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Kenya
is not the new Rwanda
Frank
Furedi, Spiked Online
January 08, 2008
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4249/
Back in the 1970s, when
Eldoret in Kenya was a relatively sleepy town, I was struck by the
frontier-type mentality of many of the people I encountered there.
Individuals and families came to this part of western Kenya to start
a new life, and to try to make their fortune.
This had been the case
in Eldoret for a long time. During the colonial era, the town was
settled by groups of Afrikaners who had 'trekked' there in
1908. In subsequent decades, landless Africans also made their way
to Eldoret and the surrounding area. Many of these African settler
communities - in Burnt Forest, Kipkabus, Timboroa - provided the
backbone of the Mau Mau movement in the region, which fought against
British colonialism in Kenya. They were also pioneers looking for
their 'Kenyan Dream'.
Unfortunately, in post-independence
Kenya, access to opportunities and resources have tended to be mediated
through ethnic networks and affiliations. Land grabs are frequently
organised by local politicians who mobilise people on the basis
of tribal affiliation. That was evident 30 years ago - and its tragic
consequences are all too clear today after a mob burned down a church
in Eldoret, leading to the death of 30 Kikuyu refugees fleeing political
violence.
News reports about the
current political crisis in Kenya, following the disputed elections
in late December, appear to be unusually ill-informed about what's
going on and what issues are at stake. Many reports claim that the
outbreak of political violence and tribal unrest came like a bolt
from the blue in an otherwise model democracy. A commentator for
the New York Times says 'Kenya's disaster seems to have hit like
a tornado out of thin air' (1). Another writer says the 'recent
bloodshed is all the more tragic because Kenya has enjoyed economic
progress and has avoided the sectarian violence seen on much of
the African continent' (2).
This kind of naive and
ill-informed prognosis of the events in Kenya is everywhere at the
moment, and it is testimony to the power of historical amnesia in
contemporary times. The truth is that the violent clashes in the
Rift Valley region so graphically depicted on 24-hour TV news are
only the most recent example of ethnic clashes over the ownership
of land.
In Kenya, public life
has been dominated by the politicisation of ethnicity, since the
nation won independence in 1963. Consequently, elections are often
perceived to be a contest between different ethnic groups, the outcome
of which will decide which community gets access to resources. Clashes
during the elections of 1992 and 1997 left hundreds of people dead.
The 1992 elections actually anticipated the current spate of political
violence. Back then, Kalenjin politicians mobilised their supporters
to drive people from other tribes off the land that they occupied
in the Rift Valley. According to some estimates, as many as 779
people were killed, and 50,000 were displaced. A report on these
events published by the National Council of Churches of Kenya blamed
high-ranking officials for orchestrating some of the violence. Many
of the most violent clashes occurred in places where conflict is
unfolding again today. For example, now, as in 1992/1993, one of
the worst affected areas is Burnt Forest (3). Today, as in the past,
the focus of the deadly conflict is the attempt to gain access to
resources - and most importantly land.
What is striking, however,
is that back in the 1990s, outbreaks of violence in Kenya did not
arouse much interest or handwringing in the West. So what is new
today?
Rwanda
on the mind
One reason why the current
debate about Kenya is so ill-informed is because it is not really
about Kenya. In recent times, many Western experts and commentators
have lost the capacity to analyse and interpret events in Africa
and Asia by using conventional political concepts. Instead, conflicts
tend to be interpreted through a new political model that was constructed
during the post-Cold War upheavals in the Balkans and Rwanda.
This new view of conflicts
in the South and the East is based on a disoriented Western imagination,
which discusses political violence through dramatic and sensationalist
metaphors, such as 'Holocausts', 'Genocides', 'Ethnic Cleansing'
and 'Mass Rape Camps'. Consequently, when it comes to violence in
Africa or Asia, genocide has become the default diagnosis of events.
From the Congo to Darfur to Kenya, bloody conflicts are recast as
harbingers of holocaust.
Through today's promiscuous
use of the term 'genocide', conflicts become transformed into morality
plays about human destruction, and tend to be seen as being both
incomprehensible and inevitable. Western reporters see only a sudden,
inexplicable outburst of violence - a kind of murderous descent
into hell - and overlook the structural causes of crises in the
Third World. Many African politicians have learned to talk the talk
of Western media outlets and non-governmental organisations (NGOs),
and now try to use this language to secure an advantage in a conflict
situation. It is worth noting that the communication strategy of
Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki's election campaign was directed by
Marcus Courage, an Old Etonian public relations consultant who had
previously served as an adviser to the Make Poverty History campaign.
Courage helped to promote Bob Geldof's Live 8 campaign in
2005. Is it really surprising that, once he effectively elected
himself as president, Kibaki started to speak in the language and
tones of a distraught humanitarian aid worker? Indeed, it was Kibaki
who first raised the spectre of genocide, as his critics and opponents
carried out acts of violence; it was Kibaki who advised the world
media to think about Rwanda when they watched the violence in Kenya
unfolding.
A statement issued by
Kibaki's party said: 'It is becoming clear that these well-organised
acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing were well planned, financed
and rehearsed by Orange Democratic Movement leaders prior to the
general elections.' Sadly, significant sections of the media were
all too happy to embrace this talk of genocide. Quite quickly, relatively
unorganised and chaotic gangs of youth were labelled as militias,
old-fashioned land grabs were recycled as ethnic cleansing, and
despicable acts of human degradation were discussed as the beginning
of a systematic campaign of mass rape in what was apparently fast
becoming a war. The message of the media coverage was clear: this
is Africa, what else should we expect?! As one reporter said: 'The
ethnic hatred of Rwanda, the political divisions of Ivory Coast,
the horrific rapes that characterised the war in Congo, all came
to Kenya this week.' (4) It's all just the same typical African
barbarism, isn't it?
Kenya has more than its
share of problems, and the current crisis may well unleash a protracted
period of violent upheaval. Competing groups of corrupt political
cliques, who have usually managed to cobble together a political
deal in the past, may not be able to do so now. But it is precisely
because the stakes are so high that the last thing Kenya needs is
for its problems to be transformed into a Western fantasy about
'another Rwanda'. Kenya was not a beacon of democracy or a model
of economic stability before the December elections. And nor is
it the dramatic setting for a Rwanda-to-be after the elections.
All that has happened is that one group of corrupt politicians overplayed
its hand, got a little bit too greedy, and forced its opponents
to react on the streets.
That things got out of
hand, and even acquired a dynamic of their own, is beyond dispute.
That local politicians and other ambitious operators embraced this
conflict as an opportunity to gain advantage at the expense of their
neighbours, that is also a fact. And tragically, hundreds of people
have been maimed and killed, and thousands driven from their communities.
That is the problem that needs to be debated and confronted, not
the 'the new Rwanda' of the distorted Western imagination.
Frank Furedi's
Invitation To Terrorism: The Expanding Empire of The Unknown has
just been published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
His book, The Mau Mau War in Perspective (1989) was published by
James Currey. Copies are available via Abebooks. Visit Furedi's
website.
Notes
(1) 'Kenya Isn't Rwanda',
The New York Times, 4 January 2008
(2) Democracy's Fragility, Theday.com, 3 January 2008
(3) See 'Neighbour Turns against Neighbour', Daily Nation, 10 May
1993
(4) 'Kenya's desperation was obvious but ignored', The Daily Telegraph,
5 January 2008
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