Two seemingly unrelated cases that began on the same day in two European cities, The Hague and London, have thrust Kenya into the international limelight and could shake up East Africa in a big way.

On Thursday April 7, hearings started at the International Criminal Court of five senior Kenyan public figures and a journalist accused of bearing the greatest responsibility for the 2007-2008 violence.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura, former police chief Mohammed Hussein Ali, former Higher Education minister William Ruto, former minister for Industrialisation Henry Kosgey and radioman Joshua arap Sang are accused of crimes against humanity during the violence in which some 1,300 people died.

On the same Thursday, some 311 kilometres away in London, four Kenyans who allege they were tortured during the colonial counter-insurgency operations against the Mau Mau rebellion started legal proceedings against the UK government.

The group, which is seeking compensation, alleges that they were assaulted between 1952 and 1961 by British colonial officials.

And back in Kenya, a judge two days earlier had found former president Daniel arap Moi liable for the unlawful detention of former deputy intelligence officer Stephen Muriithi and ordered him to pay the latter Ksh2 billion ($25 million) in compensation.

But there are uncanny parallels between the ICC and Mau Mau cases.

The Mau Mau rebellion was based in the heartland of Central Kenya, and most of its victims — as well as the most prominent and vilified British collaborators — were from the Kikuyu community, Kenya’s largest ethnic group.

The Mau Mau crackdown was one of the many factors that led to the movement of people from Central Kenya into the Rift Valley.

The children and grandchildren of that generation of Kikuyu immigrants bore the brunt of the violence in the Rift Valley after the disputed 2007 election.

Oddly enough, they have now formed a united front to fight the ICC cases — Uhuru, Muthaura and Ali are loosely seen as by their supporters as defenders of the victims, and Ruto, Kosgey, and Sang as their tormentors.

The two ICC and Mau Mau cases have already drawn quite some international attention to Kenya. This could be double-edged.

The attention, especially that stemming from the ICC case, could turn out to be unwelcome.

It could damage Kenya’s “swagger,” as one commentator called it, in East Africa and the world, as it would highlight the possibility that the country does not have the capacity — or willingness — to try the suspects at home.

This seeming impotence is frittering away Kenya’s standing and clout, and if the case drags on, could wound the country’s pride.

On the other hand, it could change the way politics is conducted in Kenya — and the region.

Politicians and public officials from many other countries will be thinking twice about playing high-handed politics.

It is in this respect that the Moi case could come in play.

The court’s ruling on Moi and the decision by the judge to order him to pay damages, is the first time a former president has been found guilty of a human rights-related transgression in East Africa.

It could open the door for people like the famous writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and even ministers today who were jailed in the Moi era, to bring cases against the former president.

For Uhuru, a frontrunner in Kenya’s 2012 election, there is a real possibility of political victory.

In Central Kenya, there is a pro-Uhuru constituency that views the ICC as “neo-colonialists,” a view stated very publicly a few days ago by Uhuru’s mother, former first lady Mama Ngina.

If the Mau Mau case is concluded first, as is more likely, and in favour of the petitioners, it would be exploited back home in his stronghold as a blow against the “colonialists” and would provide an easy entry point for Uhuru supporters to escalate their attacks on the “neo-colonial” ICC.

But like everything else in these cases, it cuts both ways.

The 1,500 or so Mau Mau files that were “found” recently, and on which the case is expected to draw, were spirited away by the colonial government on the eve of Kenya’s Independence in 1963, and are thought to show how the insurgency was put down, as brutally as the litigants claim.

The documents could solidify claims of torture and sexual violence against the British government, but it is the potential that they bear of also revealing the identities of collaborators with the colonial reign of terror that will be a sore cause for concern for the powerful Kikuyu elite that has rallied behind Uhuru’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The embellishment among the Kenyan peasantry is that the Mau Mau — a movement that articulated Kikuyu land concerns — was victorious and valiantly chased the colonial government out of Kenya.

While many dispute that, the role of the so-called collaborators is much clearer, with many providing information to the authorities.

It is expected that if such a list were made public, many prominent Central Kenya families could be portrayed unflatteringly, much to their discomfiture.

These families were the real beneficiaries of the land redistribution programme under the independence government, such that the squatters who had been evicted from the so-called White Highlands ended up with very little as the elite appropriated land for themselves.

Were any such details to become clearer as expected by the uncovered files, a rift could be opened between the Kikuyu elite and the freedom fighters, most of whom ended up with nothing.

In the face of this scenario it would be difficult to rally Central Kenya against the ICC cause if it became apparent that the elite are not quite in the same ship as them and are only looking out for their own interests.

The land the Kenyan “traitor class,” as they are sometimes called, grabbed could come into the limelight again.

Politicians like former justice minister and Narc-K leader Martha Karua, who has stood up for the IDPs, and argued that the collaborators should give up some of their land, could well be propelled to the top in the new political reality.

Kenya could be plunged into violence again, but ironically the two cases could also be what propels the country into a middle income economy.

In the Mau Mau case, it would bring closure to a grievance that has refused to go away nearly 60 years later and remove one of the issues that tends to lead to radical politics (and violence by outlawed groups like Mungiki) in Central Kenya.

Second, the two cases together could shock and shake up the old elite that still retains a grip over Kenya politics, releasing tensions that have been locked up for years.

Kenya is unique in East Africa in that while in Rwanda and Uganda, most of the old order was destroyed by coups and rebel wars, and in Tanzania by the high turnover caused by the activist nature of the internal politics of the ruling CCM, in Kenya there are colonial officials who are still in government!

As the Moi case suggests, the ICC could also kick off an insurrection by the courts in Kenya, whose independence and powers have been bolstered by the new Constitution, in ways that could put other EAC judiciaries on the spot.

If the other EAC countries want to remain competitive, they will have to follow Kenya-style reforms.

In all probability, then, the outcome of the so-called Ocampo Six trials at The Hague and of the Mau Mau in the UK could set off a political tsunami in East Africa.