Are Kenyans prepared for TJRC report?

By KWENDO OPANGA, Saturday, May 25   2013 

In Summary

• Nothing better demonises, disparages, harasses and harangues, embitters and embattles than the truth

When I joined in the agitation for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, I also argued that truth does not unite or reconcile. Truth, I said, divides. I, therefore, argued that whereas it is important that we have a truth commission, it is also crucial that we be prepared for the truth and how to handle it.

Now that the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) has handed over its long-awaited report to President Kenyatta, I wish to buttress my position by emphasising that, indeed, nothing better demonises and disparages, harasses and harangues, embitters and embattles than the truth. This assumes that the report of the TJRC is nothing but the truth.

Of course, the TJRC was set up to expose the truth about past injustices so that it may set us free. The way I understand it, the recommendations of the report and implementation thereof should help us exorcise the ghosts of the past that drove us into the madness and mayhem of 2007/2008 and lead us into a new chapter of reconciliation and amity.

My concern is that the possibility exists that if the truth is not handled properly it could become a monster that would burden and haunt us with the ghosts of the past forever or, worse, turn the present into a hell that consumes us all. We must be careful as a country not to expend a substantial part of our time and resources on excavating the past to the detriment of building the future.

While the past has important lessons for us to learn, I am of the view that our future does not lie in the past. Kenya’s best days, I would like to believe, are ahead of it and not behind it. The future is built by executing the visions of the present which must address and redress – or build on – the deficits of the plans of the past.

Now, the TJRC recommends that more than 400 people, most of them former senior figures in government, be prosecuted. It calls for myriads of investigation into the activities of many others, including its own chairman, Dr Bethuel Kiplagat, and security agencies. TJRC proposes that President Kenyatta apologises for Kenya’s human rights abuses since 1963.

The TJRC wants the 1990 murder of Dr Robert John Ouko investigated afresh and indeed names former President Moi as a person of interest in such an investigation. The commission recommends that the National Land Commission fast-tracks the process of addressing and recovering all irregularly and illegally acquired land at the Coast.

The recommendations are as legion as the injustices the commission covered. So if these be objectives, can they be described as specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused and time-bound? I get the feeling that the TJRC is all over the place; that it wants to have its finger in every conceivable pie and its footprint on everything.

Of course, its mandate was wide, but I would have preferred two or three recommendations that would have forced us into collective reflection and also given us a clear path to national reconciliation. If we are going to have a plethora of investigations, prosecutions and threats of or actual land seizures, then we cannot rule out ethnic mobilisation by the affected parties, especially politicians.

President Kenyatta is expected to apologise within three months. What happens if he does not? Suppose he argues that if he apologises he will have opened the doors to thousands of Kenyans to sue the government for compensation? Apologising amounts to owning the alleged sins of omission and commission of the two living former presidents and the deceased one, but they may not agree they sinned and may want to challenge the TJRC report.

And might not the TJRC have tied itself in knots? It mentions the President and Deputy President William Ruto adversely in connection with the post-election violence of 2007 and 2008 and uses the Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHCR) report as well as the report of the Justice Philip Waki Commission on post-election violence.

President and Deputy have nothing, and have preached nothing, but antipathy and anathema for these reports. Will they implement that which embraces what they consider to be speculation and hearsay by rented witnesses?

Given the fiscal and especially emotional cost of implementing the TJRC report and granted the fragility of Kenya’s politics and inter-ethnic tensions, President Kenyatta should ask himself the value-add in prosecutions vis-à-vis the promise of the Constitution. However, recommendations on land must occupy his mind most.

Kwendo Opanga is a media consultant opanga@diplomateastafrica.com