When Kenya knew no peace
Kenya is bleeding literally following violence occasioned by the disputed presidential poll results announced by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) chairman Mr Samuel Kivuitu on December 30 2007. The post-election violence has assumed unprecedented proportions with Kenyans who had co-existed peacefully with their neighbours from other ethnic groups over the years turning against each other. It does not help matters that the police have resorted to brutal force while handling demonstrators in various parts of the country.
With over 800 lives lost, 300,000 people internally displaced and another 5,400 seeking refuge in neighbouring Uganda, the situation warrants urgent attention. The economy is almost grounding to a halt, property worth billions of shillings has been destroyed. Houses and business premises have been razed while many families have been driven out of the slum areas that have been divided into tribal blocs. The imagery of the “Valley of death” in the book of Ezekiel is NOW synonymous to our present situation.
Just look at the news media – violence, rumours of war, devastation of the environment, and killings dominate the news. We are daily treated to acts of yesterday’s violence as if there are no peace news today! Look at the way we are all bound into this story of death, the story that unless you are this tribe you are a nobody. Social life is nothing but tribal talk. If you are joining a new social group it is important you identify yourself, who you associate with, where you work etc … You do not exist if you do not work.
The big issue is that It is now evident there is a great deal of death around us at the moment. Therefore the need to solve the political stalemate we are faced with ASAP!
It is pretty clear that the local and international media has a major role to play prior to and after the election. John Barbier, an independent reporter who lived in Kenya from Jan.-June 2007, and the founder of the US Coalition for Peace with Truth and Justice in Kenya considers three particularly dangerous, pervasive myths and misrepresentations that have appeared in the media in covering Kenya ’s post election crisis. He asserts that news without a proper sense of history and context is just a list of jumbled half-truths, and news without a proper respect for and input from the people who are actually affected is just a list of callous stereotypes.
Locally, the mainstream media, both English and Swahili, have been praised for their even-handedness, however, particular FM vernacular radio broadcasts have been put on the defensive side given the role of Kigali's Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines in inciting people to slaughter their neighbours in the 1994 genocide.
A report by a local Media Research group indicate that inflammatory statements and songs aired on vernacular radio stations, (SMS) text messages, emails, campaign posters and leaflets have all contributed to post-electoral violence in Kenya, according to analysts.
We have true life stories of what ordinary Kenyans have gone through since “hell broke loose” but Aruanga’s story is an inspiration to many of our young people majority of who are faced with unemployment. Aruanga is a talented artist brought up in the slums but driven with the dream of one day owning a decent home.
Indeed, we are wounded, Kenya is wounded. It is our task to keep open the hope of human community, of the fact that, although we might look very different and our cultures may be very different, we are all children of God in a country going mad with dying patriotism, with conflicts between ethnic communities and between classes where the rich and the poor are being increasingly separated. We should keep alive the reality that we are one people, one nation.
While this wave of violence continues, our photographer has captured messages of peace painted by an anonymous Kenyan. Find them published elsewhere in this issue and at the back page. God Bless Kenya .