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End the national shame that is Mt Elgon clashes
KENYA TIMES
By Denis Oyosi
10.04.2007
Mount Elgon district is an administrative unit in Western Province. Its headquarters are in Kapsokwony town. The district is located on the South East slopes of mount Elgon with a population of about 135,000 people in an area of 944 square kilometer.
Kapsokwony is the district headquarters though the economic hub is Cheptais. The dominant communities here are the Saboats, Iteso and the Bukusu.
With it’s uniqueness of being one of the odd three or so districts, with single constituency--- the others being Suba, Ijara and Kuria---Mt Elgon which derives its name from Mount Elgon which straddles the Kenya, Uganda border is represented in parliament by Hon. John Serut. Further more, it has only one local authority (Mt Elgon County Council) .
The ongoing killings in the region have left over 150 people dead with more than 40,000 displaced. About 30 schools remain closed as hundreds of clash victims are nursing wounds. This heart-wrenching scenario of the mindless clashes is going on as if the government is powerless to stop the mayhem, and prompting top clerics to demand that Internal Security minister John Michuki tackle his responsibility with more conviction and bring to an end the killings.
This country is not a banana republic. This government can not be at the mercy of nihilists and other lawless people who thumb their nose at order and security. Before this government assumed power in 2002, conventional wisdom had it that such clashes were politically instigated and that they only got out of hand if the government opted to look the other way.
Kenyans must be asking whether this government has opted to look the other way as over 150, mainly innocent Kenyans are butchered. Latest reports indicate that there is a surge in rape with law enforcers becoming the major perpetrators of the vice.
As a country, we are yet to get to grips with many cases of injustice which promote flare ups like the Mt Elgon one. The bottom line is inequity. Kenyan authorities have neglected to address the raging inequalities and injustices attached to land ---ownership and use. Why do we have millions of Kenyans tagged squatters even as tens of thousands of land lie idle or under utilized? And the reason? Such massive acreage of land belong to few people who have no qualms seeing tens of thousands of landless Kenyans crammed in tiny space.
The contention and reason for current bloodletting is the Chepyuk settlement schemes and the apparent manipulation with which it was done, leading one clan thoroughly dissatisfied with the exercise.
Initially, Government spokesman Dr. Alfred Mutua dismissed the real cause and instead blamed the skirmishes on criminals out to destabilize peace.
His version was that the fighting was being instigated by outsiders who were out to grab land.
The Mount Elgon conflict is not a simple police problem as it has been thought to be.
The police sent to quell the situation are combatants who do not have any skills and training to deal with conflict resolution. Our collective failure as a nation to deal with the conflict has made those dealing with it powerless. As a country we have, therefore, failed to establish policies, systems and procedures to handle conflicts.
With the local community forming an organization calling itself the Saboat Land Defense Force, which is armed with tactics dangerous guerilla operation, one is left to wonder how Kenya could have slid to such depths.
Murder cases, destruction of property and misery have been as a result of the land issue, yet there has never been any credible legal land policies since on various occasions and circumstances, we have witnessed double land allocations due to the rampant corruption ailing the country.
This week there were fears of the violence spreading to Trans Nzoia with police revealing of leaflets warning member of certain communities to vacate the area. Just where could we be leading to as a country with citizens resorting to violent methods to cry out for justice?
The voices of the likes of Archbishops Ndingi, Okoth and Gaitho are being echoed across the country with Kenyans rightly asking to be told the measures the government is taking to quell the killings in Mount
Elgon.
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