Kenyans should demand more than ‘Building Bridges’ in 2019

December 24 (Christmas Eve) will mark exactly seven months since the Building Bridges to Unity Advisory Task Force (BBU Task Force) was formally gazetted.

It’s also a little over nine and a half months since the celebrated “handshake” between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition leader Raila Odinga. Yet the country at large remains pregnant with expectation around what it portends for Kenya, beyond “holding hands and singing kumbaya”, as we witnessed in Nyanza last week.

As one of the more unusual and unexpected events of the year, let’s revisit this “handshake”.

Let’s first recall the issues in the March 2018 communiqué that underpins this BBU initiative. Ethnic antagonism and competition. Lack of a national ethos. Exclusion. Unviable and unsustainable devolution, politically and economically. Divisive elections.

Unsafe and insecure living. Corruption. Inequality in opportunity and economic outcomes. Unprotected rights and unacknowledged responsibilities. We might have been wearing “rose-tinted” spectacles at the time, but, in their proper negative reading, these are the nine issues our two leaders agreed upon.

We know about the “alphabet soup” of institutions in place —through the Constitution or ordinary law — to deal with these issues; the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the County Public Service Boards (CPSBs), the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the Gender and Equality Commission (GEC).

So, even though some see these institutions as sufficient, the view that BBU took is that this was not the case.

The BBU Task Force was then gazetted in May 2018, with three core tasks. First, to evaluate these nine challenges and “make practical recommendations and reform proposals that build lasting unity”. Second, to “outline the policy, administrative reform proposals, and implementation modalities for each (of the nine) area(s)”. Third, to “consult citizens, the faith-based sector, cultural leaders, the private sector and experts at both national and county levels”.

We read intermittently about “consultations” and other events happening across the country. But all we see are leaders “holding hands and singing kumbaya”. As far as one is aware, there is no publicly known and published programme of work, timetable of consultation or agenda for discourse.

By example, are the nine issues the only ones currently being canvassed, or are we going back to a full-blown constitutional review process? If we see the Constitution (and our laws) as our “hardware”, should we be rushing to fix it before addressing our “software” problems (culture, norms, values, virtues, ethics and the like)? How does one carry out public consultations on these software issues?

There is a second perspective to this BBU initiative. Even accepting the nine challenges as comprehensive (a matter for debate) and reflective of our present context, is there not some alternative visioning that presents a positive conceptual reverse of this negative context?

I suggested at the time of the handshake that we might have been better served working towards “a social vision underpinned by a rights-based and responsibility-aware shared national ethos and identity, built around a virtuous circle of ethnic harmony, just electoral outcomes and inclusivity, and driven by integrity, transparency, accountability and human security. All geared towards shared prosperity and human progress, and sustainable political and economic devolution outcomes”.

The BBU initiative would then have focused on “how’ to achieve this vision, rather than endless circular arguments over problems many of which a properly implemented Constitution would have solved.

Thought about this way, and bringing in a third perspective, it might then be possible to view recent initiatives — noisy and quiet — in a “Building Bridges” light. Like the biometric identification, national census and boundary review projects as an integrated national identity, inclusivity and (electoral) justice) initiative. Or the war on corruption and counterfeits as a long-term ethos, integrity, transparency and accountability initiative. Think of “Big Four” too — food, health, housing and jobs — as addressing the “rights and responsibilities” aspects of “Building Bridges”.

We know that we will learn more about “Building Bridges” in the coming months. Yet, as we build and rebuild our bridges with family and friends over this holiday period, let’s think about what more we should expect of our leaders and ourselves beyond “holding hands and singing kumbaya” in 2019.