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Abstract
Since the transition to multipartyism in the 1990s, internal displacement in Kenya has been part of political strategies to retain or win power. Cycles of aggression and antagonist articulation of ethnic identity of perceived hostile voters have enmeshed grievances over unequal land distribution into political discourses of exclusion. Increased use of hate speech, intimidation and inability to recover from the effects of cyclic violence have encouraged ethnic balkanisation in some areas and institutions. This contribution argues that pervasive impunity for all perpetrators and lack of political will to address perceived marginalisation and landlessness has made durable solutions impractical for the majority of internally displaced persons.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank South Consulting for permission to use data collected over the last year through the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation monitoring project and UNICEF Kenya for facilitating field missions to violence-affected areas in 2008. She thanks her family for support.
Notes
1. Ministry of Special Programmes statistics released in July 2008 after an IDP profiling exercise done in partnership with UNCHR and the National Bureau of Statistics. Author's interview with resettlement officer, 26 February 2009.
2. OCHA Kenya, Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan, April 2008, p. 1; the Directorate of Refugees in Uganda indicate that 2,500 Kenyan refugees fled to Mulanda Transit Camp in Tororo Uganda, 1,926 of whom are still in six refugee settlements and urban areas in Uganda. Author's interview with official at the Uganda Office of the Prime Minister, 5 May 2009; and with Edwin Buwa, Legal Officer Refugee Law Project, 6 May 2009).
3. Other ethnic alliances formed along similar lines are the Gikuyu Embu Meru Association (GEMA), Kalenjin, Masai, Turkana and Samburu Association, the Young Kavirondo Association of the Luo and Luhya Kisii, and so on.
4. Communities seem to live in relative peace between elections, and threats of displacement are a characteristic of election campaigns. This dynamic suggests that the centrality of land stems from its potency as a political resource rather than as a trigger of violence due to perceived inequality. Where land conflicts are genuine, they transcend elections and political episodes, as in Mount Elgon.
5. Report of the judicial commission appointed to inquire into tribal clashes in Kenya, 1999. The report argues that the ethnic violence preceding the transition to democracy was fuelled by three factors: ambition by the Kalenjin to recover what they thought they had lost when the Europeans forcibly acquired their ancestral land; desire to remove outsiders derogatively referred to as madoadoa or ‘spots’ from their midst; and political and ethnic loyalty.
6. Also written as Gikuyu.
7. According to studies by Dr Mutuma Ruteere, there are four main interpretations of the Mungiki Movement: as a religio-cultural movement, a local manifestation of the anti-globalisation forces, a criminal gang and vigilante group that has metamorphosed from its cultural roots to a tool for the politics of ethnic exclusion; and a political organisation. See Ruteere Citation2008.
8. Human Rights Watch Citation2008 and Republic of Kenya 2008a.
9. At the height of the post-election violence in January 2008, Mungiki was allegedly used to perpetrate retaliatory violence and displacement of ODM supporters in South Rift.
10. Leys indicates that 40% of land in the white highlands was accessed by the Kikuyu in a deliberate strategy to alleviate the land pressure in the Central province and settle squatters on white farms, but also naturally because the Kikuyu were more able to afford the land fees.
11. According to the anthropologist Mulemi Benson, the Kalenjin pastoralists sold off their land to the farmers for settlement by others, but realised they had made a mistake when formerly accessible grazing lands became individual agricultural lands. This aggravated conflicts with the migrants. (Author's interview with Mulemi Benson, 2 May 2009).
12. Kenya Land Alliance Citation2004a, Citationb
13. Conversation with Dr Karuti Kanyinga, March 2009.
14. David Throup (Citation1987) notes that the 1969, 1974 and 1979 cabinets were 30% Kikuyu.
15. In 1978, a group of Kalenjin elders met again in Nandi Hills hoping that, since the president was Kalenjin, he would revive recovery of their ‘stolen’ ancestral land. The meeting, chaired by one Seroney, revised a 1969 strategy document dubbed ‘the Nandi Declaration’ and presented it to Daniel arap Moi. However, the president suspended the land question and banned the Nandi Declaration so that it was ‘not to be circulated now or in the future’.
16. For instance, Daniel Arap Moi rewarded those close to him with public land, and squatters who had hoped to acquire the land were displaced. In 1995, Agricultural Development Corporation farms set aside for resettlement of IDPs were grabbed by senior politicians and civil servants. Forests were also excised and given to the already landed political class. See JRS 2001.
17. Schlosser and Siegler Citation1990.
18. The same KADU group that in 1962 negotiated for a regional government (majimbo).
19. Weekly Review, 6 December 1991.
20. The perceived lack of social cohesion exacerbates politicised discourses of exclusion based on insider-outsider considerations. For instance, the name of the church where 35 were burnt to death in the Rift Valley on 1 January 2008 was named after a village (Kiambaa) in Kiambu district, Central province. This renaming trend is said to irritate the local people greatly, as they feel ‘disrespected’ and their link to the land obliterated (Interviews in Eldoret, July 2008).
21. Africa Rights Citation1997.
22. Since 1991 there have been an increase and variation of derogatory terms, symbolic connotations and enemy images used to denote outsiders, notably the Kikuyu; in 2007 and 2008 outsiders were also referred to as maharagwe (beans), sangara (couch grass), bunyot (enemy). See Republic of Kenya 2008a, 63.
23. Author's interviews in the Molo and Uasin Gishu, July 2008; see also JRS 2001.
24. Republic of Kenya Citation2006.
25. Author's interviews in Molo, Burnt Forest and West Pokot, 2007 and 2008.
26. The government resettled about 891 families in Kapsita, another 200 in Moi Ndabi and 640 in Elburgon. See details and associated problems in JRS 2001.
27. UNICEF Kenya Eldoret Field Office June 2008 monthly report unpublished.
28. UNICEF Kenya, July 2008 Review Mission Report, unpublished; interviews in Eldoret, March 2009.
29. 1US$ =Ksh.75
30. Interviews with Director of Resettlement, Ministry of Special Programmes, March 2009; see also South Consulting Citation2009 (March).
31. By the end of March 2009 plans were under way to call in the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate; interview with Ministry of Special Programmes.
32. South Consulting Quarterly Monitoring Report, March 2009; unpublished.
33. For example, the OCHA Eldoret monthly report for April 2009, which reported that there were 2,600 IDPs remaining in the Show Ground Camp, but the Humanitarian Update for the week ending 2 May reported there were 1,100 IDPs, as quoted by a government official.
34. See OCHA Kenya, Humanitarian Update, Vol. 44.
35. Interviews by South Consulting in Molo area, August–December 2008.
36. Author's interview with former member of parliament, 18 March 2009.