NAIVASHA, Kenya. Jan 29th. (Toronto Star) –A thick black pillar of smoke billowed up from a neighbourhood in the ordinarily quiet town of Naivasha, surrounded by lush green mountains and dotted with flower farms. Young men carrying anything from wooden table legs, to stones and machetes cheered on as the fire rose and what once was a house turned into smouldering ashes. As the violence triggered by disputed polls has spread east, Kikuyus, the tribe that has borne the brunt of the chaos, are taking revenge on rival Luos with an ultimatum: ethnic cleansing or death. Several hundred Kikuyu men and women faced off against an equal number of displaced Luos, the tribe of defeated presidential candidate Raila Odinga in Naivasha and Nakuru, Rift Valley's provincial capital some 70 kilometres northwest. "Exactly what is being done to our own people is now being done to them," said Jack Kinyanjui, 30. "We are for peace and they are not. Either they leave, or they die."The spreading violence has reached a point that neither President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, nor Odinga, a Luo, may be able to stop it, said an official from Kenya's state-funded human rights panel. "I don't think the politicians can stop it any more, it's out of hand," Linda Ochiel, program director at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Nairobi. "Yesterday we watched on television as people with machetes were hacking people to death and the army was looking on." Kenya's Rift Valley province has been the epicentre of the violence that has convulsed the nation. After the Dec. 27 election results were announced, the region's dominant tribe, the Kalenjin, began attacking their Kikuyu neighbours, who are the same tribe as Kibaki. But since Sunday, the tables have turned. In Naivasha, some 80 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, dozens have been killed as Kikuyu gangs burned through the town. In the western city of Kisumu, however, thousands of machete-wielding youths hunted down Kikuyu members, torching homes and buses and clashing with police. Witnesses yesterday described seeing two people pulled from cars and stoned to death, while another was burned alive in a minibus. Naivasha drew throngs of Kikuyus from the central highlands in controversial resettlement plans by the first post-independence government in the 1960s, ousting the indigenous Kalenjin and Masai from the area and spurring the start of years of resentment. Over the decades, several tribes descended on the town to find work in the flower industry, a major export, and Naivasha became a melting pot of different tribes.
But after the month-long orgy of violence, angry Kikuyus now want their co-workers and neighbours out and threaten that if they don't leave by the end of the month, more chaos will be unleashed. Already some 800 people have been killed since the election and 250,000 displaced. Naivasha, like other tourist towns nationwide, has seen a virtual halt in visitors and the crisis has caused $1 billion in damage to Kenya's economy. Kibaki and Odinga blame each other for the violence, trading accusations of "ethnic cleansing." Human rights groups and officials charge it has become organized. "What is so alarming about the last few days is ... there's evidently hidden hands organizing it now," said Britain's visiting minister for Africa, Mark Malloch-Brown. He spoke after meetings with Odinga, Kibaki and their mediator, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.
by Tia Goldenberg
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