For Kenyans, US race feels like déjà vu
AFIREBRAND populist positions himself as the saviour of a marginalised segment of the electorate. He whips his supporters into a frenzy, implying a loss at the polls would mean the destruction of democracy itself. Then he rejects the outcome of the election as rigged and acts surprised when some of his supporters resort to violence.
Could the story of Kenya’s disputed 2007 vote, which ignited a bloody melee that left more than 1,000 people dead, be a harbinger of America’s future on election day? The parallels are clear enough to have inspired a trending hashtag: #RailaAnotherTrump is a jab at Raila Odinga, who ran for president in 2007 and is still the leader of the political opposition. But it’s American voters who may find it the most painful to read.
“Raila and Trump, the presidential candidates who believe the media is rigged and elections will be rigged too,” writes one Twitter user.
“Trump inciting his poor & uneducated whites to bring fracas if he does not win, just like Raila does with his minions!” writes another.
Kenya knows what it means to have its democratic process upended. And although the comparisons to this year’s US presidential campaign are imperfect – international observers said Kenya’s 2007 vote was actually “flawed” and politicians on all sides fuelled the subsequent violence – there’s a sense that Kenyans have seen this movie before.
Having promoted the idea of a vast conspiracy aimed at denying him the White House, Donald Trump says he won’t necessarily accept the electoral result. Many in Trump Nation say they’re expecting a revolution in the event of a win by Hillary Clinton, and some right-wing militias have reportedly already begun to mobilise. Against this backdrop, it’s not difficult to imagine some overzealous supporters of the Republican nominee rejecting the outcome and vowing to install him as the “people’s president”. as Odinga’s supporters threatened in 2007.
“People saying, ‘I won’t accept the result, and maybe I’ll take up arms’. That is very striking, it is very chilling, and it has a familiar ring,” says Murithi Mutiga, a columnist at the Daily Nation, Kenya’s most widely circulated newspaper. “The most dangerous parallel is preparing people for only one outcome: that we’ll either win or the outcome is rigged.”
Kenyan Senator Naisula Lesuuda, a member of the ruling party, tells me that she also sees echoes of the traumatic 2007 election. “When you are telling people that the election will be rigged, you are preparing them psychologically to reject the result. You are preparing them for chaos,” she says.
There are more subtle parallels, as well. What Mutiga calls the “radical transparency” of the US election, brought about by WikiLeaks and other leaks to the press, has exposed a seedy underside of US politics that feels familiar in Africa.
“It’s a type of politics people recognise,” Mutiga says. “And the way you see them sharing news on Facebook is, ‘Oh, they are just like us. Their leaders are also compromised and on the take’.”
Unlike the last two US elections, when Barack Obama’s candidacy electrified his father’s ancestral homeland, the mood this time around has been subdued. There are no buses emblazoned with the likenesses of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, although one still occasionally sees Obamathemed public transport.
Whereas entire “Obama shops” dedicated to presidential swag popped up across Africa in 2008 and 2012, I’ve had trouble tracking down even a single Clinton- or Trump-themed trinket.
“You had Obama, and then you go to this. It’s a bit underwhelming,” is how my friend Jisas Lemasagarai, who works in finance, explains it. “So there is less interest in the US election in that sense, though there’s interest just because people want to see what this crazy guy is going to do.”
That doesn’t mean there aren’t staunch supporters of both candidates. Veteran trade unionist Francis Atwoli, who is famous for his ostentatious gold jewellery and watches, went on television recently dressed in a Trump shirt and pledged allegiance to the New York real estate mogul. Obama’s controversial halfbrother Malik, now living in the United States, has also come out for Trump.
“I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart . . . Make America Great Again is a great slogan,” Malik told the New York Post, adding that he was “very disappointed” in Obama’s presidency.
But most members of the Kenyan chattering classes are what I would describe as reluctant Clinton supporters. They recognise the damage that a ban on Muslim immigration could do to the economy of a country that is 10 to 20 percent Muslim.
And Kenyans haven’t forgotten the “Birther” movement Trump helped spawn, which many viewed as racist. “It’s been very peculiar watching from a distance, seeing Kenya bandied around almost as a dirty word,” Mutiga says. “A lot of people took offence to the general Birther movement, at the attempts to ‘other’ Obama, at the efforts to colour Kenya as this backward place.”
But not all Kenyans are turned off by Trump’s divisive rhetoric. The other side of the Birther coin is the belief Obama is a secret Muslim. And as the Somali militant group alShabab has ramped up its attacks in Kenya, the country has experienced a surge in USstyle Islamophobia.
Earlier this year, I was in a jail in the town of Isiolo, a little less than 200 miles north of Nairobi, attempting to gain access to Ethiopian prisoners. Isiolo is majority Muslim, but one of the wardens told me he was Roman Catholic. He turned out to be an ardent Trump supporter: “You can’t trust Muslims. Most of them are terrorists or are helping the terrorists,” he told me. “Donald Trump understands this.”
Even those Kenyans who share Trump’s distrust of Muslims are not flocking to him in droves, however. And among the political class, his candidacy has been greeted largely with a sense of dread. What worries people most about Trump is the same thing that makes his campaign seem so familiar: his potential to divide people in destabilising ways.
“It’s scary that Donald Trump can have 40 percent or 43 percent of people who support him,” says Thomas Leremore, who will be a candidate running for deputy governor of Samburu County next year. “What kind of people are those? Is there a class of people who are ready for violence in America? I’ve never been to America, but I don’t want to believe it will go the Kenyan way.”