There are many ways of looking at the political drama of the past week, which ended with President William Ruto and the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga signing what amounted to a power-sharing political pact.
Here is my take on it: but first a little history. One of the most unforgettable and distressing scenes from the 2008 post-election violence, was from President Mwai Kibaki hosting a “peacebuilding” meeting somewhere in the Rift Valley, which was at that time one of the most unrepentantly anti-Kibaki zones in the country.
What happened is that even as he continued with his speech, the TV cameras suddenly swerved away from him, to focus on the thick smoke billowing barely a kilometre away from where the president was holding his meeting.
The residents had sent a clear message of rejection: they did not recognise Kibaki’s presidency and were contemptuous of his efforts at peacebuilding.
The thing to bear in mind here – and the reason why this scene was so scary at the time – was that we all knew who owned the houses being burnt, and who was burning them.
And though such destruction of private property owned by innocent Kenyans had been going on for some time, this was the first time it was being done specifically as a show of defiance to the head of state.
I vividly remember this tragic event – which took place at a time when the country was awash with tragedies – because a short while later I was required to offer an analysis, for a global media platform, on whether I thought the country could pull back from the brink, or if Kenya was about to plunge into a fullscale civil war.
And I was able to cook up an adequate answer to this: I argued that “Kenya had passed the supermarket test” and so we could be certain that in the end, all would be well. What did I mean by this?
Well, basically, that supermarkets serve as a useful barometer of whether or not the elaborate supply chains needed to keep them going are still working as expected.
There are the fruits and vegetables in supermarket shelves brought in from various corners of the country. There are locally manufactured goods.
There are imported goods, which come in mostly through the Port of Mombasa.
Thus, to the extent that supermarket shelves were not empty, despite panic shopping in most places; and insofar as the staff continued to report to work; we could argue that the country’s political stability had been severely tested and had passed that test, since normal economic activity was continuing even amidst the tragic carnage.
It showed that what was happening in Kenya, tragic as it was, could not be compared with the Rwanda genocide of 1994, for example: that most Kenyans did not wake up every morning and pick up a machete to go out and look for enemies to kill.
Rather we went about our usual routines and attended to our responsibilities, in spite of the chaos and violence around us.
I was to later find this narrative useful, both in columns I wrote for this newspaper, and in lectures I gave in foreign universities, at which I attempted to explain what had gone so terribly wrong in a country like Kenya, which had previously enjoyed a great reputation as a beacon of political stability in a region frequently engulfed in destabilising violence.
And I have remembered it now, when considering the headline grabbing events of the last year or so, which – to my mind – underline our ongoing political stability.
The (now former) Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has pledged that he will make Ruto a one-term president. But we all take it for granted that he proposes to achieve this goal through the political process, and not by unleashing violence.
Raila, who after the 2022 general election, claimed “his victory had been stolen” through massive rigging, thereafter, used only the political process – and not violence – to manoeuvre his way to his current power-sharing arrangement with President Ruto.
All this suggests that despite our many failings, yes, we still are a politically stable country.
