The Road To Eldoret

The scene from his hotel room screen in Nakuru still fills his mind. Let's call him M. He's from Muranga, he still drives the Datsun 120 Y that he bought in 1972 when he was a twenty two year old boy.

He's got a family in the outskirts of Eldoret where his wife runs the family farm (cows and wheat) that he bought in 1982 from a white man fleeing the coup that "never happened," as he is fond of saying. "So I got the farm cheap."

Read more from Tony Mochama here.

You blame my people; I blame you and not yours

After a bloody post-election crisis, Kenya has found a political solution. Once again, we have found ourselves resolving or countering a political impasse by throwing high paying jobs at a select few. To stop politicians from interfering with our day to day lives, and using Kenya's hordes of unemployed, embittered and disillusioned youth as canon fodder in their power struggles, we have offered them plum jobs. We have a negotiated solution that will see the cost of government go up in a country which, already, "devotes a disproportionate shares of its taxes on administration and wages at the expense of provision of services."

Read more from Charles Matathia here.

Why do we condone ethnic cleansing?

Tomes have been written against the violence in Kenya, poems have been composed and most of us have lamented the fact that our countrymen are taking up arms against each other. What we have neglected to condemn, is the idea that specific parts of Kenya belong to specific tribes.

Read more from Patrick Gathara here.

A History of Violence

In African folklore, there is a character that looms large for its polished deception, which guile often results in sizzling dramatic irony. The story usually culminates in a situation where the devious, meek-looking carnivore is entrusted with the care of the docile herbivores, often depicted as sheep.

There is likelihood that lore might imitate life in the on-going dialogue over the Kenyan crisis, particularly given the appointment of people linked to tribal violence as negotiators and engineers of peace.

Read more from Muciimi Mbatia here.

Opposition Officials Helped Plan Rift Valley Violence

Human Rights Watch investigations indicate that, after Kenya's disputed elections, opposition party officials and local elders planned and organized ethnic-based violence in the Rift Valley, Human Rights Watch said today.

The attacks, targeting mostly Kikuyu and Kisii people in and around the town of Eldoret, could continue unless the government and opposition act to stop the violence, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch called on the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leadership to take immediate steps to stop its supporters from committing further attacks. At the same time, Human Rights Watch said the Kenyan police should urgently deploy extra officers to the region to protect displaced people and resident Kikuyu communities.

Read more from the Human Rights Watch here.

Political tribalism, moral ethnicity

Unlike, apparently, rather a lot of the people I like and respect, I think that the boycotts strategy announced by the ODM is a disastrous move, one that can only lead to greater pain. Let me explain. John Lonsdale somewhere distinguishes between political tribalism and moral ethnicity. (Never mind that I've always thought it a slightly tenuous distinction - everybody thinks the same of most distinctions they didn't first think of themselves.) Political tribalism is the constitution of an ethnicity by competition for state power and largesse against other, similarly constituted, ethnicities. Moral ethnicity on the other hand is a set of assumptions about public virtue for people like us. Political tribalism is inevitably adversarial; moral ethnicity inward-looking.

Read more from Daniel Waweru here.

It's worse, it's planned and it's definitely ethnic

In reading Nanjala Nyabola's article of yesterday, I have found myself appalled at the myths that pass for truth in Kenyan discourse, and especially that such myths proceed to become the basis upon which political decisions and alliances are made.

Take for example the account on President Jomo Kenyatta and the opening of the New Nyanza Hospital in Kisumu. It is true that Kenyatta's bodyguards opened fire on crowds, but this was only after the crowd at the rally heckled and threw stones at him. The security forces certainly overreacted, but it is inappropriate and misleading to suggest that the victims were shot because they were Luo; the violence broke out because hotheads at the rally attacked first, because the bodyguard had reason to believe that its employer was in danger. This has clear implications for this year's riots as well, especially with politicians claiming that the police are aiming to kill members of certain tribes.

Read more from Daniel Waweru here.