How private sector acted as promoter of peace after polls

Opinion and Analysis

Participants during the MKenya Daima campaign. The business community played a big role in pulling Kenya back from the brink. Photo/FILE 

By Mike Eldon

In Summary

• While major public campaigns that wag fingers at our politicians and hold us back from violence are necessary, they are unlikely to be sufficient. If our excited leaders are to move away from agitated politics towards calm and visionary statesmanship, there will – as before – also need to be serious behind the scenes talks.

I recently participated in a Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) breakfast meeting for the launch of a report titled, “The case of the 2013 election cycle” that describes the peace-building role the private sector played around the time of the 2013 elections.

 

The report was funded and organised by the One Earth Future Foundation, and among those presenting were Dr Victor Owuor, the report’s principal researcher and author, and Lee Sorenssen, one of the foundation’s leaders.

The report, which draws on interviews with leaders from the business community and literature on private sector peace-building, concludes that our private sector was influential in preventing election-cycle violence last time round.

The study demonstrates how the potential impact of violence motivated the private sector to take action through conflict-prevention activities. Not surprisingly, it found that the power of the private sector is enhanced when it acts in a collective and coordinated fashion, and when it works with other sectors of society.

The private sector’s 2012-13 peace-building initiative was organised through the Mkenya Daima campaign, and there was general agreement that it accomplished its objective by contributing to a peaceful election.

Shaken by what happened in 2008, the private sector moved from being reactive to proactive, with the thrust of Mkenya Daima being to have us accept that each of us is an owner of the country, and that we must not leave everything to government and “others”.

Together with civil society, religious groups, student leaders and the media owners, the private sector under Kepsa used its great convening power to undertake a sustained, systematic, and comprehensive peace building campaign, defying the temptation to take peace for granted.

Inevitably though, the peace-building role of business has been dormant for the last year. But given the rising political temperature (in Kenya it never falls much below boiling point) it is reassuring that business has decided to re-engage.

“Politics is the narcotic of choice of Kenyans,” said KAM chairman Polycarp Igathe at the meeting, “with politicians grandstanding and playing tough.” The toxins are rising again, we see, as a result of which we can’t just leave politics to the politicians.

It is for the private sector and others to engage with government leaders and have them draw back from the brink. But in keeping with Kepsa’s normal respectful approach, it was emphasised that we must do so constructively, not talking down to the politicians.

Ken Njiru, who leads the Uunguana Initiative, told us that having worked on the “hardware” of the Constitution, we must now focus on its neglected “software”, as laid out in the sections on leadership and integrity and on national values.

Mr Njiru is convinced that following the first phase of the country’s development – led by nationalists – and the second – led by civil society and faith-based leaders – this third stage is in the hands of business. For ultimately, he said, it is only businesses that can transform nations, being the creators of wealth and jobs and the promoters of corporate and hence national values.

At one table sat a collection of current and former student leaders, among whom several had been active in promoting peace around the time of the 2013 election.

Tom Mboya, now a practising doctor, remembered that in 2007 the young people were “mouthpieces for hire” who carried out the acts of terror but that by 2013, they had become a force for peace. During that time, he said, the student leaders developed friendships with one another, became accountable to one another, and “proved the power of small groups”.

I contributed too, introducing myself as a “peace addict”. I went back to my involvement in the 2004 private sector political mediation that tried to get the political leaders to relaunch the power-sharing MoU between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga.