The two major opponents in the crisis that gripped Kenya early this year, President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, have become partners in a big coalition government.
According to both parties that is sufficient reason for the country's main ethnic communities to forget about their strife and resume their harmonious cohabitation. "If Raila and I can co-operate, why would you keep isolating yourselves, instead of all marching in the same direction?" the president told the people who lost their homes as a result of last month's violence.
The government wants the hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes. But the refugess are hesitant. A part of the crowd at Kibaki's conciliatory speech to the homeless last month left in disgust. One man said, "We don't want to be cattle, on our way to the slaughterhouse." And a woman said, "My neighbour shot arrows at me in January, he set fire to my home and stole my cattle. How can I live next door to him while he is milking my cows?"
Fear
Last week the government started an operation called Rudi Nyumbani (Return to your home). But tribal animosity remains rife. Some refugees who came back of their own accord were attacked by people in their neighbourhood.
| The violence that erupted after the December 2007 presidential elections in Kenya cost 1500 lives and displaced over half a million people. The economy sustained damage worth approximately 1500 million dollars. |
Displaced people expressed their fears during the recent reconciliation tour that Kibaki and Raila Odinga made in the regions that suffered the heaviest violence. One displaced farmer complained after his return,
"We got a cool reception from our neighbours. We felt unsafe, despite the presence of extra troops."There are numerous reasons for the refugees to have doubts after they fled the violence that followed the elections. Particularly for Kikuyu, belonging to President Kibaki's tribal group, who were driven from the Rift Valley province earlier this year by ethnic Kalenjin. In their election campaigns, a number of Kalenjin MPs of Raila Odinga's party had said that "foreigners should be expelled" - a clear reference to the Kikuyu who have settled in the Rift Valley over the past one hundred years.
 When all was well: queueing for the Kenyan elections |
Resistance toward the Kikuyu in the province remains considerable, as became clear last week, when Kalenjin MPs called for a temporary halt to the Rudi Nyumbani campaign until a number of demands were met, such as an amnesty for the attackers.
New violence
In and around the slums of Kenya's capital Nairobi thousands of displaced peope are living in shelters. The wide 'green zones', separating Kikuyu from other citizens have been scrapped, but the thousands of burnt-down huts and homes have not been rebuilt. An inhabitant of the Mathare Valley slum says, "The polical elite pretends everything is back to normal, but the doubling of food prices has made our lives impossible. This will lead to a new eruption of violence. We'll grab the first opportunity we get to plunder again." Some four million of the 30 million Kenyans live in slums.
Unequal ownership of land and vast income differences are seen as the social causes of the violence in Kenya. Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga promised that their new cabinet would reform land ownership. But at present, the government seems to be more preoccupied with the economic consequences of the displacements: the food production in the Rift Valley, a grain belt, fell by a third as a result of the mass population drift. That is one of the reasons why Kenya needs food assistance for 1.2 million people this year.
"Let's rob together"
Quiet seems to have returned to Kenya since the formation of the coalition government. But the causes of the violence remain unclear. The government pretends there is no more reason for revolt now that there is a government of 92 ministers and junior ministers. But the grand coalition appears to be a reincarnation of all the earlier regimes: of the Kenyatta government (1963-1978), the Moi government (1978-2002) and the Kibaki government since 2002.
Commentator Macharia Gaitho describes the coalition as an association of thieves who have taken the motto "Let us rob together." He says one might just as well have asked the mafia to form a government in Kenya. According to Mr Gaitho, "Half of the ministers from Kibaki and Raila's parties are known thieves, plunderers and ethnic warlords. For the political class a return to normality does not mean the recreation of an equilibrium in society, but the recreation of the possibility of official rape, robbery and plunder. Is this really the cabinet with which to fight corruption and bring about sensible reforms?"
*RNW translation (rk)
Tags: Kalenjin, Kenya, Kikuyu, Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga