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Friday 18 July 2008

When elephants fight, the grass suffers

Aidan Hartley says that the violence in Kenya reflects the failure of the political class: better paid than their European counterparts in a nation where many live on 50p a day

But on a local level ‘Majimboism’ was interpreted another way. Months ago a drunken power-broker in a local village wagged his finger at us and declared that after the elections all ‘outsiders’, including Kikuyu farmers and whites, would be kicked out and their farms taken. The epicentre of the violence has occurred in Rift Valley districts where Kalenjin leaders have in the name of Majimboism been stirring up ethnic fascism against Kikuyu peasants since multi-party polls in 1992, when thousands died.

In Kenya, you cannot have decentralisation without functioning national institutions. Without these you have mob rule, with the poor deciding to help themselves to the property of ‘outsiders’. It was always going to be an explosive cocktail in a Kenya already scarred by tribal clashes, sapped by corruption, greed and incitement to ethnic hatred by leaders. For those who have already acquired a taste for killing with impunity, it is easy for them to do it again.

For their part, hardline Kikuyus and their allied tribes in the ‘Mount Kenya Mafia’ appear to show no contrition over their contribution to this political chaos in a blatantly rigged election. Instead, they crow about victory, claim they can exclude Raila from a power-sharing deal and celebrate a return to business as usual. But if this arrogance persists, the political impasse could result in fresh mayhem.

Under Kibaki, the economy was growing by 6 per cent a year. This was not directly thanks to good government, which did nothing to encourage enterprise. Business went well simply because government had begun to withdraw from its traditional role of harassing the private sector — though Kenya’s leaders continued to loot state coffers.

Fresh riots erupted across several cities on Tuesday night after Kibaki snubbed Raila and appointed a new cabinet made up of a narrow coalition of ethnic allies. Such a move may provoke a protracted political crisis along the lines of another failed African state, Ivory Coast. Whatever the case, the recent violence will simply worsen the poverty that was itself the root cause of the current crisis. The Western news hacks will pretty soon trickle home, but for Kenyans the economic blowback will worsen for months. Already we are seeing mass lay-offs and the collapse of the tourism and agricultural industries. The great nation of Kenya needs a miracle.

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