|
Experts Say Kenya Reconciliation
Will Take Time
VOA
By Scott Bobb Nairobi
11 March 2008
Kenya's leaders have set national reconciliation as a major goal
after post-electoral violence killed 1,000 people and displaced
hundreds of thousands more. Experts say that healing can occur
fairly quickly for some victims, but reconciliation could take a
long time. Correspondent Scott Bobb was in Kenya recently and has
this report.
Nicholas Ochieng was living in central Kenya with his wife and two
children when a few days after the election a gang attacked his
home while he was out.
"They went there and threw petrol, then my family were burnt to
ashes there," he said.
Richad Gitahi owned a small, second-hand electronics business in a
slum in Nairobi.
He says he was attacked by gangs that robbed him and destroyed his
shop.
Both men spent several weeks in camps for displaced people before
being transported to their ancestral homes in western and central
Kenya.
At one point, Ochieng and Gitahi could have been neighbors,
testimony to Kenya's ethnic integration. But today they are among
hundreds of thousands of people who have returned to their ethnic
homelands and are afraid to go back to homes where they had lived
sometimes for decades.
Nairobi Psychiatrist Frank Njenga says Kenyans had never seen such
violence and many are traumatized.
"This, the first traumatic event is that of feeling alienation
from our land, our neighbors and for many people from God himself,"
he said.
The hostilities were sparked by perceptions that members of a
dominant ethnic group had rigged the elections in order to stay in
power. The attacks brought retaliation. And the violence was
fueled by long-standing rivalries over land and jobs, and by
looters who took advantage of the breakdown in law and order.
Sociology professor Ken Ouko of Nairobi University notes that
people from different ethnic groups lived in every region of the
country. And intermarriage was common.
"The most unfortunately thing for the demographic structure of
this country was the marital divisions that occurred. We had many
cases of people who had married across ethnicities being separated
from their spouses. And it was very sad," said Ouko.
He says children of these broken homes will be reluctant to marry
outside their ethnic groups. And if the displaced remain in their
ancestral homes, the country will be balkanized (splintered) into
small fiefdoms.
Psychiatrist Frank Njenga says healing is possible, because the
human psyche is remarkably resilient.
"The majority of the people who have gone through these
experiences will get better. However, there is a portion of them,
20 or 30 percent, who will suffer the consequences of these
traumatic experiences for many, many, many years to come," said
Njenga.
He says it is important to quickly treat individuals showing
symptoms of post-traumatic stress, such as depression, anger and
substance abuse.
Many of the displaced receive counseling at the camps. But a
counselor at one of these, in the western city of Kisumu, James
Dera, calls this "psychiatric first-aid" and says they will need
long-term care.
"Counseling is a process. We need to continue that process until
the whole healing process is reached," he said.
Dr. Njenga says a truth and reconciliation commission, similar to
those set up in Rwanda, South Africa, and other post-conflict
areas, can help national healing.
"Men and women of recognized integrity in this country would
superintend a process around which people would speak out freely
and be able to explain the historical and current injustices that
they see, traumatic experience they have seen, political
oppression, economic oppression and so on," said Dr. Njenga.
And he says people involved in the violence would also have an
opportunity to acknowledge their guilt and seek forgiveness.
The Kenyan government and opposition have agreed to create a
commission, though details have yet to be worked out. Sociologist
Ken Ouko says the commission can help in another way.
"The biggest benefit is that it (the violence) will be documented.
Right now there is a lot of speculation. And reconciliation cannot
work with rumor and speculation. But if you put it down and you
document it, then it is easier to go into policy design that can
help with reconciliation," added Ouko.
Ouko says there is a new threat now from vigilante groups. These
have been financed and used by politicians in the past. But now
they are more organized and more independent. And they have been
joined by groups of ordinary criminals ready to take advantage of
any breakdown in law and order.
If these groups are not disbanded, he says, they will pose a
continuing threat to peace and the reconciliation process so many
Kenyans desire.
|
