Rebirth of a nation

The 25-year-old prison officer felt a tingle of excitement when the clock struck midnight and the lights suddenly went off at the historic Uhuru Gardens.

Jomo Kenyatta, the young nation’s new Prime Minister, rose from his seat and strode in step with the Duke of Edinburgh to an elevated position 10 metres from the stage.

The flag of empire was lowered for the last time and, to strains of the young nation’s anthem, a new flag fluttered in its place when the floodlights came back on that night on December 12, 1963.

“It was an electric moment,” says Rahab Mwangi, now a businesswoman and church deacon with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Nairobi. “There was great excitement. When people saw the flag in the air, a big roar broke out. That is when I knew Uhuru had come at last.”

Last Wednesday morning, Mrs Mwangi was one of 9,106,285 Kenyans who lined up patiently to cast the ballot that would change Kenya forever.

Like many voters over 60, Mrs Mwangi has had the privilege of watching two new dawns unfold across the nation. Her fervent wish is that the outbreak of joy and relief that has greeted the birth of the Second Republic proves more enduring than that witnessed when Uhuru came five decades ago and Kenya became Africa’s 34th state.

It is one of the ironies of the successful referendum last week that the coverage of the event seemed more upbeat and excited abroad than in Kenya. Editorials from the UK to India to other parts of Africa that are struggling to write a constitution lavished the process with unqualified praise.

That is probably down to the unique nature of the approach taken in drafting the document that will become Kenya’s supreme law in the next few days.

Constitution-making has often been seen as the preserve of a few experts who hand their work to rulers who pass down the new law to the people.

That was partially the case in nations such as Ethiopia, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait which reviewed their laws fairly recently, argues Prof Yash Pal Ghai, who with his wife Jill Cottrell and a number of other scholars is working on a comparative study of constitution review efforts around the world.

The Kenyan process was entirely different. “It was participatory right from the start. And although there are others that have taken an inclusive approach, the Kenyan process benefited from the fact it had a very clear framework in the form of the Constitution of Kenya Review Act (2000). That set out how to consult the people, how to resolve disputes and how to conduct systematic analysis of the views the people presented. Another major factor was that the process was generously funded by indigenous resources and ultimately factored in the views of the public in the final outcome.”

The way in which the proposed law attempts to swing the balance of power from the governors to the governed probably explains some of the optimism that has greeted the endorsement of the new law.

In the Kenya of the 1990s, University of Nairobi lecturer Prof Maria Nzomo could barely use her phone.

“We were followed and hounded around all the time. We thought that after the repeal of Section 2A things would get better. But the repression of the Moi state continued apace,” she says.

In the new Kenya, Prof Nzomo will have the right not only to communicate freely but to find out what information the government has gathered about her. That right is enshrined in Section 35(2) that states “every person has the right to the correction or deletion of untrue or misleading information that affects the person”.

Prof Nzomo, who returned to the country from Canada in 1982 as the first Kenyan woman to attain a PhD in political science at the height of the Kanu dictatorship, warns against complacency following the passage of the new law.

“I was elated when the results came in. This is the best thing that could have happened to this country. The real work for Kenyans starts now. Citizens must be the watchdogs of the new order so that anti-reform forces do not scuttle the process. There is need for a new round of civic education so that Kenyans know what the law says. They must jealously guard the gains they have won.”

That is a concern expressed by Prof Edward Oyugi who, with Wachira Kamonji, Al-amin Mazrui, Mukaru Ng’ang’a and Willy Mutunga, were among the early prisoners of conscience at the height of Moi-era dictatorship.