The instructive thing about the post-election violence in Kenya is that it was predicted long before it broke out, but very little was done to prevent it from happening. What does this indicate if not gross misgovernance on the part of the officials concerned and callousness and blood-thirst on the part of the political leaders who funded the violence and polarized the people against each other?

I recently heard from a Kenyan who, angered at the goings-on in mid-2007, started to write an article about Kenya’s impending descent into hell. The article was completed late in the year and never saw the light of day, that is until now. I am reproducing it here to show you that violence doesn’t just erupt out of thin air.

The writer’s perceptions are, for the most part, on point. The disaster predicted did in fact end up taking place. The only difference between the prediction and the actual disaster is in the magnitude of the crisis. Keeping in mind that the crisis has not ended (as far as I am concerned, it will only end when the grievances of the ordinary Kenyan are addressed in the constitution and in the economic and political set-up), we cannot afford to heave a sigh of relief. If we had paid attention to these issues when they first became apparent, thousands of lives would have been spared. We failed then. Now that we have been given a second chance to right things, let us be vigilant. Let us keep our eyes open to what is going on around us so that we can prevent future massacres:

“Early this year a news media house interviewed a sample of the Tanzanian general population on their take on the proposed East African political federation. The response was striking. The vast majority of the interviewees viewed Kenyans as an arrogant, mannerless lot without an iota of etiquette. They saw a thin line between Kenyans’ aggressive business techniques and their tendency towards conmanship and criminal behaviour, a situation which they regarded as a threat to Tanzania’s regional industrial development and sense of nationhood. But more important to them was the ethnic animosity among Kenyans themselves. If one added to this the mix of Ugandans, Rwandans, Burundians and Tanzanians (nearly 200 strong tribes), what explosive mixture would result, they wondered.  

“Although ethnic hyper-consciousness and intolerance has always been a household phenomenon in Kenya and indeed in many African states, its crescendo during the last five years has alarmed many Kenyans. The significance of the problem has been increased by the impending general elections. It is expected that the elections will push the crisis to boiling proportions. All sorts of chauvinistic and demeaning political slogans are already doing their rounds in text messages, posters, leaflets, electronic media adverts etc. A few unlucky individuals have been shot, trampled upon or clubbed to death. Others have lost their teeth, or watched as their houses have been razed down. One unlucky female aspirant had faeces stuffed into her mouth for daring to support an ‘enemy’ party. Some buses belonging to members of one community have been barred from traversing certain tribal fiefdoms for one election-related issue or another. Not surprisingly, all Kenyan political parties are allied to major tribal blocks in the country.

“But ethnic intolerance or tribalism is not a uniquely negative Kenyan phenomenon. In fact ethnic consciousness is a positive identity trait that makes us what we are. It is when these differences are expressed in a retrogressive fashion that they impinge on good governance, peaceful co-existence and national stability. Former Belgian colonies seem to be the champions of ethnic intolerance, and the 1991 Holocaust in Rwanda (which most Kenyans today fear will be reproduced in their country) is evidence of this. When one visits the University of Rwanda in Kigali, he is first ushered in to the massacre centre to be greeted by a macabre scenario: skulls, being the remains of  400 students and 200 lecturers, some of them labeled with the victims’ names.

“Inter-tribal animosity was invented and perfected by colonialists who used it to perfect their divide and rule doctrine. In the case of Rwanda, Belgians supported and used the Tutsis’ pre-existing dominance to rule the local native subjects. When the wind of change started to blow in Africa, the Belgians were rudely kicked out by Tutsi-led Rwandan activists. A similar scenario unfolded in the then Congo-Leopoldville. On the eve of their departure, the Belgians, infuriated by the ‘betrayal’ of their once valued ‘allies’, advised the Hutus to sort out the Tutsis before it was too late, lest the Tutsis became their neocolonial masters.

“The colonialists and those with vast interests in the region promised covert technical and material support for the project. The rest is history. It is instructive that, at the departure of the Belgians, Tutsis controlled all sectors of the Rwandan economy, dominated the army, the intelligentsia  and literally lorded it over the Hutus. They occupied all the key government posts, and were effectively the slave drivers of the nation. This situation infuriated the majority Hutus and hence started the spiral of coups, and counter-coups that culminated in the genocide in 1991.

“Tribalism in Kenya has a different genesis. Because Kenya was destined to be a dominion, a lot of infrastructure was left in place by the colonialists and this catalysed a transient form of nationalistic feeling. But this false sense of security was short-lived because the founding President soon discovered the value of tribalism and nepotism as tools to further his selfish designs. All this was watched by his most faithful student, the then Vice-President Moi. When the new graduand, Moi, took the mantle of the Presidency, he inherited an already established, deeply-rooted ideology. He perfected and used it to its full potential. However, as we shall see later, the culture of blind ethnic bias is not compatible with national socioeconomic development and progress, nor does it promote political stability. Soon the Kenyan economy ground to a halt and was set on a negative trend of growth. It is the currently outgoing Kibaki and his regime who have developed the art of tribalism to sophisticated levels and subtly and effectively used it to subdue his formidable foes.

“Tribalism is part and parcel of the most worrying trend in Africa according to a report by a United Nations committee on drugs and criminality in the recent past. According to this report, corruption, criminality and poverty are so intertwined as to lend credence to the recent controversial impression espoused by the Nobel Laureate, Watson. The report describes the African case as an unredeemable situation, The Nobel Laureate however goes further by blaming the situation on the genetically ‘daft’ nature of the African, a claim which has no scientific basis and can only be blamed on the loss of judgment and senility that come with the degeneration of a once mighty brain.

“Whether it is due to the daft nature of the African, or environmental and foreign interference, the modus operandi of Kenyan inter-ethnic animosity is easy to observe. First of all, Kenyans are untroubled about referring to their compatriots as ‘Okuyu’, ‘Jarabuon’, ‘Kale’, ‘Jaruo’, ‘Jang’o Jeuri’, ‘Kihii’, ‘Jamwa’, ‘Rayuom’, ‘Omunyolo’ and the like. Tribal clashes are a predictable and common occurrence between particular tribes. It doesn’t take much to say with precision where and when the next ethnic conflict is going to occur.

“Politics of the stomach are the order of the day as high profile jobs are preserved for a small clique of the ruling tribe, irrespective of the individual’s suitability for the job. The justification is simple: it is their time to eat. In Kenya, the allocation of national resources has never been based on economic sense and need, hence the persistence of the so-called marginalized areas and communities. For over forty years, there has been no attempt to address the situation. Instead, governments have simply wished away the underdeveloped regions by labeling them ‘hardship areas’ and moving on. Budgetary allocations are ethnically-based and are as predictable as they are incongruous. Predictable because the ruling ethnic fiefdoms routinely get the lion’s share. Incongruous because an “ethnically correct” constituency’s allocations for, say, water development may surpass the one of an entire province that happens to be the inhabited by the ethnically incorrect.
 
“The sad and ironic fact is that the majority of the members of the so-called favoured communities are themselves no better off than the neglected. Indeed, the distribution of the national cake is not as simple as it may appear. Sixty per cent of all Kenyans live below the poverty line (ignore the politically-motivated doctored figures released by the Kenya Bureau of Statistics), the GNP per capita of Kenyans is much closer to USD 150 than the USD 315 that is trumpeted in official reports (ignore the hyped up claims of economic growth- a phenomenon of misinterpreted statistics which only applies to the high and the mighty). Over 90% of people in Central and Rift Valley Provinces, which were home to former presidents, are as poor as church mice, because the allocated resources eventually ended up benefiting the chosen few. During the last severe drought, the government had to airlift food to assist starving Baringo Central inhabitants in the constituency of the former President Moi, one of the richest men in Kenya. Gatundu constituency, the home of the founding president, has nothing to show for the millions of shillings in funds received by Kenyatta during his 15 years reign (apart from the Gatundu Sub-District Hospital). Where did all the money go?

“If you think that the educated elite from institutes of higher learning are spared from such pervasive ideologies, you are mistaken. It was previously (and naively) thought that the education of more Kenyans would sound the death knell for retrogressive ethnic biases. However, many institutes of higher learning are choking with those who have specific ethnic agendas to achieve. There are professors in universities who have never written any academic papers, nor conducted any research, but somehow got their installation orders- probably from higher powers. Nepotism is the philosophy of the day: kith and kin are offered a positively-skewed playing field during their academic careers. Hence in some situations, lecturers, teachers and tutors may in fact ‘assist’ students from their ethnic groups to pass examinations. In such institutions, although no formal manual on ethnic animosity exists in the curriculum, it is so effectively practiced by lecturers that previously tribally-naïve, observant young students are ready-made specialists at tribalism by the time they graduate. Such graduands are more likely to serve the interests of their  community than those of the public at large. Thus, you will find architects and engineers who will readily approve building construction plans that have not satisfied the minimum requirements, doctors who will treat cases that they are not familiar with, or who will refer patients to their kith and kin colleagues, whether they are competent to deal with the cases or not.

“What can Kenyans do to reverse this practice that denies ordinary folk their basic human rights? Misguided foreigners, who rarely appreciate that they are an important contributor to Africa’s problems, including poor governance and siphoning of our natural resources, human resources and skilled manpower are convinced that their type of democracy would solve most of Africa’s miseries. The opposite is true: the Westminster type of democracy is an irrelevant commodity in Africa. Hence political ideologies, manifestos and visions are nothing more than poems in the newspapers or public entertainment at political rallies. The doctrine of tribal alliance is what makes sense to many Africans. Last minute inter-party defections and shifting allegiances are the norm.

“Another perception, especially among aging politicians, is that, whatever the multi-tribal composition of political parties, they and their communities are their so called ‘owners’ (read tribal bosses). For example, ODM (read Odinga Dictatorship Movement) is a ‘Luo party‘, ODM-K (read ODM-Kamba) is specifically ‘a party for Kambas’, PNU (read Party for the Nugu Useless, or Party for the Not Uncircumcised) ‘belongs to Mount Kenya communities’. For personal reasons, including that of safeguarding personal wealth, preventing prosecution for past ill deeds and protecting their progeny, Kenyan Presidents, past and present, have propagated this doctrine. It is an open secret that at different points in history, ordinary members of the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities were duped into believing that KANU was their private property.

“Economics are the most important determinant of success in life. During Moi’s reign, the rampant printing of currency to reward ‘ethnically correct’ individuals, or the strategic manipulation of exchange rates accompanied by the buying and selling of currency at opportune moments was in vogue. Today, the ruling class has become more sophisticated. Shares of parastatals are floated and sold in batches to the ethnically correct. The stock values are thereafter deliberately fluctuated, irrespective of their market value, to facilitate buying and selling at the opportune moment. In addition, shares of certain strategic companies of socioeconomic importance to the country are block-sold to favoured members of the ‘ethnically correct’ elite to ensure future economic dominance by the ethnic group (in the event that they lose political power). To subscribe to this sort of manipulation is to ignore the genesis of the Rwandan experience. The more that one community seeks to dominate others, the more they put themselves and their innocent progeny at risk

“It is unfortunate that Kenya is now witnessing a situation where one ethnic group is on the fast track to control all sectors of the economy. This is a dangerous precedent for the stability of the nation. Instability and genocidal catastrophe, if they occurred in Kenya, would be to a scale never before seen in East Africa. The Rwandan experience would comparatively be child’s play. This is because the machetes used in Rwanda would be replaced with AK 47s, grenade-launchers and handguns, thanks to Kenya’s porous borders with Somalia and Sudan. Secondly, many hard working innocent Kenyans from some communities have settled in all corners of the country doing legitimate business. These communities, if targeted, would be sitting ducks for any ethnic group with evil genocidal designs. Thirdly, compared to Rwanda, Kenya has comparatively efficient infrastructure to facilitate a genocidal exercise. What took Hutus one month to complete would take a bare one week for any evil-minded Kenyans to effect.

“What does all this ethnic muddle mean with respect to our impending general elections? First of all, the country has long been balkanized into ethno-political fiefdoms which are no-go areas for opponent outfits. Secondly the conduct of campaigns, the language used and the violence will be offensive to a level never seen before. Already arms are being stocked, and tribal battle lines have been drawn.”

Kenya’s problems go back a long time. It is fitting to listen to the words of a Kenyan professional who’s been around longer than I have. His experience of the transition from the colonial era to independent Kenya under three presidents is instructive. The overall sense is that our nation is slipping backwards:

“To those as old as myself, the match by Kenya to self destruction has been watched with increasing fear. We saw the consequences of Pio Gama Pinto’s death. We lived the violent aftermath of Tom Mboya’s assassination. We lived two weeks of darkness and uncertainty following JM Kariuki’s murder. Worse still, was Robert Ouko’s assassination, an ominous warning to the chauvinistic, power-hungry self-seekers whose misguided machinations have plunged Kenya into uncertainty.

“I feel ashamed at the naïveté and parochial perception of many of the current Kenyan leaders  who have held us at ransom. Before the last general elections, if you could dare call them that, I confided in my friends that I would not vote for two personal reasons. First of all I knew that former President Moi had rigged Kenyan elections for over 24 years of his rule due to his cunning double-faced leadership. I also knew that whatever the outcome of the elections, the dye had already been cast and self-anointed victors were already wetting their mouths for the spoils. I was not going to grace the occasion by voting for evil, myopic thieves and chauvinistic liars.

“Many Kenyans, for lack of words to say, or for their own cowardice, routinely ask Kibaki and Raila to solve their differences. But is it as simple as that? Nay. The stupidity, crudeness, arrogance and lack of diplomacy manifested by the new generation of dishonourable charlatans and court-jesters in the form of mediators leaves us in a hopeless situation. One is amazed at the failure of our so-called mediators to understand the glaring writings on the wall. A President of the most powerful superpower in the world makes a transatlantic flight to our borders and sends his de facto second-in-command to our hapless country. The message is clear: “We are friends of Kenyans”, she says. “Kenyans have been demanding peace from you for a long time. You should have solved your differences by yesterday”, she continues. “We shall do everything possible to help Kenyans. We shall not allow the situation in Kenya to degenerate to unbearable proportions. We shall find out and deal with those who are disrupting the talks or formenting violence. Kenya is not an island and what affects Kenya affects us too, and indeed the whole world. It is our social responsibility as a superpower to ensure that democratic principles are maintained in the whole world.”

“As they say, let those who have ears hear, and eyes, see. It would appear that the likes of Wetangula neither heard nor saw. Instead the PNU-axis started to dance to the tune of “sovereignty and constitution”. These people know that Iraq also had a constitution and sovereignty, and so did Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia and East Timor. These countries are now under something akin to colonial rule and this is the destination our country is espousing. Sovereignty in the world today finds its expression in economic and technological might, not in some artificial, miserable, poverty-stricken geographical entities based on arbitrary demarcations created by former colonial masters.

“What the Graceful diplomatic lady has been telling our negotiators is, “That person who went to plant his vote at the polling station is the real Kenyan, not the likes of you who strategically positioned yourselves to steal it from the granary after the harvest. We shall do anything in our power to assist the ordinary Kenyan, not because we have some romantic encounter with them, but because, in that way, we shall have control of the country whose strategic global position is too dear to lose. We shall recolonise you if we have to, should you not wake up and put your house in order”. Funnily enough, our negotiators do not seem to appreciate that the European Union, President Bush, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Security Council and, funnily enough, the African Union are reading from the same script. And that, by inference, Kofi Anan, willingly or unwillingly, is their mouthpiece. They seem to equate their current predicament and chances to those of Mugabe and Zimbabwe. Unfortunately for our gluttonous Kenyan leaders, Zimbabwe is of no strategic interest to world powers. Soon they will be trampled and relegated to the archives of the murky African history.”

In news articles reporting the recent violence in Mt Elgon District of Western Kenya, there is often a disclaimer stating that the violence in the region has nothing to do with the controversial December 2007 election results and post-election violence. I beg to differ. The violence in Mt Elgon may have roots in early Kenyan history, but so does the post-election violence in the rest of the country. To separate the two is to deny the glaring truth: that the colonial British government, and the post-independence Kenyan governments that have followed in its footsteps have not handled the distribution of resources responsibly, and that this form of misgovernance has deepened ethnic divisions in an already polarized state.

I have a specific view on the ongoing violence in Kenya, which I will elaborate in future entries. However, the aim of this blog is not simply to air my views. I am merely one of 30 million plus Kenyans. My larger aim in this blog is to share the opinions and stories of other Kenyans, some of which I may agree with, and others that I may not agree with. My point is that most of these perspectives come from subjective experiences and if we are to work towards peace in Kenya, then we have no choice but to start paying attention to each other’s experiences. I encourage you, the reader, to do independent research on this subject and not to take it for granted that all the opinions presented on this blog are the absolute truth.

The first perspective I will spotlight comes from a young Kenyan who tries to give context to the origins of the violence in Mt Elgon District:

“The government decision to deploy the military in Mt. Elgon is like using “a hammer to kill a fly.” So far the military has adopted “scorched earth” tactics against the civilian, resulting in the death of over 50 people by starvation and beatings to death, and being thrown in the forest, and thousands of women and children internally displaced with no food, shelter, clothing and medicine. This is another Wagalla massacre in the making.

Violence in Mt. Elgon district, which has claimed more than 500 lives, dates back to 1965 when the state decided to settle 370 Ndorobos who were living on land that was not arable. They had been pushed out of Trans-Nzoia District into Chekitale, near the top of Mt. Elgon,  by the colonial government in the 1950s. Others were forced by settlers into Kaptega, Kiptugot, Kimoson and Kiborowa, also in Trans-Nzoia and more pushed afield into Romronwet in Mt.Elgon.

Two years after independence, the government decided to settle families from Chekitale – a moorland of 39,575 acres at  the Chebyuk Settlement Scheme- so that they could do meaningful farming and have access to education. The 370 Ndorobos were to be settled in  Bura in Tana River District and Naitiri in Bungoma, but the elders led by the then MP, Mr. Daniel Moss, rejected the offer, saying that the people were not used to the hot climate of Bura and would not feel at home in Naitiri either. Since they were too few to warrant the excising of the larger Mt. Elgon forest, they invited 300 Soys to make the number. Some 670 Ndorobos and Soys were initially allocated 7220 accres, with each receiving about 20.

A committee chaired by Mr. Francis Laikong’ did the distribution in 1974. After the settlement, the Ndorobos (now Ogieks) started selling their pieces of land to the Soy since most of them (Ndorobos) depended on honey, milk, meat and wild fruits. Since there was great friendship between the two clans, they entered into a mutual understanding in which the Ndorobos would exchange an acre for one head of cattle. This happened although the land had been gazetted as a game reserve. After some time, the Ndorobos started moving back to Chepkitale

In 1987, an aspirant for the area parliamentary  seat, Mr.Simon Psiwa,  led a delegation of Ndorobos to Sacho in Baringo District to see President Moi and report that the then MP, Mr. Wilberforce Kisiero, had brought his supporters to settle on their land. The action led to the nullification of the allocations in 1988 and the sacking of Mr. Kisiero as a livestock assistant minister the following year. In October 1989, Mr. Kisiero was reinstated but redeployed to the Ministry of Water. Western provincial Commissioner Francis Lekolool later ordered everybody out of the land to pave the way for fresh allocations.

On January 15, 1982 a local chief lamented, “Most of the Chepkitale originals sold their farms to other members of the public and claimed later that the land had only been hired, which is not true. Unless farms are registered, there will be no understanding among the Ndorobos and the Soy.”

In a letter to the then Elgon District officer, the chief said the Chebyuk land issue should have been sorted out as early as 1965, arguing that it would get complicated with the invasion of illegal squatters. When Mr. Lekolool sub-divided the land in 1989, the Ndorobo population had grown to 1,170 after they invited fellow clansmen and women from Kaptega, Kiptigot, Kimoson, Kiborowa and Romromwet, forcing the PC to give out five acres each in what was called phase I of the scheme.

At the moment there are no records to show the full list of Soys since they bought most of the land from Ndorobos. Since most of the latter had been bought out, they settled illegally in Emia and Chebyuk locations, which were then part of the forest, Later the government excised 3,845 acres of the forest to settle 769 landless people in phase 11 of the scheme. Invaders at Chepkurur and Korngotuny were evicted and trees planted on more than 947 acres with the help of the Norwegian government. This cost about shs.5.7 million. In 1991, a delegation of Soys comprising 15 men and two women saw President Moi at his Kabarnet home to report that more than 1,000 of their clan-mates were still landless, and asked for more land. Their plea went unheeded, however. The following year, tribal clashes hit the area, and when visited the district later, the President was told that the cause of the fighting was land. The head of state then gave them the go-ahead to live on phase III of the scheme.

In 1993, the team comprising one of the ring leaders of the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) again paid a visit to president Moi to say that another 636 people were still landless. But before surveyors could be sent to the ground, the team is said to have led more of their kin to clear a square kilometer of the forest. Tree seedlings on the farms were also uprooted to pave way for the settlement. In 1993, vetting was done and the Soys at first rejected land allocations, and the Ndorobos said they had negotiated for it, but it was eventually shared out on a 50-50 basis after the local elders intervened. Mt. Elgon district was created in 1993, but no district officer was posted there until 2001 eight years later.”

I write because silence is intolerable at this point in Kenyan history. Too many people have been killed, maimed and abused, and the violence still continues. The bloodshed in Kenya must end, but before that happens, we all need to talk to each other and to listen to the responses. This blog reflects the voices of different people who would like their stories to be heard, but don’t have the means to make that happen. Read their words and keep their stories in your heart.