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State Should Ensure Safety for
All
The East African (Nairobi)
COLUMN
25 February 2008
L Muthoni Wanyeki
More needs to be done. The mediation is at a critical stage. All
those involved need to realise - or be forced to realise - just
how much hinges on their efforts.
Credible (that is, verified) information is coming through. The
story first broken by the UK Telegraph and re-circulated locally
by The Star is supported by testimony from the ground about a
build-up among the Kalenjin militia in the North Rift.
Other testimony warns about the arming and training of the Gikuyu
right within the internally displaced camps in the Rift Valley.
Such testimony also informs that the militia, believed to be
Mungiki, or a parallel one, is still in preparation around
Naivasha and Nakuru.
All such testimony points to both militias trying to access more
conventional arms - the Kalenjin militia allegedly from south
Sudan and northern Uganda through the Pokot, and the Kikuyu
militia reportedly from the armouries of our security services.
We know, too, about the call to arms, ostensibly for self-defence
and/or restitution, on both sides.
Organisations such as GEMA Abroad in the UK are mobilising funds
to support such calls while the Thagicu Central Committee
mobilises a "professional" response among the same in support.
Similar calls are being made among the Kalenjin. The calls on one
side pervert the legacy of the Mau Mau Land and Freedom Army.
Those on the other side similarly pervert the legacy of Koitalel
arap Samoei.
Let us be clear about this: None of our collective anti-colonial
movements took up their own calls to arms for us, their inheritors,
to act against one another. They were different parts of the same
struggle
- that of seeking an economic and political inheritance for us
all.
Let us all also be clear that, if a political settlement that is
acceptable to both protagonists is not reached expeditiously, we
can expect renewed confrontations in the Rift Valley.
THOSE PARTY TO THE MEDIATION MUST take this into account and
commit with renewed urgency to getting through the stalemate so
that we can all move to addressing the more fundamental issues
underlying the crisis in a manner that will not stoke up violence.
What is needed is not just a win-win situation for parties to the
mediation, but a win-win situation for us all, particularly those
most apparently at risk - those still in the Rift Valley. How can
we achieve
this?
The mediation effort needs to re-visit its first agreement and
commitment of ensuring an end to the violence and ask whether, in
fact, both parties are doing all they can to demobilise and disarm
the
organised militias and hold them to account.
Bearing in mind that the state has the primary duty to ensure
security, what needs to be asked of the ruling party is whether
all state security organisations are doing what actually needs to
be done. Is the
intelligence system functioning? Are the police responding
appropriately? And not just by hauling small-time perpetrators and
would-be perpetrators to court but by actively investigating those
funding, arming, training and planning the militia activities with
a view to prosecuting them throughout the country, without fear or
favour.
The police should also ensure protection for the internally
displaced still in the Rift Valley and other areas believed to be
at risk. And protection should include warning without creating
alarm or, worse, more calls to arms and self-defence.
It is not easy, and none of us should pretend that it is. But the
way out is certainly not for more militia and more community
vigilantism.
It is for the state to demonstrate its capacity to meet the most
basic criteria of statehood - that of exercising effective control,
formally and in a manner that respects basic human rights. If the
state cedes now - or acts in a manner deemed to be politically
partisan, all may be lost. And irretrievably so.
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