A digital essay by Onyango Oloo in Nairobi
Away from the mediation table, Kenyans are lurching to the first stage of what may be an all consuming, destructive civil war which may make Somalia, Liberia, both Congos and Sierra Leone look like child’s play.
Among the Agikuyu, documents are being circulated surreptitiously about the formation of a renaissance movement to defend the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru and affiliated ethnic groups whose main domicile is in and around the Mount Kenya region-even as Mungiki continues to recruit openly. One report says that a female recruiter is performing FGM on at least five women every single week as their male counterparts sharpen their pangas for what they expect to be a major violent campaign in this very month of February 2008.
Luos are thinking out loud about armed struggle.
There is already a highly organized militia among the Kalenjins in the Rift Valley.
Members of the Abagusii community met over the weekend to plan humanitarian and relief efforts- even as younger members of the same community arm themselves with machetes, bows and arrows to fend off attacks from neighbouring tribes in the Rift Valley and Nyanza.
All over Nairobi, especially in the informal settlements of Mathare, Kariobangi and Kayole, ethnic based vigilante groups have regimented themselves in anticipation of nocturnal raids.
A report by one European based news agency claims that a minister in Kibaki’s regime and some other prominent businesspeople supporting the PNU camp are actually financing the activities of the illegal Mungiki sect.
Amidst all these ominous developments a slew of civil society and faith based organizations are intensifying the search for a peaceful solution to Kenya’s gravest political crisis so far.
Bodies like the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations and countries like the United States and Britain are ratcheting up the pressure on the mainstream electoral adversaries to work out some kind of a settlement to break the log jam.
Kenyan newspapers have documented the enormous economic losses suffered all over the country since the onset of the crisis.
We all hanker for peace, but until and unless we understand the build blocks of peace, we will continue to flounder, arms flailing, mouths wailing as we make quixotic appeals to the return to a calm, that if we are absolutely honest, we will admit was never really there in the first place.
Last week I was at a meeting convened by the National Civil Society Congress at the All Africa Conference Churches in Westlands here in Nairobi. When I said, during my intervention, that Kenya has really never known peace, I was shot with several stunned and bewildered glances from across the tent under which we were converging.
But I was not really being hyperbolic; I was being literal.
What we see today is an intensification of the many little conflicts and conflagrations that have CONSTANTLY raged across the country for DECADES.
Squatters occupying idle tracts of land owned by far away millionaire telephone farmers; police brutality against innocent urban youth a daily routine in all our major towns; brutal individual and gang rapes against women and children almost an hourly outrage; class and regional tensions and resentments around issues of land grabbing, worker exploitation, regional disparities; consolidation of ethnic hegemonies; complaints about electoral malpractices; corruption and maladministration in the judiciary; state unease with the feistiness of the Kenyan print and electronic media; heavy breathing from former colonial and imperialist powers anxious to force feed us with their ideological and geo-political agendas; competing national interests and imperatives from our neighbours like Uganda; the emasculation of the legislative and judicial branches of power by an overbearing executive- none of these phenomena are new; what the coup of December 30, 2007 did was to make some of these conflicts to burst out and rage in the open in a way never witnessed before.
That is why it is very ambitious for Kofi Annan to put out a time-table which expects a blue print for peace to be ready within seven days.
As I have said repeatedly, what is unfolding in Kenya is NOT a private fist fight between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. That is why it has been amusing-in an unfunny way- to see newspaper editors shake their fists at the two men, insisting that only the duo hold the keys to our peaceful, just and democratic future.
For instance when Mwai Kibaki irked the ODM leadership with his intemperate remarks in Addis Ababa, flippantly asking Raila to go to the Kibaki appointed judges for legal redress, he was not just being pig headed and reckless.
No, he was reassuring his PNU base that he is not the spineless waffler that many of his Gikuyu supporters suspect he has been all along.
Consider this following extract:
Epistle 1-Justification, a leaflet produced by the Thagicu People’s Resistance Movement/ TPLF
From the above excerpt it is clear that a significant section of Mwai Kibaki’s social and political base are TOTALLY OPPOSED to the Annan led peace process and mediation talks.
If one grasps this simple fact, one can then easily fathom Kibaki’s dismissive comments in Addis Ababa and Martha Karua’s sabre rattling in her Gichugu rural constituency a day later. Or the petulant rejection by the PNU die hards of the widely respected Cyril Ramaphosa as a chief mediator.
Going by this alone, one can make the projection and prediction that the Kofi Mediation is headed nowhere in its present form- UNLESS Kibaki’s social and political base is compelled by other realities to rethink their suicidal intransigence.
In the case of Raila Odinga and ODM, I have been speaking to several very enraged and militant supporters of the Orange Democratic Movement who feel that the party could be doing a whole lot more to defend Raila’s supporters who are under attack and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis afflicting members of ethnic groups which are being evicted from all over Central Province by Kikuyu vigilante and militia groups who want to cleanse ( to use a term favoured by PNU hawks and Jendayi Frazier) these areas of “ethnic foreigners” belonging to the "wrong tribes". It is possible that some of these increasingly radicalized members of the broader ODM support base may opt for solutions not sanctioned by either Raila Odinga himself or the rest of the ODM leadership.
In other words, the agenda for war and peace in Kenya today is steadily going beyond Kibaki and Raila.
That is why to insist on corralling these two political leaders to come up with a miraculous capsule to end our national woes is more than a bit naïve.
As I write these words, I have just been informed that there are some players who want to up the ante in the tense national political stakes.
According to a very reliable source who is close to Kenyan military circles, it is being whispered in the barracks and garrisons of Kenya that a section of the armed forces general command is contemplating staging a coup de tat IN FAVOUR OF KIBAKI and the PNU within the next few weeks to actually consolidate the rule of the Agikuyu comprador bourgeois elite. In this plan, I am informed that the top commander, General Kianga has largely been isolated and is increasingly being bypassed by other generals who share the same tribal background with Mwai Kibaki.
Of course, conspiracy theories abound in Kenya and this may turn out to be another wild story. But what we have noticed over the last few weeks, a lot of the rumoured smoke that does the rounds in Kenya eventually reveals a raging fire so I would not totally rule out this scenario.
In my opinion, it would appear that the forces promoting violence and war, especially those from the PNU side, may be in danger of outnumbering the forces pushing for peace and democratic development.
The real arena of struggle in my opinion therefore should be where the forces of peace, the voices of justice, then soldiers of democracy push back the vigilantes of ethnic terror; the squads of fascism and the battalions of repression.
The way I see it, the neocolonial state and its main actors are main reservoir for terror and violence in Kenya right now. At the moment the most visible exponent of state terror is of course the police, but we know that the military is just a few metres behind, waiting behind the curtain for their cue to jump on the stage of national conflagration. Some of the ethnic gangs are DIRECTLY funded by cabinet ministers and wealthy individuals backing Kibaki and as we saw in the case of Kibera, given state protection by the GSU, the AP and the regular police as they carry out their beheadings and mutilations in the slums.
Talking to some of the Luo and Luhya speaking internally displaced people from areas like Gachie, Kinoo, Limuru, Kiambaa, Thika and Juja that I met in Nairobi over the last few days, they point to an additional source- the Gikuyu landlords who either or on their own, or after threats have terminated their rental agreements and given them an immediate quit notice.
It must be pointed out in the same breath that some of my own Gikuyu nieces and nephews (and I am speaking in literal blood-ties terms) who lived in Kisumu all their lives are also now in Nairobi having left under very similar circumstances.
What is bizarre in all these ethnic evictions- whether it is by Kalenjins against Kikuyus in the Rift Valley; Luos against Kisiis in Nyanza or Kikuyus against Luos, Kisiis, Luhyas and even South Asians in Central Province, Nairobi and parts of Eastern Province is the total disregard for the disastrous economic impact and financial consequences both locally and nationally, not to speak of the disruption of regional and international trade affecting other countries like the Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For instance by IDP pals from Kinoo and Gachie tell me that it does not make business sense for their Gikuyu landlords to evict them because the locals live in their own houses and gichagis and are therefore not likely to move in to the more pricier dwellings vacated by the “wrong tribes”.
An industrial centre like Thika is directly divesting itself of hundreds if not thousands of workers in the local factories and plantations.
Rift Valley is losing a lot of working people and entrepreneurs.
Part of Nyanza is depriving itself of more of the same.
And you know what:
Coast Province has YET to erupt- especially areas like Kwale, Taita Taveta and the beach front properties on the outskirts of Mombasa and Malindi.
It is just plain INSANE.
But that is what war is:
A collective cataclysm of madness where people kill other people in the hope that they will still be people living among other people.
Is there any point then, in talking about peace in the light of what I have written above?
Well, to answer my own question is that yes, we must not merely talk about peace, but more importantly do everything to make sure it is a reality in our Kenya.
What I am saying is that it will take more than a round of talks to bring about peace.
The mediated talks were and remain a very important first step in our quest for peace.
But we must also keep in mind that the elections themselves were a campaign for national peace.
Let us look at the election of Fred Kapondi in Mount Elgon.
Here is someone who won his seat with a landslide, despite being locked up, accused of all kinds of heinous crimes.
When the people of Mount Elgon elected him, they were sending a message that, we the people of Mount Elgon, have got our own solutions towards resolving the issues which brought about conflict in our communities.
One way of looking at the ODM Election Platform is to see it as an agenda for peace because it had a raft of recommendations on how to deal with issues of regional disparities, negative ethnicity, empowerment of the youth, insecurity etc.
Lest you think this is far fetched, let us look around at other African examples.
In South Africa, the apartheid state was the main source of violence and insecurity. In Mozambique and Angola, imperialist backed bandits like RENAMO and UNITA were the main sources of insecurity and violence. In Sudan, the intransigence of the El Bashir regime was the firewood which kept the SPLM insurgency raging for decades. In Rwanda, the Hutu dominated regime presided over the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens.
Further a field, in Kampuchea (aka Cambodia) the Pol Pot dictatorship was the cause of millions of deaths. And we saw the role of Hitler and his Nazis in the violence which rocked Europe in the late thirties and early forties of the last century. In Vietnam the role of France and the United States impacted directly on the question of peace and social progress in that South East Asian nation.
In all of the cases cited, when the source of instability and violence was removed or dealt with, there was a return to a relative period of calm and peaceful development.
My argument that in our own case of Kenya the main impetus for instability, violence and national strife is the NEO-COLONIAL STATE itself.
That is why, for me, the chief task is to dismantle that state itself, so that it will no longer be possible to ever have another Kenyatta, another Moi and most certainly another Kibaki.
The Kenyan neo-colonial state confers on its local comprador managers like Kibaki and his cohorts, undue powers, especially the patronage powers to dole out wealth to their cronies who often are restricted to their fellow tribesmen and tribeswomen.
If we want to transform the Kenyan state, in other words, democratize it and give it to the people, there would be that much of an attraction to be crowned president because those draconian powers would not be invested in that office.
I was chatting with a Cuban friend the other day and he startled me by informing me that in Cuba, members of parliament DO NOT draw a salary. Can you imagine if this was the case in Kenya? The race for Bunge would be largely restricted to those people who want to serve the wananchi.
Of course talking about transforming the state in Kenya is easier said than done.
Those people, like Kibaki and his sidekicks who know first hand the perks and privileges of state connected public offices will cling on to power until they are dragged kicking and screaming to their waiting graves. Political power to these kleptocrats is too sweet to give up willingly.
The civic, parliamentary and presidential elections that took place in Kenya were an attempt to make some steps in transforming the Kenyan state.
The Bomas process and the entire almost two decade campaign for a democratic constitution is another attempt.
One can not separate the two, because these are intertwined.
In other words Kenyans in their millions have been striving for years to transform the state so that they can live in a democratic society which allows them to thrive as they peacefully build a prosperous nation build on the tenets of social justice and democratic development.
It is NOT a coincidence that the people who stole the 2007 presidential vote are the SAME FORCES that scuttled the attempt to promulgate a new national democratic constitution in 2003.
These reactionary forces are threatened by peace; they are challenged by social justice and are certainly allergic to democratic development.
Once we all grasp this fundamental fact, it is then clear that task of bringing peace in Kenya is a task for the very same millions of wananchi who threw out the 39 year old KANU dictatorship and passed the Bomas Draft Constitution.
In organizational terms therefore, it calls for nationwide mobilizing for peace on a platform of seeking social justice, national unity and democratic development.
This platform attracts people from across many partisan persuasions.
That is why it cannot be confined to any single party such as ODM for instance because this task, this campaign embraces Kenyans who did not vote for ODM, some who did not even bother to vote.
At this stage it can only be encapsulated in the form of a National Democratic Movement or a United Democratic Front.
It will of course, out of practical necessity assign a key role for ODM, but also for organizations like Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice (KPTJ), the National Civil Society Congress ( an umbrella with 64 members), representatives from the Kenya women’s movement; the University Academic Staff Union, Kenya Women Workers Organization, the progressive segments of COTU; faith based organizations, student and youth unions, groups for Kenyans with disabilities; associations of cultural and ethnic minorities; and organizations representing Kenyans in the Diaspora.
The leadership of this body must be collective and drawn from the constituent organizations.
One of the key tasks of this NDM/.UDF call it what you will should be to pressure for a transitional government and setting the stage for the rerun of the presidential contest.
Internationally, it must rally public opinion and organize international solidarity actions.
For me, this is a key and IMMEDIATE task.
I have been thoroughly perturbed by the kind of desperate, ethnic based mobilization for armed conflict on the basis of tribal differences that I witness taking place right here in Nairobi almost on a daily basis.
It has taken us more than one hundred years to come up with the entity called Kenya, a nation which embraces us all, across our tribal idiosyncrasies and regional peculiarities. We simply cannot afford to defy the logical momentum of our history and degenerate back into artificially created ethnic cocoons. If we do not watch it, we will continue squabbling on around tribe and clan even as some criminal war lords carve out the country into convenient kabilastans.
We must challenge and take head on the narrow parochial tribal mindset that Mwai Kibaki has succeeded in foisting on Kenyans a mere five years after millions of Kenyans transcended tribe and region to vote him in overwhelmingly hoping that he would help usher in a new democratic chapter in Kenya’s progress.
In the meantime what do we do?
Democratic and patriotic forces must continue supporting the Annan Mediation process because it is a building block for peace and it is daily exposing the fascist and demonic agenda of Kibaki and PNU sidekicks. We must endeavour to bring the entire international community to the side of the consistent democratic forces even as we further isolate and delegitimize Kibaki locally, nationally, continentally and internationally.
We must expose the paymasters behind all the tribal militias. Some of them are in Kibaki’s cabinet. Let us do the necessary research which enables us to expose them completely. Let us then put pressure on the communities which condone these tribal violent gangs to embrace more peaceful methods of conflict transformation.
We may have to confront and challenge the various foreign agendas, especially the one spearheaded by the United States which is trying to arm twist Kibaki and Raila to share power to suit IMPERIALIST, not Kenyan interests. I am of the firm belief that if Kibaki had been given a democratic mandate to govern Kenya then he is not compelled to share power with ODM- especially given that his right wing election platform contrasted sharply with that of ODM. Since we know that he STOLE the elections, then the one democratic avenue left to restore hope is to hold fresh presidential elections. After all, if he claims to be the “duly elected president” he should not FEAR a re-run, especially now that he has Kalonzo Miracle Man Wiper Musyoka in his corner.
While all this is going on, I feel that ODM should take advantaged of its DOMINANT presence not just in parliament but especially saw in the thousands of city, municipal, urban and county council to try and exercise a form of democratic and ideological hegemony in the towns and countryside and start giving Kenyans an inkling of what a NATIONAL ODM government could be like. Right now ODM is poised to control the powerful councils of Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu and many other urban and rural areas.
If there is a valid criticism that can be lobbed at the ODM at the moment is that it is largely INACCESSIBLE to its core supporters and allies who are not part of its top hierarchy. It has been an arduous task just getting through on the phone to some strategic people- and one is NOT referring to the ever busy members of the Pentagon.
This is a time for alliance building and broad-based democratic convergence. This is far from being helped by the presence of some pesky gate keepers who may not see the need to touch base with people outside their own immediate circles.
The reason why some very sincere and committed ODM supporters are toying with a range of adventurist options is precisely because of that lacuna which should be sealed at the earliest opportunity.
It would be interesting to see how social contradictions in Central Kenya play themselves out, especially with the return to the region of the grandchildren of the ahoi who were resettled in the Rift Valley in the 1960s and the forced exodus of Kenyan workers who happen to be non-GEMA. I would also be curious to see how the conundrum between the rich business elite who need peace and stability to maximize their profits will fit in with murderous gangs who are paid by high profile politicians to cause terror and stability in pursuit of parochial tribal agendas.
One word of caution to any members of the Gikuyu comprador elite contemplating a military putsch in favour of PNU:
Power is very sweet. Once you unleash soldiers on to the political arena, you will only have yourself to blame if they refuse to go back quietly to the barracks.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya
Away from the mediation table, Kenyans are lurching to the first stage of what may be an all consuming, destructive civil war which may make Somalia, Liberia, both Congos and Sierra Leone look like child’s play.
Among the Agikuyu, documents are being circulated surreptitiously about the formation of a renaissance movement to defend the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru and affiliated ethnic groups whose main domicile is in and around the Mount Kenya region-even as Mungiki continues to recruit openly. One report says that a female recruiter is performing FGM on at least five women every single week as their male counterparts sharpen their pangas for what they expect to be a major violent campaign in this very month of February 2008.
Luos are thinking out loud about armed struggle.
There is already a highly organized militia among the Kalenjins in the Rift Valley.
Members of the Abagusii community met over the weekend to plan humanitarian and relief efforts- even as younger members of the same community arm themselves with machetes, bows and arrows to fend off attacks from neighbouring tribes in the Rift Valley and Nyanza.
All over Nairobi, especially in the informal settlements of Mathare, Kariobangi and Kayole, ethnic based vigilante groups have regimented themselves in anticipation of nocturnal raids.
A report by one European based news agency claims that a minister in Kibaki’s regime and some other prominent businesspeople supporting the PNU camp are actually financing the activities of the illegal Mungiki sect.
Amidst all these ominous developments a slew of civil society and faith based organizations are intensifying the search for a peaceful solution to Kenya’s gravest political crisis so far.
Bodies like the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations and countries like the United States and Britain are ratcheting up the pressure on the mainstream electoral adversaries to work out some kind of a settlement to break the log jam.
Kenyan newspapers have documented the enormous economic losses suffered all over the country since the onset of the crisis.
We all hanker for peace, but until and unless we understand the build blocks of peace, we will continue to flounder, arms flailing, mouths wailing as we make quixotic appeals to the return to a calm, that if we are absolutely honest, we will admit was never really there in the first place.
Last week I was at a meeting convened by the National Civil Society Congress at the All Africa Conference Churches in Westlands here in Nairobi. When I said, during my intervention, that Kenya has really never known peace, I was shot with several stunned and bewildered glances from across the tent under which we were converging.
But I was not really being hyperbolic; I was being literal.
What we see today is an intensification of the many little conflicts and conflagrations that have CONSTANTLY raged across the country for DECADES.
Squatters occupying idle tracts of land owned by far away millionaire telephone farmers; police brutality against innocent urban youth a daily routine in all our major towns; brutal individual and gang rapes against women and children almost an hourly outrage; class and regional tensions and resentments around issues of land grabbing, worker exploitation, regional disparities; consolidation of ethnic hegemonies; complaints about electoral malpractices; corruption and maladministration in the judiciary; state unease with the feistiness of the Kenyan print and electronic media; heavy breathing from former colonial and imperialist powers anxious to force feed us with their ideological and geo-political agendas; competing national interests and imperatives from our neighbours like Uganda; the emasculation of the legislative and judicial branches of power by an overbearing executive- none of these phenomena are new; what the coup of December 30, 2007 did was to make some of these conflicts to burst out and rage in the open in a way never witnessed before.
That is why it is very ambitious for Kofi Annan to put out a time-table which expects a blue print for peace to be ready within seven days.
As I have said repeatedly, what is unfolding in Kenya is NOT a private fist fight between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. That is why it has been amusing-in an unfunny way- to see newspaper editors shake their fists at the two men, insisting that only the duo hold the keys to our peaceful, just and democratic future.
For instance when Mwai Kibaki irked the ODM leadership with his intemperate remarks in Addis Ababa, flippantly asking Raila to go to the Kibaki appointed judges for legal redress, he was not just being pig headed and reckless.
No, he was reassuring his PNU base that he is not the spineless waffler that many of his Gikuyu supporters suspect he has been all along.
Consider this following extract:
His Excellency Hon. Emilio Mwai Kibaki, CGH, C-in-C, MP and Hon. Professor George M. Saitoti, EGH, MP will not protect us, our wives, our daughters and our boys from GENOCIDE, mass RAPES and the plunder of our hard earned possessions, AMEN.SOURCE:
They cannot, will not and have never because they have no will nor CAPACITY, AMEN!
His Excellency Hon. Emilio Mwai Kibaki is a lazy rudderless coward of a man.
He cannot, and in his political life he has never and will never fight for anybody or for anything, not now! For five years he sat pretty in silence and was insulted, belittled and humiliated by immature political upstarts AMEN
....In December ‘07 he begged us to come out in large numbers and vote to protect his presidency, his power and his cohorts. And now he is watching unperturbed as our poorest people get killed, their wives and daughters get raped; children get roasted in a church in the ultimate acts of inhumanity in a GENOCIDAL FRENZY orchestrated by the above media houses and the GENOCIDEER-In- Chief, William Samoei Arap Ruto, AMEN.
And now His Excellency Mwai Kibaki wants to negotiate with their Commander –in- chief, Raila Amolo Odinga and reward the Genocideer - in – Chief and his accomplices with good posts to enjoy our taxes over the blood of OUR PEOPLE, AMEN.
Is OUR BLOOD that CHEAP, to be auctioned at STATE HOUSE?
Are our VOTES that CHEAP to be traded for raw POWER? Were they not counted just like those of other Kenyans? Are our lives that CHEAP to be sacrificed every five years? Are our women and daughters that CHEAP, to be raped and violated with abandon? Are the possessions of the poorest amongst us that worthless, to be looted and burnt at will?
Epistle 1-Justification, a leaflet produced by the Thagicu People’s Resistance Movement/ TPLF
From the above excerpt it is clear that a significant section of Mwai Kibaki’s social and political base are TOTALLY OPPOSED to the Annan led peace process and mediation talks.
If one grasps this simple fact, one can then easily fathom Kibaki’s dismissive comments in Addis Ababa and Martha Karua’s sabre rattling in her Gichugu rural constituency a day later. Or the petulant rejection by the PNU die hards of the widely respected Cyril Ramaphosa as a chief mediator.
Going by this alone, one can make the projection and prediction that the Kofi Mediation is headed nowhere in its present form- UNLESS Kibaki’s social and political base is compelled by other realities to rethink their suicidal intransigence.
In the case of Raila Odinga and ODM, I have been speaking to several very enraged and militant supporters of the Orange Democratic Movement who feel that the party could be doing a whole lot more to defend Raila’s supporters who are under attack and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis afflicting members of ethnic groups which are being evicted from all over Central Province by Kikuyu vigilante and militia groups who want to cleanse ( to use a term favoured by PNU hawks and Jendayi Frazier) these areas of “ethnic foreigners” belonging to the "wrong tribes". It is possible that some of these increasingly radicalized members of the broader ODM support base may opt for solutions not sanctioned by either Raila Odinga himself or the rest of the ODM leadership.
In other words, the agenda for war and peace in Kenya today is steadily going beyond Kibaki and Raila.
That is why to insist on corralling these two political leaders to come up with a miraculous capsule to end our national woes is more than a bit naïve.
As I write these words, I have just been informed that there are some players who want to up the ante in the tense national political stakes.
According to a very reliable source who is close to Kenyan military circles, it is being whispered in the barracks and garrisons of Kenya that a section of the armed forces general command is contemplating staging a coup de tat IN FAVOUR OF KIBAKI and the PNU within the next few weeks to actually consolidate the rule of the Agikuyu comprador bourgeois elite. In this plan, I am informed that the top commander, General Kianga has largely been isolated and is increasingly being bypassed by other generals who share the same tribal background with Mwai Kibaki.
Of course, conspiracy theories abound in Kenya and this may turn out to be another wild story. But what we have noticed over the last few weeks, a lot of the rumoured smoke that does the rounds in Kenya eventually reveals a raging fire so I would not totally rule out this scenario.
In my opinion, it would appear that the forces promoting violence and war, especially those from the PNU side, may be in danger of outnumbering the forces pushing for peace and democratic development.
The real arena of struggle in my opinion therefore should be where the forces of peace, the voices of justice, then soldiers of democracy push back the vigilantes of ethnic terror; the squads of fascism and the battalions of repression.
The way I see it, the neocolonial state and its main actors are main reservoir for terror and violence in Kenya right now. At the moment the most visible exponent of state terror is of course the police, but we know that the military is just a few metres behind, waiting behind the curtain for their cue to jump on the stage of national conflagration. Some of the ethnic gangs are DIRECTLY funded by cabinet ministers and wealthy individuals backing Kibaki and as we saw in the case of Kibera, given state protection by the GSU, the AP and the regular police as they carry out their beheadings and mutilations in the slums.
Talking to some of the Luo and Luhya speaking internally displaced people from areas like Gachie, Kinoo, Limuru, Kiambaa, Thika and Juja that I met in Nairobi over the last few days, they point to an additional source- the Gikuyu landlords who either or on their own, or after threats have terminated their rental agreements and given them an immediate quit notice.
It must be pointed out in the same breath that some of my own Gikuyu nieces and nephews (and I am speaking in literal blood-ties terms) who lived in Kisumu all their lives are also now in Nairobi having left under very similar circumstances.
What is bizarre in all these ethnic evictions- whether it is by Kalenjins against Kikuyus in the Rift Valley; Luos against Kisiis in Nyanza or Kikuyus against Luos, Kisiis, Luhyas and even South Asians in Central Province, Nairobi and parts of Eastern Province is the total disregard for the disastrous economic impact and financial consequences both locally and nationally, not to speak of the disruption of regional and international trade affecting other countries like the Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For instance by IDP pals from Kinoo and Gachie tell me that it does not make business sense for their Gikuyu landlords to evict them because the locals live in their own houses and gichagis and are therefore not likely to move in to the more pricier dwellings vacated by the “wrong tribes”.
An industrial centre like Thika is directly divesting itself of hundreds if not thousands of workers in the local factories and plantations.
Rift Valley is losing a lot of working people and entrepreneurs.
Part of Nyanza is depriving itself of more of the same.
And you know what:
Coast Province has YET to erupt- especially areas like Kwale, Taita Taveta and the beach front properties on the outskirts of Mombasa and Malindi.
It is just plain INSANE.
But that is what war is:
A collective cataclysm of madness where people kill other people in the hope that they will still be people living among other people.
Is there any point then, in talking about peace in the light of what I have written above?
Well, to answer my own question is that yes, we must not merely talk about peace, but more importantly do everything to make sure it is a reality in our Kenya.
What I am saying is that it will take more than a round of talks to bring about peace.
The mediated talks were and remain a very important first step in our quest for peace.
But we must also keep in mind that the elections themselves were a campaign for national peace.
Let us look at the election of Fred Kapondi in Mount Elgon.
Here is someone who won his seat with a landslide, despite being locked up, accused of all kinds of heinous crimes.
When the people of Mount Elgon elected him, they were sending a message that, we the people of Mount Elgon, have got our own solutions towards resolving the issues which brought about conflict in our communities.
One way of looking at the ODM Election Platform is to see it as an agenda for peace because it had a raft of recommendations on how to deal with issues of regional disparities, negative ethnicity, empowerment of the youth, insecurity etc.
Lest you think this is far fetched, let us look around at other African examples.
In South Africa, the apartheid state was the main source of violence and insecurity. In Mozambique and Angola, imperialist backed bandits like RENAMO and UNITA were the main sources of insecurity and violence. In Sudan, the intransigence of the El Bashir regime was the firewood which kept the SPLM insurgency raging for decades. In Rwanda, the Hutu dominated regime presided over the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens.
Further a field, in Kampuchea (aka Cambodia) the Pol Pot dictatorship was the cause of millions of deaths. And we saw the role of Hitler and his Nazis in the violence which rocked Europe in the late thirties and early forties of the last century. In Vietnam the role of France and the United States impacted directly on the question of peace and social progress in that South East Asian nation.
In all of the cases cited, when the source of instability and violence was removed or dealt with, there was a return to a relative period of calm and peaceful development.
My argument that in our own case of Kenya the main impetus for instability, violence and national strife is the NEO-COLONIAL STATE itself.
That is why, for me, the chief task is to dismantle that state itself, so that it will no longer be possible to ever have another Kenyatta, another Moi and most certainly another Kibaki.
The Kenyan neo-colonial state confers on its local comprador managers like Kibaki and his cohorts, undue powers, especially the patronage powers to dole out wealth to their cronies who often are restricted to their fellow tribesmen and tribeswomen.
If we want to transform the Kenyan state, in other words, democratize it and give it to the people, there would be that much of an attraction to be crowned president because those draconian powers would not be invested in that office.
I was chatting with a Cuban friend the other day and he startled me by informing me that in Cuba, members of parliament DO NOT draw a salary. Can you imagine if this was the case in Kenya? The race for Bunge would be largely restricted to those people who want to serve the wananchi.
Of course talking about transforming the state in Kenya is easier said than done.
Those people, like Kibaki and his sidekicks who know first hand the perks and privileges of state connected public offices will cling on to power until they are dragged kicking and screaming to their waiting graves. Political power to these kleptocrats is too sweet to give up willingly.
The civic, parliamentary and presidential elections that took place in Kenya were an attempt to make some steps in transforming the Kenyan state.
The Bomas process and the entire almost two decade campaign for a democratic constitution is another attempt.
One can not separate the two, because these are intertwined.
In other words Kenyans in their millions have been striving for years to transform the state so that they can live in a democratic society which allows them to thrive as they peacefully build a prosperous nation build on the tenets of social justice and democratic development.
It is NOT a coincidence that the people who stole the 2007 presidential vote are the SAME FORCES that scuttled the attempt to promulgate a new national democratic constitution in 2003.
These reactionary forces are threatened by peace; they are challenged by social justice and are certainly allergic to democratic development.
Once we all grasp this fundamental fact, it is then clear that task of bringing peace in Kenya is a task for the very same millions of wananchi who threw out the 39 year old KANU dictatorship and passed the Bomas Draft Constitution.
In organizational terms therefore, it calls for nationwide mobilizing for peace on a platform of seeking social justice, national unity and democratic development.
This platform attracts people from across many partisan persuasions.
That is why it cannot be confined to any single party such as ODM for instance because this task, this campaign embraces Kenyans who did not vote for ODM, some who did not even bother to vote.
At this stage it can only be encapsulated in the form of a National Democratic Movement or a United Democratic Front.
It will of course, out of practical necessity assign a key role for ODM, but also for organizations like Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice (KPTJ), the National Civil Society Congress ( an umbrella with 64 members), representatives from the Kenya women’s movement; the University Academic Staff Union, Kenya Women Workers Organization, the progressive segments of COTU; faith based organizations, student and youth unions, groups for Kenyans with disabilities; associations of cultural and ethnic minorities; and organizations representing Kenyans in the Diaspora.
The leadership of this body must be collective and drawn from the constituent organizations.
One of the key tasks of this NDM/.UDF call it what you will should be to pressure for a transitional government and setting the stage for the rerun of the presidential contest.
Internationally, it must rally public opinion and organize international solidarity actions.
For me, this is a key and IMMEDIATE task.
I have been thoroughly perturbed by the kind of desperate, ethnic based mobilization for armed conflict on the basis of tribal differences that I witness taking place right here in Nairobi almost on a daily basis.
It has taken us more than one hundred years to come up with the entity called Kenya, a nation which embraces us all, across our tribal idiosyncrasies and regional peculiarities. We simply cannot afford to defy the logical momentum of our history and degenerate back into artificially created ethnic cocoons. If we do not watch it, we will continue squabbling on around tribe and clan even as some criminal war lords carve out the country into convenient kabilastans.
We must challenge and take head on the narrow parochial tribal mindset that Mwai Kibaki has succeeded in foisting on Kenyans a mere five years after millions of Kenyans transcended tribe and region to vote him in overwhelmingly hoping that he would help usher in a new democratic chapter in Kenya’s progress.
In the meantime what do we do?
Democratic and patriotic forces must continue supporting the Annan Mediation process because it is a building block for peace and it is daily exposing the fascist and demonic agenda of Kibaki and PNU sidekicks. We must endeavour to bring the entire international community to the side of the consistent democratic forces even as we further isolate and delegitimize Kibaki locally, nationally, continentally and internationally.
We must expose the paymasters behind all the tribal militias. Some of them are in Kibaki’s cabinet. Let us do the necessary research which enables us to expose them completely. Let us then put pressure on the communities which condone these tribal violent gangs to embrace more peaceful methods of conflict transformation.
We may have to confront and challenge the various foreign agendas, especially the one spearheaded by the United States which is trying to arm twist Kibaki and Raila to share power to suit IMPERIALIST, not Kenyan interests. I am of the firm belief that if Kibaki had been given a democratic mandate to govern Kenya then he is not compelled to share power with ODM- especially given that his right wing election platform contrasted sharply with that of ODM. Since we know that he STOLE the elections, then the one democratic avenue left to restore hope is to hold fresh presidential elections. After all, if he claims to be the “duly elected president” he should not FEAR a re-run, especially now that he has Kalonzo Miracle Man Wiper Musyoka in his corner.
While all this is going on, I feel that ODM should take advantaged of its DOMINANT presence not just in parliament but especially saw in the thousands of city, municipal, urban and county council to try and exercise a form of democratic and ideological hegemony in the towns and countryside and start giving Kenyans an inkling of what a NATIONAL ODM government could be like. Right now ODM is poised to control the powerful councils of Mombasa, Nairobi, Kisumu and many other urban and rural areas.
If there is a valid criticism that can be lobbed at the ODM at the moment is that it is largely INACCESSIBLE to its core supporters and allies who are not part of its top hierarchy. It has been an arduous task just getting through on the phone to some strategic people- and one is NOT referring to the ever busy members of the Pentagon.
This is a time for alliance building and broad-based democratic convergence. This is far from being helped by the presence of some pesky gate keepers who may not see the need to touch base with people outside their own immediate circles.
The reason why some very sincere and committed ODM supporters are toying with a range of adventurist options is precisely because of that lacuna which should be sealed at the earliest opportunity.
It would be interesting to see how social contradictions in Central Kenya play themselves out, especially with the return to the region of the grandchildren of the ahoi who were resettled in the Rift Valley in the 1960s and the forced exodus of Kenyan workers who happen to be non-GEMA. I would also be curious to see how the conundrum between the rich business elite who need peace and stability to maximize their profits will fit in with murderous gangs who are paid by high profile politicians to cause terror and stability in pursuit of parochial tribal agendas.
One word of caution to any members of the Gikuyu comprador elite contemplating a military putsch in favour of PNU:
Power is very sweet. Once you unleash soldiers on to the political arena, you will only have yourself to blame if they refuse to go back quietly to the barracks.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya
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