Posted on 02/02/2008 4:19:01 PM PST by SJackson
THE tragedy of Kenya’s violence was etched on the face of James Kamau, a softly spoken 43-year-old biology teacher, as he steeled himself to search Nakuru city mortuary for his murdered brother-in-law this weekend.
“We are glimpsing an enormity of evil in Kenya larger than any of us imagined,” he said. “Look how they have destroyed our people.”
He flinched in a moment of shock as he spotted a familiar pair of brown shoes on the feet of a man burnt beyond recognition who was lying on the floor. “It is Eliud,” he said, turning away in sorrow and comforting his sister.
Local legend has it that the steam rising from the bottom consists of the souls of Masai warriors who were hurled into the crater after a battle over land and are now trying to reach heaven. The volcano was a top tourist attraction in the Rift Valley until 10 days ago, when the violence that began over a disputed presidential election on December 27 spread to the streets of Nakuru.
Chaos reigned in and around the town, Kenya’s fourth largest, as tribal gangs fought with knives, pangas, stones and poisoned arrows. After more than 60 people had died, the police imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew. The tourists left and have not come back.
Kamau and other relatives of the dead milling before the gates of the mortuary said they believed worse bloodshed was to come. The violence had exploded after members of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) claimed the government had rigged the elections to prevent their leader, Raila Odinga, 63, replacing Mwai Kibaki, the 76-year-old president.
Immediately after the re-election of Kibaki, the violence was directed against his tribe, the Kikuyu, whose political and economic domination of Kenya since independence in 1963 has exposed them to widespread resentment. But in the past week Kikuyus have hit back at Luos, Luhyas, Kalenjin and other tribes supporting Odinga, who is himself a Luo.
The ODM said the violence was a spontaneous surge of anger at Kibaki’s electoral “fraud”, but activists on both sides fanned the flames of tribal resentment and on Wednesday, after nearly 1,000 people had been killed and 250,000 had been made homeless, the Daily Nation newspaper said the fear of civil war was not farfetched. Jendayi Frazer, the American assistant secretary of state for Africa, called the violence “clear ethnic cleansing”.
A glimmer of hope emerged late on Friday when Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general who is mediating, announced that the government and opposition had agreed a plan to end the crisis. Annan said measures would be introduced in a week to 10 days to stop the violence. But 27 more people were killed and a church burnt yesterday.
In the traumatised strife-torn Rift Valley, many Kikuyus driven from their homes said it was too late to stop the tribal hatred. “It is impossible to live together. There will be more blood. It cannot stop now,” said Robert Njoroge, 55, who came to the mortuary to collect the body of his nephew, who had been murdered by the Kalenjin.
The reason why the Rift Valley has become the epicentre of the conflict is rooted in history. Once the homeland of the Kalenjin and Masai, much of it was seized early last century by the British, who turned it into a colonial paradise of farms and Tudor-style mansions. Instead of being returned to those tribes on independence, the farmland was bought by Kikuyus, the tribe of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president.
Although the constitution granted Kenyans of any tribe the right to live anywhere in the country, the spread of Kikuyus across the Rift Valley triggered bitterness and grievances.
Many Kikuyus believe that the violence was planned, regardless of the election result. They have accused William Ruto, one of Odinga’s top aides, who is a Kalenjin and an MP in Eldoret, one of the flashpoints in the Rift Valley, of a preelection hate speech.
“He has become the warlord of the Rift Valley,” said a man called Simon. “He poisoned the Kalenjin against the Kikuyu.”
Kamau said his Kalenjin neighbour, a banker, had warned him two weeks before the election to expect trouble. He said he had heard hate speeches broadcast on the local Kalenjin radio station and had been told that Kalenjin youths were being indoctrinated against the Kikuyu while undergoing circumcision in December as a rite of passage.
“There are no Kikuyus who have been left on their farms in the Rift Valley,” said Kamau, who was burnt out of his Eldoret home with his wife and three children and now lives in a refugee camp.
“They have destroyed all our property. They think the Rift Valley is theirs and no other tribe should be there. That is what they were told during the circumcision ceremonies.”
So powerful was the rhetoric that it seemed to have infected even educated Kalenjins. After being burnt out of his home, one senior figure at Moi University in Eldoret was warned last week that his colleagues were hunting for him and he should not return if he wanted to stay alive.
The growing and seemingly uncontrollable tribal violence has led to inevitable comparisons to Rwanda, where the 1994 geno-cide claimed nearly 1m lives. But Kenya is not Rwanda. It has 42 tribes, where Rwanda had only two, one of which made up 90% of the population. The brutal ethnic cleansing that divided Bosnia is a fairer analogy.
To combat the Kalenjin attacks, the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley have resurrected a murderous criminal gang notorious for beheading its victims. The gang, called the Mungiki, was established during elections in the 1990s to counter violence by Kalenjin gangs but was later outlawed. Last year the police reportedly killed 500 Mungiki in a crackdown.
According to a priest in Nakuru, Mungiki gangs were on the prowl last week, under police protection and looking for members of other tribes. One Kikuyu youth who would call himself only John described how he was forced to join a gang which beheaded 15 Kalenjin and Luos.
“They killed one man armed with a club and stones. He could not answer a question put to him in Kikuyu so they forced him to the ground and cut off his head. Next we met a big man sharpening two pangas. They cut him so fast that his mouth was still moving when they lifted up his head on the end of a panga.”
His story fitted word from other Kikuyus that a strategy had been devised to wait for most Kikuyus to be in places of safety before striking back against the Kalenjin. “We kept quiet for a month,” said one Kikuyu who was thirsting for vengeance.
“If we had acted before our people were safe, the Kalenjin would have killed them. Now we will chop them in pieces. Raila and Ruto will cry.”
Tribal divisions
* Kenya's main tribes are the Kikuyu 20%, Luo 14%, Luhya 13%, Kalenjin 11% * President Kibaki is Kikuyu; Odinga is Luo * The Kalenjin in the Rift Valley resent Kikuyu land purchases there
At least Eliud, 40, could now be buried. Kamau had feared when he could not find him that his brother-in-law had been thrown - like other victims of the violence - into the 1,600ft-deep crater of the dormant Menengai volcano five miles from the city centre. There he would have been devoured by wild animals.
We are in agreement!
I read this past weekend that a church was harboring a 100 people while the violence was going on in Nakura. It was the only building standing in a a large area. I’m wondering if this was the church.
He may be attempting to fool us but he is only fooling himself. They know.
gezuss
how far we have fallen in such a short time
how weak we have become
Think of it — you are a new student with an unruly class — do you ally yourself with the top bully (who doesn’t need or want allies?) or with the second-best bully? With the second-best and you combined, you can now take the top spot.
Africa...tribalism...forget it.
Re-Colonize it or write it off.
Been asking myself the same question.
I'm also asking why more people don't know about this purported kinship. Open and transparent government. Our media is silent, and we read about it in the foreign press until US bloggers pick it up. Still the American people except trackers are clueless.
Unless anyone can point me to a MSM outlet that ran or broadcast it, including talk radio.
The BBC article was more vague, this one pins the source of the initiation of the violence on one close to Odinga which leads me to believe he might have wanted it to go down like it has.
No way do I believe Obama would have wanted that to happen in Kenya, but I think he is helplessly monitoring it closely. Neither side is amenable to mediation.
Islam is a long established religion in Kenya. The post doesn’t claim what you are reading into it. It says Arabs, not muslims arrival from 500. Arabs in fact traded in spices and slaves from around the 1st century AD.
Mosques were being built in this part of East Africa before they were constructed in parts of what is now the Middle East. Falola, Key Events in African History, pp. 83-84.
Europeans, Portuguese to be correct, didn’t arrive until the early 1700’s. Long after islam had been established by the omani arabs.
A tradition of Judaeo-Christianity in a society instills the habit of trust between people who are not of the same clan. It takes that, which is almost nonexistent outside of cultures with that Judaeo-Christian tradition, to be able to do business above basic subsistence level. China is not even really exempt from that. All of the large Chinese companies are either family or government operations.A sizable Christian minority in Buddhist/Confucian culture works because the Buddhists catch on from the Christians and run with it. It is happening that way in Viet Nam, too, with the added benefit that Christians were not allowed to work for the government or for foreign companies until last year. What happened was that Christians became the business class and many Buddhists were following the path when the government decided it had need of whatever it is that the Christians have that allows them to get along with unrelated people smoothly. It all doesn’t seem to be working so well in Africa yet. I guess it has to wait for the tribal warfare to work itself out.
It won’t be over until it’s over and whenever that is Mr. Anan won’t have had any effective input at all.
Arabs regarded subsaharan Africans as one thing only: slaves. In fact, the entire Middle Eastern world was accustomed to getting slaves from Africa, long before the advent of Islam, and Islam simply continued the practice and even made it a key part of its law. One of the reasons for the revival of slavery in Europe after centuries of decline, actually, was contacts between Europeans and Muslims as a result of the Muslim attacks on Europe and European shipping.
Islam extended itself to Africa the way it extended itself to Turkey, India, and any other place it has ever been: armed attacks and slaughters, slave-raids, and entering into agreements with the local tribal lords to force the tribes to pay tribute in goods and slaves to their Arab masters. If that’s what you mean by “being Muslim,” you’re right.
>Of course, if Kenyan Muslim Luo Obama gets elected, who knows what will happen. <
Is it reasonable to suppose that the aggressors in Kenya will then be further motivated to destroy the victims of their violence? The election of one of their own could be taken as a sign that they are on the right track, and it could make them redouble their efforts at ethnic cleansing.
Kenya was the one island of civilization in the chaos that is Africa. How depressing that it is now in a slow-motion fall to destruction.
Kenya: Revealed - Raila’s Real MoU With Muslims
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711280012.html
Seems to be old news, before the elections. Just a bit of history though as Kenya struggles.
Of course not, it's a religion of peace after all. Much of this is tribal in nature, but Islam is tribal as well, you only have to look to the Sudan to see it's handiwork.
Yes, as though the hierarchy of the Reich or the Soviets were stupid.
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Since both the Kikuyu and Luo tribes are Christian why would islam be a factor?
Kenya is a Christian nation, less than 10% muslim...according to the CIA.
Yes, Most of Kenya is Christian. But the Muslims have been moving in, including foreign terrorists. For the background on Odinga’s promise to install sharia law, see this link:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1199824924
Why do you suppose they are burning churches? The actual document that Odinga signed with his pledge of sharia law has been posted on the internet and linked here several times in various threads.
I’ve googled this now and found this site also, with links to various other sources and the document itself:
http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/2008/01/kenyas-odinga-m.html
The Belmont Club has a piece on Obama’s connection to Odinga and the Kenyan Muslims:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/01/cousins.html
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