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Western Kenya's Kikuyus blame
tribal rhetoric for violence
19.01.2008
ELDORET, Kenya (AFP) - Members of Kenya's dominant Kikuyu tribe
living in opposition strongholds feel they are paying the price
for the tribal rhetoric that plagued last month's disputed
elections.
"It's inhuman to ask somebody like me to go back to my 'real home
land', I don't even know my real home land," said Nancy, a Kikuyu
woman from the Eldoret area in western Kenya.
The Kikuyus are the country's largest tribe but in a minority in
western Kenya, where people overwhelmingly voted in the December
27 presidential election for opposition leader Raila Odinga, from
the Luo tribe, who lost to incumbent President Kwai Kibaki, a
Kikuyu.
Nancy, 47, said she had no intention of leaving the area where her
family has lived for more than three generations to move to the
Kikuyu heartland, in central Kenya.
"I'm not going anywhere, I was born here. My family came in the
1930s, they bought a piece of land, I have no relatives anywhere
else," she explained.
When Kibaki was declared the winner of the election on December 30
despite mounting evidence of fraud, several tribes turned against
the Kikuyus.
Dozens were speared and hacked to death in raids on villages in
the Eldoret area. Refugees were also targeted, notably when a
church in Eldoret housing displaced Kikuyu families was
deliberately set on fire, killing at least 35 people.
Local residents and observers have argued that in regions where
feelings of marginalisation were strongest, tribal vindication was
encouraged by campaigns using the long obsolete term of "majimbo".
Majimbo - a Kiswahili term which implies a form of federalism,
decentralisation and devolution - featured in Odinga's campaign,
although it was never clearly defined.
Most of the attacks against Kikuyus in the Eldoret area were
carried out by Kalenjin, one of the dominant tribes in the area,
who squarely supported Odinga and are represented in parliament by
his right-hand man William Ruto.
Many of the country's tribes rallied behind Odinga, amid
resentment at Kibaki and his Kikuyu entourage, seen as an arrogant
and corrupt elite.
Stephen, who was displaced by the deadly violence that followed
the elections and now lives in a camp some 20 miles from Eldoret,
said that majimbo was understood by some as a license for ethnic
cleansing.
"They did not understand that the term majimbo means sharing of
resources and power, brought to people on the ground," he said.
"According to them, it's cleaning and removing tribes from
Kalenjin ancestral land," Stephen added, quivering because of the
cold.
Kenya, a mosaic of at least 42 tribes, has been relatively spared
the kind of ethnic strife that has plagued other countries in the
region such as Rwanda and Burundi over the past decades.
Many of Eldoret's Kikuyus settled the fertile region after the
1963 independence, with the support of their leader and the
country's first president Jomo Kenyatta.
John, 44, who lives with 10,200 other people displaced by the
violence in a tented camp in Eldoret, only two miles from his home,
said the opposition politicians had a slogan: 'Kalenjins, with no
other tribes remaining'.
"It's not what they told the media, which was 'equal distribution
of national ressources'," added John, a nurse.
But Reverend Maritim arap Rirei, from Eldoret's Anglican church,
said that the ethnic dimension of the conflict only surfaced on
the back of deeper underlying problems.
"We have been having a potential conflict for several years, just
waiting for a spark," he said, adding: "In Kenya, we confuse calm
and peace."
"Kikuyus are seen as the privileged in terms of access to
resources and protection of the governement, and when there are
problems, they become an easy target," he explained.
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