Jealousy 'leads' to unrest
2008-02-13 15:27
Naivasha - Although they are from different tribes, Peter and Sospeter have much in common: they do the same job, are roughly the same age and practically share the same first name.
Now Kenya's ethnic clashes had landed the two men - one a
Kikuyu of the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, the other a Luo
like opposition leader Raila Odinga - in hospital.
There, thanks to a shortage of space in the midst of a flood of violent
injuries, they share the same bed.
Sospeter Odipo, a Luo, said he didn't mind sharing a bed with fellow flower-farmer Peter Ndungu, a Kikuyu, but he said he could no longer live alongside Kikuyus.
He planned to return to Kisumu in his western tribal homeland.
Outside the hospital gates, their communities fired arrows
and chucked rocks at each other in the latest post-election clash.
A month or so ago, few could have believed the tension
exposed by elections in a country best known for tourism, would
prompt conflict that had killed 1 000, displaced 300 000 and
been called "ethnic cleansing" by the United States and others.
Paul Brennan, a missionary who had worked in Kenya for the last 30 years said: "It was there the whole time, but people didn't want to acknowledge it.
"It is about land. It is about jealousy, exacerbated by
politics - the spark was the election."
The trigger was disputed polls, that returned Kibaki to
power. Odinga said Kibaki rigged it. But the seeds of the
conflict were sown long ago.
Politics, land and ethnicity had combined before to spill
into violence. Clashes in the early and the late 90's also caused
the deaths of hundreds, mostly Kikuyus, in the Rift Valley.
Revenge
Resentment of the Kikuyu stemmed even further back, to
perceptions that they were favoured by colonial power Britain
and - as shrewd businesspersons - then emerged from the
country's 42 tribes as the most influential, analysts said.
Crowded in central Kenya, and encouraged by the independent
nation's first president, himself a Kikuyu, they moved on to and
bought land from other groups in the Rift Valley.
"They say we stole their land. We didn't. We bought it,"
said Jane Nyaga, 55, a retired Kikuyu teacher, as she sat on her
only remaining possession, a sofa, near a police station
sheltering refugees.
A mob from another tribe, the Kalenjin, burnt her house.
"I have a title deed to prove it, but they don't care. They
think only Kalenjin belong here so we somehow stole it."
Brennan feels the violence had taken on a new
dimension: "Of course (previous clashes) were serious to those
affected, but there wasn't the targeting and the revenge we are
seeing now."
What started as the opposition's rejection of the election
had spread - fuelled, many said, by politicians or elders
mobilising gangs to protect their local interests.
Protests in urban areas were as much about the gap between
rich and poor as they were politics, some Kenyans said.
When the violence reached Naivasha - just north of Nairobi
- last week, it was mostly Kikuyus who were retaliating for
attacks on their own in western Kenya after Kibaki's victory was
announced.
Hundreds of youths from the Kalenjin and Kisii tribes
battled last Sunday in Chebilat, near Kericho town, shooting
arrows and slingshots as each side accused the other of chasing
them off their land.
So much hatred
The result, said Francois Grignon, Africa Director for the
International Crisis Group, had been the collapse of state
legitimacy.
He told Reuters: "The institutions of the state are being rejected.
They are not playing their role so people are resorting to
violence,".
Many Kenyans, disgusted by the bloodshed, pin their hopes on
talks between the two leaders' parties in Nairobi.
But, Grignon warned it could get much worse if those meetings
fail: "We could see fighting on a much larger scale."
Meanwhile, in Eldoret, also in the west, a successful Kikuyu
businessperson who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said
he was tearing up plans to retire there and heading home
generations after his family arrived.
"It has been devastating," he said. "The change has happened
so quickly.
We lived with these people and we shared our lives
together. We never imagined that they harboured so much hatred."
When clashes permit, buses, trucks and cars loaded up at
makeshift camps, piled high with furniture before crisscrossing
the country, ferrying thousands of Kenyans back to homelands.
Kikuyus from the west were heading to Central Kenya. Luos,
Luhyas and Kalenjins and heading back westwards.
As much as the displaced might consider these ethnic
tribelands home, Grignon warned they might face more struggles if
many returned to over populated regions, where unemployment was high.
"It is going to be a major issue that will require some
serious political negotiations and people with large tracts of
land giving some up," he said.