Kenya is not the new Rwanda
Why Western observers see every political conflict in Africa as an
inexplicable outburst of violence and a harbinger of ‘holocaust’.
Frank Furedi
Back in the 1970s, when Eldoret in Kenya was a relatively sleepy town, I was
struck by the frontier-type mentality of many of the people I encountered
there. Individuals and families came to this part of western Kenya to start
a new life, and to try to make their fortune.
This had been the case in Eldoret for a long time. During the colonial era,
the town was settled by groups of Afrikaners who had ‘trekked’ there in
1908. In subsequent decades, landless Africans also made their way to
Eldoret and the surrounding area. Many of these African settler communities
- in Burnt Forest, Kipkabus, Timboroa - provided the backbone of the Mau Mau
movement in the region, which fought against British colonialism in Kenya.
They were also pioneers looking for their ‘Kenyan Dream’.
Unfortunately, in post-independence Kenya, access to opportunities and
resources have tended to be mediated through ethnic networks and
affiliations. Land grabs are frequently organised by local politicians who
mobilise people on the basis of tribal affiliation. That was evident 30
years ago - and its tragic consequences are all too clear today after a mob
burned down a church in Eldoret, leading to the death of 30 Kikuyu refugees
fleeing political violence.
News reports about the current political crisis in Kenya, following the
disputed elections in late December, appear to be unusually ill-informed
about what’s going on and what issues are at stake. Many reports claim that
the outbreak of political violence and tribal unrest came like a bolt from
the blue in an otherwise model democracy. A commentator for the New York
Times says ‘Kenya’s disaster seems to have hit like a tornado out of thin
air’ (1). Another writer says the ‘recent bloodshed is all the more tragic
because Kenya has enjoyed economic progress and has avoided the sectarian
violence seen on much of the African continent’ (2).
This kind of naive and ill-informed prognosis of the events in Kenya is
everywhere at the moment, and it is testimony to the power of historical
amnesia in contemporary times. The truth is that the violent clashes in the
Rift Valley region so graphically depicted on 24-hour TV news are only the
most recent example of ethnic clashes over the ownership of land.
In Kenya, public life has been dominated by the politicisation of ethnicity,
since the nation won independence in 1963. Consequently, elections are often
perceived to be a contest between different ethnic groups, the outcome of
which will decide which community gets access to resources. Clashes during
the elections of 1992 and 1997 left hundreds of people dead. The 1992
elections actually anticipated the current spate of political violence. Back
then, Kalenjin politicians mobilised their supporters to drive people from
other tribes off the land that they occupied in the Rift Valley. According
to some estimates, as many as 779 people were killed, and 50,000 were
displaced. A report on these events published by the National Council of
Churches of Kenya blamed high-ranking officials for orchestrating some of
the violence. Many of the most violent clashes occurred in places where
conflict is unfolding again today. For example, now, as in 1992/1993, one of
the worst affected areas is Burnt Forest (3). Today, as in the past, the
focus of the deadly conflict is the attempt to gain access to resources -
and most importantly land.
What is striking, however, is that back in the 1990s, outbreaks of violence
in Kenya did not arouse much interest or handwringing in the West. So what
is new today?
Rwanda on the mind
One reason why the current debate about Kenya is so ill-informed is because
it is not really about Kenya. In recent times, many Western experts and
commentators have lost the capacity to analyse and interpret events in
Africa and Asia by using conventional political concepts. Instead, conflicts
tend to be interpreted through a new political model that was constructed
during the post-Cold War upheavals in the Balkans and Rwanda.
This new view of conflicts in the South and the East is based on a
disoriented Western imagination, which discusses political violence through
dramatic and sensationalist metaphors, such as ‘Holocausts’, ‘Genocides’,
‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and ‘Mass Rape Camps’. Consequently, when it comes to
violence in Africa or Asia, genocide has become the default diagnosis of
events. From the Congo to Darfur to Kenya, bloody conflicts are recast as
harbingers of holocaust.
Through today’s promiscuous use of the term ‘genocide’, conflicts become
transformed into morality plays about human destruction, and tend to be seen
as being both incomprehensible and inevitable. Western reporters see only a
sudden, inexplicable outburst of violence - a kind of murderous descent into
hell - and overlook the structural causes of crises in the Third World.
Many African politicians have learned to talk the talk of Western media
outlets and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and now try to use this
language to secure an advantage in a conflict situation. It is worth noting
that the communication strategy of Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki’s election
campaign was directed by Marcus Courage, an Old Etonian public relations
consultant who had previously served as an adviser to the Make Poverty
History campaign. Courage helped to promote Bob Geldof’s Live 8 campaign in
2005. Is it really surprising that, once he effectively elected himself as
president, Kibaki started to speak in the language and tones of a distraught
humanitarian aid worker? Indeed, it was Kibaki who first raised the spectre
of genocide, as his critics and opponents carried out acts of violence; it
was Kibaki who advised the world media to think about Rwanda when they
watched the violence in Kenya unfolding.
A statement issued by Kibaki’s party said: ‘It is becoming clear that these
well-organised acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing were well planned,
financed and rehearsed by Orange Democratic Movement leaders prior to the
general elections.’ Sadly, significant sections of the media were all too
happy to embrace this talk of genocide. Quite quickly, relatively
unorganised and chaotic gangs of youth were labelled as militias,
old-fashioned land grabs were recycled as ethnic cleansing, and despicable
acts of human degradation were discussed as the beginning of a systematic
campaign of mass rape in what was apparently fast becoming a war. The
message of the media coverage was clear: this is Africa, what else should we
expect?! As one reporter said: ‘The ethnic hatred of Rwanda, the political
divisions of Ivory Coast, the horrific rapes that characterised the war in
Congo, all came to Kenya this week.’ (4) It’s all just the same typical
African barbarism, isn’t it?
Kenya has more than its share of problems, and the current crisis may well
unleash a protracted period of violent upheaval. Competing groups of corrupt
political cliques, who have usually managed to cobble together a political
deal in the past, may not be able to do so now. But it is precisely because
the stakes are so high that the last thing Kenya needs is for its problems
to be transformed into a Western fantasy about ‘another Rwanda’. Kenya was
not a beacon of democracy or a model of economic stability before the
December elections. And nor is it the dramatic setting for a Rwanda-to-be
after the elections. All that has happened is that one group of corrupt
politicians overplayed its hand, got a little bit too greedy, and forced its
opponents to react on the streets.
That things got out of hand, and even acquired a dynamic of their own, is
beyond dispute. That local politicians and other ambitious operators
embraced this conflict as an opportunity to gain advantage at the expense of
their neighbours, that is also a fact. And tragically, hundreds of people
have been maimed and killed, and thousands driven from their communities.
That is the problem that needs to be debated and confronted, not the ‘the
new Rwanda’ of the distorted Western imagination.
Frank Furedi’s Invitation To Terrorism: The Expanding Empire of The Unknown
has just been published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
His book, The Mau Mau War in Perspective (1989) was published by James
Currey. Copies are available via Abebooks.
(1) ‘Kenya Isn’t Rwanda’, The New York Times, 4 January 2008
(2) Democracy’s Fragility, Theday.com, 3 January 2008
(3) See ‘Neighbour Turns against Neighbour’, Daily Nation, 10 May 1993
(4) ‘Kenya’s desperation was obvious but ignored’, The Daily Telegraph, 5
January 2008
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4249/
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