Constructing a "New Kenya": National Unity and Reconciliation in the Wake of Kenya's 2007/2008 Post-Election Violence

Abstract

On December 30, 2007, moments after Kenya's electoral commission announced incumbent President Mwai Kibaki won the presidential election, violence erupted across Kenya in response to perceptions the election was rigged. Within weeks, 1,133 people were killed and more than 350,000 displaced. Although immediately sparked by the contested election, the violence resulted from and revealed longstanding social divisions and political injustices. In addition to destroying thousands of human lives, the crisis shattered Kenya's imagined national identity as an island of peace and a model democracy. In an address to the National Assembly, newly elected president Mwai Kibaki identified the crisis as a "turning point" and called for the construction of a "new Kenya." This thesis works towards understanding rhetoric's potential contribution to national unity and reconciliation as the basis of constructing a political community, especially when ethnicity is irreducible. Ultimately, I argue that the potential for reconciliation and national unity lies in a particular form of rhetorical performance: a form that Kenya's Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission calls "truth telling." By cultivating an enlarged collective understanding, truth telling fosters identification across differences and is attentive to the sources of social divisions and tensions, grounding the potential to transform them.