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Using golf clubs, rocks and
machetes, neighbour turns on neighbour in Kenya
Ethnic conflict takes hold in Kenya's slums
Xan Rice in Kibera, Nairobi
Wednesday January 30, 2008
The Guardian
Some carried golf clubs: an old fairway wood, a lofted iron, a
silver putter. A young man swung a hockey stick. Others clutched
pieces of plumbing pipe, rubber whips, slingshots made of rope,
melon-headed clubs straight from an Asterix comic, hammers, axes,
and bows and arrows. But the weapon of choice was the panga, or
machete, sharpened against the railway track as if it were a
whetstone.
"Everybody has to have something to defend themselves," said Jacob
Otieno, a member of the Luo ethnic group, standing among a large
group of angry men in the Mashimoni area, deep in Kibera, Kenya's
largest slum. "They cannot just wait to be killed like a chicken
in a hotel kitchen."
Facing Otieno 100 metres up the railway line were dozens of men
with a similar array of weapons, who just a month ago were his
neighbours and friends. Now, because they are Kikuyu - the ethnic
group of President Mwai Kibaki, who won a highly suspect election
on December 27 - they are the enemy. If it weren't for the dozen
or so policemen separating the groups, firing live bullets into
the air from time to time, the death toll in Kibera yesterday
would have been far higher than seven. Most of those were hacked
to death.
Historically Kibera has been largely peaceful, despite its
cosmopolitan mix. Now a wrong turn means death. Different areas of
the slum, a warren of narrow red mud alleyways and densely packed
rust-brown shacks that house up to a million people, are now
either pro-government or pro-opposition - not based on how people
necessarily voted, but on their ethnicity.
"It's basically everybody versus the Kikuyu now," said Josephat
Mwanje, 43, a Luhya. "Nobody in Kibera can afford to sleep
properly at night because of the fighting."
A short way up the railway line, hundreds of men did the work of
an industrial machine by lifting the rail tracks off the ground in
an act of sabotage. The line ends in Uganda, and people in Kibera
are upset that President Yoweri Museveni quickly congratulated
Kibaki after he was awarded the election victory.
As stones rained down from the Kikuyu side, the call was "twende,
twende" - let's go - and a fresh crowd of youths emerged from the
alleyways with their weapons to join Otieno in reinforcing the
frontline. Frightened women used metal sheeting to barricade the
entrances to their shacks.
Kenya's rapid descent from political protest to all-out ethnic
conflict, further fuelled yesterday by the murder of an opposition
MP who was shot twice in the head outside his home, has raised
fears that the enmity may soon be irreversible.
Sharpshooters firing rubber bullets and teargas from military
helicopters had to be used in the usually sleepy town of Naivasha,
65 miles from Nairobi, repeatedly dive-bombing a mob of about 600
young Kikuyu men with machetes to try to stop them from attacking
hundreds of people from opposition leader Raila Odinga's Luo
community, who have been forced out of their homes, along with
thousands of Luhyas and Kalenjins, who are also accused of being
anti-Kibaki.
The Kikuyus say they are avenging earlier violence against their
community in low-income areas of towns across the country, and in
the rural parts in the Rift Valley. At least a dozen people died
in violence nationwide yesterday, moving January's death toll
above 850.
Analysts say it may soon get a lot worse. The violence appears
increasingly orchestrated, with violent gangs such as the Mungiki,
a Kikuyu criminal sect, becoming involved.
"People have completely lost faith in the government's ability to
protect," said a Kenyan conflict expert working for a humanitarian
organisation, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Unless a
solution is found quickly, guns will be used and the dynamic of
this trouble will change completely."
At a special meeting in Nairobi chaired by Kofi Annan, the former
UN secretary general who is on a mediation mission, Kibaki and
Odinga formally began a negotiation process yesterday - but only
after a squabble over where Kibaki's special presidential chair
would be placed. Both political leaders appeared to maintain their
hardline positions.
The 250,000 people displaced by the worst violence in Kenya's
post-independence history are mostly from the poorest strata of
society, who lived in sprawling urban slums or rural villages in
western regions untouched by electricity or running water.
To many in Kenya, these displaced people, like the ongoing
violence, remain out of sight - most of Nairobi was calm yesterday,
with shops open and traffic flowing freely. But the daily shocking
images in the local media mean most people are aware that the
government's strategy of trying to ride out the post-election
anger has failed dramatically.
Instead, tensions that have remained suppressed for decades have
boiled over, particularly in the slums where people have been
ignored by successive governments since independence and where the
ballot box was seen as the one way to make their lives better.
In Kibera, close to where Orange Democratic Movement MP Mugabe
Were was gunned down early yesterday in an attack that may be
linked to politics, the constant refrain is that "Kibaki must go".
"Before this election happened, we lived together with Kikuyus and
even got married," said Winnie Akini, 28, who held a small rock in
her hand for "protection". "But if Kibaki does not resign for
stealing the election it will never be the same again."
Prejudices previously hidden are now freely spoken. Though
everyone in Kibera is poor and has little to thank the state for,
the Kikuyus are now being viewed as somehow very different. "They
own most of the businesses here," said Otieno. "They see
themselves as superior to us."
As he spoke someone shouted "Shopping! Shopping!", meaning that a
Kikuyu-owned house or stall was open for looting.
For their part, many Kikuyus, and to a lesser extent the Kambas
and the Merus, also aligned to Kibaki's government, feel Kenya's
40 other ethnic groups - and the international community - are
ganging up on them.
Talking to the Kikuyu men gathered in the Laini Saba area of
Kibera, who were facing off against Otieno's group, proved
impossible. When the Guardian approached, a middle-aged man with a
mobile in one hand and a machete in the other immediately shouted
"Go, go, go! Get out! Why do you come to spoil our country?" A few
of his colleagues, armed with machetes and wooden clubs, made sure
his order was followed.
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