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SMSs 'tool of hate in Kenya'
19/02/2008 08:14 - (SA)
Mathare Chief Camp - When Joyce Mandela's mobile phone beeped to signal she had a text message, the 27-year old Kenyan expected a note from a friend. Instead, she found a message of hate.
"If your neighbour is a Kikuyu, just kick him or her out of that house. No one is going to ask you anything," the phone read.
"You don't know who is sending them, you don't know how they got your number," said Mandela, leaning against a lush fruit tree surrounded by squalid tents in this refugee camp next to one of the capital's sprawling slums.
Since December's disputed elections, ethnic clashes involving the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin tribes - among others - had rocked Kenya, claiming about 1 000 lives and displacing another 300 000 people.
'I don't want to get into politics'
Hacked bodies, razed homes and burnt-down shops lined ash-coated streets after the violence hit Mathare slum, forcing hundreds to flee to neighbouring camps.
In the capital's mazelike shantytowns, tribal battles had largely pitted the Kikuyus, who were mainly supporters of incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, against the Luos and Luhyas, supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga.
"I deleted the messages because I don't want to get into politics," said Mandela, who had spent six weeks in Mathare camp.
Behind her, lines of laundry strung under mango trees weave past mattresses, sheets and pillows stacked on the dirt ground and piled on wooden dressers.
A Luhya, Mandela had received four similar text messages since the December 27 presidential poll. She said: "I believe some politicians are responsible for the messages."
Politicians 'using people'
Willis Kuria, 28, agreed. He received a text message - which he was instructed to send to five others - telling him to join thousands of other Kenyans in a million-man opposition march in Nairobi protesting the official election result.
Such public rallies were banned at the time. "I think politicians are using the people to send the messages," said Kuria, a Kikuyu, walking past children playing football amid corn sacks and jugs of water.
He said: "I saw it as incitement. It would not make sense to march. We would find police and be beaten. My job was just to vote."
Last month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Kenyan opposition officials of inciting inter-ethnic violence in the western province of the Rift Valley -- allegations rejected by Odinga's party, the Orange Democratic Movement.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights meanwhile charged that text messages were among the means used to encourage Kenyans to participate in tribal attacks, along with inflammatory statements and songs broadcast on radio stations and at party rallies, leaflets and even bribes.
The Kenyan government recently said it was working with leading mobile operators to monitor voice and text messages on mobile phones - and potentially catch offenders.
- AFP
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