The blame game, or, how to avoid dealing with deeper issues

Another one from the BBC, which is now reporting that key people in Kibaki's government called on the Mungiki to 'protect' Kikuyu residents in the Rift Valley. The article alleges that Mungiki leaders were called to official government offices by senior people in the administration and given the duty to head down to various Rift Valley towns to carry out attacks on non-Kikuyu living there. The pattern certainly seems to fit something like that, especially the wave of battles in Nakuru and Naivasha in late January. Other Mungiki sources are saying that it was a renegade faction which carried out those activities, and not the main group. That's not a great sign, if indeed it's true, that Mungiki is decentralized enough for factions to be used by different people in different ways. It's the kind of situation that could create a kind of Kikuyu civil war if left unchecked. Of course, there are many Kenyans who would say 'fine, let them kill themselves' as they did when the government was waging open war on Mungiki in mid-2007, but those Kenyans would then be choosing to ignore the risk to national stability...

Now, I expect it will only be a matter of time before similar, very specific claims are made with regard to ODM and the gangs which carried out some of the earlier violence in places like Eldoret, if in fact they haven't already been made. The vague allegations have certainly been published already.

On one hand, it would be great to try to pursue charges against any leaders who are found to have done something like this. Whether it's PNU/Kikuyu leaders and Mungiki, or any others, it's an important aspect of the potential for ethnic conflict in Kenya, and if it's taken away, it will be harder for such clashes to go on without people being held accountable.

On the other hand, going after political leaders as the main cause of ethnic conflict in Kenya is both an easy way out and a way to ensure that nothing really changes. Kenya, the state, has repeatedly shown itself unwilling or unable to actually prosecute leaders who mobilize or utilize ethnicity to promote or carry out violence for political ends. The legacy of the clashes of the 1990s is a testament to this. Further, going after political elites and/or telling them they need to be responsible and not take advantage of the conducive situations for such political uses of ethnicity (as was done in the Akiwumi Commission's report on tribal clashes), ignores the fact that something must be done about those conducive situations.

To simply ask politicians, and threaten them with incarceration or fines, or whatever other measures of censure might be used, to resist inciting people along ethnic lines, especially when they rely on their communities for votes in every election, is yet another way of keeping deeper problems locked in the closet. The rattling bones of the giant skeleton of ethnicity, land disputes, and poverty will not simply disintegrate when politicians stop mentioning them in public. Ordinary Kenyans are not mindless followers who will just agree when politicians fabricate greivances or ethnic animosities. Nor will they simply forget their history, and the many legitimate complaints they have which sometimes derive from the past indulgences of leaders taking advantage of state power for the benefit of their patronage networks.

The most serious mistake that the government can make in the next few months would be to set up a system of dealing with this round of violence and politics without making any provisions for finally trying to open the debates about what many Kenyans call 'historical greivances' and which date back as far as the colonization of East Africa by the British.