In Obama's Footsteps

This time last year Kenya was in flames, torn apart by ethnic violence triggered by a flawed election. About a thousand people were killed, and several hundred thousand fled their homes in response to ethnic cleansing. Even prior to the violence, politics was already ethnically polarized. The election pitted a Kikuyu against a Luo - President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga - and about 98% of Luo people voted for Odinga. There was little faith in the elections: in the run-up a local joke was that there would be a Luo president of America before there was a Luo president of Kenya.

Escalating violence was arrested by an externally imposed power-sharing deal, the model for a similar agreement in Zimbabwe that yesterday saw Morgan Tsvangirai sworn in as prime minister. In both deals the incumbent remained dominant, with no sign of a genuine intention to share power. In Kenya the result has been policy stasis as each side manoeuvres in preparation for a further contest. According to a new opinion survey, only 20% of the population regard the election result as fair, and a majority no longer regard Kenya as a functioning democracy. The Zimbabwean arrangement seems to be even less likely to herald the radical policy changes that are so urgently needed. Without a large infusion of aid, real reform is unlikely, but such an infusion would probably strengthen the patronage network on which Mugabe depends for his survival. Although the opposition has the finance ministry, Mugabe continues to control both the central bank and the security services.

However, the parallel between Zimbabwe and Kenya cannot be taken too far. In Zimbabwe a deeply unpopular regime clings to power by corrupt means, whereas in Kenya the country is genuinely polarized. In a sense it is the Kenyan situation that is in the longer term more difficult.

Kenya is paying the price for more than 40 years of ethnic politics led from the top. There is no substitute for nationally unifying leadership, something Kenya has never had. In neighboring Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere recognised the need for it. While his experiment with socialism failed, the deeper strategy of nation-building is a huge asset: Tanzania is rightly regarded as one of Africa's most promising countries. It is an asset that Kenya desperately needs.

Any effort to build a sense of Kenyan nationhood has been blighted by ethnic violence, a polarized, continuing political contest and a discourse that denies reality. Kenyan society needs leadership which guides it to something better. At last it has found it. John Githongo, who blew the whistle on top-level corruption in Kenya, has just returned to Nairobi after three years of self-imposed exile. Appointed the permanent secretary to fight corruption, he had come to realize that those who had appointed him expected that, as someone born into the Kikuyu elite, he would not be excessively vigorous in pursuit of his colleagues. They had misjudged their man.

Githongo's devastatingly detailed revelations, backed up by secretly taped meetings, became world news. But instead of triggering a general clean-up, the longer term response of the regime was to circle the wagons, and disgraced ministers have now been reappointed. (Fortuitously, his story has just been revealed in Michela Wrong's Our Turn to Eat, a tremendous account that reads like a cross between Le Carré and Solzhenitsyn.)

Githongo - whose return is manifestly an act of personal bravery - is not trying to carve out a political role but to counter these fractures. He is a moralist, not a politician: Kenya's Gandhi. His integrity has earned him an affectionate respect from across the spectrum of Kenyan society.

A political concept familiar to every Kenyan is "footsteps", the notion extolled by President Daniel arap Moi that a leader should follow the approach of his predecessor. Moi, who succeeded Jomo Kenyatta, duly trod the well-worn path of ethnic favoritism. Githongo too will follow in someone's footsteps, but they will be those of the if-only-Kenyan, President Barack Obama. But Obama is more than a role model of personal success: his campaign demonstrated how effectively disillusioned youth can be tapped to build a movement for transformation. While Githongo's objectives are different, he has the opportunity to follow this potent precedent. Unsurprisingly, because he offers a more uplifting approach than the mentality of the ethnic bunker, he is already attracting a large, multi-ethnic group of young people wanting to help.

The new Africa will be built by people like Githongo. Forging a sense of social unity on the wreckage created by the Kenyan political elite will not be easy; but the alternative does not bear contemplation.

• Paul Collier's new book, Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, is dedicated to John Githongo