Today is the third anniversary of the “AfriCommons Blog”, so let me celebrate by being a bit direct.

I lived in Nairobi with my family during the last Kenya elections campaign and the duration of the post-election violence. I certainly saw both Uhuru and Ruto in Nairobi during the uncertain post election period, and they were on local television as well–serving in Parliament together and carrying out their functions as members of the political class. Never saw either with a police rifle, a panga or a can of petrol. No recollection of seeing either of them in the slums or other types of neighborhoods where most of the violence in Nairobi took place.

Rather, the ICC has accused them of being involved in the incitement, organization and funding side of the organized part of the post election violence or PEV.

I don’t recall ever seeing any indication that the two had any type of personal animosity between them or couldn’t get along between themselves. Could be, but not necessarily obvious from the context of funding militias and gangs in the hinterlands on opposite sides of a political tussle. In terms of the political debate it was Martha Karua that squared off with Ruto during the ECK “vote counting” at the KICC and the post-election negotiations.

When I moved to Kenya in June 2007, less than seven months before the elections, Uhuru and Ruto, along with Mudavadi, Raila and Kalonzo were in ODM-K (later to become ODM) and all were running against each other for the opposition presidential nomination through their mutual coalition. Uhuru was KANU leader and titular Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. They were all rivals, but all against Kibaki. Uhuru and Kalonzo split off the main ODM, with Kalonzo running as ODM-K nominee as a “third party” and Uhuru switching sides to Kibaki/PNU, presumably at least in part because he could not hope to get re-elected to his seat in Parliament in Central Province otherwise. (And maybe he was looking to 2012/13.)

If there was a question of anyone not getting along personally, it was more about Kalonzo and Raila than Uhuru and Ruto.

It just seems naive to me to be especially surprised that Uhuru and Ruto would hook back up–and most especially so when they are in a serious jam together with the ICC charges.

Did Uhuru oppose Moi because of Moi’s role in the related violence in the Rift Valley around the 1992 and 1997 elections? Seems to me he stayed in KANU and was anointed as Moi’s candidate for the succession in 2002. Perhaps if he did, as accused, get involved in using the Mungiki in post-election violence in Naivasha and elsewhere, could it have been for instrumental political reasons rather than some atavistic “tribalism”? Has Ruto ever supported a non-Kalenjin candidate before? (hint: Uhuru in 2002)