Rift Valley tension persists, bishop warns
Kenya is slowly sliding back to the grips of anarchy witnessed during the 2007/2008 post-election violence, a national forum on peace and reconciliation was told.
It is Eldoret Catholic Bishop Cornelius Korir who first told the forum that ethnic suspicion has continued to haunt the volatile Rift Valley province despite promises of national healing.
He gave an example of Eldoret, where he said families resettled in their farms after having been displaced by the post-election violence have refused to spend the nights in their newly built houses.
According to him the families, which were resettled under the government’s resettlement programme prefer to sleep outside fearing attacks.
Eldoret experienced the worst of the 2007/2008 atrocities. It is in the area where a church was burned leading to deaths of scores of people.
The raiders who torched the Kiambaa church were targeting families that had taken refuge in the place of worship.
Bishop Korir expressed worry that the situation is yet to change, a cause for worry on the eve of another general election next year.
“We still practice politics the same way, we still engage in negative ethnicity, and our politicians are still inciting their constituents to ethnic passions,” the cleric told the forum convened by the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs at Egerton University in Njoro, Nakuru County.
The five-day forum, which ended on Wednesday, discussed strategies for attaining national cohesion amongst various communities living in the Rift Valley Province.
Hotspots
Other speakers supported Bishop Korir’s view, with most of them saying that a discernible pattern preceding the outbreak of violence in various hotspots countrywide was currently being replayed.
National Cohesion and Integration Commission member Gaudins Bomet said that the country had not healed sufficiently to ensure a peaceful transition of power next year.
“If it were up to me, I would delay next year’s polls to enable Kenyans to undertake more in dialogue, but since the country must go to the polls because of constitutional dictates, it is up to us all to ensure that we effectively exorcise the ghosts of our past,” said Mr Bomet.
He said that in perennial hotbeds of violence such as Mpeketoni in Lamu and Likoni in Mombasa, inter-ethnic suspicion was the order of the day.
“In Mombasa, a chilling reminder of the violence that broke out in Likoni in 1997 is often given by residents through imagery; that when you corner a cat and it has nowhere to run, it often turns against its pursuer in a deadly attack,” said Mr Bomet.
The meeting discussed strategies for attaining national cohesion amongst various communities living in the Rift Valley Province, which was said to be a melting pot of various ethnic communities and which experienced perennial outbreaks of ethnic killings.
The forum, which brought together religious leaders, civil society organisations, youth and women groups as well as various opinion leaders from the volatile province, ended with a clarion call for peace and reconciliation.
Participants cautioned that if appropriate measures were not taken to address the root causes of violence that occurred every election year, then the country might not avert a looming catastrophe next year.
