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The truth about violence is in the bigger picture
Related to country: Kenya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Story by EUNICE KAMAARA
Publication Date: 1/30/2008

Nearly all my first lessons to my students at whatever level begin with the famous story of the elephant and the six blind men.

The story is so simple that my postgraduate students often wonder at my simple thinking. But for me, the story best prepares the student, very much like a soldier prepares himself for war, not just for the academic life, but also for real life.

The story goes: Some six blind men had an encounter with an elephant. The first man felt the tail of the animal, the second one the leg, the third the sides, the fourth the ear, the fifth touched the tusks and the last one touched the ?..Then the blind men began a discussion on how the elephant looks like.

THE FIRST MAN SAID THAT THE Elephant is like a branch of a tree but the second one said it is not like a branch of tree but actually like a tree trunk. The third man laughed at the first and the second and said that the elephant is neither like a branch of a tree nor like trunk for it is like a flat rough wall. But the fourth man interjected dismissing all others as wrong, saying that the elephant is like a winnowing basket.

Then the fifth man laughed out loudly saying that his colleagues had not properly felt the elephant as the animal is like two big carved horns, but even before he finished describing, the sixth man interrupted to disagree with everyone else and say that the elephant is like a long trumpet.

The moral of the story is that there are many perspectives to reality. It all depends on where you are standing. All the blind men were right in their perspectives because each was accurately describing the elephant from what he felt. However, all of them were wrong because the elephant has all these perspectives. To get to the truth, it is necessary to get as many perspectives as possible in order to see the whole picture. Nothing could be truer than this in explaining the current situation of violence in Kenya.

Many would want to argue that the suspected rigging of presidential vote is the cause of the violence. But this is only one aspect of reality. The presidential vote only sparked off the violence. The truth is that there are deep seated issues related to historical injustices such as of land distribution. But these issues of historical injustices are not the only issues. There are also issues of selfish political leaders, who seek to get or retain power at all costs, even at the cost of their supporters’ lives.

One wonders how they succeed to throw a whole country into such chaos and the answer lies in another perspective: there are many unemployed, poor, hopeless, and frustrated youths for whom an opportunity of violence is a win situation for them because they have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. They can loot, they can release their frustrations even when it is misdirected at their fellow poor youth, or to the police, and they can entertain themselves by harassing the rich, who they are jealous of and sometimes attribute their situation to their riches.

But of course there is also a good number of youth who are not necessarily frustrated or hopeless, but are simply ignorant and therefore easily misused by political leaders.

And we cannot leave out the question of tribalism. The dichotomy between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is clear in Kenya today though the lines are not so clear as they naturally keep expanding.

THE TRUTH IS THAT ONCE WE START discriminating against people on the basis of identity, there is no end to it. We can go down to discriminating on the basis of clans and deeper into families and eventually into individuals.

In short, the reason the truth seems blurred in Kenya today and everyone is blaming everyone else, is that we have six blind men: Kibaki (and all around him), Raila (and all around him), the media, the international community, the religious leaders, and therefore the led (the people), are describing the situation from where they stand.

The truth is that we are all part of the problem and therefore part of the solution. For as long as we remain imprisoned by our selfish interests, egoistic ethnic, political and religious identities, we will never see the truth and we will never be free. For the truth is in the whole picture!

Eunice Kamaara is a professor of Religious Studies at Moi University, Eldoret.

January 30, 2008 | 1:04 PM Comments  5 comments

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In the crisis, the buck stops with Kibaki
Related to country: Kenya

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Publication Date: 1/30/2008

Whether the killing on Tuesday of Embakasi MP Melitus “Mugabe” Were was an assassination or — as the police put it — pure murder, it will certainly complicate the state of national insecurity, which threatens to turn Kenya into a failed state.

It comes as the country grapples with national unrest in which 350,000 people have been displaced, at least 800 have died and property worth billions of shillings has been destroyed.

Such is the cycle of violence that has poisoned ethnic relations that the fear of civil war is not far-fetched and the prospect of healing wounds and reconstruction is simply daunting.

Every image of a razed house, every shot of a drying patch of blood is a chilling reminder of the deep fissures which have turned Kenya’s fabled unity into a mirage. Eldoret, Kisumu, Nakuru, Naivasha — it’s all a tale of blood-letting and destruction on a scale never envisaged in our beloved country.

We have now reached a stage where we must wonder whether the Government has been absent or has been unable to function since President Kibaki was declared elected for a second term and sworn in under a cloud of controversy.

Yet we are nowhere near resolving the dispute: Opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga claims that the election was rigged and has refused to accept President Kibaki’s victory; The President insists he was fairly elected and duly took up office. The standoff has precipitated the worst crisis Kenya has faced since Independence.

This is not about who won or who did not win the presidential election. It is not about who is responsible for organising or fuelling the violence. This is about the simple and indisputable fact that, whatever the circumstances of his victory, President Kibaki now occupies State House and owes this country a responsibility. Granted, the legitimacy of his presidency is in question, but nobody is better placed than he to deal with the daily slaughter of innocent Kenyans and the rancid climate of ethnic distrust.

For now, he controls the instruments of State.

If then there is a government in place, why has the situation been allowed to get out of hand? The killings and evictions in northern Rift Valley, the revenge attacks in Nakuru and Naivasha and the ethnic fighting in Nairobi slums all indicate an abysmal failure of government.

The diplomatic effort

Yes, the formal mediation by Mr Annan’s team has started, but the public’s confidence in the diplomatic effort is continually dampened by jarring remarks — bordering on the insensitive — from Cabinet Ministers and Opposition hard-liners harping on the legitimacy of their cause. How, for instance, does Mr Amos Kimunya propose to push ahead with the Safaricom flotation with internal refugee camps full and some mortuaries overflowing with strife victims? How callous can one be, Mr Otieno Kajwang’, to dismiss the fate of innocent women and children burnt to death in a church as a “wake-up call”?

Then there are the politicians and businessmen who are fuelling a frightening new conflagration. Impatient with what they see as President Kibaki’s inability to handle violent dissent, they are reported to be raising funds and mobilising militias to counter what they see as the targeting of their community. The attacks in Naivasha and Nakuru may be part of this strategy, which may also include leaflets by a shadowy group containing a hit list of alleged tribal “traitors.” The list includes politicians, civil society activists and journalists.

Much of what has befallen Kenyan indicates an absence of leadership. No one can dispute the fact that in many of the worst hit areas, particularly in the Rift Valley, the government’s security and administrative organs fell flat on their faces.

In Nakuru and Naivasha, the world watched in horror as police stood by while armed mobs set up illegal roadblocks and killed innocent people.

Whereas in Kisumu and Nairobi police were accused of using excessive force against rioters and demonstrators, in Nakuru and Naivasha the force appears to have done exactly the opposite: It was ineffective against murderous mobs who killed and maimed in full view of television cameras. Mr Kibaki has at his command awesome powers that can be called upon to restore sanity before things get out of control.

This should not be about using the full might of the security forces against the opposition; this is about applying lawful force to counter all troublemakers, whatever their political or ethnic affiliations. It’s about defending the Constitution and protecting life and limb; it’s about enforcing peace; it’s about statesmanship.

While all sides in the political divide bear responsibility for what has happened to Kenya, it ultimately falls on the President to exercise his authority and do what needs to be done. He has to restore law and order and drive the pursuit of a just political settlement. That is what occupying the Top Office is all about, Mr Kibaki, and there can be no evading that responsibility.

If Kenya disintegrates, history books will record that the collapse of a once great, united and prosperous country happened on your watch.