Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

Once a journalist, always a journalist, I guess. And for me, one of the biggest news items was, that I was not the only foreign journalist in town and in the country. Some 200 journalists, in their branch of our profession also known as ‘travel writers’, had been invited by the Kenyan Tourism Board and other organisations to come to Kenya and see for themselves the tourist marvels of this holiday destination in East Africa. For two very good reasons, I would say.

First of all, tourism is the biggest foreign currency earner within the Kenyan economy and a direct and indirect supplier of hundreds of thousands of jobs for Kenyan men and women. It makes sense, then, to invite travel writers from the four corners of the globe to see first for themselves and write about what their fellow country men, the foreign tourists, should come and enjoy after them. The beaches, the game parks with all those wild animals, the mountains and rivers: you most probably have heard about them, but take it from me that they are indeed fully worth their while.

The second reason was, at this particular moment of history, even more urgent. A couple of months ago, in early January of 2008, I also was in and around Mombasa. One night I spent in the Mombasa Beach Hotel, a place that is as friendly as it is big. There I was, together with my wife, having breakfast in the restaurant the next morning. Not with more than a hundred other guests, as it should be in that tourist peak season, but with less than ten. Less than ten! Now, why was that? You know why. Of course you do. As the whole world knew in January of this year. Tourists were not flocking the game parks and beaches, but were fleeing the country. All that because of the violent aftermath of the December 27 elections.

For nearly two months, most of us in Kenya were holding our breath, looking on in anger, terror and shame, as some of our fellow Kenyans were taking it out against one another. If it were not for that wise man from Ghana, Kofi Annan, and the political agreement he brokered between president Mwai Kibaki and then opposition leader Raila Odinga, maybe we would not be here this morning to talk about a ‘democracy in distress’, as we would be too busy living, experiencing that distress in our actual lives. Kofi Annan left, Kibaki and Odinga started working out their new coalition cabinet, and the Kenyan Tourist Board invited 200 travel writers to come over to Kenya and see for themselves how peaceful we all in Kenya had once again become. Lies. Damned lies. Damned lies and politics, of course.

In that very same week in which 200 visiting journalists were supposed to take in the beauty of Kenya, Kibaki and Odinga decided that after one month they would not agree to work together for now. In that crucial week for that most vital economic sector, Kenya’s Number One foreign currency earner, the tourism industry, the people in Kisumu and in Kibera, Nairobi’s awfully big slum, were battling it out again with the riot police. Once again, Kenya was Teargas Country, making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. What great political timing, don’t you think so? Such sensible political bravery! Such wonderfully mature political leadership. Are we really that doomed with our politicians? Yes we are. We are doomed with a political class that sees itself, not as the representatives of the people, for whom they will work relentlessly, but of the representatives of just themselves and the economic clique that will keep them fat, rich and happy.

Politics in Kenya, as in most of Africa still, will never get to the stage of a democracy, will never be governance by, of and for the people, as long as it is the only way for political individuals to get to the helm of economic power. As long as that political-economic nexus will not be broken, Kenya might never find true peace.

Having said that, it is still a most beautiful country to visit. Welcome to our discussion this morning. And please book your travel tickets to Kenya later today.

Thank you very much.