency to protect political sites to safeguard ill gotten wealth, the divide-and-rule tactics, the cabinet reshuffles, and election induced economic uncertainty are typical to Africa. The book shows that vote buying, bribery, communal buying or the absence of secret ballot are still common even in Europe says the real danger in African politics is in the 'winner-takes-all' mentality.

It is the phenomenon of "social closure" what the Luo of Nyanza call "Inoragia haria igwite" (when the elephant dies; it is the grass near it that grows tallest". Moi puts it brazenly to opposition FORD-Kenya MP,Henry Obwocha: "Be in KANU or find a way of contracting with it or you are out in the cold". While debunking emphasis on class-consciousness', the book concludes that what is dubbed voting along ethnic lines in Africa might in fact be an expression of socio-economic conflict.

This book is written like Fountain's 1998 NOMA award winning book: Nyaba, PA (1997) Politics Of Liberation in Southern Sudan: An Insiders view. It deserves similar applause, not least because it follows in the Fountain format of publishing on pertinent themes.

Its strongest argument; however, might be its urging of African democrats not to aspire for the western ideal because their politics is on a different historical trajectory. Instead, it says, voting must be for what it is, a transaction, an expression of identity and an opinion.

'Out of the count is an important book. It is strongly recommended for university, college and public libraries.' Korwa Gombe Adar, Human Sciences Research Council. In: The African Book Publishing Record, vol. 29, no. 3, October 2003.