Africa Up Close

Voters queuing at a polling station in Kenya during the 2007 elections. Photo courtesy of User DEMOSH via Flickr Commons.

Political tensions are high in Kenya with just a few days to the general elections. The European Union has warned that the country could once again plunge into violence, and the Kenya Elections Observation Group (ELOG) expressed dissatisfaction with the preparedness of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). Opinion polls suggest that the election will be a two-horse race between the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta, and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. In attempts to woo voters, both candidates are targeting the youth vote—the largest voting bloc in Kenya. The candidates are very active on new media platforms popularly used by the youth: Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube, and Twitter.

A voter casts a ballot in Kenya in 2007. The 2007 election saw a great deal of post-election violence, in part because of issues with the electoral body. Photo by Juliana Rotich, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

A survey by Pan-African research network Afrobarometer reveals that 55% of respondents across 36 African countries have little or no trust in their national electoral bodies and how they conduct elections. Poor conduct by the electoral body is a major reason for election-related violence, as the opposition party may feel the election has been rigged, and opposition supporters may be provoked into violence.   

In 2016, there were 56 internet shutdowns across the globe, 180 percent more than in 2015, according to Access Now, a digital rights company. Many were in African countries. An internet shutdown is when a government intentionally restricts public internet access for a period of time in a bid to limit free speech and access to information, often during elections. These shutdowns are typically national but in some cases are limited to just certain regions, as in the recent months-long shutdown in Anglophone Cameroon. Governments typically do not directly restrict internet access, but order telecom operators and other internet service providers to halt their services.

Citizens line up to vote in the 2013 Kenyan elections. Photo by Commonwealth Secretariat, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind” – John F. Kennedy

After Kenya’s 2007 general elections results were announced, there was a surge of violence between supporters of the winning party and the opposition. The opposition claimed the elections had been rigged, an accusation that resonated after international observers, including the European Union, noted incidences of election malpractice.

More than a thousand people were killed in the post-election violence, and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes. Ten years later, some victims still complain of neglect by the government. Many victims are still working their way through the legal system, asking the courts to compel the government to compensate them. In a case filed by 25 internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the High Court, psychologist Dinah Kituyi told the court that victims are still suffering from post-traumatic stress, and survivors need medical care. Early this year, a group of IDPs in Naivasha and Nyanza threatened to boycott the upcoming 2017 elections until they were compensated for the suffering they said they experienced in the 2007 violence. Other victims of the 2007 violence who fled to Uganda’s Kiryadongo Refugee Camp returned to Kenya and camped outside Parliament for almost a month in 2016, demanding solutions to their grievances, to no avail.