There is much to applaud in people who can see the worst in each other and then move in, forgiving and forgetting. There ought to be more of that in the world, I suspect. Yet Kenyans, from the very start of their history as independent country some 45 years ago, have shown an outsized willingness to set aside past differences — to pretend, in short, that the past does not matter. Kenya’s first president, Kenyatta, from the very start of his new nation in December 1963, chose to set aside concerns about who did what during the violent campaigns by British colonial authorities and “Mau Mau” freedom fighters to alter political arrangements in Kenya during the 1950s. Kenyatta decided not to examine ethnic differences in his country; he chose instead to priviledge the “fiction” of Kenyan identity in hopes of turning this lie into a reality.

To some degree, Kenyatta succeeded. I was struck in Nairobi by the intense patriotism of young Kenyans with education; people of talent and good character who weren’t born even during the last years of Kenyatta’s stern rule. For these young strivers in Nairobi, their pride in nation is palpable and, actually, moving. Kenya is a destroyer of hopes as much as a creator because of the long night of poor governance under Kenyatta’s successor, Moi. Today, hopes are reviving and young Kenyans can dream of a better day without suspending either their reason or their morality.

Which brings me back to the post-election violence. The willingness of people to move on, without examining what happened only a few months, is of a piece with Kenya’s modern history, which has never received even a rough kind of reckoning, either inside Kenya or without. These closing words in Caroline Elkins disturbing book, “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya,” could well stand as a coda on the Odinga-Kibaki rivalry — and the ethnic violence it spawned earlier this year. Elkins is writing of course about political violence in Kenya 50 years ago. Her words seem eerily relevant to the recent crisis and not only because of the obvious observation that if Kenyans can’t come to grips with the history of a half-century ago, what chance exists to reconcile less distant, more hot and painful conflicts of the moment.

“To this day [Elkins writes] there has never been any form of official reconciliation in Kenya. There are no monuments for Mau Mau, children are not taught about this part of their nation’s past in school, few speak about it in the privacy of their own homes, and, with the exception of the relatives of the Hola massacre victims, there has never been any kind of financial consideration given to those who lost family members in the camps and villages, or property to the local loyalists [to the British]. Some men and women lost the use of their limbs, others their minds, as a result of years spent behind the wire…. But they too have insisted that bygones remain bygones.”

Is this the Kenyan way?

The field of vision should be clearer now. Pragmatic and relentless behavioral and societal adaptations are the best (and most humanistic) responses to the persistence of new cases of HIV/AIDS. As Helen Epstein wrote last year in her brilliant polemic on the disease, “The Invisible Cure,” the most effective responses in Africa — where the disease remains an enormous public-health issue — are animated by mass-based social mobilizations. In Uganda, where social mobilization has perhaps gone the furthest on matter of AIDS, the results have been impressive.

After 20 years of discussing the possibility of an AIDS vaccine, the time has come to pause and let the social mobilizers hold sway in the field of prevention, unburdened by the “noise” of well-meaning technocrats holding out the hope of a swift and easy intervention, unfettered by concerns about social organization and culture. In fighting AIDS, as in much else, social values and political mobilization, is decisive. The failure of the vaccine movement provides a convenient opportunity to remember the limits of technological innovation and the perils of engineering arrogance.

To be thrown on the social and cultural, however, is not to escape the awful dimensions of HIV/AIDS. On my visit early this month to a community of farmers in eastern Uganda, I was humbled by the capacity of human beings — alone and in their chosen groups — to deny, dissemble and even self-destruct in the face of lethal threats. In the foothills of beautiful Mount Elgon, the leaders of a community I’ve come to know and respect have fallen prey to new cases of HIV/AIDS. These men and women only fitfully sought treatment, and their “prevention strategies” remain flawed.

The hollow promise of an AIDS vaccine had never reached this Ugandan village. In the homes of the stricken, there are no technocratic delusions, only evidence of flawed humanity.

That Mugabe deserves to be replaced by his chief domestic opponent is without doubt. More likely, he will be replaced by a leader of the military junta that actually runs Zimbabwe. Mugabe is too old and feeble to hold his shattered state together, even in its current dismal form. The Zimbabwean regime depends on a cabal of Mugabe loyalists operating in the shadows. One of them is likely, before long, to seize power, declare Mugabe history — and appeal for recognition and assistance from the international community.
Zimbabwe’s next strong man will do what others in African have long done: say they need time to stage legitimate elections. Perhaps they will need 18 months or even two years to prepare the way for real democracy in Zimbabwe. Faced with a Hobson’s Choice, the international community will go along, satisfied that at least Mugabe is off the stage.

The aid money will pour into Harare, so will the tecnical experts. Improvements in the material life of the people will come quickly, though more educated Zimbabweans — those few who remain — will leave the country. Then about a year from now, the regime’s leader will declare that he is decided, after much anguished reflection, that he will stand as a candidate for president in the “free and fair” elections to come. The international community will moan and groan, diplomats will say they’ve been cheated, the opposition will cry foul. But after a week or two, the decision will come to be accepted.
Is this Mugabism without Mugabe? Is this Zimbabwe’s future? To go from one dictator to another?