Violence Softens in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya
If the price of cabbage is any indicator, things may be edging back to normal here in Kenya’s capital.
Before last week’s election, a head of cabbage in Mathare, an enormous slum, cost 15 shillings (about 20 cents). After the controversial results were announced on Sunday and the country exploded into chaos, cabbage prices doubled. By Thursday, as police tear gassed protesters in the streets and tribal gangs hacked each other to death some of it right here in the sour-smelling, garbage-strewn footpaths of Mathare cabbage prices shot up to 100 shillings.

But on Friday, many shops opened up for the first time since election day and the price of cabbage dropped to 50 shillings. Not normal, for sure, but better than it was, which seems to be the story in many parts of the country.

A few days ago things were very, very bad,said Dominick Mutuku, who runs a small restaurant in Mathare and was hit in the head with a rock over the weekend. But now it’s over.

Kenya’s crisis is probably not quite over, though many Kenyans clearly wish it was, but for the first time in a week tensions have cooled, or at least they have put on simmer. The overnight death toll on Friday, according to local news reports, was less than 10, compared to the more that 300 people killed in a shocking burst of violence earlier this week.

Politically, some space seems to be opening up. Mwai Kibaki, the president who narrowly won reelection, and Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who claims the government rigged the results, have yet to meet or even agree on how to do so. They are still negotiating about negotiating.

But the government on Friday said that it would hold a new election as opposition leaders are demanding if a court so ordered. And Mr. Odinga has dropped his insistence that the government admit to rigging. Just a few days ago, Mr. Odinga accused the president of pulling off a civilian coup.Now Mr. Odinga says he would consider some type of power sharing arrangement with Mr. Kibaki.

We want a revote, but we are not being so rigid as saying that is the only option,said Salim Lone, a spokesman for Raila Odinga.

Alfred Mutua, the government’s top spokesman, said on Friday, we are willing to talk with anybody.

But he reiterated the government’s resistance to having those talks mediated by outsiders. Opposition leaders are confident that foreign mediators will side with them. Already, the European Union, the United States, Japan and just about every major donor to Kenya has said that the presidential poll results were deeply flawed. That may be why the Kenyan government has refused to sit down with a foreign mediator and Kenyan officials put the brakes on a visit from the president of Ghana, who was planning to fly in earlier this week.

This is a Kenya problem and we can solve it ourselves,Mr. Mutua said.

That said, the government has been willing to entertain some high-profile foreign visitors eager to get Kenya back to its old self as one of Africa’s most stable countries and a regional economic powerhouse. Mr. Kibaki met with the retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu on Friday to discuss options for reconciliation. And Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for Africa and the highest ranking Western official yet to come to Kenya since the unrest began, was scheduled to land in Nairobi on Friday night and to meet with Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki over the weekend.

Obviously, there are still enormous political differences. Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki both insist they won the election, and some sort of political crisis will probably remain for the weeks ahead. The opposition controls the most seats in the Parliament, and more than half of Mr. Kibaki’s cabinet was voted out of office. Accommodation will have to be made if the government is going to accomplish anything in the next five years, the length of the presidential term.

More concerning, though, are the tribal issues. This election stirred up deep undercurrents of ethnic-based hatred that will not be receding any time soon. Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu, known as Kenya’s privileged tribe, and Mr. Odinga is a Luo, a tribe that feels it has never gotten its fair due. The voting followed mostly tribal lines. After Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner, despite disputed vote tabulations that gave the president, at the 11th hour of the counting process, a razor-thin margin of victory, Luos and members of other tribes lashed out at Kikuyus. Mobs swept through towns across the country, looting Kikuyu stores, attacking Kikuyu people and in one case burning to death up to 50 Kikuyu women and children who were taking refuge in a church.

Thousands of Kikuyus have evacuated ethnically mixed areas and are streaming back to central Kenya, their homeland and a Kibaki stronghold. Aid officials said more than 100,000 people have been displaced. Many are still scared.

Kenya has changed,said Francis Mwaniki, a Kikuyu who said tribal gangs destroyed his home. He has no plans to go back.

But in Kisii, a town in western Kenya that had been the scene of brutal tribal clashes, people returned to work. For the first time in a week, farmers were loading bananas and lettuce in trucks bound for Nairobi. In Mombasa, Kenya’s biggest port, several hundred people demonstrated outside a mosque and police fired tear gas at them. But fuel and freight were beginning to flow again, which is crucial for the rest of East Africa.

In the Eldoret area, where the church was burned, the town was still tense, residents said, but there were no incidents of violence reported.

Mathare, the giant slum, seemed to represent the national mood. Things were hardly cheery here. Two bodies were found by the river on Friday morning and dozens of families were still camped out by an air force base seeking protection.

But the stores were open, the streets full and Chuck Norris movies were playing again on Biashara Street.

We want to go back to normal,said Anthony Irungu, a shopkeeper, as he painted his stall a fresh coat of green paint. We are trying.
Violence Softens in Kenya

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: January 5, 2008