Kenya braced for return to bloodshed as election looms
Citizens are terrified of a reprise of the chaos and violence that led to 1,300 deaths after 2007 poll
THERE is no sign of the church now, nothing behind the rusting white gates, save perhaps for a small patch of charred soil still visible under the witchweed, that hints at Kenya’s time of madness.
But Grace remembers it well, for she was there 10 years ago when Kalenjin tribesmen, baying for Kikuyu blood, sealed the doors of the church in Kiambaa and threw petrol-soaked mattresses through the windows.
As the flames scorched through the flimsy wooden structure, she and two of the nieces she raised on behalf of her sick sister forced their way to safety through the vestry door.
But, like scores of other Kikuyu women and children who were told they would be safe in a House of God, her other niece Hannah, who was 10, burned to death.
Kenyans go to the polls on Tuesday and many are terrified of a reprise of the violence which erupted after the 2007 election, killing 1,300 people including Hannah. Rich Kenyans and many expatriates have boarded flights to London.
Rickety buses piled high with belongings screech lopsidedly along the highway from Nairobi to opposition strongholds in western regions, carrying passengers fretful of potential blood-letting in the capital’s ethnically mixed slums.
Most elections since the end of one-party rule in 1990 have been a cause for dread, but this year’s vote seems particularly fraught because of its unpredictability, with fears of a violent backlash from the losing side.
Pollsters say the contest between Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent, and his opponent Raila Odinga, mounting his fourth bid for the presidency, is too close to call. Further poisoning the atmosphere, a senior election official responsible for protecting the vote against electoral manipulation was found murdered last week, raising fears of fraud.
Accusations of rigging were the trigger for the violence after the 2007 poll which Mr Odinga, an ethnic Luo, is widely regarded as having won, despite the official result saying otherwise. An election victory by Mr Kenyatta, if perceived to be unfair, could lead to riots in Nairobi and other cities where Odinga- supporting tribes live in large numbers.
Yet observers hope that the election will be less violent than 10 years ago. Although the country remains tribally divided, one of its most dangerous ethnic rivalries has been placed in abeyance following a coalition pact between Mr Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, and William Ruto, his Kalenjin vicepresident, who supported Mr Odinga in 2007.
Grace often sees the Kalenjin neighbour who fired poisoned arrows as she fled the burning church, in Kiambaa, a village in the Rift Valley 190 miles northeast of Nairobi.
He is friendly to her now, popping over on occasion to ask for water.
“I once asked him why he tried to kill me,” she said. “He told me it was the devil’s work and we should both forget it.” But the veneer of unity is at best threadbare, born less from genuine Kikuyu-Kelenjin reconciliation than from selfpreservation after Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, enemies in 2007, were charged by the International Criminal Court with orchestrating the bloodshed.
To Western dismay, the two formed an electoral pact, presented themselves as the victims of a neoimperialist plot and defeated Mr Odinga in another disputed election five years ago – despite threats from Britain and the US, which proved hollow, to downgrade relations with Kenya if they won.
The cases against the president and his deputy collapsed after prosecution witnesses vanished or recanted.
British influence over its former colony is arguably at its weakest since independence in 1963, even though the UK remains one of Kenya’s biggest donors, giving more than £100million a year. Britain has also provided £28.5million as part of a programme partly meant to ensure “free, fair and peaceful elections”, a Dfid spokesman said. For all the chumminess between the president and his deputy, the animosity between Kalenjin and Kikuyu is barely disguised – and there are signs it could boil over on election day.
Kalenjins still nurse a grudge after Jomo Kenyatta, the president’s father and Kenya’s first post-independence leader, ensured that land once farmed by British settlers ended up in the hands of the Kikuyu, the country’s largest and richest tribe.
In recent weeks, Grace and other Kikuyus have received hate leaflets threatening their expulsion from Uasin Gishu county if the Kalenjin governor is not re-elected on Tuesday.
Similar pamphlets have been delivered to ethnic minorities in other parts of Kenya, raising fears that, whatever the outcome of the presidential election, local politicians could use the cover of the vote to settle ethnic scores with violence.
Elsewhere in the country, there has already been election-linked bloodshed. In Meru, according to Peter Munya, its governor, 24 people have been killed in recent weeks after raids by tribes from neighbouring Isiolo disputing the position of the electoral boundary between the two counties. Of Kenya’s 47 counties, 22 are engaged in boundary rows driven by political and ethnic competition for resources and territory. Any one of them could prove incendiary on election day.
On the other side of Mt Kenya, white farmers have also been caught up in violence after the invasions of large cattle ranches on the Laikipia plateau.
Local political power barons stand accused of inciting Pokot and Samburu tribesmen into launching the attacks in order to grab territory and force out rival ethnic groups likely to support their election rivals.
Dozens have been killed in Laikipia and even more bloodthirsty violence has been unleashed in neighbouring Baringo county.
When the raiders attacked Makutani, close to the eastern boundary of the ranch where Italianborn conservationist Kuki Gallman was shot and wounded by Pokot fighters earlier this year, female villagers hoped, as Grace in Kiambaa once had, that they would be safe in the local church. But as the killing began, Nasaru Kirhambu realised she would be killed unless she ran. Grabbing her two-year-old grandson Fabian, she managed to elude her pursuers.
But as she turned to look behind her, she saw other tribesmen haul down her daughter-in-law, a sevenmonth-pregnant single mother.
“They slashed her stomach and ripped out the foetus before slitting her throat,” she said.
The Pokot killed 11 people that day in March, five of them children, just one of a series of raids that have claimed 70 lives in Baringo this year, according to Amos Olempaka, an opposition parliamentary candidate.
The 758 survivors of Makutani fled to a makeshift camp in the bush 25 miles from their homes and are unlikely to be able to vote on Tuesday.
Kenya may have a reputation as one of Africa’s most stable countries, but many are becoming aware once again of how fragile their country’s peace really is.