What Americans could learn from the 2007 Kenyan elections
“Donald Trump pressed ahead with his ongoing effort to erode confidence in U.S. elections during his debate Tuesday night with Vice President Kamala Harris,” reads a Washington Post tweet that appeared on the X platform following the recent presidential debate in Philadelphia.
In the accompanying article, the WaPo cited some of Trump’s debate remarks that illustrate his strategy. They point to Trump’s ongoing attempts to convince voters that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ by claiming, “Look, there’s so much proof, all you have to do is look at it.” In fact, Trump has never been able to produce any credible evidence to support his allegations of widespread fraud in connection with the 2020 election.
Trump is already prepping his base for the likelihood that the 2024 election could be ‘stolen’ as well, with remarks such as, “We have to have borders, and we have to have good elections.” He continued, “Elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” (1)
In light of his history of election denialism, such remarks indicate that Trump will be unlikely to accept the results of the 2024 election in the event that he is bested by his Democratic opponent. For years, Trump has been focused on convincing voters that Democrats will lie, cheat, and steal to keep him from winning back the presidency, leading the vast majority of his ardent supporters to accept this claim on the strength of Trump’s word alone.
His past rhetoric has proven to be not only misleading but also dangerous, as evidenced by the failed insurrection that has transpired in the months leading up to the certification of the last presidential election on January 6th, 2021.
In what is expected to be another tight presidential race, where the outcome of the election is likely to turn on a relatively small number of votes in a handful of so-called ‘swing states,’ we could very well be in for another protracted election challenge if Trump once again comes up short in the Electoral College.
I am not an American, and I don’t live in the United States. Still, I find myself holding my breath whenever I think about the upcoming presidential election. I have witnessed firsthand how an election in another part of the world, but sharing some common denominators with the U.S. election, can explode into extreme violence.
My story set off in November 2007 in Kenya. I had just arrived at the airport to start a two-year placement on the Kenyan coast in a small town north of Mombasa. While waiting for the driver to pick me up, I peered through the large airport window and looked at the traffic that needed to navigate a huge roundabout.
At some point, my eyes caught a car that had diplomatic license plates. The driver of the car seemed to be in a hurry, but for some reason, instead of following the curve of the roundabout, the car ran straight over some shrubs, tipped on its side, and came to an abrupt stop against a lamppost.
Kenyans rushed to the scene, pushed the car back on its wheels, and pulled out the driver and passenger. There was no sign of life. I thought to myself, “If this is any indication of what to expect during the rest of my stay in Kenya, I am in for quite a wild ride.”
During my orientation at the organization’s Nairobi headquarters, I came to learn about the upcoming Kenyan elections. We were provided with information and trained on what to do in the event that the elections became violent, although my Kenyan colleagues in Nairobi were not concerned that there would be any civil unrest.
A week later, I traveled to the Kenyan coast to start my job and settle into my new home. Whenever I found myself in a conversation with my new Kenyan colleagues and friends and the topic of the prospective elections came up, they would assure me that the election would be peaceful, as “Kenyans don’t fight.” However, the Kenyans did fight with each other, and everyone was caught totally off guard.
Christmas arrived, and I was sitting at the beach in Watamu together with some colleagues who came out to the coast to celebrate the holidays. Because we did not have reliable internet access, it was difficult to follow the election developments, so we were not prepared for the message that we received from our colleagues at the Nairobi HQ.
It was a short text message saying that the country had become unstable and that we had to start stocking up on food and other essentials. What was just beginning to unfold became known in Kenya as the Post-Election Violence (PEV).
The contrast between the serenity of relaxing on a pristine, white sand beach looking out over the aquamarine Indian Ocean in one moment and, in the next, scurrying to gather essential provisions in preparation for the worst, could not have been more stark. The day after we got the news, it was already nearly impossible to stock up on supplies, as shops were being looted.
Together with my colleagues (about 30 people), we were taken to a well-protected hotel in Nyali, a residential area within Mombasa City. We stayed there for about three weeks, and although it was reasonably safe in the hotel, we could still hear gunfire near our temporary refuge.
Having been evacuated to a more secure area and disconnected from the world around us, we started to feel frustrated that there was so little we could do to help our Kenyan colleagues and friends. It was even difficult to stay in touch with them by telephone to see if they were OK.
Most people in Kenya were using prepaid phones that required periodic ‘top-ups’ to add credits. These mobile phone credits were delivered in the form of scratchcards. The owners of the prepaid phones would visit a small stand on the street or a local shop and buy a scratch card for the amount they were able or willing to spend. Then they would take a coin and scratch off a silver coating to reveal an activation code.
This code had to be typed into a message on the mobile phone and sent to the provider for activation. Normally, these scratch cards were ubiquitously available throughout the city, but now the small food stands and local shops had a hard time restocking their supplies.
Eventually, we figured out that by composing a text message and using a certain code, we could send credits from our phones to those of our friends and colleagues. So, we started sending phone credits to those who did not respond to our messages — a sure sign that they had run out of credits. Since we were not supposed to leave the hotel, we would sneak out every day and hunt for scratch cards.
This may have seemed like a small gesture, but for the Kenyans, it provided a great sense of relief, as it enabled them to reconnect with their loved ones, friends, and colleagues. It helped them follow events that were unfolding in connection with the PEV.
After a couple of weeks, the hotel staff warned us that we would soon be running out of food. A week later, we were flown to Nairobi to stay in another hotel until the rioting and violence had abated.
At our new safe place, we connected with colleagues who had been evacuated from other places in Kenya where the threat of violence was high, such as the Nairobi slums, Nyanza Province, and the Rift Valley.
They told us about interethnic marriages, friendships, and neighborhoods that were being ripped apart based on their different ethnic backgrounds. Homes and shelters were burned to the ground. People were killed or displaced. Women were raped. Poor people were paid by the wealthy to fight the opposition and keep the riots going.
As things slowly settled down, and after a thorough assessment of the safety level of our original placements, most of us were sent back to our assignments. Unfortunately, our return only lasted a couple of days, as the violent clashes also returned in vengeance.
Following a successful rescue operation in which one of my colleagues had to be airlifted out of a village that was besieged by severe rioting, everybody was sent back to their home country to wait and see whether we would ever be allowed to return.
I went back to the Netherlands, but I continued to closely follow the news back in Kenya. Eventually, Kenya was able to restore its normal level of social harmony, due in large part to the help of the international community. Soon I was back on the plane, together with my Dutch colleagues, relieved that Kenya had managed to restore its relative safety and excited to finally resume our placements in Kenya.
Since gaining its independence from Britain in 1963, Kenya has been able to maintain a remarkably stable multi-ethnic society in comparison to most of its African neighbors. What was it, then, that had driven Kenyans to violence in the aftermath of the 2007 presidential election?
To fully understand the reasons for conflict between different groups of people, we need to examine the different perspectives that these groups had at the time and, to a great extent, continue to have to this day. We do this through our faculty for extrapersonal mentalizing.
Extrapersonal mentalizing relates to reasoning about mental states on a group level. It means that we focus on mental states that are shared to a high degree by group members. Extrapersonal mentalizing also entails examining these ‘shared minds’ within a given situational context. So, what were the voters’ mental states (feelings, desires, beliefs, and access to knowledge) before, during, and after the 2007 election?
Understanding the situational context in which the 2007 Kenyan election took place requires that we start at the point of their struggle for independence from Britain, which commenced in 1952.
In the beginning, a lot of blood was shed in an attempt by Britain to suppress the uprising. When the colonial government began to understand that things had permanently changed, they introduced reforms making it easier for Kenyans to own land, grow coffee, and become part of the ruling party.
In 1960, representatives of the Kenyan independence movement met with the British government to negotiate independence for Kenya. This attempt to end British colonial rule was initially suppressed by the colonial government until Britain realized that it was no longer financially or militarily capable of sustaining its empire.
Kenyan independence was granted in 1963, but to a government that included a great many colonial collaborators (2). During the colonial period, the British had economically and politically favored one ethnic group, Kikuyu/Embu/Meru, over two others, Kalenjin/Maasai/Turkana/Samburu, and Luo — none of which comprised a majority of the national population. (2)
After gaining its independence, successive Kenyan administrations continued to favor the majority Kikuyu ethnic group both economically and politically, which pitted them against smaller ethnic groups, including Luhya, Luo, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kisii, and others. The growing dissatisfaction of this political and economic disparity within the smaller tribes reached a boiling point shortly after the voting had ended.
Before the PEV, I did not know any of the above. Every time I asked Kenyans who they were voting for and why, they named their favorite candidate and explained that he was the best candidate “because he is from my tribe.”
When I asked them about the extent to which they considered the candidates’ policies to make an informed decision, they would laugh and tell me that “their policies don’t matter as long as he is of the same tribe.”
Listening to my Kenyan colleagues and reading about Kenya’s colonial background and fight for independence, I started to understand why this was the case. The title of one of the best books I ever read about Kenya said it all: It’s Our Turn to Eat (3).
From their perspective, it was an ironclad principle that when your ethnic group was the one in power, you should be favored, both politically and economically.
Another important factor was related to the previous election in 2002, in which two Kikuyu leaders were running against each other for the presidency.
One was Daniel Arap Moi, whose Kenya African National Union (KANU) had run the country for close to 25 years and encouraged and fostered a culture of corruption and patronage. The other one was Mwai Kibaki, who started as vice president but then decided to run against the sitting president, Moi.
Kibaki won the presidential race, and he owed his victory in large measure to his decision to partner with opposition leader Raila Odinga, who brought a large Luo constituent to the race. Odinga joined Kibaki with the mutual understanding that the constitution would be amended to provide for a power-sharing arrangement between the office of the president (to be occupied by Kibaki) and the office of prime minister (to be occupied by Odinga).
During the transition, however, this agreement was quickly ‘forgotten’ by Kibaki. After Kibaki became president, he surrounded himself with prominent Kikuyus, an alliance that came to be known in Kenya as the Mount Kenya Mafia.
Additionally, he sidelined Odinga and ignored the compromise plan to create the post of prime minister.
What Kibaki did, however, was hold a referendum on a newly proposed constitutional amendment that would give the office of the president even more power than it already had — power that would inevitably result in even more corruption. The referendum to ratify the amendment, submitted to the electorate in 2005, was rejected by the majority of the Kenyan people.
My Kenyan colleagues and friends who supported Odinga would frequently share this historical account, and I came to understand that they felt betrayed and frustrated. In referring to the government, my landlady frequently uttered the widely held view that “They are all thugs!”
Although Kenyans would root for the leader of their own tribe to win so that they could reap the benefits of ‘favored status,’ they also had a strong desire to consolidate more power in the office of the presidency so that all types of corruption could be fought.
Kenyans strongly believed that free and fair elections were the right way forward to deal with dissatisfaction with their current government. They trusted that the democratic electoral process was well established in their country, so rather than protesting or fighting, they voted.
Having an understanding of the Kenyans’ pre-election mental states provides us with some insight into how a population can be driven to violence. Their belief in a fair election and their hope for a change in government were crushed in a heartbeat on the evening of 30 December, just days after people had gone to the polling places to cast their ballots.
Suspicion of vote rigging began to brew as the votes were tabulated and the Kibaki lead over Odinga narrowed to just over 100,000 votes. The preliminary results showed Kibaki with 4,584,721 votes to Mr. Odinga’s 4,352,993 votes.
There was evidence of widespread election fraud on both sides and, eventually, Kenyans lost all faith in the accuracy of the reported results. As the sitting government became increasingly impatient and concerned that the opposition might reject the outcome, the decision was made to formally announce that President Kibaki had won the election.
Following a hastily organized swearing-in ceremony, Kibaki resumed his duties as the self-proclaimed ‘duly-elected’ president of Kenya. Immediately after the announcement, the country was thrust into civil unrest, the likes of which Kenyans had not experienced since their fight for independence.
The drive to violence was triggered by the opposition’s belief that the rumors of vote rigging were true and that Odinga had been robbed of his rightful election victory. This idea was strengthened by Odinga’s party-faithful supporters, who propagated allegations of vote-rigging and announced their intention to hold their own swearing-in ceremony, at which Odinga would be installed as the new president of Kenya.
Odinga’s supporters perceived Kibaki’s ethnic Kikuyu group as the enemy and started attacking their members. Kikuyus launched their own revenge attacks. This only reinforced the perspectives of both sides that they were the true victims of electoral injustice. More than a thousand people died, and over 600,000 people were displaced from their homes and villages in the ensuing social unrest.
Another mental state underlying the PEV was related to the long-standing and deep-rooted ethnic divisions in Kenya. This divide was marked by differences among ethnic groups in their perceptions of the fairness of the 2007 election. (2) The majority of Kibaki supporters perceived the election result as honest, while the majority of the opposition supporters believed it to be a product of electoral fraud.
Interestingly, as research later indicated, the mental state of competition aimed at gaining access to property and opportunity in line with population density was a better explanation for the PEV than electoral fraud. As a consequence, the PEV was much worse in areas where Kenyans were in competition for rural land and urban housing. For these people, the PEV had served an instrumental purpose. (2)
A final influencing factor in the civil unrest was related to the fact that both Kibaki and Odinga campaigned on a platform of fear of ethnic dominance or displacement by the opposing party.
How did the Kenyans manage to quell the PEV within a relatively short period? The international community played an important role with their quick and decisive response to the situation. Several multinational delegations traveled to Kenya to push for an end to the hostilities.
Ultimately, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, established a panel together with Benjamin Mkapa (former president of Tanzania) and Graça Machel (wife of Nelson Mandela). Together with four representatives from Kibaki’s PNU and four from Odinga’s ODM, they established the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Committee.
They immediately started mediation efforts to bring the PEV to an end. All of them understood that to stop the PEV, they needed to approach negotiations from the perspectives of ALL Kenyans.
By the end of February, Kibaki and Odinga came to an agreement, and a coalition government with Kibaki as the president and Odinga as the prime minister was fashioned. They also agreed to several political changes, including amendments to the constitution. (4)
Kenya’s civil unrest slowly abated as the resolution strategy was crafted to accommodate the perspectives of all the different ethnic groups.
Fast forward to the 2024 U.S. election, and one can see a great deal of overlap between the Kibaki and Odinga campaign strategies and the campaign playbook of former president Trump.
The United States is not Kenya, of course, but the events of January 6th, 2021, provide a chilling reminder that conflict may be lurking around the corner if Trump loses again, especially if he loses by a narrow margin. So, how could a repeat performance of the 2020 U.S. election violence be avoided?
Mentalizing on a group level involves gaining the true shared intragroup and intergroup perspectives. This can be done only when group members make an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the shared mental states of their counterparts. This can be accomplished by stepping away from viewing other people as part of a group to perceiving them as people who, like themselves, are simply trying to make their way through life.
For instance, research done by Dr. Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, shows that most people greatly overestimate the competitive drive of others for competition and egocentrism.
Additionally, most people underestimate how trustworthy people are in general and how much they share in a strong desire for compassion, cooperation, and collaboration. These misjudgments are especially prevalent when dealing with outgroup members.
Our tendency to over- and underestimate the aforementioned characteristics of people is often exploited by those who want to attain power or influence but are not capable of doing so with integrity and competency.
Such individuals will use influence tactics to instill a mental state of apprehension in their followers through zero-sum thinking (i.e., there is not enough to go around, so you had better make sure that get as much as possible as soon as possible) and peddling real or imagined competitive threats.
They try to foster feelings of resentment in their followers by pointing out group disparities (often contrived) in power and resources. The ensuing escalation cycles are typically accompanied by tit-for-tat dynamics and emotional escalation.
Additionally, they negatively shape their followers’ perspectives of outgroup members by using negative stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. They dehumanize outgroup members, causing their base to believe that peaceful coexistence would be impossible.
Their selectively peddled historical injustices would resonate with the mental states of their base and foster an ingroup selective memory by ignoring or downplaying the suffering of outgroup members.
The manipulative personality will attempt to build a strong ingroup identity (i.e., an ‘us vs. them’ mentality) and fortify this ingroup identity through favoritism. Nationalism is highly promoted, often through the use of violent and hostile rhetoric.
Communication is kept intentionally vague so that people can cherry-pick their way through a presentation or conversation and stick to their beliefs, which of course were designed in the first place to reinforce the perspective that the would-be leader wants them to adopt.
Does this all sound a little too familiar?
There are many biases that we can espouse when we don’t really make the effort to try to gain the true perspectives of others. Gaining the perspectives of others helps us to humanize one another (even outgroup members), which in turn can lead to empathy, compassion, cooperation, and collaboration.
I am keeping my fingers crossed for a positive outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election and the peaceful transition of power that will (hopefully) follow.
References:
Washington Post By Amy Gardner September 11, 2024 at 12:14 a.m. EDT
Comments