Even as we have all been so utterly focused on the recently concluded election, events around the world have significantly reshaped the global order within which our next President will operate.
The key events have been, first and most consequential, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24. This led directly to a second event of great significance: the abandonment of decades of rigid neutrality by Finland and Sweden, and their application to join NATO – the intergovernmental military alliance led by the US.
The third and most recent event is the visit by the US Speaker of the House of Congress, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan.
The first event has thus far led to a series of humiliations on the battlefield for Russia, as Ukraine’s Western allies have provided it with advanced weapons, making it possible for Ukraine to effectively resist the much larger and better-equipped invader. And the third event – though essentially symbolic – has deeply upset the Chinese leadership.
China and Russia were of course the most prominent communist countries during the Cold War years, from 1947 to 1991.
Well then: what these events in remote places have done is to effectively recalibrate the global order into what amounts to a new Cold War.
We can get some idea of how this is likely to play out from Forward to Independence: My Memoirs by Fitz de Souza. The author was a prominent lawyer of the 1960s, who served as the Deputy Speaker of the Kenyan Parliament in the early years of the Jomo Kenyatta presidency.
As a Kenyan Asian deeply involved in Kenyan politics (going back to the pre-Independence era) he has a unique perspective on the events of the time. As he did not belong to any indigenous Kenyan tribe, he was not invested in any internal tribal rivalries.
But more significantly still he was on friendly terms with two of the top Kenyan politicians of the time, Vice President Jaramogi Odinga and the famously charismatic and brilliant Cabinet Minister, Tom Mboya.
The rivalry between these two men was one of the great political dramas of that time. Basically, they were in a struggle to predetermine who would succeed Jomo Kenyatta.
Both men were Luos so there was no tribal dimension to this rivalry.
Their rivalry was instead based on something we have not seen in this country for a long time now: it was that one of them (Jaramogi Odinga) was an avowed socialist (though invariably represented by his enemies as a “communist”) and thus the point man for Russia and China, both of whom sought to have some influence in this country. And Tom Mboya was the Americans' key ally within Kenya.
Most importantly, Fitz de Souza makes it clear – while in no way detracting from their reputations as exceptional men and gifted politicians – that both men also had access to vast financial resources through their overseas patrons. And also, at a time when Kenya had only one national university, they could distribute scholarships to universities in their respective patron-states by the plane-load.
Ultimately Tom Mboya was able to outmanoeuvre and politically marginalise Jaramogi Odinga – thereby putting an end to his own indispensability and initiating a process that led to his assassination in 1969.
The Kenya we live in now is a vastly different place from that of the first Cold War. With roughly 90 universities operating within our borders, and with a reasonably functional system of providing loans to those who qualify for admission, opportunities for attending overseas universities can no longer be weaponised.
What remains to be seen is the terms on which the current competition for global influence will play out.
Will we in future have leading politicians – and especially those who seek the presidency – supported with the unprecedented sums which Putin-friendly Russian oligarchs can supply from their loose change?
Will the modification of terms of payment for the many loans already taken depend on which side of this new Cold War the new President allies himself with?
What is clear though is that the days of neutrality are now over. And that like Sweden and Finland, Kenya will have to take sides.
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