This month, Kenya has marked 10 years since Saba Saba - the sustained public defiance and mass action campaign of July 1990 which culminated in the re-introduction of multiparty politics.

Reflections on the intervening decade may be a useful addition to the debate about the political direction for the country. How do we explain the valiance of Kenyans in standing up to a repressive and relatively strong government in 1990 by sustained demands for a democratic transition, and the submissive, docility and fatalistic resignation of the same Kenyans 10 ten years later, when the government is much weaker and the national conditions more depressing?

By July 1990, the clamour for more democratic governance was hardly organised. There was no formal mechanism galvanising people from different sectors of the society. The emergent group of civil society activists, disparate groups of oppositionists and individual multiparty activists were insufficiently organised, had little shared agenda and strategy almost to the point of contradictory expectations, and limited trust across pockets knit together by a camaraderie borne of a narrow shared experience.

In addition, there were very few politicians (virtually none in Parliament) offering backup. For their part, religious organisations sought very little of a democratic nature. The Anglican church basically agitated for an overhaul of Kanu. On July 4, 1990, the National Council of the Churches of Kenya urged Kenyans to steer clear of the planned Kamukunji rally.

The economic situation was never desperate in comparison to a decade later. Foreign aid was still flowing in, tourism was still robust, inflation was low and state control of largesse was still typical of what Goran Hyden has called "the economy of affection."

When Mr Kenneth Matiba announced his intention to hold a rally at Kamukunji on July 7, state condemnation and harassment went overdrive. President Moi "revealed" that Saba Saba was being organised by subversives who hoped to kill innocent citizens and blame it on the government. On July 6, he alleged that a terror gang had just returned from Libya to manage the expected violence.

Later, the President claimed that the "hooligans" planning Saba Sabawere offering half a million shillings for anybody killed during the planned rally. He promised firm action.

Then there was the actual state terror. Starting on July 1, shops were raided and hawkers selling "subversive" music and thousands of wananchi were arrested.

On July 4, Matiba and Rubia were arrested in a humiliating way. Their detention was followed by a series of other arrests. One Joseph Gerishon Ndereba, a tutor at Kigari Teachers Training College was arraigned over the strange charge of "creating a disturbance likely to cause a breach of the peace by shouting that the July 7 meeting would take place in Nairobi as scheduled."

In spite of all these hurdles, wananchi went to Kamukunji in the tens of thousands and launched a series of protest actions that continued for most of the following week. A transport strike was launched with much success in spite of threats from the government to de-register vehicles participating. Buses were burnt for breaching the strike. Motorists were forced to flush the two finger multiparty salute. A demonstration of the potence of popular action was made planting "mass action" into the repertoire of Kenyan political tools forever. Fast forward to July 2000.

In contrast with a decade ago, July 2000 shows a mature environment for democratic struggle and at the same time the absence of any democratic and popular initiatives. The economic and political circumstances portray a country in deep crisis and needing fundamental change and renewal. The economy is in its worst shape since independence. The government limps under the weight of an expensive domestic debt originating from the irresponsible management style of the 90s and the resultant aid freeze from key donors. Infrastructure from roads to telecommunications has taken major leaps backwards.

Tourism remains chronically crippled after a decade of violence, collapsing infrastructure, negative publicity and increasing competition in the region. Power rationing has returned urban Kenya to the dark ages with resultant lay-offs from industries. The depressed labour market is compounded by massive government retrenchment, massive landlessness and a ravaging drought with related famine. Corruption has ballooned from the modest levels of a decade ago to keep the country firmly on the international list of shame. Latest international indices show the country declining to a lowly number 138 in world rankings of social development.

Apart from these problems of economic governance, the political conditions of July 2000 are also more depressing than a decade earlier. The much heralded constitutional reform has virtually come to a dead end. Polarisation between factions of the ruling elite, an increasing perception of a lame duck presidency, and a growing impression of a government fatigued by decades in power, suggest conditions ripe for resurgent democratic effort.

Parliament has many who express desire for greater democratisation. The civil society has matured as a force for long term structural change in the political system. Religious organisations have broadly embraced the call for a democratic dispensation as a just course.

Yet in spite of these overwhelming objective conditions, July 2000 is a pale shadow of Saba Saba of 1990. Political and social displeasure finds most expression in increasing domestic violence, alcoholism, and growing cynicism. How do we explain this strange occurrence? Part of the answer lies in the history of the past decade. Two fundamental problems are grounded in our narrow conception of democracy back in the early 90s. A third may be traced in the fundamental flaws of recent experiments with liberal democracy in an African setting.

Problem number one is an unstated assumption that multipartism is the same as democracy. One of the most helpful antecedents of the push for multipartism a decade ago was the much abused mlolongo queue voting of 1988. Apart from the widespread abuse that saw winners blatantly denied their due, the experiment produced the most docile and unpopular parliament in the country's history. By projecting democratic struggle as the opposite of the mlolongo parliament, the opposition leaders of 1990 recast popular aspirations to a mere struggle for a parliament which reflected the popular will - a diverse parliament. Devoid of any dynamic aspirations, democracy became a twin effort for alternative leadership and multipartism. The arrival of a parliament with diverse political parties was to many Kenyans the end of the struggle for democracy.

The December 1992 general elections saw heroes of pluralism and symbols of the democratic struggle elected into parliament. The fact that people like Prof Rashid Mzee, Raila Odinga, Paul Muite, James Orengo, Kiraitu Murungi and Anyang' Nyong'o were now in parliament created the impression that popular sentiments would now find expression in a newly focused national assembly. The people were now ready to sit back and let their heroes deliver.

The entry into parliament of crusaders for democracy inadvertently robbed the extra-parliamentary crusaders for change their most important weapon while stifling the ability of the new parliamentarians to sustain the struggles that led to the partial retreat of the government. Indeed, the survival of the Nyayo government in the 90s was underwritten by the decapitation of the democratic movement and the domestication of its most vocal element in the Nyayo parliament from where they could make some noises but remain less potent and threatening than when they were on the street.

The 90s have seen some of the worst excesses of the Nyayo era and the continued impunity of those in power in spite of a parliament parading itself as custodians of tax payers' interests. There was more allocation of public houses to the politically correct in the 90s than in the whole 30 years before then. The worst scam of our history, Goldenberg, continued full steam under the noses of a multiparty parliament. The ethnic clashes started in 1991 continued intermittently in the subsequent years of a "democratic" parliament. Current disillusionment with parliament has partly been founded on unanswered questions of why bankrupting the public treasury, mass insecurity, ethnic 4discrimination, the rise of the lootocracy, widespread hopelessness and the economic meltdown have not been arrested by a "democratic" parliament containing some of the heroes of multiparty struggle. Where democracy is narrowly defined as multipartism and popular dreams anchor on democracy as a panacea for social malaise, failure in attaining the dreams gives democracy a bad name.

The second problem with our popular expectation has to do with what role parliament has in the process of government. In Kenya, and in quite a few other places, there is an expectation that parliament shares the appropriation of government power. Every mheshimiwa is seen as serikali. Historically, parliaments came into existence not to govern but to control the power of those who govern. Yet, almost everywhere in the Third World, people assess parliamentarians on the basis of their performance as governors. Modelled as braking devices, parliaments are increasingly expected to act as engines. This expectation is not accidental. It has an evolved history.

First, during the decades of single party rule in Kenya, all public institutions were crippled and subordinated to the executive. The boundary between parliament as a legislative entity and the propaganda outpost of the government disappeared. Parliament became part of government. And parliamentarians saw themselves as part of the government. At a more general level, the Westminster model of democracy where the executive is the dominant voice in the legislature always tends to disguise the boundaries that separate executive government from the watchdog functions of parliament. The absence of traditions of restraining the executive and a political culture of separation of powers means that this confusion is more elaborate in a place like Kenya.

In Kenya, the decline in state financing of social development from the early 80s coincided with increasing allocation of resources to the politically favoured to selectively finance the atrophying social infrastructure through harambee as "viongozi wapenda maendeleo." Politicians clowned around the country as development agencies. The image of an overblown middle-aged man with a black bowler hat and a cane in his hand threatening imaginary enemies of the people and ordering public officers to heed his instructions as he addresses a harambee interspersed with school choirs and gifts of goats and sheep became the stereo-typical character called mheshimiwa in Kenya.

When multipartism re-emerged in the 90s, its principal midwives, the new parliamentarians, adorned the historical apparel of the Kenyan political culture they had set out to change. Upon entry into parliament, most politicians have embraced the language of "development conscious" leaders and embarked upon the expensive and disruptive rituals of "developing" their constituencies through harambee fund-raisers. They parade members of the provincial administration at the shrines of this perverted development as they real off the "donations" of their claimed friends. Apart from the political cost of this national obsession, the fundamental crossover between legislative and executive governance functions continues to be consummated.

The blurring of the divide between legislature and government has meant that parliament shares the blame for failed government. Listening to any phone-in programme on the new independent radio stations in Nairobi gives ample evidence of the popular frustration with parliament for the social decay and economic depravation Kenyans face in their daily lives today.

More than most other weaknesses, this confusion of roles holds the pride of place in the erosion of popular respect for politics in Kenya. Hence the increased frustration with politics for failing to deliver the country from perceived problems. This malaise may partly explain why increasingly populist parliamentarians have appeared to seek legitimacy by locating themselves with the people as a contra to the parliament. What Saulo Busolo once called running for parliament by standing against parliament.

Problem number three is a more general theoretical problem with liberal democracy. In The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm argues that: "Democratic systems do not work unless there is a basic consensus among most citizens about the acceptability of their state and social system, or at least a readiness to bargain for compromise settlements." The acceptance of a social system by the citizens is founded upon a shared minimum of values and a widespread dream that under the current system, next Christmas is likely to be better than the last one. The majority of the people must believe that the democratic system they have is more likely to offer them protection than to harm them, and that in the balance of things, their individual fortunes are likely to benefit under the system.

Since the end of the cold war, merchants of liberal democracy in Africa have proceeded as if the benefits of this system of government are so self-evident and conditions for implantation imminently ripe that they needed no further ascertaining. Some of the frustrations of practitioners may call for a rethink of this religious zeal. In embracing multipartism early in the 1990s, Kenyans hoped that they could evolve a system of more accountable government and manage transitions by shopping among competing alternatives. These assumptions have been mediated by some features of the national makeup which were not originally anticipated.

The politics of ethnic hate that was witnessed in the 90s had the singular impact of splitting the country into almost mutually exclusive blocs threatening and fearing each other. This has greatly contributed to polarisation and diminished the possibility of consensual politics. In addition to this, a history of ethnic reward and discrimination has weakened the foundations of trans-ethnic consensus and legitimisation of the system beyond those immediately benefiting from political advantage.

In his seminal work, Europe and The People Without History, Eric Wolf has argued that in newer market economies "new ethnic identities emerged as particular cohorts of workers gained access to different segments of the labour market and began to treat their access as a resource to be defended both socially and politically." Selective access and exclusion have also coloured the Kenyan landscape in such a way as to mediate the foundations of political solidarities and organisation.

The history of independent Kenya has nurtured dynamics of ethnic suspicion that translates competition into ethnic distrust and potential animosity. The unequal allocation of settler farms in the Kenyatta days and ADC farms in the Moi days coupled with the continued absence of clear land ownership and land use laws have created much distrust and an impression that land rights are a convenience enhanced by access to state power. Where access to land is predominantly defined in ethnic idiom, organisation of politics revolving around land use anxiety easily strengthens the linkage between political mobilisation and ethnic identity.

Apart from land, the labour market in Kenya has also witnessed historically implanted disparities of access and market segmentation. From a colonial economy which recruited people from different regions for different labour roles to a post-independence bias to use public sector employment as a resource for ethnic patronage, we have evolved a labour market mosaic which does not reflect the character of our national mix. Those in the labour market who consider their positions as an advantage gained on the basis of ethnicity, can only define the protection of that advantage through political action. Similarly, those who perceive themselves as ethnically disadvantaged in the labour market, look to ethnic organisation for political advantage as a route for redressing their disadvantage.

When a country has such a history of ethnic distrust, liberal democracy can only offer a healing service if the basis of its organisation is deliberately trans-ethnic and works to reduce the gulf implanted by history. In the early 90s, there were efforts to create such trans-ethnic soldiers in the movement for democratic change. The so-called Young Turks deliberately looked to knit together an alliance reflecting ethnic diversity and regional balance. But these efforts suffered two major blows.

First, the decision by these relatively younger politicians to pass over the leadership of the democratic movement to old politicians from the earlier epoch saw a resurgence of pre-modal rallying calls and a return to promises of ethnic advantage.

Secondly, clashes of the early 90s reinforced the ethnic foundation of political mobilisation. Indeed, the very tribalisation of political parties by the time of the 1997 elections reflected not only the collapse of a political intelligensia working on trans-ethnic political mobilisation, but the entrenchment of the negative lessons from the ethnic clashes.

Ethnic communities voting as blocs, and tribe-based political parties cannot provide the foundations of a democratic political system. They erode the possibility of consensus among the mutli-ethnic citizens on preferred political system. The desire for ethnic advantage overrides the considerations for systemic niceties that sound abstract to a population increasingly polarised by negative mobilisation and an increasingly bankrupt cadre of political leaders.

Where the facade of democratic institutions is underpinned by premodal values and reward systems, the incumbents are very difficult to dislodge. Indeed, such are conditions under which the charade of democracy sees dictatorships mutate into apparent heroes of a democratic age. The dawning of such a realisation also ebbs the drive for democratic struggle.

When a society is emerging from a history of ethnic competition and seeking to hold together other than through the domination of a dictatorial authority, there is a premium on de-tribalised and visionary leadership.

One of the problems Kenya suffers at the onset of the 21st century is the dearth of such leaders in its political organisations. The need to manufacture new leadership and leadership values has never been greater. Indeed the very survival of the liberal experiment in Kenya will hinge upon the capacity of the society to provide new leaders whose driving obsession has more to do with inclusiveness than the erection of bridges to the past as one sees in the crop of leaders we have today.

It has always been an amazing feature of Kenya that civil society and professional associations operate at a level of leadership way ahead of the politics of the land. Part of the frustration and despair so blatantly evident in the country today is the consequence of this anomaly. Mediocre politicians have been allowed free reign while more enlightened leaders pretend that they can get along by minding their professions.

The grapes of wrath we harvest today are the crop of a society which is only belatedly starting to discover that politics is too expensive to be entrusted to career politicians. Before this realisation comes, our democratic experiment, like the Weimer republic of the thirties in Germany, will remain a tree planted in thin, stony soil.