A History of Violence

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Keeping Democracy at Bay
According to researcher Prisca Mbura Kamungi in her 2001 report: The Current Status of Internally Displaced Persons in Kenya: “Research into the violence indicates that the affected communities were mainly supporters of opposition parties. The Kenya government got into pluralism involuntarily due to internal and international pressure, 13 and it is alleged that KANU leaders were firmly resolved on either reverting the country to one party status or keeping genuine democracy at bay.”

The way democracy was to be kept at bay was through Majimboism, a form of uniquely Kenyan ethnic federalism, calls of which have been associated with violence since Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1963. People in the Rift Valley, specifically Kalenjins, were incited against fellow Kenyans who had settled in their midst. This was done with a specific purpose: ensuring that the opposition, then mainly Kikuyu and Luo, did not garner the required 25 percent in the Rift Valley for their presidential candidate. KNHCR put it succinctly in one of their aptly named reports called Killing the Vote. If enough pro-democracy people could be killed or displaced, why, it was possible for authoritarianism to prevail.

As reward for executing the violence, local people were told that those non-local people who had settled in their midst had exploited them for social benefits. That they had settled in their areas away from their ancestral lands was pointed out as evidence of this exploitation. Kamungi writes: “The violence was therefore explained by politicians to be caused by resentful locals who wanted these benefits for themselves, an aim achievable only through eviction of the ‘aliens’ or ‘foreigners’.”

What is often lost to most observers is the connection between the violence of 1992, 1997, and 2002, and 2007. For a start, the violence was perpetrated against other communities by one community – the Kalenjin. It targeted people who had settled in the Rift Valley regardless of their ethnic origins so long as they were non-Kalenjins. The attacks were accompanied by theft and looting of private property by Kalenjin warriors. In these incidences, the government was reluctant to take the Kalenjin head on, thereby emboldening them to conduct the next raid during the next raiding season. These raids coincide with moments when the country was exercising its democracy – elections. It is as if some elements within Kalenjin politics are still intent on keeping genuine democracy at bay. Genuine democracy initially meant multipartyism, which was seen as inimical to Kalenjin interests by threatening “their” hold on power because President Moi is Kalenjin.

Today it behoves us to understand it in a more holistic sense, that democracy means not just liberal democracy, but also a general acceptance of the democratic tenets of majority rule, equal opportunity, and rule of law. For Kalenjin nationalists, this is unacceptable. Majority rule to some Kalenjins means that Kikuyus will dominate, even though it is clear that no one community in Kenya can rule without the coming together with other communities. Equal opportunity also does not appear to satisfy some of them; many were unable to take advantage of opportunities availed to them disproportionately by President Moi. Rule of law is also a problem for some Kalenjins; it means that past crimes, including raids by Kalenjin warriors will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that people who acquired public property or bankrupted state companies will also face the law. Given this state of affairs, some prominent Kalenjin politicians continue to portray both majority rule and rule of law as a conspiracy by the Kikuyu to monopolize power and wealth without stating that that mode of governance threatens the Kalenjin way of life.

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