Macharia Gaitho states - It’s business as usual for the rich as the poor kill each other

Ref: http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=114132

It’s business as usual for the rich as the poor kill each other

Story by MACHARIA GAITHO
Publication Date: 1/8/2008

I have been frequenting my local despite all the post-election chaos around.

Even when violence had reached crazy levels in the slums, not too far away, I found life pretty much normal.

At the shopping centre, typical of middle-class Nairobi, the beer was flowing, everybody was catching up with the news on TV, when not watching English soccer, and the car-wash and the outdoor roasts were doing their thing.

In the pubs, politics was of course the main conversation. While some may have a liking for specific joints, everything is pretty much multi-tribal. The barrel I sit around could be shared by a Kikuyu, a Kamba, a Luo, a Kalenjin, a Somali, a Maasai or any other person that makes it a microcosm of Kenya.

AND BETWEEN THE BEER AND THE banter, there is absolutely no tribal animosity even as the TV brings up images of ethnic violence hitting the poor all over the country, while their wealthy leaders fight by proxy over the spoils.

Even the jokes have been updated. In the early days of the vote count, the one about one Peter Marangi, hired by Mrs Ida Odinga, stocking up on gallons of orange paint was all the rage. And there was First Lady Lucy Kibaki getting packing and removals company, Othaya Express, in readiness for departure from State House.

By last weekend, Peter Marangi was desperately trying to exchange his orange paint for blue paint. Ida Odinga was stuck with rolls and rolls of orange curtain material. Othaya Express was demanding more money from Mrs Kibaki for unpacking and putting everything back in its place.

And life went on. Surreal? Bizarre?

Certainly, Kenya may be burning, on the brink of ethnic warfare and total breakdown, and yet the middle and upper classes carry on as before in the cloistered confines of secure estates, private clubs, gated compounds, razor wire and electric fencing.

Fools paradise, probably, and even more as we start to celebrate what we think is a return to normalcy.

The fact is that the artificial peace and tranquillity we have always taken for granted, has forever been shattered.

IN THE RIFT VALLEY, THE GENIE OF violence, uncorked in the early 1990s as the Moi regime sought desperately to halt the march of democracy, has never been stilled. It is always there, lurking below the surface, and ready to boil over at a moment’s notice.

Some elements, now in the Kibaki regime, might have created the Mungiki as a Kikuyu counterweight to the Moi era Kalenjin warriors in the Rift Valley (Such is a time we must cease this nonsense of a ‘certain community’ and say it as is it).

The problem is that such forces, once created, often take on a life of their own. We have witnessed after the elections an ethnic violence in the Rift Valley that could recur again and again unless the underlying grievances are properly and comprehensively addressed.

Some in the ODM initially welcomed the violence as the anti-dote to Kikuyu arrogance, until they realised it was directed by forces in their midst they had no comprehension of.

Then there was the urban violence, particularly in Nairobi, where the dreaded gang, Mungiki, was mentioned as the one leading the Kikuyu troops against their presumed enemies from the Luo and other communities.

If the Kalenjin warriors were an unofficial army of the previous government, then one wonders whether the Mungiki are playing a similar roles in this government.

One picture missed in all this is that it is the poor fighting the poor, the poor killing the poor, the poor burning the houses for the poor, the poor raping the poor, the poor decapitating the poor.

The poor are waging war against their fellow poor on behalf of the wealthy, who despite ethnic differences and party affiliations, are drinking together, sleeping together, pulling business deals together, partying together and playing golf together.

SO WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE poor realise they are nothing more than pawns and cannon fodder on the giant chessboard or monopoly set by which the rich and wealthy amuse themselves?

That will be the time when Kenya will be ripe for revolution. Here it will not be the revolution that sweeps President Kibaki out of State House and installs Raila Odinga. Not at all. It will be the revolution that dumps both members of the political elite into the dustbin.

Of course experience shows that revolutions in Africa often bring chaos rather than order and a re-making of society.

Perhaps the trauma of the past week or so will force us all to take a long hard look. The solution is not in the rival elites entering into coalition or sharing power. It is in comprehensive reshaping of society.