Resurgence of Kanu and looming battle for soul of ‘happy valley’

The Kenya African National Union (Kanu) chairman Gideon Moi during a past function. FILE PHOTO |

What you need to know:

  • Happy Valley remains the thermometer of the politics of Kenya whose destiny has become inextricably tied to the stability of Kalenjin politics in the Rift Valley.
  • In what the British scholar, Gabriella Lynch, lampoons as “the defeat of dynasticism”, the Kalenjin’s most powerful family lost all its political power as Moi’s three sons (Gideon, Jonathan and Raymond) lost to the ODM wave in the Rift Valley.
  • Finally is an equally small but vocal group of “URP Rebels” who are publicly challenging Ruto on the basis of his leadership style and alleged failure to aggressively push for core interests of the Kalenjin Nation.

War drums are beating ahead of a looming epic battle for the soul of Kenya’s region once enchanted as the “Happy Valley”.

In this fabled land in Kenya’s equatorial highlands, there once lived bored British aristocrats who passed their time in orgies of drinking, drugs and decadent carnal affairs — what the literary critic and writer, Cyril Connolly, satirised as the three ‘As’: Altitude, Alcohol and Adultery.

And the world-famous 1987 film, White Mischief, added violence and murder to this list of extremes in the Happy Valley.

Happy Valley remains the thermometer of the politics of Kenya whose destiny has become inextricably tied to the stability of Kalenjin politics in the Rift Valley.

When the Canadian scholar, Bruce Berman, and his British co-author, John Lonsdale, revisited the region they re-christened it, rather sardonically, as the Unhappy Valley — the title of their two widely-read volumes (1992).

This intellectual negation of the colonial idea of the Happy Valley was made possible by the brutal waves of senseless election-related ethnic killings that rocked the region after 1991 — culminating in the 2008 post-election violence that saw Kenya dragged to the Hague-based International Criminal Court.

Since 2002, the Valley has been defined by an unfinished struggle for the succession of retired President Daniel arap Moi within the Kalenjin Nation.

In the run-up to 2017, the supremacy war over the control of the Valley and the Kenyan presidency coalesces around two formidable camps. One power house revolves around the Moi family, the other around Deputy President William Ruto.

In the 2007 General Election, Ruto wrested away the power that Moi had on Kalenjin politics for decades. In what the British scholar, Gabriella Lynch, lampoons as “the defeat of dynasticism”, the Kalenjin’s most powerful family lost all its political power as Moi’s three sons (Gideon, Jonathan and Raymond) lost to the ODM wave in the Rift Valley.

However, in the 2013 General Election, the Moi family rose from ashes like the proverbial Sphinx back to national politics.

Today, its political vehicle, Kanu, has six parliamentary and two senatorial seats and is an influential member of Musalia Mudavadi’s Amani Coalition that has a total of 24 seats in Parliament.

But it is not Kanu’s current power that has set the stage for the looming clash between the two rival camps for the soul of Kalenjin Nation.

Rather, it is its two-step “Rift Valley Strategy” involving wresting power from URP in the Rift Valley by securing the largest number of elective seats in 2017 as a stepping stone to the larger battle for the Kenyatta succession and the Kenyan crown in 2022.

This has set on the campaign path the other powerhouse that revolves around Deputy President William Ruto, Kenya’s second most powerful leader.

Since 2007, Ruto has been riding the crest of a “generational change of guard” within the Kalenjin Nation from the old guard of the Moi era to a budding “Uhuru generation”.

But this generational transfer of power is overlaid with an even stronger and subtle undertones of “a class struggle” pitting the well-to-do or “haves” of the Moi era against the largely “have-nots” or “hustlers” of the Jubilee moment.

Consisting mainly of young professionals, many of whom if URP scoops more seats than Kanu in the Rift Valley, Ruto will have cleared the road to the presidency in 2022 have no direct linkages to the influential families of the Moi period, the URP “hustlers” are internally divided into four ideological groups on the unfolding Kenyatta succession ahead of the 2017 General Election.

First is a small but virulent “presidency now” group of parliamentarians convinced that the Deputy President has the requisite clout to wrest power from Kenyatta in 2017.

But the “presidency now” group is out-numbered and out-gunned by the more sobre and calculating group of “gradualists” that prefers that Ruto use 2017 to consolidate his networks and war chest for the gruelling fight for the crown in 2022.

The hustlers’ ultimate strategy is to gradually edge the Kenyatta presidency to an early lame-duck phase to enable Ruto build a national support base. In this regard, unlike the “presidency now” group that opposes the JAP, the URP gradualists consider the new party as Ruto’s safest vehicle for 2022 — perhaps drawing lessons from Moi’s rise to power on President Mzee Kenyatta-led Kanu in 1978.

The third group consists of the “URP oppositionists” who are ideologically opposed to the Kikuyu-Kalenjin détente that underpins the Jubilee alliance. The oppositionists still see a possibility of Ruto working with Raila.

Recently, this group has been pushing a divide-and-wind gambit of weakening Ruto and driving a wedge between his URP and TNA as its best chance for the opposition to win in 2017.

Finally is an equally small but vocal group of “URP Rebels” who are publicly challenging Ruto on the basis of his leadership style and alleged failure to aggressively push for core interests of the Kalenjin Nation.

Foremost in this group is the Bomet Governor, Isaac Ruto, who recently announced that he might run for president in 2017. The “URP Rebels” appear to be closing ranks with Kanu.

The looming Kanu-URP clash poses three possible scenarios for 2017 and beyond. First, if URP scoops more seats than Kanu in the Rift Valley, Ruto will have cleared the road to the presidency in 2022.

Second, a “no winner scenario” will risk political paralysis in the region with ripple effects at the national level. But the doomsday scenario is where Kanu sweeps a majority of the seats in the Rift Valley, thus putting to question Ruto’s legitimacy as the kingpin of the Kikuyu-Kalenjin détente and heir to Kenyatta.

But the unresolved ICC trial is still the wild card that might refashion power in the “Happy Valley”.

Prof Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute [email protected]