Violence and Exodus in Kenya's Rift Valley, 2008: Predictable and Preventable?

Abstract

This article offers a preliminary analysis of the outbreak of violence in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya, over January and February 2008, following the national elections of December 2007. Maps of the earliest phase of the violence are reproduced to illustrate the sequencing and location of conflict. The causes of the violence are explored through discussion of historical patterns of land settlement in the Rift Valley, the impact of political violence in key constituencies since the early 1990s, and more recent political contingencies around the question of constitutional reform and regionalism (majimboism). The violence of 2008 bore strong similarities to earlier episodes of conflict in the Rift Valley, and in that sense was predictable and might have been prevented. Though the December 2007 poll was the catalyst for this violence, its causes are to be found in deeper-rooted historical and political conflicts.

Notes

1. Kalyvas, Logic of Civil War, intro.

2. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 10–15.

3. HRW, Ballots to Bullets, and International Crisis Group, Kenya in Crisis for the best published accounts to date.

4. Throup, ‘The Count’.

5. A selection of the literature on the 1990s violence includes; Akuwumi, Report; HRW, Divide and Rule; KHRC, Ours by Right, Theirs by Might; KHRC, Killing the Vote; Republic of Kenya, Report of Parliamentary Select Committee to Investigate Ethnic Clashes; Klopp, ‘Ethnic Clashes’; Médard, ‘Les confits’; Médard, ‘Dispositifs’; Muigai, ‘Ethnicity’; Mutahi, ‘Political Violence’; NCCK, Cursed Arrow; Oucho, Undercurrents; Rutten et al. , Out for the Count; Throup and Hornsby, Multi-party Politics.

6. Anderson, ‘Yours in Struggle’.

7. Anderson, ‘Majimbo’; Lynch, ‘Negotiating Ethnicity’; Oucho, Undercurrents; Ngunyi, ‘Resuscitating’; Klopp, ‘Ethnic Clashes’; Klopp, ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump’.

8. Akuwumi, Report, Rift Valley chapter, 10.

9. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 11–13; Akuwumi, Report, Rift Valley chapter, 44.

10. Oucho, Undercurrents.

11. HRW, Ballots to Bullets, 37–38; ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 3.

12. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 3.

13. KHRC, Still Behaving Badly.

14. Médecins Sans Frontières , ‘A Hidden Crisis’; Médecins Sans Frontières, ‘Mount Elgon’. Thanks to Jake McKnight.

15. UN Country Team in Kenya, ‘Kenya Presidential Elections Violence Situation Report No. 1’, 1 January 2008. Available at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/MUMA-7AG3X8?OpenDocument. Accessed 9 January 2008.

16. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, ‘Kenya: Civil Unrest’, Information Bulletin No. 1, January 3, 2008. Available at www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/retrieveattachments?openagent&shortid=AMMF-7AHH73&file=Full_Report.pdf. Accessed 23 February 2008.

17. UNOSAT is ‘the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme, implemented in co-operation with the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the European Organisation of High Energy Physics (CERN)’. See http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/who_we_are.htm for more information.

18. The fire data used in production of the maps is regularly collected by two civilian NASA satellites, the Aqua and the Terra. Both satellites carry a MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), an instrument able to sense the peak intensity of light that fires emit. Once gathered by the satellites, fire data is processed by the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) at the University of Maryland. The data is often used for tracking patterns of brush fires and use of fire as an agricultural management tool. Launched to provide data on a variety of environmental processes, the Aqua and Terra satellites image the entire earth every one to two days. See http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms for more information on FIRMS at the University of Maryland and http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/ for more information on MODIS and the Terra and Aqua satellites.

19. Personal communication with UNOSAT staff, 31 January 2008.

20. ‘Active Fire Locations in Rift Valley Province Following Kenyan National Elections’, 3 January 2008. Fire data acquired and processed by NASA/University of Maryland (2008). Analysis and map production by UNOSAT (2008).

21. It must be noted that the underlying base maps do not show all up-to-date district boundaries. Part of interpretation must involve an awareness of the context in which these maps are created – they are produced for emergency relief purposes under great time constraints.

22. Personal communication with UNOSAT staff, 31 January 2008. Also see http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/faq.asp.

23. Note that the final announcement itself may have occurred after many of the fires were detected by the satellites.

24. Personal communication with UNOSAT staff, 31 January 2008.

25. HRW, Ballots to Bullets, 35–38.

26. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 11.

27. Kenya Red Cross Society, ‘Kenya: Electoral Violence’.

28. Kenya Red Cross Society, ‘Kenya: Electoral Violence’.

29. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 12

30. See for example, Associated Press, ‘Politicians Pay for Killings’.

31. Harter, BBC interview with Kibor.

32. Throup and Hornsby, Multi-party Politics, 550.

33. Klopp, ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump’, 277–78. Klopp characterizes the shift in Nandi politics around this land dispute as a pro-nationalist (Nandi) but anti-majimbo move. While this certainly accurately reflects the tone of the debate in the mid-1990s, I read this differently over the longer term, seeing it as having contributed to a deepening of majimbo rhetoric and action in subsequent years. The Nandi land debate was ultimately not about the pros and cons of majimboism per se, but about precisely whom majimboism was to benefit.

34. Akuwumi, Report, recommendations

35. Beatrice Obwocha and Karanja Njoroge, ‘Kibor in Court on Alleged Incitement’, East African Standard, 26 February 2008.

36. See Lone's comments in Associated Press, ‘Politicians Pay for Killings’.

37. Robert Olouch and Mike Pflanz, ‘Secret Army Preparing for War in Kenya’, Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2008; Nation Team, ‘Raising Funds to Arm Gangs for Revenge Poison Delicate Peace’, Daily Nation, 27 February 2008. We should be aware, however, that media investigations have focused primarily on ODM, ignoring defeated candidates within the PNU alliance, including those from KANU. Some of these individuals were culpable in the violence of 1992 and 1997. The role of defeated politicians from parties other than ODM therefore needs closer scrutiny.

38. In the relevant literature, upon which the following account draws, for the official view see Abrams, Kenya's Land Resettlement; and Nottidge and Goldsack, The Million Acre Scheme. For critical class analysis, see Leys, Underdevelopment; Leo, Land and Class; and Njonjo, ‘Africanization of the “White Highlands”’. For the politics, see Wasserman, Politics of Decolonization; Sorrenson, Land Reform; and Harbeson, Nation Building. For the agronomy, see Von Haugwitz, Experiences with Smallholder Settlement; Ruthenberg, African Agricultural Production; Ominde, Land and Population; and Odingo, Kenya Highlands. And for connections between the original Scheme and current political violence, see Kanyinga, ‘Land Question’; and Boone, ‘Winning and Losing’.

39. Abrams, Kenya's Land Resettlement, intro.

40. Harbeson, Nation Building, 266–67.

41. Abrams, Kenya's Land Settlement, 19

42. Kanyinga, ‘Land Question’, 218–20.

43. Kanyinga, ‘Land Question’, 221.

44. Harbeson, Nation Building, researched in the late 1960s, gives the best account of this.

45. Klopp, ‘Ethnic Clashes’, 477.

46. See Abrams, Kenya's Land Settlement for oblique references, and Harbeson, Nation Building and ‘Land Reforms and Politics’, 231–52 for a fuller discussion.

47. Anderson, Eroding the Commons, chs 7 and 8, for a discussion of the politics of this on the earliest schemes in Baringo and the forested neighbouring area of Lembus.

48. Kanyinga, ‘Land Question’, 227

49. Personal communications with several members of the Kalenjin elite, January 2008.

50. Leo, Land and Class, passim.

51. Leys, Underdevelopment, but see also Kanyinga's excellent summary of the position in Uasin Gishu, ‘Land Question’, 165–275.

52. Kenya Land Alliance, ‘The National Land Policy’.

53. Klopp, ‘Pilfering the public’, 7–26.

54. See Klopp, ‘Pilfering the Public’, and ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump’; and Kanyinga, ‘Land Question’, esp. 233–39.

55. See note 7 for the relevant sources on this violence.

56. For the example of Enoosupulia, see Klopp, ‘Ethnic Clashes’, 493–99.

57. Klopp, ‘Can Moral Ethnicity Trump’, 278–86.

58. ICG, Kenya in Crisis, 13–15.

59. Kagwanja, ‘Power to Uhuru’, 52–70.

60. Anderson, ‘Vigilantes’, 532–36.

61. Nation Team, ‘Raising Funds to Arm Gangs for Revenge Poison Delicate Peace’, Daily Nation, 27 February 2008; HRW, Ballots to Bullets, 35–58.