In village after deserted village across Kenya's fertile Rift Valley, the story is the same. Rampaging mobs have chased away Kenya's most powerful tribe, the Kikuyu, burning homes to the ground and killing hundreds in the worst ethnic bloodletting in 15 years.
The violence erupted amid accusations President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, stole the Dec. 27 vote. But for many here, it's all about one thing: land.
"They think all of Kenya is theirs," Felix Biwot, an ethnic Kalenjin, said of the Kikuyus. "But this land belongs to all of us."
Biwot spoke near Kiambaa, where dozens of Kikuyus were burned alive in a church last week by Kalenjin mobs. The atrocity was the worst in a week of mayhem that killed 500 people and displaced 250,000.
The tensions trace back to Kenya's colonial era, when white settlers seized land in the Rift Valley of West Kenya. The Kikuyus who lived there were dispersed throughout the country, and the British ruled by keeping the ethnic groups divided.
At independence in 1963, Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, took over. Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, helped Kikuyu families buy land from white settlers, including territories across the Masai- and Kalenjin-dominated Rift Valley. He also packed top government posts with his ethnic kinsmen.
The Kikuyu quickly prospered, growing into the most powerful ethnic group in the country, running business and politics. The favoritism shown to Kikuyus fueled a simmering anger among the nation's 41 other tribes. Kikuyus make up the largest tribe, but still only about 22 percent of Kenya's 34 million people. The Kalenjin make up 12 percent, and the Luo — the tribe of presidential challenger Raila Odinga — about 13 percent.
Now the old bitterness is erupting over the land, which stretches golden with corn to the horizon, dotted with flat-topped acacia trees.
"Many people were disposed of their land during the colonial era, and these historical injustices were not addressed until now," said Odenda Lumumba, national coordinator of the Kenya Land Alliance.
Kenya suffered similar clashes during its first multiparty elections in 1992.
Then, as now, there were tribal killings and home burnings. And then, as now, the desire for land — and the economic power and security it brings — stoked the anger.
"Kenyans romanticize land," said Ken Ouko, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Nairobi. "They use the land as identity because the Kenyan nation has failed to rally the people together as one."
President Kibaki paid a visit to thousands of displaced Kikuyus Wednesday in Burnt Forest, about 20 miles south of Eldoret. The Kikuyus here were chased away from their villages by mobs armed with machetes, sticks and arrows.
Kibaki promised he would rebuild their homes and said the government would protect them and their property.
"Nobody will be chased away," Kibaki said to roaring applause. "Anybody who owns land here, who bought land here, has a right to that land. That is Kenya. That will never change."
But healing the newly opened wounds will not be easy.
The overflowing morgue in Eldoret, the closest town, offers gruesome testimony to the bloodletting: at least 100 corpses — hacked, shot and burned — have been dumped onto the floor of four rooms. At the casualty ward, the wounded wince in pain under makeshift tents outside. Inside, dozens of men, women and children lie two to a bed.
At least 13 of the wounded are from Kiambaa, including Stephen Mburu, 43, the pastor of the church that was torched on New Year's Day. He was pulling children out of a back window when mobs beat his skull with clubs, knocking out 11 teeth, and left him for dead. He awoke hours later in a pool of blood, and lay Monday in a hospital bed in Eldoret.
Asked if Kalenjins and Kikuyus could live together in Kiambaa again, Mburu thought for a moment.
"It will require the intervention of God," he said. "I can forgive (the attackers), but it will be hard for people to forget what happened."
On Monday, 60-year-old Godfrey Karanja Ndungu helped Mburu's wife cart away their furniture from a nearby building that survived the attack.
At the church's gate, a red jacket covered with dried blood lay in the grass. Inside a stick-walled compound, a few discarded clubs, arrows and machetes lay in the black patch of scarred earth where the church once stood.
"It's hatred," Ndungu said. "Kikuyu are hard workers. These Kalenjin are just jealous. They just want our land."
Kiambaa was home to several thousand Kikuyu and a few dozen Kalenjins. But the only people left now are those who have come to retrieve belongings or identify dead relatives whose bodies are scattered around the fields.
Even Kiambaa's tiny Kalenjin minority has fled, fearing reprisal attacks, but they plan to return.
As for the Kikuyu, "We don't need them here," said Biwot, the Kalenjin farmer. "They've controlled too much of Kenya for too long. It's our turn now."
Print Story: Land at heart of Kenyan violence on Yahoo! News
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press WriterWed Jan 9, 4:29 PM ET
Why the Silence About the Ethnic Cleansing?
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has congratulated President Mwai Kibaki because Kibaki was declared the winner of the Kenya election. Prominent among the critics are Ogenga Latigo and Reagan Okumu. No level is too low for them not to sink. The lowest depth they have now sank is to allege that Museveni helped Kibaki to rig the election and is therefore a party to the so-called Kibaki's fraudulent victory.
Fourteen years ago there was genocide in Rwanda when the Tutsis were massacred because they were Tutsis. Today we see a repeat of the same in Kenya though on a smaller scale. I find it extremely appalling because of the dead silence and and lack of condemnation of the systemic and premeditated ethnic cleansing by well-organised killers in various parts of Kenya.
The international media reported that the killer weapons were acquired in advance, which suggests a premeditated plan. It is terrible that people were being asked whether they were Kikuyu and those who were identified as such were brutally murdered. Others were asked to speak a few words so as to be condemned to death by their accents.
The absence of condemnation of such barbaric ethnic cleansing of women and children even is a despicable shame even on the BBC and a frightening reminder of what happened in Rwanda. BBC reporters were busy running around talking about stolen votes. The burning to death in a church of innocent children was of secondary interest!
Assuming the votes had been stolen, must you commit genocide; burn children and women in order to reach the top? In Rwanda, even those who ran to churches as sanctuaries were not spared. The poor innocents of Kenya, some of whom did not even vote or understand what elections were about ran to the church, thinking that they would be safe.
How can the East Africa of the 21st Century condone the turning of its citizens into refugees in their own country? Africa should not tolerate a leader who incites and champions ethnic cleansing as a means of getting to the top. In Uganda, I am worried by what I am hearing in the media. On january 3, on WBS TV, there were three commentators on the Kenya elections. One of the speakers warned Ugandans that genocide was awaiting us. Whom or what ethnic groups are being targeted for cleansing? On January 5 on the Kimeza, a female participant went further and told Ugandans that even if millions of people were butchered for alleged vote stealing she will congratulate those who defend their votes.
Obviously, these two speakers are openly inciting ethnic hatred and violence. Such incitement should not be tolerated. In Rwanda, genocide was fueled by radio. Uganda should stop these tendencies immediately.
Today President Museveni is allegedly in power because he stole Dr Kizza Besigye's votes. I get flabbergasted by the mindset of even the so-called election observers. According to them, it is only incumbent governments which rig elections and violence and intimidation are the monopolies of incumbent parties.
For these glorified observers, the opposition party leaders are innocent and are assumed to be incapable of rigging elections!
Experience has shown us that media houses tend to build the opposition to gigantic proportions and inflate their often non-existing electoral strength. I must say that to believe that is a demonstration of gross naivety.
The purpose of course is to stage-manage the outcome. When they lose, the loss must be because their votes were stolen. The winner is labelled a vote stealer. Yet any independent election study will always expose the shallow way of reasoning. I have participated in three presidential elections in Uganda by actually being on the ground. During the 2006 presidential elections, the Weekly Observer published seven days before the election poll, projections which gave Besigye a clean sweep in Buganda. But these projections were the most scandalous because they were lies. Both The Observer and besigye knew it.
I challenged the editor to come to the ground and show the country those districts and counties where Besigye was poised for a clean sweep. I knew how weak Besigye was in Buganda. But that was not the issue for the Observer. The issue was to stage-manage Besigye's heavy losses and attribute them to Museveni's 'vote stealing'.
Today the opposition still claims that Museveni's victory was fraudulent and this is still touted because the newspapers had created that impression. The following observations should be considered by any unbiased analyst. There were three polling companies. Two consistently showed the opposition in the lead. The third polled otherwise. The question is how accurate were these pollsters to the last day?
The second observation is what we call tactical or split ticket voting. In Kenya, because many ministers lost their seats, their losses were automatically translated into Kibaki losses by uncritical and ill-informed analysts.
In many countries, and this certainly happened in the Kenya election, there was split voting. Why have the political experts ignored this trend. Did it happen or did it not?
The third observation is what the newspapers reported on December 29, 2007. It was reported that the votes from Central and Northeast were not yet in. The papers went further and added that the majority of those votes were likely to go to Kibaki.
The question is if these votes were numerous enough, did that not mean they enabled Kibaki to overhaul the opposition? I ask again why has this possibility been ignored by the so-called expert analysts? These are pertinent questions which must be answered when considering a verdict on the election outcome.
The fourth observation is that during the night of Saturday, the Kibaki and the opposition groups at the Electoral Commission went over the tallies of nearly 200 constituencies. This was stated by the High Commissioner of Kenya to the UK, Mr. Joe Muchemi when he was interviewed by the BBC. If this claim is true, what was the outcome of the scrutiny of all these constituencies?
This question must be answered by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission. On Saturday evening, the reports were that the opposition was leading by 40,000 votes. If the opposition had won by a margin of 40,000 votes, would the international media have alleged that Kibaki was cheated?
I am asking these questions as an independent analyst who wants to establish a logical approach to the investigation so that sanity can return to Kenya. My final observation concerns the behaviour of the Electoral Commission.
Asked by the BBC why President Kibaki was sworn in with indecent haste, the Minister of Justice alleged that there was a strategy not to announce the winner before the expiry of the tenure of the Government on Sunday midnight. The implication of that statement is that the Electoral Commission was deliberately withholding the verdict of the poll and wait for the expiry of the government. If the allegation by the Minister of Justice is true, the ECK must be asked whose strategy it was implementing for not announcing the results? Was it, for Kibaki or for the Opposition?
In the former Yugoslavia, those who engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing have been and are being hunted to be brought before the ICC for prosecution. Will those who burnt innocent children and women in Kenya be prosecuted? This is the question which Africa and the International Community cannot be allowed to ignore. The politics of ethnic cleansing must be condemned and outlawed.
The writer is the minister of state for finance in charge of investment
New Vision (Kampala)
OPINION
9 January 2008
Posted to the web 9 January 2008
By Ssemakula Kiwamuka
Kampala
If elections fail, violence prevails!
