Handshake healed the nation and secured Uhuru's legacy

For better or for worse, the handshake has become emblematic of Kenya’s public culture. Not everyone, however, sees the Kenyan handshake as a savoury gesture of peace.

Four years ago, the journalist Sophia Baraka lamented about the “weird Kenyan handshake”.

She wrote hyperbolically of a Kenyan official who, during an international cultural exhibition in Washington, “squeezed and crushed people’s hands leaving behind a trail of bruised and broken fingers”.

HISTORIC

But the historic March 9, 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga is different.

The unity deal has ended animosities arising from Kenya’s double presidential elections in August and October 2017, healed the nation and secured President Kenyatta’s legacy.

The newest Kenyan handshake brings to mind another historic peace deal between President Mwai Kibaki and Mr Odinga on February 28, 2008.

DEMONS

The handshake ended the catastrophic orgy of violence that followed the disputed December 2007 presidential election results.

But intellectually speaking, it revealed democracy’s demons and questioned the widely held wisdom that democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another.

Although the signing of “the National Accord and Reconciliation Act (2008)” ended the 2007/2008 crisis, the experiences of Zimbabwe and Kenya with externally-imposed “power-sharing” models have shown that only home-grown approaches can guarantee lasting peace.

VIOLENCE

The Kenyatta-Odinga handshake signifies the new search for homegrown models of shielding democracy and development from shocks and cycles of electoral violence.

Mr Odinga described the March 9 handshake with Mr Kenyatta as “painful but a worthy decision for millions of Kenyans”.

The handshake is a new deal for Kenyan nationhood.

“We agreed that we must build one peaceful nation. That is why I agreed to sit with President Uhuru on behalf of millions of Kenyans I represent,” Odinga averred.

CROWN PRINCE

Fostering nationhood is the same reason Mr Kenyatta signed the deal: “We have come to a common understanding that this country is greater than any one individual, and that for this country to come together, leaders must come together.”

Whatever structural form the Raila-Uhuru deal takes, it is a game-changer for the 2022 Kenyatta succession.

As Jubilee’s “crown prince”, Deputy President William Ruto is no doubt head and shoulders above other potential candidates vying to succeed Mr Kenyatta.

INSURGENCY

But for now, the unity deal has quashed the secession drive, effectively postponing early campaigns and refocusing attention on development.

Blissfully, the handshake is draining the swamps of opposition militancy coalesced around Mr Odinga’s National Resistance Movement and civil society, ending the possibility of an insurgency or civil war.

Although the idea of a civil war appeared remote, secession was a very real possibility before and after the October 26 repeat election.

INCLUSIVITY

After the handshake, the world media, which waited with bated breath to see whether Kenya would end up in some kind of civil war, can turn its cameras to other potential flashpoints.

The handshake has forced a rethinking and possible re-engineering of executive power to create an ethnically inclusive polity.

Perceptions of exclusivity linked to the “tyranny of numbers” theory fuelled the radicalisation of opposition politics and brought Nasa’s sail close to the wind.

RESENTMENT

The idea of power changing hands from Mr Kenyatta to Mr Ruto solidified the Kikuyu-Kalenjin détente.

But the naïve utilisation of the narrative of two ethnic groups monopolising power ad infinitum stoked widespread resistance.

Indeed, in 2017, Mr Odinga rode on this popular wave of resentment of the Kikuyu-Kalenjin diarchy (the rule of two people or groups) among the Kamba, Luhya and Luo elite who sought political salvation in his radical brand of politics.

SECESSION

Although Mr Kenyatta won the 2017 presidential vote fair and square, after his swearing-in, this fear of an ethnic diarchy gave legs to Nasa’s “electoral injustice” campaign and fuelled the idea of secession.

If the militants in the NRM made a serious attempt at secession, this would have predictably been violently crushed by the national government, with the potential of pushing the country to the brink of a war.

The handshake has ushered in a moment of ethnic balancing that the nationalist generation failed to accomplish.

TWO KENYAS

If it succeeds, ethnic inclusivity will wipe out the noxious idea of ‘two Kenyas’ poised for a civil war, which opposition extremists had started planting into the minds of citizens.

One is the “Old Kenya” as a landlocked state comprising the Kikuyu, Kalenjin and ethnic Somali traditional homelands.

The other is the “Democratic Republic of Kenya” predicted to emerge as “a Muslim-majority country” in about 30 years and covering Western, Nyanza, Lower Eastern, and Coast regions.

SENATE LEADERSHIP

This reminds one of the ideology of Ivoirité which morphed into a terribly negative nationalist and xenophobic notion that split Cote d’Ivoire along a North-South divide.

The handshake is shaking the foundations of opposition politics.

On March 16, sixteen Orange Democratic Movement senators signed a petition to oust Mr Moses Wetang’ula from Senate House leadership and replace him with Siaya Senator James Orengo.

ULTRA-MILITANTS

But daggers are out with the Ford Kenya leader declaring that the Nasa “divorce will be noisy and messy.”

Moreover, Mr Odinga has to secure the deal from ODM ultra-militants who see the handshake as a unilateral, irrational and erratic decision and a “betrayal of the fight for electoral justice”.

Worse still, although a team has been set up to look into the practical modalities of implementing the promises of the handshake, it is not clear what form it will take.

RETIREMENT

One scenario is Mr Odinga’s lucrative retirement, currently enjoyed by former presidents Daniel arap Moi and Mr Kibaki.

While this is likely in the long-term, it will be politically imprudent in the short term.

A second option is Mr Odinga’s inclusion in a classic power-sharing triumvirate (three leader) government, sharing power with Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto.

HYBRID

While this is likely to stoke resistance from inside Jubilee’s corridors of power, Mr Odinga’s allies in ODM have clarified that the cooperation does not mean that the party had entered into a coalition with Jubilee.

A more likely scenario is a hybrid option in which Mr Odinga takes up a prime position in government while continuing to occupy a refurbished and well-remunerated position of the leader of opposition.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is a former government adviser and Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute