Sub-Saharan Africa will never be a peaceful region: on the one hand there is misery, ethnic conflicts, battles for water and land, on the other the struggle for power by the oligarchies and the interests of foreign powers that add fuel to the fire.
In this context, which today has the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with its rare earths) and Sudan (with its oil) as the two most desperate humanitarian situations, Kenya has always appeared as the security ‘buffer’, the peaceful country that can also bring others to their senses.
Although undermined by endless feuds in rural regions, by the threat of al-Shabaab in those bordering Somalia and exasperated by a selfish and corrupt political class, Kenya is one of the most solid nations, often called upon to act as peacemaker in disputes involving the other countries of the so-called Horn of Africa.
The most recent of these concerns South Sudan, the state that borders Kenya to the north. It became independent in 2012 and for years has been precariously balanced between armed peace and disagreements between the president and his vice-president, both of whom are the heads of two powerful armies (along the lines of what happened in the former ‘parent’ country of Sudan).
The arrest, in recent days, of Vice-President Reik Machar, once an ally of independence leader Salva Kiir and now his main opponent, could, according to the UN, plunge the country into a civil war with disastrous humanitarian consequences. If there are already almost a million children in Sudan who are orphans, homeless or mutilated by the war, the situation could soon be replicated in the southern state.
For this reason the Kenyan president, William Ruto, has announced the sending of a peace-keeping force to the capital Juba, in the hope that neighbouring Uganda and Ethiopia will do the same.
These are complicated times that seem to be affected by the tensions and conflicts within the international panorama, fuelling opposition, separatism and tendencies towards violent resolutions of issues that have been pending for years. With the usual neocolonialists, arms dealers and rebuilders of razed realities, ready to intervene.
Meanwhile, internally, Kenya is grappling with the certainty of Ruto's declining popularity, who now finds dissent wherever he goes (the last occasion, at the Nairobi stadium during the World Cup qualifier between Kenya and Gabon, which ended with the home defeat of the Harambee Stars) and that incorporates into the government, month after month, parts of the previous ones and members of the opposition, in an attempt to reduce potential political adversaries. The economic situation is not at its best either, after the International Monetary Fund ruled out new funding. We are entering a new phase of painful choices that will certainly have their epilogue in the presentation, between May and June, of the new finance bill. For the last three years, every finance bill has been the subject of criticism and street protests. Last year, it was the young people who took to the streets, with waves of arrests, extrajudicial kidnappings and about sixty deaths, with the parliament set on fire and the consequent withdrawal of the law by the government.
This year we hope for preventive solutions from Ruto, so good and wise in foreign policy but less far-sighted, for now, within the walls of his home.