Obama puts Kenyan leadership on the spot over troubles

KENYANShad been complaining for years that Barack Obama had never visited the country of his father’s birth since he became president.

At the weekend the Kenyans finally got their visit. But it came with a rather heavy dose of the proverbial caveat “be careful what you wish for, because it may come true”.

For Obama took the opportunity of the pulpit and the huge audience that had been created by the pent-up demand to deliver several blunt messages to Kenya’s leadership and to the people at large.

Much of the focus before he arrived on Friday had been on gay rights. Kenya is one of 38 African countries that criminalises homosexuality.

There had been much huffing and puffing among Kenyan conservatives that Obama would not be welcome if he came preaching about gay rights. But he spoke out for gay rights and was still fêted.

In a televised press conference with President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday, Obama said: “I believe in the principle of treating people equally under the law, and that they are deserving of equal protection under the law, and that the state should not discriminate against people based on their sexuality.

“If you look at the history of countries around the world, when you start treating people differently, not because of any harm they are doing to anybody but because they are different, that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen,” Obama said.

Kenyatta’s weak response was to say that gay rights were “not an issue”.

And on Sunday, addressing a large crowd of about 6 000 – including Kenyatta and his cabinet – Obama also spoke out about several of Kenya’s other wellknown flaws – corruption, tribalism, inequality and suppression of civil society dissent.

Corruption was costing Kenya 250 000 jobs a year, was “the biggest impediment to Kenya’s economic growth” and was aggravating inequality. Gagging civil society – as Kenyatta is doing with a recent anti-NGO law – was counterproductive as it was key in fighting graft, Obama said.

And “politics that’s based solely on tribe and ethnicity, it’s a politics that is doomed to tear the country apart. It is a failure, a failure of imagination”, he said.

Obama urged the Kenyan leadership to make “tough choices” to address these problems. Kenyatta said nothing.

Obama appeared to be responding in part to an entreaty from two former US ambassadors to Kenya, William Bellamy and Johnnie Carson, who had urged Obama to push Kenyatta and his government to deal with security – and specifically the surge in terror attacks in Kenya by the violent Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab – more competently and comprehensively.

They noted that the US was giving Kenya much support to fight the Somali extremist jihadist group which has carried out several terror attacks inside Kenya, killing hundreds.

Yet Kenya was wasting much of that help by its actions. “Weak leadership, poor co-ordination among security agencies and pervasive corruption especially within the Kenyan police force are fundamental problems.

“Rather than address those, President Kenyatta’s administration has instead moved to restrict media coverage of terrorist attacks and crack down on businesses, civic organisations and entire communities it charges are sympathetic to the Islamist insurgency,” the duo wrote before the visit.

Whether any of this translates into action by Kenyatta’s government remains to be seen. But at least Obama made his points, clearly and publicly. In the end, for all its importance, Kenya needs the US more than the US needs Kenya.