Mombasa
If you count the grains of sand in the sky
they are greater than the stars on earth
The coral cliffs are holding them up
their porus bodies falling one by one to their death
Turning shooting stars into sand and shells
only to bleed the light dry
To walk upon them, to collect them
like sand grains of time
But there is a place above the stars and cliffs
it is a division of life and death
Like how the onshore breeze bends the coconut tree
a morning prayer, bowing to the unknowing earth
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
The crisis in Kenya has as much to do with equity as it does with ethnicity
‘We are late sewing crops this year’ a friend sighs as we sit at a roadside café in the heart of Nairobi. The rain is falling heavily on the tarpaulin roof above and I have to concentrate closely to what my friends are saying. One says ‘All this rain going to waste, we don’t just have the world food crisis we have a Kenyan food crisis as well. We were too busy fighting and now we will pay through our stomachs’. I have returned to Kenya after six months absence and am trying to piece together what happened to cause the post election violence and what the future holds for my friends.
I ask them, how did you cope during the violence? I hear clearly one friend say ‘we turned on the TV, got scared, turned the TV off and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening’. So it was a shock, I asked? ‘No not really, we felt leading up to the elections that things were not good, you could feel it in the air’ another friend says. She continues, ‘what was a shock is that we didn’t expect, didn’t know that Kenyans were capable of such violence’. Another says ‘yes it has really damaged our sense of nationhood’.
So, I asked, this was an ethnic conflict? Another friend says ‘well yes and no’. The discussion then became lively. Many of my friends, from different ethnic groups, including the Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin and Kikuyu who were those groups at the heart of the post election violence voiced their opinions. It seems that whilst it did manifest itself in an ethnic conflict, underlying it was longstanding economic inequalities and access to land. It was as much about inequity as it was about ethnicity.
They tell me that in the Rift Valley where the conflict was and still is continuing the real issue is land. Prior to the arrival of the colonial powers much of the Rift Valley was traditionally the lands of different pastoralist groups comprising mainly the Kalenjin, Luhya and Masai. The land was highly productive and colonial powers soon took over large areas of the Rift Valley. The ‘White Highlands’ as they were known were those productive areas where the white farmers grew their lucrative export crops of tea and coffee.
With independence in 1963 many white farmers left the area and much of the land to the group that was made largely up by the first Government, the Kikuyu. Jomo Kenyatta the first Kenyan President and Kikuyu took much of the land. It is estimated his family still have more than 500,000 acres. But other politicians took and have since taken their slice of this productive land. Former President Daniel arap Moi (a Kalenjin) and his family are believed to have more than 300,000 acres and current President Mwai Kibaki in excess of 250,000 acres.
The first Kenyan Government resettled many Kikuyu from their homelands in central province to the Rift Valley and land was either given, leased or sold to many Kikuyu. It was believed by many that only the Kikuyu could continue making profitable incomes on the productive white highlands. Attitudes of Kikuyu superior intelligence amongst the ruling elite and increasing wealth of this group combined with local groups marginalization and increasing poverty levels has caused tensions to steadily rise to this day. To make things worse there has been steadily increasing population pressures in the area, putting more pressure on the availability of arable land. The Luo, from the Lake Victoria basin, perhaps the second most powerful group after the Kikuyu in Kenya have also been moving more into the rift valley over time as Lake Victoria resources continue to dwindle. The subsequent pressure of land for poorer people on which to survive combined with certain individuals (mostly Kikuyu) still owning large tracts of land created a tinderbox ready to ignite.
My friends tell me the 2002 elections was not one based on ethnicity. People wanted a change for a more equitable Kenya and so they united with Kibaki. One of his promises was land reform but when he came to power he did very little to address this. Things did not seem to go as people had hoped. Toward the end of 2007 Mr Raila Odinga, who had supported Kibaki in the 2002 election announced his candiancy under the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) banner. He based much of his pre-election promises on dealing with social issues including that of land reform. Mr Odinga, a Luo, gained much sympathy from other groups in the Rift Valley including the Kalenjin. Then one friend tells me ‘when it appeared to many that Mr Odinga had been robbed of winning the election, the people had just had enough and took matters into their own hands’. The consequences are what we saw on our television screens across Australia.
I asked ‘so this sounds like another potential Rwanda? I mean there is a small ruling group (the Kikuyu) that many groups are now starting to target and get increasing hostile toward?’ My friends say that this is their greatest fear. They say that political leadership is now crucial to stop such a thing occurring. Even in Nairobi people are starting to talk badly of the Kikuyu. The notorious group ‘the Mungiki’ who are rife in Nairobi at present causing all kinds of social mayhem are linked closely to the Kikuyu and even allegedly prominent Kikuyu politicians. Someone says ‘how can such lawlessness be allowed to go on in the centre of Nairobi?’ They are clearly disappointed with their leaders, there is no way of hiding this.
Then someone says, ‘if only our leaders would follow the example shown by Kofi (Annan). This is a true African leader’. He continues ‘we saw the two sides of humanity during the crisis, we saw such evil but we saw such good and courage as well’. There is a silence and I sense that my friends, also from different ethnic groups, are happy the crisis didn’t split them but made them even stronger. Personally I witnessed Kenyan volunteers and emergency staff risking life and limb to assist those in need. I saw a great strength in Kenya in the midst of all this turmoil. This is something we should not overlook, it is easy to just say ‘it is happening again, those Africans are just hopeless’. But I tell you there are people here with a heart far greater than mine.
So where do we go from here I say? ‘Well it is a long road back, but people are sick of fighting, they now just want peace’ is the voice I hear. One of the problems are that people are scared to go back home and the people that forced them out are still not welcoming them back. But I am told that the land issue is one that can be solved, there are of course large tracts of land owned by wealthy people and politicians in the rift valley. So the question is essentially one of equity not ethnicity. As in many land disputes it is not a question of how much land there is available but who controls it. To solve this problem there needs to be a long process of peace building and land reform. But how will this happen I ask? Again the answer is leadership. We need leadership, true leadership. We are looking now to Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to work together to address and solve this issue. Mr Kibaki a Kikuyu and Mr Odinga a Luo now have a unique opportunity to address the long-standing grievances between their two ethnic groups. However, if they squander this opportunity Kenya may fall back into a situation even worse than what we saw in January and February this year. I hope for my friends that such a situation does not eventuate.
The political crisis combined with increasing food and petrol prices is putting the pinch on my Kenyan friends. I feel like in so many situations of this kind, so unbelievably inadequate and so out of place. I think they can sense this and as the rainfall continues to fall we order our food. My friend sitting next to me sees that I have lost my appetite and says jokingly, but with a sense of irony, ‘better eat up now, who knows when we will eat next’. With that we did as my friend and the TV does, we turned our fears off, pretended it wasn’t happening and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon together, like old times.
Stuart Thomson
27/4/2008
‘We are late sewing crops this year’ a friend sighs as we sit at a roadside café in the heart of Nairobi. The rain is falling heavily on the tarpaulin roof above and I have to concentrate closely to what my friends are saying. One says ‘All this rain going to waste, we don’t just have the world food crisis we have a Kenyan food crisis as well. We were too busy fighting and now we will pay through our stomachs’. I have returned to Kenya after six months absence and am trying to piece together what happened to cause the post election violence and what the future holds for my friends.
I ask them, how did you cope during the violence? I hear clearly one friend say ‘we turned on the TV, got scared, turned the TV off and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening’. So it was a shock, I asked? ‘No not really, we felt leading up to the elections that things were not good, you could feel it in the air’ another friend says. She continues, ‘what was a shock is that we didn’t expect, didn’t know that Kenyans were capable of such violence’. Another says ‘yes it has really damaged our sense of nationhood’.
So, I asked, this was an ethnic conflict? Another friend says ‘well yes and no’. The discussion then became lively. Many of my friends, from different ethnic groups, including the Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin and Kikuyu who were those groups at the heart of the post election violence voiced their opinions. It seems that whilst it did manifest itself in an ethnic conflict, underlying it was longstanding economic inequalities and access to land. It was as much about inequity as it was about ethnicity.
They tell me that in the Rift Valley where the conflict was and still is continuing the real issue is land. Prior to the arrival of the colonial powers much of the Rift Valley was traditionally the lands of different pastoralist groups comprising mainly the Kalenjin, Luhya and Masai. The land was highly productive and colonial powers soon took over large areas of the Rift Valley. The ‘White Highlands’ as they were known were those productive areas where the white farmers grew their lucrative export crops of tea and coffee.
With independence in 1963 many white farmers left the area and much of the land to the group that was made largely up by the first Government, the Kikuyu. Jomo Kenyatta the first Kenyan President and Kikuyu took much of the land. It is estimated his family still have more than 500,000 acres. But other politicians took and have since taken their slice of this productive land. Former President Daniel arap Moi (a Kalenjin) and his family are believed to have more than 300,000 acres and current President Mwai Kibaki in excess of 250,000 acres.
The first Kenyan Government resettled many Kikuyu from their homelands in central province to the Rift Valley and land was either given, leased or sold to many Kikuyu. It was believed by many that only the Kikuyu could continue making profitable incomes on the productive white highlands. Attitudes of Kikuyu superior intelligence amongst the ruling elite and increasing wealth of this group combined with local groups marginalization and increasing poverty levels has caused tensions to steadily rise to this day. To make things worse there has been steadily increasing population pressures in the area, putting more pressure on the availability of arable land. The Luo, from the Lake Victoria basin, perhaps the second most powerful group after the Kikuyu in Kenya have also been moving more into the rift valley over time as Lake Victoria resources continue to dwindle. The subsequent pressure of land for poorer people on which to survive combined with certain individuals (mostly Kikuyu) still owning large tracts of land created a tinderbox ready to ignite.
My friends tell me the 2002 elections was not one based on ethnicity. People wanted a change for a more equitable Kenya and so they united with Kibaki. One of his promises was land reform but when he came to power he did very little to address this. Things did not seem to go as people had hoped. Toward the end of 2007 Mr Raila Odinga, who had supported Kibaki in the 2002 election announced his candiancy under the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) banner. He based much of his pre-election promises on dealing with social issues including that of land reform. Mr Odinga, a Luo, gained much sympathy from other groups in the Rift Valley including the Kalenjin. Then one friend tells me ‘when it appeared to many that Mr Odinga had been robbed of winning the election, the people had just had enough and took matters into their own hands’. The consequences are what we saw on our television screens across Australia.
I asked ‘so this sounds like another potential Rwanda? I mean there is a small ruling group (the Kikuyu) that many groups are now starting to target and get increasing hostile toward?’ My friends say that this is their greatest fear. They say that political leadership is now crucial to stop such a thing occurring. Even in Nairobi people are starting to talk badly of the Kikuyu. The notorious group ‘the Mungiki’ who are rife in Nairobi at present causing all kinds of social mayhem are linked closely to the Kikuyu and even allegedly prominent Kikuyu politicians. Someone says ‘how can such lawlessness be allowed to go on in the centre of Nairobi?’ They are clearly disappointed with their leaders, there is no way of hiding this.
Then someone says, ‘if only our leaders would follow the example shown by Kofi (Annan). This is a true African leader’. He continues ‘we saw the two sides of humanity during the crisis, we saw such evil but we saw such good and courage as well’. There is a silence and I sense that my friends, also from different ethnic groups, are happy the crisis didn’t split them but made them even stronger. Personally I witnessed Kenyan volunteers and emergency staff risking life and limb to assist those in need. I saw a great strength in Kenya in the midst of all this turmoil. This is something we should not overlook, it is easy to just say ‘it is happening again, those Africans are just hopeless’. But I tell you there are people here with a heart far greater than mine.
So where do we go from here I say? ‘Well it is a long road back, but people are sick of fighting, they now just want peace’ is the voice I hear. One of the problems are that people are scared to go back home and the people that forced them out are still not welcoming them back. But I am told that the land issue is one that can be solved, there are of course large tracts of land owned by wealthy people and politicians in the rift valley. So the question is essentially one of equity not ethnicity. As in many land disputes it is not a question of how much land there is available but who controls it. To solve this problem there needs to be a long process of peace building and land reform. But how will this happen I ask? Again the answer is leadership. We need leadership, true leadership. We are looking now to Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to work together to address and solve this issue. Mr Kibaki a Kikuyu and Mr Odinga a Luo now have a unique opportunity to address the long-standing grievances between their two ethnic groups. However, if they squander this opportunity Kenya may fall back into a situation even worse than what we saw in January and February this year. I hope for my friends that such a situation does not eventuate.
The political crisis combined with increasing food and petrol prices is putting the pinch on my Kenyan friends. I feel like in so many situations of this kind, so unbelievably inadequate and so out of place. I think they can sense this and as the rainfall continues to fall we order our food. My friend sitting next to me sees that I have lost my appetite and says jokingly, but with a sense of irony, ‘better eat up now, who knows when we will eat next’. With that we did as my friend and the TV does, we turned our fears off, pretended it wasn’t happening and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon together, like old times.
Stuart Thomson
27/4/2008
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