Why fists and chairs fly at polls

Kenya’s party primaries ahead of the August 9 general election are largely done. Though some ended relatively peacefully, there were more than enough that descended into the usual chaos and violence.

Although, anecdotally, it seemed less this time, violence has been a feature of Kenyan party nominations and has increased considerably in the past three election cycles. It is not uniquely Kenyan either. Violence in the primaries happens in many parts of Africa — from the noisy and messy democracies like Nigeria to the quasi-democratic one-party-dominant states like Uganda.

At a retreat of a Nairobi think tank last year, a dry-eyed pragmatic participant blew us away with his take on violence in Kenyan elections. He argued that it was a leading factor in determining how competitive, especially, a presidential candidate is in Kenya. He said it was no accident that Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga were the frontrunners in the presidential race.

Both men, he said, have the potential to shut down sections of the economy — even parts of the country if it came to that — if they mobilised their supporters to do so. He said a presidential candidate (whom we won’t name) was deluding himself about his prospects because he “couldn’t even shut down Waiyaki Way if he tried”.

If he is correct, several of the implications are immediately evident. For one, it could explain why women have not fared well as presidential candidates in Kenya. Perhaps, it is less to do with gender biases but the fact that women candidates are less prone to mobilise violence as a political weapon. They do badly because they are better citizens and less murderous.

Party nominations

It was not always this way. If you read past newspaper and magazine stories of party nominations, the photographs alone don’t make sense from today’s perspective. They show party members dressed in their Sunday best, sitting in an orderly fashion, and nominations being conducted like they were at a Rotary Club event.

These days, you go to a nomination in Kenya, Nigeria or even Zambia in a suit and they could hang you with your tie and strangle you with your scarf when a brawl breaks out. Several changes have happened to turn nominations, and elections, into war — a lot of them, ironically, otherwise good developments. 

Back to the nomination photographs of the 1960s and ’70s and today, another obvious difference is demographics. In the past, party elders who were past throwing punches had a lot of sway in nominations. Today, there are hardly any old people in nominations and they are full of hot-bloodied younger people.

The other shift is that nominations are far more democratic. The party delegates would most times assemble not to elect, or even select, but rubber-stamp a candidate chosen by party headquarters and the president. That still happens via direct tickets but the cases are so few you can count them on your fingertips.

There is just no leader in Kenya today who has the total control of their party that Jomo Kenyatta, and later Daniel arap Moi at his height, had over the independence party Kenya African National Union (Kanu). The parties and their leaders are weaker and the price of defying them low. Because they are less feared, they can’t impose order and discipline. Flying chairs and fists is the result we get for that at nominations.

Militarised elections

We live in very difficult and competitive economic times and politics has become a bigger vehicle for accumulating wealth. The cost of entry has, therefore, gone up and the stakes are much higher. With politicians making ever-larger investments to win nominations, a loss is a big hit to their pockets. They will battle as much as they can to win, and to oppose their defeat.

All these make an explosive mix when they encounter one of the ugliest features of modern elections in most of Africa: Vote theft. The reality of election rigging has brought candidates under a lot of pressure to protect their votes. If you are seen not to be able to protect your vote, the electorate will ask why they should give it to you.

Election theft isn’t just fiddling with the numbers. Incumbents and governments have militarised elections; some of the largest military and police deployments in peacetime are reserved for election day to help in the heist. The opposition and losers know they can no longer respond meaningfully with placards, walking along the streets singing “alleluia” or telling the system to respect the Constitution.

The threat of inflicting pain, disrupting the economy and answering the security agents with stones and Molotov cocktails, tragically, has become the main incentive for electoral commissions and the ruling party not to steal the vote brazenly.

Candidates don’t wait to mobilise their own counter-election-theft militant resources on election day. They do so ahead, and their deployment at the nomination is a test run. Short of having an Eritrea-type situation with no elections, for most of Africa with hotly contested polls, this violence might have come to stay.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. @cobbo3