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How The Western Media Distorts
the Crisis in Kenya
TowardFreedom
Written by Zahra Moloo
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
A few nights ago, I received a text message from a friend in
Kenya. Afraid of being attacked by members of the Kikuyu community,
one of Kenya’s largest ethnic groups, he was fleeing his home. "Am
ok," it read. "There were revenge attacks from Kikuyus, as the
place is predominantly Kikuyu. Looking for another house."
But this same friend, who was not Kikuyu, had rushed to the Rift
Valley in western Kenya three weeks ago to help evacuate Kikuyus.
They were targeted by Kalenjin, a Kenyan ethnic group, many of
whom were supporters of the opposition party in the December
elections. Anecdotes like these, telling of ordinary Kenyans
helping each other across ethnic boundaries, have rarely found a
place in Western media reportage.
I had returned to Montreal in early January, after a short trip to
my home country of Kenya during the December elections, and I was
disturbed by what I read in the media here. I found it made me
more confused and afraid than when I was still in Kenya.
According to many of the media reports, my country was suddenly in
the midst of a "civil war," or even a "genocide," quite like what
had happened in Rwanda in 1994. It was as if the situation could
be reduced to a few violent images – like those of
machete-wielding youth dancing next to burning houses. Lacking
historical perspective, sensitivity to the economic conditions
fostering ethnic tensions, and prone to descriptions of violence
so sensational they seemed flavored with racism, the Western media
was robbing Kenyans of their dignity and doing a great disservice
to Westerners genuinely interested in understanding the country.
"The Horror, the Horror"
The Kenyan election on December 27, 2007 saw the incumbent
President Kibaki steal the vote, then hurriedly have himself sworn
in before a motley group of dejected government officials. In the
days after, opposition supporters rose up in protest against the
disputed elections, and the post-election power struggle spiraled
into violence. On the day that I left, the only source of news
accessible in Kenya was the BBC – the government had banned local
media from reporting, leaving the country with a domestic media
blackout.
On a BBC news page, provocative quotes entice readers: "We will
start the war. We will divide Kenya." These are the words BBC
chose to reflect the views of Jackson Kibbur, a Kalenjin "leader."
Readers relying on the BBC to find out about the Kalenjin are
likely to assume that he sufficiently represents the views of
Kalenjin. Elsewhere in the article, snippets that seem to have
been cut and pasted from an action film are quoted in isolation. "We
will of course kill them," an interviewee is reported to have said
of the Kikuyu.
The BBC, along with most of the mainstream media, also has its
choice terms to describe the political crisis: "ethnic," "chaos,"
or "tribal." In its report on January 27, The Los Angeles Times
carried the headline "‘Tribal war’ spreads in Kenya." The same
article had little historical context explaining how this "tribal
war" was linked to the December elections, save for one or two
paragraphs clumsily summing up the country’s history since its
1963 independence.
The word "tribal" means almost nothing, given that Kenya is
composed of more than 40 ethnic groups, most of whom the media has
never attempted to describe with historical accuracy. Instead, the
media give abbreviated descriptions of men from the Kalenjin or
Luo ethnic groups, who are seen simply "at war" with their Kikuyu
neighbours. This reduction of extraordinarily complex conflicts to
stark simplifications is by no means unique to Kenya: in Rwanda,
it was the "Hutus" versus the "Tutsis"; in Sudan, the "Arabs"
versus the "Africans" or the "Muslims" versus the "Christians"; in
the vast territory of the Congo, a country the size of Western
Europe, the "Hema" fight against the "Lendu."
All these groups do exist on the African continent, but not as
rigidly fixed identities dating from time immemorial. These
identities are complex and often fluid in nature, sometimes
hardening in the crucible of political movements or colonial
struggles. But simplifying every violent episode to a simple "ethnic
conflict" has a familiar effect: making every conflict on the
African continent seem irrational, chaotic, and without historical
precedent.
The problem with these kinds of inaccurate representations is
obvious enough: they preclude any nuanced understanding of the
conflict and perpetuate the racist assumptions that have
historically influenced Western perceptions of "Africans" –
barbaric, primitive, and inherently destructive.
To those following the recent Kenyan events, it might be a
surprise that the "ethnic violence" has political motivations; and
that in fact not all members of the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, and Luo
communities are bent on destroying each other. But what other
impression would people get when they read headlines like "Rival
Kenyan tribes face off with machetes and clubs" next to
photographs of black Africans holding weapons, silhouetted by the
sun?
It is certainly not ordinary Kenyans who benefit from the climate
of terror stoked by politicians, manipulating ethnic differences
to serve their own political agendas. These politicians have
mobilized gangs of young men, who are marginalized and cut off
from any participation in the country’s economy, to target ethnic
groups, prompting revenge attacks. Though the Western media has
made much of superficial differences between the two presidential
candidates – Kibaki and his rival, Raila Odinga – there is in fact
little substantive difference. Both men are from Kenya’s political
elite, and rhetoric about Odinga being the people’s president
rings hollow.
Into the valley of death?
Doug Miller is the radio host of Amandla!, a show on CKUT radio in
Montreal that provides analysis on different African countries. He
tries to offer an alternative to mainstream media journalists, who
have tended to approach their work on Kenya with an air of
adventure, mixed with disappointment about the "direction" in
which Kenya is heading.
Miller mentions the work of one prominent reporter, The Globe and
Mail’s Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen, praising her coverage
of AIDS in Southern Africa but criticizing her Kenyan coverage,
which he describes as a "cheap-thrill kind of journalism."
"The emphasis was on her going into the valley of death and facing
these bloodthirsty warriors," he says. "It’s an awful attraction
for a journalist to go out there. But is it giving us any insight
into the situation? I don’t think so."
As Nolen writes in her article, aptly entitled "Into the Valley of
Death," "The Kenya I traveled through this week was not a country
I recognized...the Kenya that was prospering and ambitious and
dignified and peaceful."
This sentiment, even when well-intentioned, seems a product of the
condescending attitude of many Westerners, who treat Kenya as it
were a child who had shouldered high hopes – the "sole democracy"
on a continent ravaged by senseless violence – but had now failed
them. A "tragic setback for democracy in Africa," one journalist
wrote, as if an entire country could be given a failing mark.
Colonial legacies
Very rarely, clear and critical interventions stand out amongst
media sensationalism. Caroline Elkins, author of Imperial
Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, offered
some much-needed historical perspective on the root causes of the
strife in a Washington Post article. Elkins tells us to look to
Kenya’s colonial period if we are to understand what is happening
in Kenya today.
"We are often told that age-old tribal hatreds drive today’s
conflicts in Africa," she writes. "In fact, both ethnic conflict
and its attendant grievances are colonial phenomena." In Kenya,
Elkins informs us, the British spent much of their time trying to
keep the Kikuyu and Luo divided. Were they to unite, the British
feared the colonial order in the country would collapse. As Elkins
writes, a Kikuyu-Luo alliance in the 1950s drove the British to
release Jomo Kenyatta, an anti-colonial leader and later the
country’s first president, from a detention camp, which ultimately
accelerated the end of formal British colonial power.
But the alliance was short-lived, and Britain’s "divide-and-rule"
tactic was put to use time and again in the colonies. It was
effective enough to create the more-or-less hardened ethnic
boundaries that are now manipulated by elites, the same elites who
had been carefully cultivated by the British to protect their
interests in the region once they left. These elites took control
of the legal systems the British left behind, which, Elkin writes,
"facilitated tyranny, oppression and poverty rather than open,
accountable government."
Nothing to fear and nothing to lose
Celebrated Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o made the important
observation that the current crisis does in fact concern two
tribes. The tribes are not split along ethnic identity, but
between "haves" "have-nots." It is no accident that much of the
violence has taken place in Kibera, the second-largest slum in
Africa, and in Mathare, another collection of slums.
In the post-election period, running battles were fought between
armed police and residents of Kibera, while much of the middle
classes and elites remained at a safe distance. Nunu Kidane and
Walter Turner, writing for Pambazuka, the weekly publication on
African news, remarked that the people living in Kibera and
Mathare are in desperate straits, with "nothing to fear and
nothing to lose."
The violence has not all been committed by nameless, disorganized
bands of young Africans. Immediately after the election results
were announced, the security forces began operating on a
shoot-to-kill policy, on government order. They are, in fact,
responsible for a large number of deaths. The media have rarely
reported on the heavy-handed tactics used by the Kenyan police and
the notorious paramilitary General Service Unit in the Kibera and
Mathare slums.
Disturbing scenes of police brutality have been aired on local
television. In western Kisumu, a region with a large number of
opposition supporters, a young man was sticking out his tongue and
jumping around, taunting a police officer. In return, the officer
ran towards him, and shot him from a few feet away before kicking
him in the ribs.
Little of this makes it into Western mainstream media. The Kibera
slum may catch international attention, but not for the above
reasons. It is becoming increasingly popular as a venue for "slum
tourism." A journalist for Reuters claimed that anyone who wanted
a "quick Africa poverty story" could surely find it in Kibera.
Armies of the unemployed
Deconstructing media misrepresentation of the Kenyan crisis is
still not enough to understand why violence has broken out. There
are other factors: Kenya is a very poor country whose more serious
troubles concern low wages, unemployment, structural poverty, lack
of social security, poorly funded health and education systems and
lack of access to land and resources.
"It is no wonder that the structural poverty imposed on Africa
throughout history has created an underclass of young people who
have no hope and no future," Doug Miller of CKUT radio says. Even
with an education, economic opportunities are scarce.
"What this is about is people with no access to resources in a
country where they can’t do anything," Miller says. "A rich person
can come by with any amount of money and mobilize them into what I
call ‘the army of the unemployed."
It is these armies of disenfranchised youth that have been
mobilized to set Kenyan against Kenyan. Understanding the origins
for their exclusion will bring us closer to transcending the
stereotypes that dominate Western media reportage, and perhaps a
little closer to envisioning a resolution.
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