Shocked by pictures of death and mayhem on the streets of Kenyan towns, a Kenyan friend in Britain called me to express her shock. “But these things don’t happen in Kenya!” she exclaimed, as if Kenya — or Keenya as she pronounced it — was immune from the political ills that have plagued Africa in the past 50 years.

She is wrong. Kenya has been a catastrophe waiting to happen. Every election since multiparty politics was reintroduced in 1991 has involved rigging. So far the margin of victory has always been so great that Western diplomats — keen to maintain “stability” — could claim that the cheating would not have made a difference to the result. “Voting broadly reflected the will of the people” was their duplicitous phrase that allowed the ruling elite to play their quinquennial charade.

Now the margin of victory is too thin. The cheating did make a difference and Raila Odinga, the leader of the main opposition party that has won the largest number of seats in parliament and six out of eight provinces, is not going to accept defeat.

Kenya is not just another African country. Suffering only one — failed — coup attempt in 45 years of independence, its stability makes Nairobi, the capital, the base for transnational corporations, the United Nations and scores of NGOs for East and Central Africa. It is also a beautiful country with well-run game parks for tourists, mountains, lakes and gorgeous Indian Ocean beaches. Unlike many African countries, Kenya’s strong professional class has never fled and have driven economic growth at about 5 per cent in the past four years. Kenyans are lucky. The country has no single natural resource, such as oil, to enrich the elite and impoverish everyone else. Kenyans have to work for their money and recently they have done well...

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