Barely two years on from the worst violence since independence, Kenya is gearing up for another round of clashes, writes Jody Clarkeat Mai Mahiu displaced persons' camp in Naivasha
FOR DOUGLAS Karanja (21), living in a tent means more than just getting wet from time to time. It also represents a spectacular fall from grace.
“We had a hotel, a proper stone house with a TV, fridge and microwave. Here, we don’t even have chairs,” he says, pointing towards the three sodden mattresses he and his two brothers now bed down in. “If it wasn’t for the UN, I wouldn’t even have a bed to sleep in.”
Karanja is one of 1,500 members of the Kikuyu tribe forced out of their homes in Eldoret in the months following December 2007, during the worst tribal violence to hit Kenya since independence in 1963.
His family’s hotel was burned down with one of the staff still inside, as a nine-acre farm and 200 sacks of maize were destroyed. And all because Mwai Kibaki, the man elected president, was a member of their tribe.
“It was like a remote control,” Karanja says. “The results came in at 1pm and then everything changed. People we went to church with suddenly put God aside and fought us. How can you be a Christian after that?”
For a country regarded as a beacon of peace and stability for the region, the violence, which left 1,500 dead and more than 600,000 homeless, came as a shock to many. But given recent developments, it might just be a foretaste of what is to come.
Arms seizures are becoming regular news, as allegations fly that state ammunition is increasingly finding its way into civilian hands.
The next election is scheduled for 2012 but already people are arming themselves ahead of it.
Some 30,000 rounds of government ammunition were recently found at a businessman’s property in the Rift Valley.
“When a police force as corrupt and inefficient as Kenya’s can still find 30,000 rounds of bullets, you know there is a problem,” says Kwamchetsi Makokha, one of Kenya’s most respected political analysts. “In the Rift Valley, groups are arming themselves along ethnic lines, while it is quite apparent that the Mungiki [a violent group of racketeers] have a grip on the Central Province.”
Last time they used machetes. This time, according to several reports, they have AK47s.
But paralysed by a power struggle that has intensified in recent weeks, the “unity” government seems reluctant to do anything about any of this.
The president has overturned a decision by his prime minister to dismiss two ministers accused of graft, while the prime minister himself tours the country on what looks like a never-ending election campaign, even though the next one is two years off. The cares of ordinary Kenyans, meanwhile, are largely ignored.
This is feeding into the hands of groups such as the Mungiki, who are multiplying as the security situation deteriorates, according to a recent study. This has some Kenyan watchers whispering the words “failed state”. “It’s pretty apparent that that’s what Kenya has become,” says Makokha.
While that does not mean the country will become another Somalia, it could lead to a Balkanised system if the state collapses.
“You could see Kenya turn into small regional blocks where regional movements of self-determination will spring up,” says Makokha.
He believes many Kenyans, already frustrated by the corruption in the government, “wouldn’t care if government or gangs was extorting money from them”.
Where this could leave Kenya, easily east Africa’s most important economy, no one knows. But if Kenyans want an idea, they should look no further than Karanja, and the roadside camp he shares with 1,500 others an hour north of Nairobi.
Two children have died of pneumonia in the past year and none of the teenagers go to school – their parents do not have jobs anymore and cannot afford to send them.
Instead, teenagers wander aimlessly around the camp, where their families subsist on plots of about 50m x 100m, sowing vegetables and raising small livestock in the hope of selling them in the local market in Mai Mahiu.
There are no public services. If ever there was an example of a what a failed state looks like, this small area of UNHCR-labelled tents is surely it.
It is not the kind of life they are used to. But then, as Karanja says, what option do they have? “It’s not fair to take something that it’s taken 15 to 20 years to build and just take it away in two days. Here, we get nothing.”
Many Kenyans might well say the same.