I love a good debate as much as the next person but it's always difficult when people take what you say out of turn, out of context and then turn it around and base an entire argument on that.

All the statistics that I based my arguments upon were derived from reports on CNN and Al Jazeera because its is virtually impossible to access such information from a Kenyan source when one is not in Kenya. If they were wrong, I humbly apologise, it was never my intention to mislead anyone. And now, here is my response to Daniel Waweru's rejoinder:

I think it irrelevant whether or not Kenyatta, or Odinga, was right in his reaction or counter-reaction to that incident or in their politics at that time. The point, and this Waweru misses completely, is that the perception on the ground was that Kenyatta was attacking the Luo. And this perception was, in my opinion the seed of the mistrust and hatred between the two groups that has persisted until today. Jaramogi Odinga may very well have been planning a coup, but whatever the personal or political issues between the two men what matters is that in reacting against the people and not the politician Kenyatta inadvertently opened the door for the mistrust that we are seeing today.

 "Kenya Report: Politicians Fueled Ethnic Violence"

In 1991, President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya confidently predicted that the return of his country to a multiparty system would result in an outbreak of tribal violence that would destroy the nation. His prediction was alarmingly fulfilled as violent clashes between different ethnic groups erupted across the country from 1991 to 1998. However, far from being the spontaneous result of a return to political pluralism, there is clear evidence that the government helped to provoke this ethnic violence for political purposes and did not take adequate steps to prevent it from spiraling out of control. "

(Human Rights Watch Website, 2008 )

And this is the second argument that Waweru completely missed. I do not posit that 1992 was worse, or that there is anything at all trivial about this years violence. I merely contend that as Kenyans should acknowledge the truth; that our politicians have been exploiting us and our brothers across the ethnic divide for generations. Any Kenyan who believes that any politician who was ever in parliament before 2002 has not in some some way exploited ethnicity for political gains is highly delusional and a hypocrite. And I emphasise the words any politician. Moi, Kibaki, Odinga, Musyoka, Murungaru, Murungi, Mudavadi, Saitoti - any politician.

The protests that we are seeing on the streets of Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu are not tribal, they are political. The targeting that we are seeing in Eldoret, Molo, parts of Kisumu, parts of Nairobi and parts of Central and Eastern provinces are ethnically motivated but that is a separate issue.

A perceived injustice has been committed in these elections and that is a fact. This article has not the time or space for debating this, but it suffices to say that many, perhaps not all, of the youth protesting alongside ODM are not protesting because they are anti-Kikuyu but are angry because they were sold the ideal of democracy. As a result, they turned out in huge numbers, braving the hot sun and long queues to vote. And to see that ripped away from them with apparent impunity by the very institutions that were conceived to preserve the integrity of their votes has made them rightly angry.

Regardless of whether or not the ODM or the PNU or the ODM-K rigged the elections, only the PNU was caught in the full glare of the media and hence only the PNU is perceived as the culprit by the Kenyan electorate. Remember in politics and much of life, perception is reality. We all watched that Electoral Commission officer stand up and tell us that he was risking his life by informing us that public servants were even as he spoke inflating the results for districts in Eastern province, we listened to the EU observers confirm that account and we've seen all other nations except Uganda refuse to congratulate Kibaki because they do not believe that his election was legitimate. What else should we conclude?

I think it is more to do with the intensification of media attention than you are willing to give the media credit for. The difference between 1992 and 2007 is that today we know that at least 600 people have been killed so far because KTN, NTV, CITIZEN and other broadcasters report that more than 600 people have been killed around the country. In 1992 even at the heart of the clashes in Kenya, with the withdrawal of international aid and other problems, the first item in the news on KBC was reliably "Mtukufu Rais Daniel Arap Moi leo ali..."

The only statistics we have on the 1992 clashes are those that the selfsame government - which was perpetrating a lot of the crimes - gave us or allowed the media to give us. How do you know how many people were buried somewhere in a forest or disappeared from their homes and were never heard from again? Today Kenyans, even at the heart of this crisis, got up got dressed and tried to go to work. In 1992 the sense of fear was palpable because no one wanted to be the next guy in the Nyayo House basement. And why do you think even today in 2007 the police post so many GSU people around the city mortuary? As the adage goes, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, how do you know it fell?

 Information is power and this is why the very first target of military coups across the world are broadcasting stations.  Control the media and you are one step forward in the effort to controlling the entire population. And that's the key difference between the clashes this year and the clashes of 1992.  In 1992 the state had more or less complete control over the media, today it does not. The media is a tool of indoctrination, a little nugget that Moi seems to have whispered into Kibaki's ear and that is why the first act of our new government was to ban live broadcasts. 

Once again, and without in anyway diminishing the value, validity and disturbing nature of what you've shared about the atrocities being committed against the GEMA and Kisii people, or your contention that the Mungiki, allow me to counter with a clip from the BBC Monitor secti0n of their website, that compiles general sentiments from blogs around the world ;

"Some blogs appeared to be calling for reprisal attacks.

The Standard and Daily Nation newspapers have reported that leaflets were circulating in Central Province - the Kikuyu heartland - warning members of other ethnic communities to leave. The reports said that close to 1,200 people had left their homes in fear and were camping at police stations, and that at least four of them were suffering from bad knife wounds, after they were attacked.

Reacting to this development on Kikuyu.com, Maituwiti (our mother, in Kikuyu) said: "Those who advocated violence against the Kikuyus in Rift Valley and Nyanza, may have banked on the fact that in the past Kikuyus hardly ever retaliate.

"Those tribes have no problem castigating the Kikuyus even as they massacre them, then they cry so loud trying to drown out the cries of the majority of the victims."

Contributor Moderator1 supported these sentiments, saying "What goes around comes back around. They did not except [as published, presumably expect] the victims to just take it and do nothing or did they?" he added.

"Leave these Luos alone," wrote Chuchu155 in the Kikuyu language, adding, "Let's write in Kikuyu so that [others] do not know what is going on."

EXTREMISM

Reacting to last week's claim by the chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Maina Kiai, that the Kibaki government was using the banned Mungiki sect, whose members are largely Kikuyu, to protect the Kikuyu community, contributor Gikenye wrote on Kikuyu.com that, "what is wrong with Mungiki resurrecting? nothing. They are standing up to fight for the house of Mumbi!!!!" [Mumbi is the mother of the Kikuyu people, according to Kikuyu oral tradition.]

Other members of the pro-Kikuyu forum seemed to support this view. Njau ya Mbogo [child of a buffalo, in Kikuyu] wrote, "What has Mungiki done or what would they do that hasn't already been done to our people by," what he called, "ODM-sponsored savage terrorists and murderers?"

Writing on the same forum, Bugus said, "We need to defend ourselves," adding in Kikuyu that, "it is time to open our eyes because these people are finishing us.""

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To finish I would like to stress, emphasise (and other superlatives) in my opinion there are two separate issues occurring side by side. The ethnic issue in Kenya is pervasive, historical and sadly has been exploited, many times violently, by successive generations of politicians and even non-politicians for electoral gain. The political issue, the perceived (I refuse to be drawn into that argument here) rigging of the elections by the PNU is a separate animal that is barely 3 weeks old.

I contend that the government, has sought to link the ethnic to the political to position themselves as the only group in Kenya that can get us out of this mess and hence gain some political mileage, a plan that is working to some extent. I insist that ethnicity, being as pervasive as it is in the day to day lives of Kenyans is the equivalent of the American "Race Card" in Kenya, a measure of last resort employed by politicians to justify seemingly irrational behaviour. I stress that if politicians in some way allowed rationality to creep back into their consciousness they would find that most Kenyans, even those currently engaged in running battles with the police in Nairobi, want peace, but they want justice more, and they view their security as expendable in the quest for what they perceive as Justice.

 I conclude therefore, and this is the premise of my previous article, that the international media has conflated the two issues - the ethnic and the political - and emerged with a gory picture of Kenya that many of us who have lived our whole lives there will find unfamiliar and disturbing. Think what you may about Rwanda, but regardless of what CNN tells you, there was a political issue at the heart of the genocide - poor representation of a section of the population in the government and other institutions coupled with exploitation and harassment, and their perceived involvement in the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana. This was then shrouded in ethnic terms - the community was Tutsi - which in turn led to the genocide. Kenya is not there yet, but if we continue to stretch the cloak of ethnicity over the mutually exclusive political issue we may just get there.