Conciliatory ‘handshake’ is Africa’s most successful political idea

When asked what he thought of “Western civilisation”, Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of modern India, replied mockingly: “I think it would be a very good idea.”

In the second decade of the 21st century, the “idea of the West” is hanging over the cliff edge, as Bill Emmott warns in his new book, The Fate of the West (2017).

It is not the resurgence of Russia or the rise of China that has sounded the death knell for the idea of the West, but the rise to power and prominence of the people and forces that stand for “distinctly unWestern ideas” (the Trump phenomenon).

But the West is its own best enemy. Internally, liberal democracy has failed to deliver on the promise of prosperity, equality, fairness, justice and security to its citizens who now reel under unprecedented inequalities, poverty and powerlessness.

VICTOR'S JUSTICE

Globally, the West is unravelling because it has continued to anchor its collective power and hegemony on the quick sands of “victor’s justice”.

The idea of conciliation or the proverbial “handshake” (forgiveness, win-win scenarios and restorative justice) is at the core of world civilisations and religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

But the crumbling international liberal order is based on the post-war “victor’s justice”, including reserving veto power to four out of five seats in the United Nations Security Council to Western victors in World War II, which has stoked pressure for the reform of the United Nations system from within the West and the non-Western world.

As a political idea, the “handshake” is firmly anchored on the win-win models of political transaction and the notion of “restorative justice” that focuses on the rehabilitation of losers (offenders) through reconciliation with winners (victims), ending apartheid (South Africa), civil wars (Sierra Leone, Sudan) or polarising and violent elections (Kenya, Zimbabwe) in emerging democracies.

AFRICAN DREAM

However, in post-colonial Africa, the West’s smouldering heritage of “winner’s justice” persists, eclipsing the idea of the “handshake” as the continent’s most indelible contribution to political thought and human civilisation.

The most iconic handshake in our modern times is that between Nelson Mandela, then as leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the last of apartheid leaders, President Frederick de Klerk in the early 1990s.

Mandela would later beautifully link the African dream with the spirit of forgiveness when he said: “If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness”. When he died in 2013, CNN eulogised Mandela as a “man of many handshakes.”

The political idea of handshake (conciliation and forgiveness) is the moral thread that binds together the story of modern Kenya. Specifically, five historic handshakes have shaped the past and future of the Kenyan nation.

IMPRISONMENT

The seminal Kenyan handshake, in the early 1960s, between the then leader of the Kenyan nationalists, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and the leaders of British settlers in Nakuru at the twilight of Kenya’s struggle against colonialism, which paved the way for the birth of modern Kenya in 1963 and provided the moral foundation of the new nation.

Although bitter with the vociferous white settlers who pushed for the arrest and imprisonment of the “Kapenguria Six” (Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei, and Achieng’ Oneko) by the British imperial government in 1953 as the organisers of the Mau Mau freedom movement, the founding fathers of the Kenyan nation conquered the natural instinct to revenge, instead choosing to walk the conciliatory path to nation building.

Kenyatta called on those of the British settlers prepared to rebuild a better Kenya free of racialism to stay on.

TRANSITIONS

But the conciliation path to new Kenya had its discontents. Some of Kenyatta’s compatriots dismissed Kenyatta’s  handshake with the settlers as “betrayal”.

Nevertheless, the Kenyan handshake became the cornerstone of peaceful political transitions from colonialism and apartheid to democracy and stability.

Other African liberators such as Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Sam Nujoma (Namibia) and Mandela would follow in the footsteps of Mzee Kenyatta’s conciliation pathway to national unity and progress.

The second handshake occurred in 1964, involving rival factions of Kenya’s nationalist elites coalesced around the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), with the aim of forging a united Kenya.

Although the Nyayo era (1978-2002) never witnessed any handshake and actually witnessed Kenya’s dark age of autocracy when the democratic ideas of freedom and equality reached their lowest ebb since colonialism, Mzee Moi’s conciliatory blissful move to give in to multi-party democracy steered Kenya away from the perilous path of Siad Barre’s Somalia, Mobutu’s Congo or Samuel Doe’s Liberia.

FRIGHTFUL

The third handshake in 2008 involved opposition leader Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki which led to the signing of the National Accord and Reconciliation Act (2008) that ended the cataclysmic post-election violence.

Although it ushered in Kenya’s first frightful experiment with power-sharing, it also enabled Kenya to debate and hold a referendum on a new social contract – the 2010 Constitution.

The fourth handshake, itself an offshoot of the 2008 one, in 2012 involved Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, youthful heirs to the leadership of two of the Kenyan communities at the heart of the 2008 violence, which culminated in the Kalenjin-Kikuyu détente that won the March 4, 2013 election.

Upon election, Uhuru adopted a reconciliatory stance and strengthened Kenya’s historical ties with the West, which had opposed his election and backed the controversial ICC trials.

ENDURING 

His reconciliatory course paid off. President Barack Obama visited Kenya in July 2015, opening the floodgates of other eminent visitors and events.

Kenya’s latest handshake between President Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga on March 9, 2018, effectively ended the country’s most protracted electioneering period.

However, the politics of Kenyatta succession, now defined by the call for a referendum to open up the constitution to tinker with the order of power, has ushered in a new phase of intense electioneering, likely to eat into the governing (development) time in our political calendar.

Despite this, like the iconic matatu on the Kenyan roads, leaders will come and go, but the handshake will remain as Africa’s enduring contribution to political thought and practice and gift to civilisation.

Prof Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser and Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute.