Inequality, Not Identity, Fuels Violence in Kenya
From day-one of the crisis that has gripped Kenya this year, much of the mainstream media has been quick to label the violence “tribal warfare,” while the top US envoy to Africa called the Kenyan clashes “ethnic cleansing.” The problem with those terms is that they don’t actually explain anything. Yet many people hear the words “tribal warfare” or “ethnic cleansing” and assume that people’s identity is the root of the violence in Kenya.We live in a time when the notion of a “clash of civilizations” passes for political science and an us-versus-them mentality (”you’re either with us or with the terrorists”) is the basis of super-power foreign policy. The crudeness of those ideas makes it hard to remember that, while identity can be mobilized in the service of hatred, a person’s “tribe,” ethnicity, or religion does not cause or motivate violence.
So what does? In the case of Kenya, tribal categories are a short-hand for describing people’s unequal access to political power and economic resources.
Since Kenya won independence from Britain in 1963, a small Kikuyu elite has dominated government and business opportunities. Meanwhile, most Kenyans have been dangerously impoverished by the debt crisis that began in the late 1970s. Like many countries throughout the Global South, Kenya was forced to sell off state-owned assets like major transport and telecommunications systems and to cut government spending to repay loans to big banks and rich governments (mostly in the US and Europe). As a result, millions of Kenyans have been denied basic resources and services, like health care, clean water, education, and decent housing.
When Mwai Kibaki was elected in 2002, he promised to share power and resources more equitably. Instead, he allowed Kikuyu elites to keep control of the country’s wealth and governing institutions. That betrayal galvanized support for Raila Odinga’s opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), especially among the poor. In December 2007, Kibaki’s party rigged national elections to prevent the ODM from unseating him and disseminating political power and access to basic economic resources more broadly.
Those are the real grievances fueling the violence today. They have their roots not in any “ancient tribal rivalries,” but in government policies meant to enrich a few at the expense of the majority. Kenya’s poor majority includes members of the Luo, Luhya, and Kalenjin tribes, who initiated the protests in December, and most Kikuyus, who are not part of the governing clique but have been scapegoated in the crisis.
Thinking of Kenya’s conflict as a class war rather than a tribal war reveals those aspects of the crisis that are about material things: a fight over access to farmland, housing, and clean water. But that explanation alone misses a more complex reality. Because identity is fluid, partial, and somewhat subjective, tribal or ethnic divisions can be calcified, even created, when identity is invoked to mobilize people for political ends. Both Kibaki and Odinga are guilty of goading people to violence in this way. And every time the BBC or the Washington Post utters the words “tribal warfare,” they help propel the self-fulfilling logic of identity-based violence. It’s a dangerous game: once violence is unleashed, it takes on its own momentum. We’ve seen that dynamic to grave effect in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan. And that may be what we’re witnessing in Kenya now, as protest over a disputed election seems to have morphed into something uglier and more dangerous.
The way that people define a crisis shapes which solutions they choose. That’s why a lasting solution to the crisis in Kenya requires junking the hollow concept of “tribal warfare.” Tackling the poverty and inequality that politicians have perpetuated by manipulating ethnicity may prove a lot tougher than resolving an electoral blow-out. But there are Kenyans who are paving the way forward.
On January 25, the “Kenyan Women’s Consultation Group” addressed peace mediators Kofi Annan, Graça Machel, and Benjamin Mkapa. The women call for “comprehensive constitutional reform that would ensure equitable distribution of national resources,” as part of their far-reaching peace proposal. Like many progressive Kenyans, the Women’s Consultation Group recognizes that while inequality in Kenya runs along tribal lines, it’s the inequality, not the tribal identity, that is fueling the violence today.
Yifat Susskind is Communications Director of MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization.
This the first coherent explanation I’ve read on what is happening in Kenya, and why it is happening. Thanks Yifrat Susskind.
The black man’s suffering is the pink man’s doing. Check the history and you will see the pinkish white people have been supporting corruption and exploitation for ages in Kenya and everywhere else. The age of the pink has been a bummer indeed.
Melanin production is related to tyrosine and neurotransmitter production. Depigmented people of the north also have unique characteristics of their nervous system. They have less tolerance to noise and disorder. They are easily jarred and thus cannot deal well with most of the pigmented world and mistake the noise and disorder for a fault, instead of an ability, tolerance, that they lack. The northern mutants are quite full of themselves but they are curiously inferior. Not one pink person can run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds. They are not good lovers as a whole, have little rythm, and tend to be dry and dispirited. The Victorian era is a good example of this need to withdraw from excess stimulus. Sad, really.
So the violence in Kenya is due to “government policies meant to enrich a few at the expense of the majority.”
As goes Kenya, so go innumberable other countries because of the same policies.
The greed of the very small elite is indeed a cancer in the world. Cancer eats up and devours its host - it simply keeps growing until there is nothing more to eat up.
What will it take to stop this cancerous greed? I don’t know. I often wonder if it hasn’t gotten to the point where even the ‘healthy’ part of the world is so stressed (like the healthy part of the body gets so stressed from fighting the cancer) that it doesn’t have the strength to do anything more than try to exist - let alone fight the cancer.
Have we gotten to that point?
lizard, from a pink person, it looks like racism is alive and well here Common Dreams. Of course, no one cares if directed against white people.
Bligh 2. As a pink person myself I don’t believe it is racist to point out that we have been most unkind to people of a nicer color. It is also not racist to point out that pink people have a tyrosine defficiency or that jews have a high prevalence of serotonin defficiecy. These defficiencies have consequences, such as dysthymia amongst jews. Don’t be so thin pink-skinned. It is my way of atoning for pink sins.
Lizard, your ’scientific” reasoning for the “deficiencies” of the race is exactly the kind of eugenic idiocy that was advocated for the “deficiencies” of black people in the past.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, just don’t include me in your tyrosine or serotonin deficient psudo-scientific claptrap. I’m sure the jewish posters love hearing that they are less than human because of some supposed genetic deficiency.
All races have genetic “deficiencies”, most of them have been selected by evolution. Such as Africans and sickle cell, which is useful in areas where malaria is rampant. It seems however that pink skinned people are perfectly well suited genetically to achieve in the modern world. Is this because of their genetics? Most likely not, its a matter of circumstances that led pink skinned people to be economically on the top. If you just flipped pink skinned and dark skinned people’s places in the world, without any genetic changes, the dark skinned people would easily slide into their new role as leaders in the economic sphere. They would most likely also become just as oppressive as the pink skinned people currently in charge. Oppression isn’t an issue of race, its an issue of imbalances in power.
Also a pink skinned person would probably be able to run a 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds, if put in a situation where his only viable option to improve his lot in life was athletics. Running is a cultural thing in many African nations, Kenya is a perfect example. If your country is know for producing great long distance runners kids grow up dreaming of being a long distance runner. If your country is know for producing billionaires, you grow up wanting to be a billionaire.
Nice analysis RedRaider. And way to cool down the vile.
The conversation was starting to turn sour, alhough it is an issue that needs to be address through dialogue not ignored.
With that said though. I think Lizard’s first posting was onpoint. I fear that things would only get worse since the effect of colonialism and the on-going neocolonialism have started to roost. From Rwanda, to East-Timor, to the Congo, to Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, to Kenya, and to other conflicts in the larger part of the “Global Souths” which are not being addressed right now because they not yet “news worthy” or have no viable or in demand natural recources at this point in time.
It is true that the problem in these countries are not “tribal” or “racial” because all these people have been living together-in peace for generations upon generations. It is true that the underlyin prognosis is political and social inequality fueld by the unsatiable capitalistic greed. Fueled by wealthy corporations, pupet gorvernments and dictators who want everything for themselve and nothing for others.
What is the solution to this Problem?
A systemic Redistribution of wealth and access to it.
But this is not going to happen because the people who currently own that wealth have the power and they would do everything to safeguard it. Even if it means killing innocent children, women and the elderly.
LifeofQuest said “because all these people have been living together-in peace for generations upon generations.” This is true only until they start fighting the USA or its proxies, and then it is proclaimed that these same people are really “fighting because of ancient hatreds.”
I think this debate about “race” is missing a crucial point… it’s not biological. Race is a socially constructed, subjective idea. Someone who might be considered black in America would be pink (as posters have so quaintly put it) in Brazil or France.
As a society we need to consciously avoid the ideology of black vs. white, that people can be categorically defined by a set of traits. I’m not saying that race isn’t a socially salient concept - it IS - but it’s absolutely ridiculous to try and slot people in essentially arbitrary groups.