Of our tribal suspicion and incitement, who stands to benefit in Kenya
political opponents supporters clash in the Nairobi streets, kenya
By Luchiri Edmond | Western Kenya
Early in the year, there were chilling reports attributed to rights groups based in the north-rift region about communities arming in anticipation for conflict against enemies either real or perceived. A casual spot check in several parts of the country further reveals a prevailing worrying state of affairs in as far as our cultural dynamism and backgrounds relates to our peaceful coexistence.
Evidently, Kenyan cultural communities which have in the past coexisted harmoniously sharing assets, means, possessions, wealth and reserves in their midst without harboring negative intuitions will today go to any length wiping out their age long abettors without a second thought!
Intermittent turmoil
Being a rich multi cultural society with over 40 tribes, our country’s pendulum is menacingly oscillating between choking calmness and intermittent turmoil as illuminated in the period immediately after the botched up 2007 general elections. The bloody affair was responsible for over a thousand deaths of innocent lives whose hopes of changing Kenya for the better were nipped in the bud. The grisly attacks by Kenyans on fellow country men left scores of others, in their tens of thousands, displaced from their homes some of whom to date continue to be holed up in makeshift camps that dot the republic living under squalid conditions.
Yet our motherland has for long been referred to as one of Africa’s quintessential democracy. We have basked in the glory of a peaceful island that stands out in a troubled surrounding that includes the horn of Africa and the great lakes region. A peaceful transition in the year 2002 in a bloodless democratic dispensation was in itself a rare affair that contradicted the norm in a continent where despots only relinquish power either through elimination by the cruel hand of death or via infamous coups.
But where does our bedevilment stem from? Why have we continued to allow these divisive politics to be entrenched in our system? Can we trust ourselves for the emancipation from the self-imposed crown of thorns? Most assuredly, provided we have the willingness.
Politically instigated
A close scrutiny of the spate of tribal clashes that were synonymous with every electioneering period during the last decade of the twentieth century strips bare the fact that they were politically instigated! The volatile Rift-Valley hot spots of Trans-Nzoia, Molo, Laikipia and Nakuru would bubble over and explode to anarchy as members of particular communities deemed sympathetic to the then opposition would be served with leave notices demanding them to return to their ‘home’. The area political leaders would then clap all the way to parliament after elections as the violence died out while the authorities would appear as though all was well.
This time round, as the referendum mood grips the entire nation, we ought to benchmark ourselves whether we have had any lessons from 2007. With the clock ticking, we are compelled to occasional physiological and economic discussion of our affliction engendered by our political infamy. But we shrink from recognizing the full extent to which it bases the whole social fabric carefully concealing its insurrections, and ignoring or misreading their lessons.
Paying lip service to careless utterances
And as though the 2007 spectacle was a mere triviality not to be taken seriously, we continue to pay lip service to careless utterances by political, religious and civil group’s leaders which bear the potentials of plunging this country deep into the abyss of lawlessness and disorder. We behave as though Somali is our greatest role model!
The barbaric incident visited on anti draft law crusaders and their supporters at Uhuru Park where grenades were used should further draw the veil on our prettily seated and already smoking time bomb awaiting 2012. We are fast developing a culture where violence expresses our desires more than reasoning and sobriety.
The endless delegations to Rwanda by our parliamentarians ostensibly to study the causes of the 1994 genocide and how to avert a similar situation from arising in Kenya appear to be efforts in futility! Their numerous reports and recommendations hardly see the light of the day while the same politicians are at the fore front flouting with abandoned impunity the very tenets of national tranquility much to the chagrin of the common mwananchi.
The various inferences that the government has so far been able to draw, including recommendations by such commissions as the Akiwumi Commission into Ethnic violence in Kenya should form the bedrock of our structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation instead of lying idle in an office. The proposed reforms contained in the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Agenda item 4, signed in March 2008 should also be encompassed to further seal any remaining loopholes.
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