The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990 (review)

On a February night in 1990, Robert Ouko, the foreign minister of Kenya and, in the West, the man increasingly considered a possible uncorrupted successor to Daniel arap Moi, was assassinated. Taken from his farm home at Koru in western Kenya by a still-unidentified gang, he was shot in the bush and his body set ablaze. Ouko's murder was yet another grisly landmark in Kenya's postindependence history of political assassinations.

E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and David Cohen have written an ingenious account recapturing the crime and mapping its reverberations. Theirs is not a linear story, nor a whodunit, but a deep exploration of the murder as event and of its resonance across many levels of Kenyan society. First and foremost, it is the story of Robert Ouko with its multiple subnarratives: family man and local Luo squire; highly educated citizen of the world; entrepreneur and development advocate; patriot who might have thought his dossier on corruption would alert Moi and help his country. He was, in sum, a man near the apex of the Kenya state but endangered by the vicious politics at those lofty heights, ascendant in the world outside but beleaguered in his own land. Atieno Odhiambo and Cohen show how these subnarratives converged in his murder and helped disperse its impact so widely.

One of their many priceless episodes comes from the subnarrative of Ouko as endangered civil servant. When he traveled to Washington with Moi in late January 1990 as part of a huge Kenyan unofficial delegation, he was warmly welcomed by Bush administration heavyweights, while Moi was ignored. (Bush was piqued by cash-strapped Kenya's having leased an expensive Concorde jet from London.) This was the episode that finally undid him. At a press conference, the minister so outshone the president that he was perceived to be superseding Moi; less than two weeks later, he was dead. The narrative of this episode and of other key moments in Ouko's life are riveting.

Atieno Odhiambo and Cohen also present an elaborate account of the surrounding institutions and various inquiries or commissions. Most important, they examine what might be called the atmospherics generated by the murder. They aim to do more than just reconstruct a context for what happened. For example, we listen in on Kenyans talking about the white car that spirited Ouko away that fateful night. This information came initially from Ouko's housekeeper, Selina Ndalo Were, who reported seeing a white car leaving the farm's driveway headed to the main road. The white car, with its undisclosed driver, ferrying Ouko away into the dark night, became a rich, surreal image aggressively exploited in newspapers and national conversations. In contrast, a less sensational chapter entitled "Why Mr. President?" offers substantial insights into the off-the-diagram evolution of the Kenyan state since Kenyatta. Chapter 7 then extends these insights to Moi's "court."

Threaded through this complex tale is an argument about what the historian does to fully capture an event like Ouko's murder. Atieno Odhiambo and Cohen contend that the production of knowledge must be followed across many sites, whether it be commission reports or Selina's observations. No one location can be privileged. A housekeeper's voice can jostle a government inquiry; overheard dinner talk can disrupt elite claims of innocence. Ouko's choice of a church reading (Job 3: 1–11) becomes a clue to his state of mind. The use of all sorts of information, freed from a hierarchical valuing, gives the authors their analytical momentum.

This can be a demanding text, rewarding but sometimes daunting for the reader. Undoubtedly, the book's style reflects the intellectual processes involved in its creation. Still, one would have occasionally liked less density. At the same time, it would have...