The House of Mumbi has suffered a great deal since the rise of the Moi Regime, politically targeted for all the economic woes of other tribes in Kenya.
Here we document some of the conflicts that have at the heart of them, aimed at inflicting genocidal punishment to the House of Mumbi.
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Kenya: Opposition Officials Helped Plan Rift Valley Violence
Police Should Protect Displaced Persons Camps
January 23, 2008
Related Materials:
Kenya: Review of Elections Needed to End Violence
Kenya: End Police Use of Excessive Force
Opposition leaders are right to challenge Kenya’s rigged presidential poll, but they can’t use it as an excuse for targeting ethnic groups.
Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa director at Human Rights Watch
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.
“Opposition leaders are right to challenge Kenya’s rigged presidential poll, but they can’t use it as an excuse for targeting ethnic groups,” said Georgette Gagnon, acting Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “We have evidence that ODM politicians and local leaders actively fomented some post-election violence, and the authorities should investigate and make sure it stops now.”
Research by Human Rights Watch in and around the town of Eldoret, which has borne the brunt of the Rift Valley violence, indicates that attacks by several ethnic communities against others, especially local Kikuyu populations, were planned soon after the elections. In some cases, local elders and opposition politicians appear to have incited and organized the violence. Since December 27, 2007, clashes between members of the Kalenjin and Luya communities and their Kikuyu and Kisii neighbors in the Rift Valley have left more than 400 people dead and have displaced thousands more.
Human Rights Watch interviewed members of several pro-ODM Kalenjin communities who described the ways in which local leaders and ODM party agents actively fomented violence against Kikuyu communities. A Kalenjin preacher in a village in Eldoret North constituency told Human Rights Watch that on the morning of December 29, 2007, a local ODM party mobilizer “called a meeting and said that war had broken in Eldoret town, so the elders organized the youth into groups of not less than 15, and they went to loot [Kikuyu] homes and burn them down.”
The following day, the village held another meeting and the youth marched to the nearby town of Turbo. They were turned away by police. But they returned early the next morning, catching the police off guard, “and burnt almost half of the Kikuyu shops in town, including the petrol station,” according to the preacher. Human Rights Watch visited Turbo and found that most Kikuyu-owned buildings had been laid to ruin by the attackers. Displaced Kikuyu seeking shelter at the police station in Turbo confirmed to Human Rights Watch that their homes and businesses were destroyed by groups of Kalenjin youth.
Human Rights Watch spoke to numerous members of Kalenjin commmunities around Eldoret who provided similar accounts. In many communities, local leaders and ODM mobilizers arranged frequent meetings following the election to organize, direct and facilitate the violence unleashed by gangs of local youth. In one case, an ODM councillor candidate is said to have provided a lorry to ferry youth to burn the homes of Kikuyu families in a neighboring community.
Many Kalenjin community leaders told Human Rights Watch that if the area’s ODM leadership or the local Kalenjin radio station KASS FM told people unequivocally to stop attacks on Kikuyu homes, then they believe the violence would stop. “If the leaders say stop, it will stop immediately,” said one Kalenjin elder.
Human Rights Watch also collected accounts from several Kalenjin men present at community meetings where local elders and ODM mobilizers urged Kalenjin residents to contribute money toward the purchase of automatic weapons. Some communities have reportedly managed to obtain such weapons already. The same sources confirmed that plans have already been made to attack camps of displaced Kikuyu and the two remaining neighborhoods in Eldoret town where many Kikuyu homes remain intact – Langas and Munyaka.
The Kenyan police are already investigating responsibility for the violence in the Rift Valley, but its forces are overstretched by the nationwide electoral crisis. In the light of apparent plans by some groups to attack camps for internally displaced persons, Human Rights Watch called on the Kenyan police to ensure that all locations of displaced people are adequately protected against attack. Fourteen displaced Kikuyu and Kisii people sheltering in a monastery in Kipkelion were killed last week in an attack by Kalenjin warriors. The sprawling tent camp in Eldoret is now home to more than 10,000 displaced persons, with only a light police presence to protect them. Any attack on the camp would likely prove disastrous. Other equally vulnerable camps have been set up in other areas.
“The murder of people sheltering at a monastery in Kipkelion illustrates the need for better police protection of displaced people,” said Gagnon. “Protecting the thousands of vulnerable people chased from their homes across the Rift Valley from further attack should be a priority for the Kenyan police.”
Background
Kenyans voted peacefully and in record numbers in parliamentary and presidential elections on December 27, 2007. In the parliamentary elections, 99 of the 210 seats were won by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Incumbent Vice-President Moody Awori and 14 of incumbent President Mwai Kibaki’s top ministers lost their seats.
According to independent observers, the presidential vote count appeared to be tampered with to such an extent as to make it impossible to determine who won the vote. Even the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya admitted that he did “not know whether Mr. Kibaki won the elections.” The European Union Electoral Mission expressed grave doubts about the legitimacy of the presidential results. The most significant fraud appears to have been committed by the government camp in the final stages of tallying the votes.
The sudden announcement that Kibaki had won the vote triggered protests throughout the country. The protests, along with widespread post-election violence and the brutal police suppression of opposition protests, has plunged the country into crisis. Talks between the opposition ODM and the Kibaki government are proceeding under the auspices of a panel of eminent African personalities led by Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary- general.
Violence erupted in the wake of the disputed elections throughout the Rift Valley and the west of the country as angry citizens burned and looted factories, shops and homes, and chased those perceived to be supporters of Kibaki (mostly, but not exclusively, members of his Kikuyu tribe) away. Kikuyu homes in the Rift Valley have been selectively burned and Kikuyu residents killed. Thirty people were burned to death in a church near Eldoret where they had been seeking shelter.
The police confirmed the deaths of 526 people nationwide, including 81 shot by police officers, but independent estimates suggest that the total figure could be much higher. Thousands of Kikuyu and members of other tribes have been displaced and are in the process of leaving the region if they can.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/01/23/kenya-opposition-officials-helped-plan-rift-valley-violence
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The Enoosopukia Clashes
The violence in Enoosopukia was preceded by years of distrust between the indigenous Maasai and the immigrant Kikuyus. In 1990 the Maasai, a pastoral people, were replaced as the majority in the area by the Kikuyus, who tended to be better educated and skilled. Kikuyu culture stresses economic productivity, and Kikuyus are well known in Kenya for their success in commerce.(For more on the Kikuyu nation, click here.) The Maasai had traditionally been their partners in trade. Perhaps because of this tradition of cooperation, both sides avoided open conflict, and the Kikuyus continued to obtain permission to settle in Enoosopukia from the local authorities, including Maasai hardliner and government minister William ole Ntimama. Tempers soon began to flare between the Maasai elites, who tended to support KANU, and the Kikuyus, many of whom favored the opposition. With the advent of the new political system in 1991, both sides realized that multi-party elections would require ethnic-based parties. Leaders such as Ntimama, ethnic Maasai and Narok MP, took advantage of the new politics of ethnicity to unflinchingly defend the perceived interests of their nations against all others. Ntimama demanded that Kikuyus residing in his district support him at the polls. According to Ntimama, the Kikuyus had acquired their land by dubious means, cheating the illiterate Maasai out of their ancestral property. (Dietz 8) Ntimama fanned the flames of ethnic hatred by making “blatantly inciting utterances at a public meeting, by saying that the non-Maasai living in Maasai land should respect the Maasai, and further warned that the title deeds owned and cherished by such non-Maasai were mere papers that could be disregarded at any time.” (Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee 60)
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/kikuyu.htm
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Enough Is Enough
(Reuters) – When the time came for a tribal reckoning in Kenya, the fact Mashuno Onyango was born in Limuru and speaks Kikuyu meant nothing.
World
The town’s dominant Kikuyus, angry over attacks on their tribe sparked by a disputed presidential election, came and told him it was time to go home because he was a Luo.
“Now how can we stay here? Our landlords don’t want to see us, and our employers don’t want to see us,” Onyango said at the nearby Tigoni police station, where about 800 Luos have taken refuge from threats of attack.
Limuru, a factory town surrounded by farms of tea, coffee and bananas 40 km (25 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, is an unlikely site for ethnic conflict since it almost entirely populated by Kikuyus, the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki.
But about 1,000 Luos, whose parents or grandparents were brought from western Kenya while the British colonial government built the railway, have called it home for decades and lived peacefully with their neighbors.
Onyango, 52, is a typical case. His grandfather worked on the railway, and he was born in the Bata shoe factory’s clinic to parents who both worked in Limuru.
Now, Luos here say it’s the political elite which is again responsible for their migration, having sparked clashes that will see them sent back to their ancestral land in western Kenya — no matter that Limuru is the only home many of them know.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, says Kibaki stole votes to win last month’s election.
As soon as Kibaki was named the winner on December 30, clashes broke out, in some cases with members of Odinga’s multi-ethnic political coalition striking out against Kikuyus and other tribes seen as aligned with him.
‘LIKE FIREWOOD’
An estimated 250,000 Kenyans have been displaced by the fighting, creating scenes most Kenyans think of as affecting other African nations, not their own usually peaceful one.
“Politicians use us just like firewood, to light their fires. They tell us we have to fight while they’re eating nicely,” said Onyango, a 52-year-old stonemason.
“They are the ones claiming they would remove us from poverty if they were elected, and now look what they have done. There is no work, we have no homes.”
The fighting that has forced Limuru’s Luos to leave actually has little to do with their tribe, but rather the Kalenjin tribe aligned with Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
Aid workers say that the Luos were threatened and ultimately ordered to leave as Kikuyus driven from the Rift Valley by attacks from Kalenjins angry over the election poured back to their families in Limuru.
The tales of horror from the purges in the Rift — including the burning of 30 Kikuyus in a church, the torching of farms, and attacks with machetes and arrows — set the local community off, said volunteer Alice Wanjiku, a Kikuyu.
“Right now, our people aren’t thinking about anything but violence. They saw their people chased off like this and now they are thinking: Those people there think we are cowards, and that we won’t fight. We’ll show them’,” she said.
Wanjiku, who runs a butchery, says she and other like-minded community members are trying to soothe tempers and persuade them to let the Luos return as angers fade and peace emerges.
But political tension is still high in the east African nation, since Kibaki moved forward with naming his government while Odinga demands internationally mediated peace talks.
“If those people could agree, it would finish. We don’t blame the Kikuyus,” said watchman William Odidi, 29, a Luo also at the police station. “As neighbors, we didn’t have a problem.”
(Additional reporting by Florence Muchori)
C. Bryson Hull
TIGONI, Kenya
Thu Jan 10, 2008 8:21am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSHUL02732820080110
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5. Ethnic Conflict in the Rift-valley Province
A lot has been written about ethnicity as a source of conflict in Africa. It is suggested here that ethnicity per se, in the absence of its politicization, does not cause conflict. There is evidence to suggest that where ethnic conflict has emerged in Africa, there has always been political machinations behind it (see e.g. various studies in Nnoli 1998). Politicization of ethnicity often takes place in a situation characterized by an inequitable structure of access.
Such a structure gives rise to the emergence of the “in group” and the “out group” with the latter trying to break the structure of inequality as the former responds by building barriers to access that ensure the continuation of its privileged position. At the centre of this scenario are the elites who, feeling excluded or threatened with exclusion, begin to invoke ethnic ideology in the hope of establishing a “reliable” base of support to fight what is purely personal and/ or elite interests. (For an excellent exposition of ethnicity vs. class interests, see various works by Nnoli and A. Mafeje).
The problem of ethnicity, having emerged during the colonial period, has been progressively accentuated since independence with the emergence of ethnicity as a factor in national politics. Ethnicity in Kenya became a national concern as early as during the colonial period but was accentuated in the post-independence period during the implementation of the policy of Africanization. Ethnic tensions developed especially around the structure of access to economic opportunities and redistribution of some of the land formerly owned by the white
settlers.
Most of the land in question was in the Rift Valley province and was historically settled by the Kalenjin and the Maasai. The other area that was affected by colonial settlement was the Central province. But the crisis was aggravated during the mid-1950s when forced land consolidation took place during the emergency period, which benefited mainly the pro-government group that had not joined the Mau Mau revolt. And when the state of emergency was lifted at the end of the 1950s, most of the detainees returned home to find that they had lost their land to the loyalists.
As some moved to the urban centres in search of wage and self employment, a large wave of this group moved to the Rift Valley in anticipation of what was expected to be land redistribution after independence. A number of them joined relatives and kinsmen who had moved to the Rift Valley many decades earlier and were staying in some of the settler owned land as squatters. Therefore, when the redistribution of some of the land
formerly owned by the white settlers began, it is these squatters that became the instant beneficiaries of the allocations. But the policy that gave rise to large scale land acquisition by “outsiders” in Rift Valley was the policy of `willing buyer willing seller’ that the government assumed for land transfers after the initial political settlement on about one million acres.
Using the economic and political leverage available to them during the Kenyatta regime, the Kikuyu, Meru and Embu groups, but especially the Kikuyu, took advantage of the situation and formed many land-buying
companies. These companies would, throughout the 1960s and 70s, facilitate the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu in the Rift Valley, especially in the districts with arable land notably Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Nandi, Trans Nzoia and Narok. The land in the said districts historically belonged to the Kalenjin, Maasai and kindred groups such as the Samburu. But the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru were not the only ones to acquire land in the Rift Valley after independence. The new entrants in the post independence period included the Kisii, Luo and Luhya, who moved into and bought land that bordered these districts.
This new settlement continued in spite of opposition by the indigenous ethnic groups of the Rift Valley. In fact the Nandi, in particular protested in a more dramatic manner when in 1969 at a meeting in Nandi Hills, what became known as the “Nandi Declaration” was made after a gathering of radical political leaders in Nandi met to protest what they regarded as an invasion of their ancestral land by outsiders. Aware of these protests even before the “Nandi Declaration” the Kenyatta regime relied on the senior Kalenjin in the government to neutralize the political opposition to the settlers. And none other than the then Vice-President (a Kalenjin) would play a leading role in this strategy. But as fate would have it, it was this same Vice-President, finding himself as the country’s President, who would have to deal with the most exclusive ethnic conflict arising from a policy that he had personally contributed to implementing.
However, during the first decade of his rule, Moi by and large managed to contain the situation helped largely by the politico-administrative culture that had been fostered during the one party era. But he at the same time put in place a mechanism that weakened the capacity of the Kikuyu to continue acquiring more land in the Rift Valley province.
It is in the above context that the problem in Rift Valley province that is the subject of analysis here is to be seen. The ethnic conflict in the Rift Valley took place against a background of an impending general election. This was to be the first time since independence when a truly multi-party election was to be held in post-independent Kenya. This is because this time round, the ruling party was seriously threatened with the probability of being removed from power by the combined political opposition, which had in the first place mobilized public opinion that ultimately forced the government to change the constitution to allow the operation of multiparty. Playing a major role in the emergent opposition movement were the Kikuyu and the Luo communities.
It should be recalled that Moi had worked very closely with the Kikuyu people, both during the Kenyatta years and during the first few years of his presidency. However, he had slowly fallen out with them through his policy of rectifying the structure of access to benefit his Kalenjin community at the expense of the Kikuyu the former in-group. By the late 80s, therefore, the Kikuyu were a bitter group looking for any opportunity to regain the ground lost during the Moi era. The Luo, on the other hand had been the leading outsiders since the mid 60s when they fell out with the Kikuyu. Therefore in the run up to the multiparty elections, the two groups had formed an alliance of convenience and out of necessity to dislodge the Moi regime. Radicalized politicians from Gusii and Luhyaland later joined them. By coincidence, all these communities had benefited from land settlement in and around Rift Valley and therefore became the target of “revenge” by the KAMATUSA* coalition that control led political power at the time. Expecting at the time to be humiliated at the forthcoming elections, the KAMATUSA group in KANU got together and decided that those ethnic groups that were betraying them should be taught a lesson. The lesson in question involved their expulsion from especially the ” Kalenjin-Maasai lands” in the Rift Valley. Such an expulsion would also rid the province of anti-KANU, anti-Moi voters; thereby denying the opposition critical votes needed to attain the 25% requirement.
* The ethnic ideology was at once invoked and politicized in order to mobilize the KAMATUSA group throughout the Rift Valley to evict the “outsiders” from their ancestral land. The mobilization campaign was spearheaded by some very senior cabinet ministers who addressed rallies in major towns in the Rift Valley and exhorted their kinsmen to protect their “own” government. As has been documented elsewhere by the writer (Oyugi 1997), most of these statements were very inflammatory, and in normal circumstances would have earned a sack for a minister. As the elections drew closer, war-like speeches increased in intensity.
Cases of ethnic clashes erupted towards the end of 1991 directed practically against all non- KAMATUSA Rift Valley inhabitants. Cases of people being killed here and there begun to appear frequently in the local press. But the most effective strategy employed was the destruction of homes and property of the victims in the hope that they would flee to their “ancestral lands”. Those who sought refuge in mission centres became targets of ruthless attacks. (For more on this see e.g. ICJ 2000; Kiliku Report; NEMU Report, etc).
In some areas, whole communities were dislocated on flimsy grounds. A case in point is in Narok where the then Minister for Local Government declared a settlement scheme at Enoosupukia trust land on the grounds that it was a catchment area. This was intended to weaken the voting power of outsiders in the area. The same was the case with the Luo in Kericho who were removed from an area they had settled for over sixty years. In the meantime, the non-KAMATUSA who had reached majority age were denied identity cards and thereby registration as voters in the hope that they would go back to their ancestral land. The Parliamentary Commission appointed to investigate these clashes established the magnitude and extent of the clashes and reported that by the time of compiling their report, a total of over 700 people had been killed. Many others had fled their homes while others had been forcefully evicted and dumped in areas claimed to be their places of origin.
Another report by the US State Department put the toll as at December 1993 at 1000 dead and between
150 000 _ 250 000 displaced. (Cited in Amisi, undated but written in the late 1990s). In the meantime efforts were being made on the ground to acquire the lands that had been abandoned out of fear of attacks.
Politicised Ethnic Conflict in Kenya
A Periodic Phenomenon
By Walter O. Oyugi
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/CAFRAD/UNPAN010963.pdf
