Many commentators on the post-election violence
in Kenya have sought to label it as a battle of the haves and
the have-nots, a struggle against perceived historical injustices and
the effect of pressure on resources following decades of massive
population growth.
There
have been numerous attempts at branding the violence, but one sticker stands out, not just in the post-election violence, but also in the
populist pre-election narrative of the opposition party and its leaders: 41-1. It is according to the ODM's craft, a struggle pitting the rest of Kenya against the
Kikuyu that has best defined Kenyan politics these last three years. The
international media and even Koffi Annan have failed to restrain the ODM in this most shameful quest.
Even
this last weekend, ODM Secretary General Anyang' Nyong'o was quoted saying, ‘We
cannot allow one tribe to dominate us economically, in business and in
politics.' At the funeral of slain Embakasi MP Mugabe Were, Raila Odinga also
weighed in, saying that skewed job allocations in the
country would not be tolerated, claiming that
there was a plot to allocate jobs to certain ethnic groups at the
expense of others, citing the police force as one of the targets.
A
few weeks ago in Kisumu, the ODM leader said to a crowd baying for guns to
fight against the government, that they must not touch the Kisii. It
was obvious what he meant then, and the people of Kisumu seem to have taken the
implicit order seriously. The town has now been cleansed
of Kikuyu life.
But
why were the Kikuyu chosen for demonisation? Is it the little accident of the
fact that President Kibaki is Kikuyu? Is it, as Maina Kiai, Muthoni Wanyeki and
the ever increasing troupe around them keep insisting, that the violence is not
ethnic, but political with ethnic overtones- whatever that means? Is there something deeper?
The
case has been made that this strategy of isolating and attacking the Kikuyu was
informed by the perception that blessings are showered on them by the
neo-patrimonialism of the Kenyan heads of state, which patronage allows the Kikuyu
districts wealth and comfort denied to other Kenyans. So the ODM's struggle is
then one of retribution against the Kikuyu for their privilege, one which it
seems has won it a lot of support from certain communities.
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Would
Kenyans really have felt this way had they not be guided and goaded by the ODM
party? It is clear that the setting apart of these communities was deliberate,
and is consistent with global trends when a developing country is in
transition toward greater democracy. According to Amy Chua's thesis as
promulgated in World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market
Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, this switch provides the opportunity for a
politician or political party to seize on the people's envy and resentment of
a market-dominant ethnic minority, and lead the electorate in a revolt against
established capital and those perceived as controlling it.
A
market-dominant minority, not quite self-evidently, is a (usually ethnic)
minority that, achieves an economically dominant position in what is largely a
free market economy. Such a minority as in the case of our GEMA peoples need
not be a national minority (these ethnicities make up at least 30% of Kenyans).
It is sufficient that in areas such as the vast swathes of the West of the
country or the Coast, these groups stand out for their economic dominance, as
for that matter do the Kisii, Somali and Asian groups which we will leave out
of our account, but which have, by all accounts, suffered similar
aggression in the post election period.
In addition, the group need not be
in actual domination, all that is needed for its qualification for envy and
demonisation, is the perception that it does dominate; that it has controlled
the political system to the detriment of the majority. The feeling against this domination and
marginalisation is so real that it takes a visitor to Kenyan no more than a few
days to have it pointed out to him that the Kikuyu and Kenyan Asians are
greedy, corrupt and exploitative.
Published above is a video of an interview of Professor Chua on Markets, Democracy and Hatred, or what another publication termed Vengeful Majorities. In the book, Chua whose family is ethnic Chinese from the Phillipines, makes
such a clear and persuasive argument that it seems immediately explicatory of
the Kenyan crisis. Her
argument is that rapid conversion to majoritarian rule and free-market
democracy make even clearer the glaring advantage that certain ethnicities hold
over others and that this often leads to vicious inter-ethnic strife, and specifically as we saw in Kenya, attacks on the accursed ethnicity. She directly mentions the Kikuyu and Kenyan Asians in her book, and the interview, not just for their tremendous success, but also for the tension between them and the rest of the country, fingering it as typical and reminiscent of her experience of the Phillipines where she lost her grandmother to similar ehnically motivated violence.
In a recent
interview with the BBC's Newsnight , former anti-corruption John Githongo
dismissed the suggestion that African countries were not prepared for the full
processes of democracy. Robert
Kaplan however, has long argued that the West's obsession with transplanting democracy
to countries that have not cultivated the institutions to support it is naive
and often dangerous, fostering demagogues (who can point at rising or existing
inequalities) and use these to stir up communal hatreds.
In "Was Democracy Just a Moment? " Kaplan heaps scorn on the United States'
fondness for exporting democracy around the globe. Democracy often
brings instability and becomes a vehicle for amplifying ethnic and
minority tensions, he says, rather than providing the foundations for a
middle class, growing prosperity and stability. What people really
want, Kaplan writes, is a better life, which benign authoritarianism
and hybrid democratic-autocratic regimes may be better able to deliver.
"My point, hard as it may be for Americans to accept," Kaplan writes,
"is that Russia may be failing in part because it is a democracy, and
China may be succeeding in part because it is not."
Uganda's President Museveni is not a fan of democracy for developing countries. He has written,
"In
fact, I am totally opposed to it as far as Africa today is
concerned.... If one forms a multi-party system in Uganda, a party cannot win
elections unless it finds a way of dividing the ninety-four percent of the
electorate [that consists of peasants], and this is where the main problem
comes up: tribalism, religion, or regionalism becomes the basis for intense
partisanship."
Chua extends this
argument, showing how expanding markets exacerbate the problem by enriching
already-dominant minority groups even as democracy empowers jealous and angry
majorities. So for example, the entrepreneurial bent of the Kenyan Asian led to their lending to the state
through purchase of government securities at very high interesst rates in the 1990s, a venture that won them the hatred and envy of many other
Kenyans.
It is this inequality that has exercised the opposition these last three years. They
argue, while vigorously waving the Society for International Development's report, 'Pulling Apart', (PDF) that inequality in Kenya is rising, and that
all the gains touted by the Kibaki government are not felt by the poor,
especially not the teeming masses in Nairobi's slums. They point
out that Central Province has improved
immensely on many scores while other provinces have not shown nearly as healthy
growth rates. They point at the presence of facilities in Central Province and use these to whip
up the passions on the ground, the Kikuyu are wealthy because they are favoured by the state, they say.
Their case is not
always false (it is often based on pre-2000 data), but what it does constistnently is to confuse the correlation showed in the report with causality. As
a reading of the SID book, Chapter 2 reveals, there has not been an
intentional, state driven effort to favour one region or ethnic group over
others. Given that the Kibaki government's strategy is entirely in line with
previous successes elsewhere, where high
growth rates were achieved through increased agricultural output and growth in farm
productivity, driven by strategic government investments in extension services,
rural infrastructure and a systematic elimination of anti-export bias, it
cannot be said that the government set out in any way to increase inequality. On the contrary, all
the evidence points at a deliberate focus of government investments in rural
areas in infrastructure, electricity, water, and sanitation, both directly and
through the CDF. These investments were complemented by investments in human
capital (both in quality and quantity, as indicated by increases in real expenditure
per pupil at primary and secondary level). Following a similar strategy,
many countries achieved both high rates of growth and declining levels of
inequality.
We have, it is clear not met such success, but there were obviously extenuating and unexpected
shocks in our experience. The massive hike in global oil or the drought in
the early years of the Kibaki government all brough great difficulty in reaching government targets. These reduced the effect of much of
the economic transformation, especially in urban areas where inflation put many
ordinary products out of the reach of the poorest Kenyans. This effect was not selective either, but hit poor Kikuyus, just as hard as it did poor people from other ethnicities. And that is where World on Fire is useful.
It is obviously
extremely sensitive, to speak about the economic aspect of communal violence,
since rhetoric like the ODM's, about one ethnic group exploiting another is so
often a precursor to atrocity. But this book makes clear that minority market
domination is a reality in much of the world, and one which inspires such
jealousies, fears and hatreds that they at the slightest excuse and with the
guidance of a skilled demagogue explode in ethnic animosity and the most
vicious violence.
Still, a study of such
minorities will perhaps provoke in all of us a sensitivity to our potential for
manipulation, and for government, a sense of the urgency with which the task of
balancing development must be approached. Even as standard development theory postulates that in
the early stages of development, inequality among regions intensifies, up to a
point where incomes begin to converge; we cannot it seems afford that wait, we must
find a balance between ensuring rapid economic growth and ensuring such
redistribution as would not give excuse for another bout of chaos as this one.
We cannot argue that democracy is not for Kenya, but it behoves our political leaders to guard their rhetoric, and not seek to incite, no matter how tacitly, Kenyan citizens against each other. Leaders across ethnicities must now seek to emulate such communities as are blazing the trail in commerce and industry. The less left behind a community feels, the less likely it is to erupt in violence against the market dominant minority.
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You hit the nail on the head. I have read world on fire and Amy Chua describes what is happening in kenya as if she lives there. I'm recommending this book to anyone who is interested in finding a solution to kenya's current problems.