The recent elections and post-election riots
in Kenya
bring forward great sorrow and also give one pause. Is this another situation where Africans tear
each other apart, one may ask?
How is it that people who have lived next to one
another can go after each other in what appears to be the
wink of an eye?
As odd as it may sound, I found
myself, in reading about the Kenya crisis, thinking about an episode
from Rod Serling’s legendary TV series The Twilight
Zone. The episode is called “The Monsters are due
on Maple Street”
and it involves a power failure in a neighborhood that cuts
the community off from the outside world and is completely
inexplicable. A particular home, however, seems to continue
to receive power. The
family in that home has kept very much to themselves and
has not been interacting with their neighbors. Suspicions fly that this family is either somehow
connected to the power failure or knows something that they
are not telling. The
neighborhood ultimately erupts into violence.
At the end of the episode, it turns out that aliens
were behind the power failure, testing whether they can
get humans to destroy themselves.
In periods of scarce and declining
resources, people can fall prey to the worst side of humanity. Their deepest suspicions, fears and jealousies
can arise, not to mention pent up feelings concerning injustice. Thus, in Kenya, after years of oppressive rule,
a pro-democracy coalition, led by current President Mwai
Kibaki, took power. This
coalition included the active support of current opposition
leader Raila Odinga. One major demand of a significant portion of
this coalition was for a democratizing of resources, specifically,
guaranteeing that all ethnic groups/tribes are treated fairly
and equitably.
President
Kibaki’s administration has turned out to be a major disappointment
for members of non-Kikuyu tribes who have complained that
the Kikuyus are the chief beneficiaries of his rule.
It was in that context that Odinga organized and
led an opposition movement challenging President Kibaki.
Until the day of the elections, pollsters indicated
that Odinga would more than likely win the election.
Yet, he did not win.
It was at that point that Kenya
exploded. What is
significant about the explosion, however, is not that there
was anger at the alleged voter fraud that resulted in President
Kibaki’s re-election (note: charges were made by international observers
that the election process and results were questionable),
but that the anger evolved into displays of ethnic violence
rather than violence between pro-democracy vs. anti-democracy
forces.
Vijay Prashad’s recent book, The
Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New
Press People's History),
helps to provide a framework in which to understand the
situation. The independence
movements in the colonial world largely resulted in the
creation of nation-states that made a very incomplete break
with their former colonial masters. Even in cases where they would use the word
“socialism” to describe the path they were taking, there
was rarely a radical redistribution of wealth and power
within these new nation-states. In many cases, dominant ethnic groups from the
colonial period continued to dominate, or in the alternative,
massive resentment against formerly dominant ethnic groups
(that were seen as collaborating with or in general benefiting
from colonial rule) resulted in massive, genocidal or near
genocidal violence (e.g., Rwanda). This situation was exacerbated in Africa and
the Middle East where nation-state
boundaries were largely the result of lines drawn by the
former colonial rulers rather than by the people themselves.
In the period beginning in roughly
the late 1970s, the economic situation for much of the former
colonial world, generally called the Global South, worsened. The massive Debt Crisis and the demands by international
funders, e.g., the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank, for what was called “structural adjustment” resulted
in resources being shifted in the various nation-states
of the global South to pay off debts and to gain much needed
financial aid. Across
the global South, this resulted in privatization, specifically
the selling off of the infrastructure and resources of countries,
piece by piece. Nation-states had fewer resources for healthcare,
housing, education, and all-round economic development. They had to spend what funds they had following
the dictates of the funders in Geneva,
Brussels, London
and Washington.
And while this happened, the lives
of the average person on the street worsened.
The Kikuyu, roughly 22% of Kenya’s
population were not collaborators with colonialism, but
they have been a very significant force in Kenya’s
political life. Insofar
as non-Kikuyus saw the Kibaki administration as favoring
the Kikuyu, it fanned the flames of simmering resentment
that pre-existed Kibaki.
Thus, while Kenya has been relatively stable since
independence and ethnic groups have co-existed, in the face
of declining living standards and resources, and in the
absence of visionary political leadership, many average
people fell back into ethnic consciousness and, as a result,
responded ethnically to the political crisis.
This
brings us back to “The Monsters are due on Maple
Street.”
Even in periods of calm there are suspicions and
prejudices, particularly in societies divided along lines
of class, ethnicity and gender.
These emotions and beliefs do not necessarily reach
the surface in periods of normality. Under stress, however, demons emerge that, if
left unchallenged, can evolve in the direction of irrational,
anti-social violence. The
mob mentality arises and one soon is confronted with the
demand: “you are
either with us or against us.”
Chasing unarmed civilians into a church to then burning
the church is only taking this all to the extreme.
While the immediate political crisis
between Kibaki and Odinga may be resolved in the not too
distant future, the deeper crisis in Kenya has now been evidenced and this
will take a very different effort.
This is not about a Rodney King “Why Can’t We All
Get Along?” scenario. Rather,
it is about a combination of work at the grassroots level
to organize and educate the population as to the nature
of the challenges they face (and specifically who is the
enemy and who is not), while at the same time, creating
and advancing a vastly different national political leadership. Insofar as Kenya continues to dance to the music
of the international funders, i.e., the former colonial
and neo-colonial powers, it will be dancing a dance of death.
The violence in Kenya
speaks less about the Kenyan people and more about into
what any people in the face of despair, brought on by the
loss of control of their lives and their loss of hope, can
devolve. The violence
also speaks to why Kenya,
along with the rest of the African continent, must with
all deliberate speed, find a different path to development,
since the path laid out by Washington, the IMF, et. al.,
is not a path into a garden but a path into a minefield.
Bill
Fletcher, Jr. is Executive Editor of The
Black Commentator. He is also a Senior Scholar
with the Institute for Policy Studies
and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. Click
here to contact Mr. Fletcher.