Eventful year: From Kenya’s peaceful elections to Juba’s violent falling out ... and a CoW

People gather at a makeshift IDP camp at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) compound in Juba on December 22, 2013. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan was unprepared for the explosion of violence that has rocked the country in the past two weeks, the top UN official in Juba said on Thursday. AFP PHOTO/Tony KARUMBA 

By WASHINGTON AKUMU The EastAfrican

In Summary

• Kenya carried out a disputed but largely peaceful election and transition to a new system of devolved governance. Tanzanians are discussing a new Constitution, while Kigali and Kampala are exercised by the pending succession of two long-serving, larger-than-life presidents.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary by governments, the events of 2013 demonstrated the fragile nature of the East African state and the region’s unsavoury reputation as a theatre of unending conflict.

Political transitions remain a dicey affair in most countries, while neighbouring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo continued to play host to its usual cast of ragtag guerrilla outfits, affecting and sucking in the rest of the region.

Kenya carried out a disputed but largely peaceful election and transition to a new system of devolved governance. Tanzanians are discussing a new Constitution, while Kigali and Kampala are exercised by the pending succession of two long-serving, larger-than-life presidents.

To the north, the region’s youngest state ended the year on a bad note, with political conflict threatening to degenerate into full-scale ethnic-based civil war.

M23’s fluctuating fortunes

At the start of the year, the M23, a remnant Tutsi-linked guerrilla outfit that has been a constant thorn in the flesh of the DR Congo government, was on a high.

It had just captured the strategically important and symbolic city of Goma in November 2012, with little resistance from a Congolese army in disarray and a UN force that had no authorisation to intervene militarily in the war.

With peace talks starting in Kampala in December of the previous year, under the sponsorship of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and the chairmanship of President Yoweri Museveni, the rebels appeared to have been handed much sought-after legitimacy by the international community.

But what happened to the M23 after that is living proof that a year can be a long time in politics. It was a rather subdued M23 that signed a loose “declaration” on peace with President Joseph Kabila’s government in Nairobi a fortnight ago, a document that fails to guarantee its key demands at the Kampala talks: Unconditional amnesty for its leaders and combatants and integration of its fighters into the DRC army.

A series of defections and surrenders by its top leaders (Sultani Makenga, Bosco Ntaganda and Bishop Jean Marie Runiga) and fighters, withdrawal from Goma on the advice of Museveni and eventual defeat by the UN’s first combat force, the Tanzania-led FIB (Force Intervention Brigade) all conspired to diminish M23’s stature.

READ: Kinshasa, M23 sign ‘declaration,’ but will it herald peace in volatile DRC?

Those Kenyans and their elections!

Kenya went into a General Election on March 4 It was the first one under the country’s new constitution, whose centrepiece is devolved governance and a bicameral parliament.

Electors were voting for six officials: President, senator, governor, MP, women’s representative and member of county assembly.

Understandably, the region was on tenterhooks, the events of 2007/8 — when the country’s last elections triggered prolonged mayhem that resulted in the death of over 1,300 people and the displacement of 600,000 — still fresh in their minds.