Kenya fails to heal years after chaos


Published on 11/05/2011


Three years after Kenya bled from the post-election violence of 2008, there are fears merchants of hatred are re-grouping amid waning efforts to unite rival communities.

And growing negative ethnicity, unresolved historical injustices and ethnic hatred are mostly to blame for slow national healing process, analysts say.

Chairman of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission Mzalendo Kibunjia acknowledges the situation remains toxic but says his team is closing in on ‘loose-tongued’ politicians.

"Most Kenyans are saying never again to violence, but few leaders still want to play past politics by inciting people on basis of ethnicity, race and religion," he said in an interview.

Kibunjia expressed disappointment that politicians continue to play tribal cards, a move he describes as a setback to his commission’s efforts to promote national peace and unity. He says they are planning a programme that would see peace ambassadors posted in all 47 counties.

Peter Kamuyu, the Executive Director of Sychar Centre, says ethnic conflict trends were worrying.

"There is increasing evidence even where conflict has been subdued, psychological trauma left behind is seldom healed, especially among children and women," he says.

In a recent publication Poverty, Inequality and Conflict in Kenya, Kamuyu says besides ethnic hatred, the worsening poverty levels and the Government’s failure to cushion citizens against economic repressions were some of the factors putting the country in a conflict danger zone.

Wounds still fresh

Hostilities the Government faced when it searched for land to resettle thousands of IDPs was proof the wounds had not healed.

IDPs have been rejected in Narok, Muhoroni and Coast regions where locals said they would not live with them.

A Catholic priest Ambrose Kimutai of Segemik Parish in Bomet says the situation remains fluid.

"The wounds inflicted by the past tribal skirmishes and the election violence are still fresh. There is no healing. The seeds of discord planted by politicians have sprouted. There will be no reconciliation until the Government addresses the issues that caused the violence," said Fr Kimutai.

And Mr Chris Owala, a regional co-ordinator with the Partners for Peace, a consortium of organisations working towards sustainable peace in Nyanza, Western and Rift Valley provinces, says infiltrations of small arms into the country and poverty play a major role in fuelling the conflicts.

He adds: "Existing peace building mechanisms, such as District Peace Committees are not sustainable and lack the necessary independence, capacity or visibility to assert a leading role in response to conflicts."

But as political scientist Walter Oyugi in a paper Conflict in Kenya: A Periodic Phenomenon published recently in the African Journal of Political Science, says: "There is evidence where ethnic conflict has emerged in Africa, there has always been political machinations behind it."