by Kofi Annan
The first I knew of this was on January 10, when Kufour called. “They have agreed to a team of Africans to mediate,” he said. “The team I’ve gotten them to accept is one made up of three: Graça Machel and Benjamin Mkapa. Under the lead of Kofi Annan.” After mentioning Mozambique’s former minister of education and wife of Nelson Mandela, as well as the former president of Tanzania, Kufor dropped the last feature in. “Will you do it?”
I was well versed in the successes and failures of previous mediation efforts, so I agreed—on the condition that ours would be the only process involved to prevent the parties from indulging in “mediation shopping.” I was drawing on my Africa Report from ten years before. African crises needed a full range of instruments for their alleviation, including the interventions of groups of friends and special mediators “to tackle new conflicts before they can expand and escalate beyond control.” But the report had also stressed the danger of “rival or competing efforts, once a framework for mediation has been established.” This was a common problem, which I had witnessed many times, where faction leaders gamed the situation, seizing on and switching between the opportunities presented by alternative mediators and negotiating plans, dragging out the process in their favor and at the expense of peace. With the obstacles we faced in Kenya, if this happened we would have little chance. The choice was simple, and I wanted it conveyed to the other parties: if we were not the unquestionable leaders of the process, then I wouldn’t go to Kenya.
I figured then that it would probably take around two weeks to dampen the tensions and get a breakthrough in the negotiations. I told Kufour that I had to return to my home in Geneva and the office of my foundation to put my situation in order and ensure the way was clear for our mediation.
I was set to leave for Kenya on January 16, but I felt myself coming down with a fever the day before. Having just returned from Ghana, I went to the doctor to check against malaria, but I was told I was fine. Then the next day, in the car on the way to the airport, accompanied by Ruth McCoy, my resourceful and experienced aide at the foundation, my condition deteriorated suddenly. My temperature rocketed and I started shaking with fever. “Take me to the hospital,” I told the driver.
I was taken to the emergency room and then admitted to the hospital. They told me I needed to complete a minimum ten-day course of drugs, administered intravenously in the hospital. “I can’t wait that long,” I protested, “I have to go to Kenya immediately.” They said this was impossible. By now the doctor and the whole medical team had gathered at my bedside, and we were engaged in full negotiation mode. “What if I at least rest at home while I organize myself?” I suggested. They said this was also impossible. I had to stay and have the drugs fed intravenously. I stressed that there was no way I could stay ten days. What if I stayed five days, and then took the rest of the high-dose antibiotics orally? They reluctantly agreed, and five days later I was on my way, with big doses of antibiotics in my pocket.
It was not ideal. As a result of what turned out to be a microbial infection, I was in a rotten state. My body was wracked; I could feel the grip of deep fatigue settling in behind the fever alongside the impact of the antibiotics, and I slept for most of the flight. But the time in the hospital had given me some advantages. I was able to continue making a series of calls to important international parties, to ensure full and undivided support for our mediation effort—to the AU; the EU, especially the UK and France; the United States; and the UN, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who gave me his full support and allowed me to draw staff from the Secretariat. I found more staff at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, including its director, Martin Griffiths. And I brought on board the former legal counsel of the United Nations, Hans Corell. I would be arriving with the fully expressed backing and authority of all the major voices of the international community behind me, so the parties would have to accept my mediation. Furthermore, the situation had become much more violent during this time, making it clear to all that an agreement was essential.
The mediation process of what was now called the Panel of Eminent African Personalities officially began with our arrival on January 22. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda also chose this day, unexpectedly, to visit Kenya at the invitation of Kibaki. The incumbent Party of National Unity (PNU) camp was against any internationalization of the election dispute. They held power and did not want to change the status quo. So they were trying to bring in a negotiator who would dance to their tune—and Museveni was an ally of Kibaki.
Museveni called me at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi, where I had just arrived. He said he had a peace plan that both the government and the ODM were willing to work with. It was based on their first accepting the results of the elections. He then asked me to come to State House, the residence of the president of Kenya, to meet and discuss the plan.
I had seen too many ploys in my career to be caught by this. It seemed to me that Museveni and Kibaki fancied a scheme that demanded that all accept the election result, and to publicly spin my visit as endorsement of this plan. I made my excuses that I still had to call all the parties before I could make any visits. When I then called Odinga, my suspicions were confirmed. He said there was no chance they would accept Museveni as a mediator, whom they saw as biased toward Kibaki. Nor had they been consulted on this. The Museveni initiative ended there, and he left two days later.
It was estimated that over five hundred people had by then died in the violence, and the atmosphere was fraught across the country. I had no illusions: neither party wanted to deal with the other. But we needed a confidence-boosting measure quickly that would calm the mood and give the impression progress was now being made. Even if they only met in public briefly, this would be a breakthrough that we could sell to the media.
However, neither party wanted to even be seen near the other. The ODM demanded that the PNU admit fraud in the elections, while the PNU demanded that ODM accept Kibaki as president first. It was at the same time that Museveni was meeting with Kibaki that I then went to see Odinga.
“I encourage you to work with your opponent to heal and reconcile the nation,” I said. “I’m meeting with the president next. I’m going to ask him to meet with you. If he agrees, I don’t want any hesitation from you.”
“We won’t go to State House to meet him,” Odinga replied. “If we do, it will appear as if we are recognizing him as the legitimate president, which he is not.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, keen to avoid the firm no that always then becomes a devil to shift. “Let’s just get the appointment scheduled, and then we’ll worry about the protocol side.” Odinga gave an accepting nod. I then saw Kibaki the next day, and told him Odinga was willing to meet with him publicly. I asked him if he would match Odinga’s gesture. He agreed. I called Odinga to organize it straightaway.
Once the three of us arrived at Harambee House, the office of the president of Kenya, we met alone in one of the rooms. The country was burning, but they were reluctant to even be there. We sat for over an hour, drinking tea, and they attempted no discussion of a solution. We then walked outside to greet the press and ensure photographs were taken of their shaking hands and agreeing to launch a process of dialogue. I was acutely aware of the importance of this step: it was a confidence-building measure to send a message that the leaders were negotiating and on track toward a solution. I was offering something to quell the desperate atmosphere prevailing across the country.
This was a deliberate mask, however. The truth was they weren’t ready to talk. The tension was far too deep. An attempt at negotiations directly between them would just mean personal confrontation. This could kill the whole process. After the handshake, I told them each to give me three names of those who would form their negotiating teams. This seemed to be the only way we were going to get things moving.
The two leaders agreed to launch the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR), a
nd the negotiations between their teams began on January 29. In the five days prior to this, I had a chance to reflect on where the process had to go. I already realized the problem was not just one of disagreement between political leaders over an election result: the countrywide violence meant the problem was more fundamental, arising from the makeup of the Kenyan political system and its relationship with society. We needed a process that would address the root causes of Kenya’s problems, otherwise any agreement would constitute nothing more than a delay before the next violent crisis. Our job had to be more than just to move the chairs around on behalf of the political elites. The resolution was going to have to come from an engagement with all of Kenyan society. Our mediation needed to be the beginning of a true process of political reform.
In this interim period I also began a series of meetings with representatives from Kenyan NGOs, civil society, churches, businesses, and others, promising them a transparent process in which they would be involved. It was a further calming measure, to encourage the public perception that a process was in swing that was in their interests, not just the politicians’. To all of these parties I promised that any decision or agreement between the parties would be made public as soon as it was signed. Not only did the people have the right to know what was going on, but they had to also own the mediation process if we were going to see reform.
But rearranging chairs was literally how the first negotiation session began on January 29. The plan was that Odinga and Kibaki would come together once more at a meeting to initiate the process between the negotiators. As was standard for such matters, my team arranged the table. I would sit in the middle, with Kibaki on the right, Odinga on the left. But one of the Kibaki team then came in and rearranged the chairs, bringing in the special presidential chair, which he placed in the middle. I walked in to find this scene.
“This isn’t a presidential meeting,” I said softly. “I’m dealing with two protagonists. Put the chairs back.”
“But that’s undermining the president,” Francis Muthaura, the head of the public service and permanent secretary to the president, argued. Uhuru Kenyatta, Kibaki’s minister for local government, then chimed in behind Muthaura, “He never goes anywhere in this country without his chair. And it always sits in the most prominent position.”
“This is a political mediation. It’s not business as usual,” I retorted. “I’m chairing the meeting and they’re to go on either side.” I knew that if the ODM saw the presidential chair sitting in the middle, they would probably abandon the event. To stop a rebellion from PNU, however, I accepted that the president could still keep his chair, albeit to one side.
The lack of urgency and childish nature of these obstacles were something to behold. This was in the middle of a four-day incident of fighting in the Rift Valley that had left sixty dead. Rumors had spread of hardline PNU leaders ferrying funds to criminal organizations, including the notorious Mungiki, a Kikuyu gang. The Mungiki were now coming out of the slums and into the towns to send a brutal message to those who would threaten Kikuyu. The politicians, meanwhile, were playing with chairs.
After the principals had launched the session, we put it to the two negotiating teams that while there were fundamental differences in their positions, they could at least agree on some basic things: action had to be taken to stop the violence and to address the humanitarian crisis, and measures of some kind needed to be taken to resolve the political crisis in the disagreement between the PNU and the ODM. We also said there were clearly long-standing causes to the nationwide crisis that needed to be examined, followed by recommendations for reform to address them. The parties agreed, and we turned this into a four-point agenda for the entire KNDR process, with the fourth item of the agenda being a long-term reform program for the Kenyan political system.
We took the document outlining the four-point agenda of the KNDR and had it signed and publicly distributed on February 1, as we did with all the other agreed statements that emerged over the coming days. Kibaki was at the AU summit in Ethiopia that day, where he repeatedly attacked the stance of the opposition and only proposed positions that had been rejected outright by the ODM. Our document was a thoroughly basic agreement for talks, but we were continuing with our strategy of building confidence through feeding an image of progress to the press.
Doing anything we could to promote a sense of calm was crucial. The comparisons with Rwanda were not overblown to any that were in the country—far from it. The sense of fear among the public for a looming episode of bloodshed of a similar scale was palpable throughout the mediation process. This fear added further danger: while it gave incentive to succeed in the quest for a political solution, it also gave incentive to prepare for a coming collapse of the country’s institutions. Any inflation in this morbid pessimism could itself trigger further violence as groups made efforts to aggressively protect their interests in light of increasingly bloody prospects, creating greater and greater opportunities for antagonism, clashes, and death.
After the reintroduction of multiparty politics in Kenya in 1992, every general election—with the exception of one in 2002 when there was no incumbent running for office—had witnessed some form of political violence. Yet the magnitude and scale of the latest violence shocked Kenyans and the world as a whole. The political violence was of a different character than before, shaking the foundation of the country to a point where it posed an existential threat to Kenya itself. Consequently, the public mood throughout the mediation was one of anticipation, anxiety, and fear of the unknown if mediation failed.
On February 8 an open letter to me was published in a Kenyan newspaper by a chief subeditor. She began by citing widespread fears that I might abandon my mission in Kenya because of the deep intransigence of the leaders involved. She then went on in words that well captured the fearful public mood:
You have seen the uncertainty that has left Kenyans this vulnerable. I, for instance, feel like a little girl again, begging daddy not to leave her alone in the dark, because a monster will eat her. Annan, you have seen the monster in this country ravage its own. You have seen the degree of violence . . . You and gracious Graca—whom I nominate as the Mother of the Continent—have struck a chord with Kenyans . . . You have made political leaders commit themselves to promote peace. You must not relent in ensuring they keep their word. But being human, you are bound to be fatigued by leaders’ doublespeak. We have seen the evident frustration on your face . . . This week, you have steered the talks to delicate waters—the disputed election results. This stage is described as “make or break,” which triggers another bout of cold sweat. If the situation prevails, communities might be reduced to just conscripting their school-age children into their militias, to fight for survival. We shall only be driven by base instincts . . . Remember you said that every Kenyan must feel “the cloak of government.” Leave us on a solid foundation for real change.
I was moved by these words when I read them, and in response I issued a public statement: I would be neither frustrated nor provoked to leave my work until the job was done. But privately for myself, Graca Machel, and Benjamin Mkapa—as well as for the other members of the overworked team that we were leading—the message only reinforced that we desperately needed real progress to calm the situation before it spiraled out of control.
Yet, despite the heat of the situation, careful and deliberative calculations still had to be made. What the official response to the contested election should be had to be decided. Should there be a full recount or a retallying of valid forms, a rerun of the presidential elections, or a forensic investigation into the results? I had already decided that any kind of rerun or recount of the election was not going to work. There was too much opportunity for further dispute and fiddling of the system. In the violent climate, such a route would also almost certainly make things worse. Nor was a rerun or recount going to solve any of the root causes of the crisis. By now I had come to th
e conclusion that a power-sharing deal and an amendment to the constitution was going to be the only way to get Kenya out of this bloody quagmire.
But the atmosphere in the meeting rooms and the instructions coming in from Odinga and Kibaki gave no scope for such a deal at this stage. I feared that if we went to the negotiators with the recommendation for a political deal, it would be shot down and killed straightaway. I knew that I could not directly lead them to this choice, proclaiming my preferred route at the outset. These were fiercely intelligent, independent negotiators we were dealing with, suspicious of any solution another might impose upon them. I decided, instead, that the best thing to do would be to take the negotiators through a deductive process. On February 12, I moved the negotiations to Kilaguni Safari Lodge, in the beautiful wild surroundings of Tsavo National Park. In this tranquil new location, as per my instructions, we would weigh together, as a group, the costs, benefits, and risks of each of the options available: a complete rerun of the election; a complete recount; a retally; a forensic audit of the election result; or a political settlement involving a negotiated agreement for power sharing between the parties. For this discussion I brought in Craig Jenness, director of the UN Electoral Assistance Division of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), to present in expert detail what each option would mean in practice. We then conducted a joint evaluation of these options, with the negotiators taking the lead in weighing the implications.
As I had hoped, when the likely impact of all the options were laid out in stark terms, it was clear that anything other than a deal to share power had little to no chance of calming the situation and resolving the crisis. The other options would take too long, be too dangerous to attempt in such fraught circumstances, or would be too likely to lack credibility in the eyes of the public or the respective parties to the dispute. But the prospect of a power-sharing deal was still daunting to the negotiators—it was alien to Kenyan politics. With this in mind, on February 13 I invited Gernot Erler, a German minister of state, to speak to the negotiators and share his experiences of coalition government, which had come to form a very effective basis for German politics and was a well-established solution there to political crises.
