The prosecutor and the Kenyan president

The International Criminal Court embodied the hope of bringing warlords and demagogues to

Nakuru is a lakeside city in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a destination for safari tourists and part of the Great Rift, the tectonic seam that gave birth to humanity and will one day rend Africa in two. Kenyans often refer to the valley simply as the Rift, a nod not just to the millions of years of volcanic tumult that produced its magnificent landscape but also to the centuries of tribal warfare it has seen.

In December 2007, Eric, a day labourer now in his late 20s, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was living on the outskirts of Nakuru with his wife and young daughters, in one of the shanty neighbourhoods tourists don’t see. That month, Kenya held an election. It was to be only the second truly open contest in the country’s history, but typically for Kenyan politics, it was cleaving along tribal lines. The incumbent, a conservative bureaucrat named Mwai Kibaki, was a member of the Kikuyu, Kenya’s predominant tribe. His challenger, Raila Odinga, Kenya’s foremost liberal provocateur, was a Luo, who historically were the Kikuyu’s main rival for power. Odinga had assembled a broad ethnic coalition, capitalising on resentment of the Kikuyu.