Maybe Kibaki and Raila Are Powerless To Stop the Senseless Slaughter (But Reconciling Them Is Still Worth A Try)

As the hours tick by and the efforts to get Kibaki and Raila talking seem distant, the violence rocking Rift Valley and specifically targeted at the Kikuyu seems to be gaining a life of its own that is out of the control of the politicians. 

The focus on reconciliation is probably a trap into which most of Kenya and the rest of the world have fallen. We plead for peace and go on protest marches to clamor for fresh elections, while those who know that the violence has nothing to do with elections are the killers and their victims. 

That is why it is useful to draw parallels between Rwanda and Kenya before it is too late. I beg the forgiveness of the victims of the 1994 genocide for seeming to trivialize the pain and suffering that they still endure.  

a)       The perfect excuse: In Rwanda, an assassinated president, in Kenya, a flawed election and a Kikuyu president. 

b)       Casualties from other ethnic groups: In Rwanda, moderate Hutus were also massacred. In Kenya, the Kisii, Luhya and even Kalenjin civil servants have not been spared the wrath of the mobs. Areas with predominantly Luo populations have seen many killed by the police. Reports of Mungiki retaliations provide evidence for what the press like to term as "revenge killings." In Kisumu, the Asian business community has suffered great the economic losses. In Nairobi, residents of the areas affected, most of them poor, report that the maurauding gangs are not members of the community. Text book case of an invisible hand intent on making the country ungovernable.

c)          A distracted world: In 1994, the World Cup and the first elections in South Africa after the dismantling of apartheid. Today, the Democratic Party primaries, Iraq and the war on terror. 

d)       A racist world: In both cases, a Western world that trivializes politically organized ethnic cleansing by calling it “tribalism” or ethnic conflict, thus appealing to the myth that Africans are instinctually propelled to kill one another with no good reason or with no prior planning. 

e)      A colonial past: In both cases, the targeted groups were “favored” by colonial rulers who used divide and rule tactics to govern. The tragedy of the Kikuyu is that the majority of them also suffered massacres and torture in concentration camps while fighting the British. In fact, the presence of Kikuyus in Rift Valley partly resulted from a loan the British gave to buy land for settling the displaced elsewhere so that the British settlers could remain on their land. 

f)          A meddling Western world intent on making political capital of the chaos: In Rwanda, France supported the genocidaires in an effort to stem the "Anglo-Saxon" influence from Ugana. In Kenya, the United States needs an unstable Kenya to secure its anti-terrorism campaigns in Somalia and the Middle East as well as to provide a justification for the deployment of AFRICOM mecenaries. The Gordon government in Britain that is facing corruption scandals and waning popularity could make significant recovery based on a moralistic intervention in Kenya. Besides, it has a fifty-year old score to settle with the Kikuyu.

g)       Colonial structures and Western ideology: In Rwanda, it was racism and the dream of a peasant revolution. In Kenya, a flawed constitution, the dream of a revolutionary movement. 

h)        A complicit press: In Rwanda, the radio of hate. In Kenya, some of the vernacular stations are said to be inciting their people. Meanwhile, the mainstream press has been referring to “a certain ethnic group” without saying which one. It gives more news coverage to the United States and the EU  as they deliver misinformed and patronizing speeches than to the Kenyans who are calling for peace. 

Never before in my life have I prayed so earnestly that my observations are wrong. On the other hand, Kenya has for 40 years evaded coming to terms with its painful colonial past and its traumatic impact on the Kenyan psyche, and so the time has probably come for the country to exorcize itself from its colonial demons. Unfortunately, like in the rest of Africa, the process claims so many lives and leaves deep scars. 

Maybe we would have avoided this tragedy if Kenyans had not deluded themselves that we are not like other African countries. In reality, Kenya is just another African country. And that is not something to be ashamed of, for we are proud to be African. In any case, our sister countries that have suffered did nothing to deserve their tragedies. The blame must go to the colonial masters, the individual Kenyan politicians, and finally to the gangs that have abandoned their own humanity so as to deny the same to others.