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Kikuyu Flee Rift Valley in
Terror As Homes Are Burned to the Ground
Guardian Newspapers
5. Feb. 2008
Local politicians are accused of condoning violence that forced
out 500 villagers
Councilor Joseph Chelelgo said no one should call it ethnic
cleansing just because his town's Kikuyu population had been
burned out of their homes. For a start, he claimed, houses were
razed only after hundreds of Kikuyu left Mogotio, in the heart of
Kenya's strife-torn Rift Valley, for reasons he could not fathom.
"If they have already quit and the house is empty then what does
it matter if it is burned? They are not coming back," he said. "I
think they were afraid but it was nothing to do with people in
this town."
That is not how Nancy Magure sees it. She was born in Mogotio 45
years ago. Her parents, children and grandchildren all lived in
the town but the mob armed with machetes, bows and arrows and
Molotov cocktails that kicked in her front door at about 2am last
Tuesday told her that as a Kikuyu she did not belong there.
"We were told 'get out, get out'. When they saw we were resisting,
refusing to go, they started burning the house," she said. "We
knew this was coming. They knew this was coming because they
planned it. Now they want to pretend they didn't know."
Magure was one of about 500 Kikuyu forced out of Mogotio, many of
them fleeing as flames engulfed their homes.
At the weekend some of the houses were still smoldering. They
included the home of Walter Njuguna, a prominent Kikuyu
businessman who fled days earlier. Fire was still eating through
the thick roof beams. What was not destroyed was plundered as
people swarmed over the wrecked house.
Next door, a butchery and house belonging to a Kikuyu woman called
Wanjiru were being torn apart by people ripping off the corrugated
metal roof and pulling out wooden pillars and window frames.
Some of Mogotio's political leaders said the attacks were a
spontaneous reaction to the stealing of the election six weeks ago
by President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu. The vote count turned against
the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, a Luo who also has broad
support among the Kalenjin majority in the Rift Valley, in
suspicious circumstances.
But Magure and other Kikuyu from the town who are now refugees in
a stadium in Nakuru, the area's major town 26 miles to the south,
said the election dispute was a pretext and that the assault on
them was a planned move driven by long-standing enmity from the
Kalenjin that amounts to ethnic cleansing. She named Chelelgo and
another councillor, Charles Koskei, as among those responsible.
"We got the threats that we have to leave that place even during
the election campaign. They said we are Kikuyu, we don't belong
there. It was the Kalenjin youths but it was also the politicians,
these councilors and chiefs. They were playing a big role in this
during their rallies. Koskei was promising they would remove 'the
decorations', and the decorations were the Kikuyu.
"They said those who do not belong here must go back to where they
belong. They said if we win or if we lose, it is the same, you
must go. This was something organized," said Magure.
It is a claim made by many Kikuyu who have fled towns and villages
in the Rift Valley and who are now crammed into Nakuru. They
reeled off their former homes - Eldoret, Molo, Burnt Forest and
places beyond - and then named chiefs and political leaders they
said incited people against the Kikuyu.
No one was killed in Mogotio but about 10 Kikuyu were murdered in
outlying areas, just a fraction of the nearly 1,000 official death
toll in violence across Kenya since December's disputed
presidential election.
The killing in western Kenya continued at the weekend with scores
more murdered and thousands of people - Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin - on
the move to escape the violence.
Most of Mogotio's Kikuyu fled to Nakuru but a few sought shelter
in the police compound to guard the last of their possessions.
Among them was Ibrahim Madedi, 69, who was sitting in front of a
pile of old beds, plastic water tanks, milk crates and a
wheelbarrow. His seven children, 15 grandchildren and 18 great
grandchildren - all born in Mogotio - had fled the town.
"They came at night banging on the door and told us to get out
even if you are naked from your bed and then they poured paraffin
on the house and burned it," he said.
Madedi said the attitude towards the Kikuyu soured during the
election campaign and long before the contested result was
announced. "These guys didn't want anyone to vote for Kibaki. They
said they don't want to see any different flowers here. The
message was that if you vote for Kibaki you are not part of the
community. They were saying when we win, you will go," he said.
Charles Koskei, the councillor, runs a general store in the center
of the town. As he talked, people stopped to greet him and shake
his hand. He disputed Magure's claim that he said the Kikuyu would
have to leave. "That's lies. Nobody said that," he said.
But Koskei paused and then added: "During campaigns people here
had different techniques of acquiring votes so you use any
language to get votes. Some other candidate was telling people
that if he was voted out they would have to leave. But that was
not me."
Asked who it was, Koskei said only that it was "an opponent".
The election was the immediate cause of the violence across Kenya
but in the Rift Valley it is underpinned by longstanding ethnic
rivalries over land distribution after British colonization.
No group suffered more under British rule than the Kikuyu, who
were robbed of the best of their land in the region north of
Nairobi by white settlers and forced into a subservient existence.
But the British also took land in the Rift Valley that was once
the home of the Kalenjin. At independence, Kenya's first president,
Jomo Kenyatta, turned over large areas of the valley to his fellow
Kikuyu. The Kalenjin believed they had been robbed twice,
particularly as the Kikuyu finally began to prosper.
Kenyatta's successor, Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, exploited that
resentment to divide and rule before elections and to gerrymander
the vote. Fifteen years ago several thousand Kenyans died in
fighting stirred by Moi to target Kikuyu calling for multi-party
democracy.
Those divisions can still be heard in the language of the
councilors and other Kalenjin in Mogotio, who talk about
themselves as the "locals" and Kikuyu as outsiders.
Koskei lumps all the town's Kikuyu into the same category: as
Kibaki supporters collectively responsible for the Kenyan
president's actions in the disputed election. "It was clear Kibaki
represented the Kikuyu and Odinga was for the other tribes. It was
41 tribes against the Kikuyu. That meant tensions were so high,"
he said. "Nobody chased them. They just feared and they left.
Their houses were empty so they were burned. I think the language
during that time made them run away," he said.
The government sent in paramilitary police after the local force
failed to stop the burnings and attacks. One of its senior
officers in Mogotio, who did not want to be named, said it looked
to him as if there was an organized and systematic move to rid the
town of its Kikuyu population. Koskei said the Kikuyu were welcome
to return to Mogotio - provided they recognized that Odinga had
won the election.
"If they don't come back then the tribal rift will remain. If the
election is resolved everything will be over but so long as Kibaki
is president they should not come here," he said.
There seems little prospect of an early return. The attacks on the
Kikuyu has prompted an equally violent response against the
Kalenjin and their Luo allies in other parts of the Rift Valley.
Communities are separating. At the weekend thousands were in the
move; Kikuyu headed east in lorries piled high with battered
furniture, plastic water tanks and bicycles.
Ibrahim Madedi said he did not think he or his family would ever
return to the only place they called home.
"These people don't want Kikuyu in their town. When they burn you
out of your house there is only one message there," he said.
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