Kenya Crisis

IF, by this time next week, the political crisis in Kenya has not been resolved, aided by a group of distinguished, influential Africans, the continent can start lowering its sights on all fronts.

The economic and political stability that seemed attainable as we ended 2007, and the prospects of progress forecast by many independent agencies, including those of the United Nations, will have to be revised downwards.

Once again, the continent will have failed to rescue from the jaws of destruction a country that had made remarkable strides in maintaining political and economic equilibrium after the advent of democracy.

Under both the founding president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, Kenya was a virtual one-party state. Only under a politically reformed Mwai Kibaki did it become a full-fledged democracy.

Many will be reminded of the disaster that befell Cote d'Voire a few years after the death of President Felix Houphouett-Boigny, the founding president.

That once oasis of peace in a poliftical desert of military coups and counter coups exploded into death and destruction.

It took years for peace and stability to return, helped by both Africa and Europe.

The reconstruction will take years and the wounds inflicted on national unity might take even longer.

What of Kenya? President Mwai Kibaki cannot be unaware that his hold on power started slipping when corruption seemed to overwhelm his administration, as it has done to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.

Kibaki cannot be unaware that to many African political analysts he was turning out to be the stereotype of the African leader, the "caricature" once described by Archbishop Desmond Tutu about another African leader nearer home.

But it is fruitless now to play the blame game: hundreds have been killed in Kenya, thousands rendered homeless. Every effort must be made to end the bloodshed and both Kibaki and Raila Odinga must recognise that they are at the centre of a defining moment in African political history.

Somalia, the DRC, Sudan (Darfur), Eritrea-Ethiopia, Uganda, the Central African Republic and Chad are among countries in which there is strife today.

Yet to counter them are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique and Madagascar where once there was bloodshed, but where peace and stability now reign.

Hundreds of thousands died in those countries, almost all of them needlessly.

Some of the bloody conflicts were ended with African and international assistance. In all of them, a pragmatic, give-and-take strategy was adopted by the combatants, leading eventually to compromise.

Kibaki and Odinga must embrace that strategy hastily if they are not to consign their country to a fate similar to Somalia and the DRC, the worst-case scenarios.

For Zimbabwe, on the verge of its own elections, caution is the watchword. Most elections since 1980 have more or less resulted in violence, some of it leading to death, particularly in 2000 and 2002.

Fortunately, there has never been anything on the scale of the Kenyan bloodbath, except Gukurahundi. Yet it is unwise to dismiss out of hand the likelihood of a change of fortune.

This time around the stakes are quite high as younger people are hoping to replace an aging leader whose tenure of office since independence has brought this country to a state of political and economic penury unprecedented in its history.

We too should look to Kenyan and African leaders to make this a defining moment for Africa - no more bloodshed caused by selfish, power-hungry leaders.