Uasin Gishu governor race lays bare tensions in Rift Valley

In April of this year, a recording of what was reported as a Kalenjin “ritual” performed in Eldoret town circulated widely on social media. In the recording, a series of powerful cries are punctuated by the chorus of several hundred youths massed in the town. For some, this was the culmination of Jackson Mandago’s campaign to clinch the Jubilee Party ticket for the Uasin Gishu gubernatorial race, where he had positioned himself at the “true” custodian of Kalenjin interest.

Mandago was facing stiff competition from Zedekiah Bundotich Kiprop Buzeki, whose strategy was apparently to galvanise ethnic minority votes around his ethnic Keiyo support base. A master of idiom, Mandago’s supposed ethnic nationalism and playing up federalist sensibilities were seen to favour him against an opponent whom he painted as the captured vehicle of “immigrant” interests. That is the nature of Kenyan politics.

ROUSE GHOSTS

Even though there have been subsequent attempts to calm fears, the episode rouses the ghosts of 2007 for the fact that Uasin Gishu is a long-standing hotspot for ethnic violence. The reason for that is a long history that has produced a two-way victim-perpetrator complex between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities in Uasin Gishu. It also creates an easy tool for mobilising popular sympathy. It is a familiar motif in Kenyan politics, making Uasin Gishu’s history a good looking mirror. With the departure of Afrikaner and other wazungu settlers from Uasin Gishu in the 1950s and 1960s, many Kalenjins expected that land would be restituted to the community. Jomo Kenyatta’s government preferred a “willing-buyer-willing seller” policy where individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, could buy land and settle in the then Uasin Gishu district.

Kenyatta’s land policy was a response to a real land crisis in Central Kenya, which has an entire history of itself. To resident federalists however, the policy was a ruse to move people from Central Kenya to Uasin Gishu. After Kenyatta’s death in 1978 and an end to the programme, a problematic political geography remained in place.

THE 'IMMIGRANTS'

The policy had massed the “immigrants” in Eldoret town and satellite settlements in the district. They grafted their sedentary lifestyles to their new habitat, even naming places in Kikuyu. Kalenjins, a semi-pastoral community with an active martial culture, settled in the farmlands surrounding the town. Someone forgot to introduce them.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, an unlikely bond kept the peace. Kalenjins made decent living from agriculture and dairy farming. Kikuyus on their part did well trading essential items.

This tense bond would break in the 1990s. Cuts to donor aid, liberalisation of the economy, post-election inflation in 1992, and plain mismanagement shattered the agriculture sector.

RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION

The agrarian rupture rooted a steady stream of rural-urban migration into Eldoret town. Ethnic violence preceding the 1992 and 1997 elections flushed Kikuyus from rural Uasin Gishu into the town. National economic stagnation meanwhile pushed migrants into Eldoret, erstwhile underpopulated and cheaper than other towns. By the early 2000s, Eldoret was ringed by a densely populated peri-urban band of low-income semi-formal settlements.

Without drama, an economic revolution had taken place. Eldoret’s increased population created an endogenous market for urban traders, cutting dependence on the rural agrarian economy. Slumlords had dethroned the landed gentry. If the damage of the 1991 and 1997 violence forced many rural Kikuyu into urban poverty, it now threatened the romanticism of a martial pastoralist culture.

REGAL POISE

In an ideal Kalenjin world, adulthood means choosing a regal, stoic and dignified poise even in the face of death. By 2007, the choice was no longer available to many.

The timing was horrible. Mwai Kibaki’s government remained hugely unpopular among Kalenjin.

ODM’s “No” campaign in the 2005 referendum resonated with local federalist grievances. It dangerously evolved into apocalyptic anti-Kikuyu rhetoric in the 2007 election campaigns, priming an already precarious tinder. That the flashpoints of violence almost perfectly cascaded on an underlying political geography meant that the mismanagement of the presidential vote count was the folly that triggered hell.

Now, we must sanction incendiary speech, but that only buys us time to fix underlying issues. The land question will remain a delicate political issue. The solution is not in rewinding or rewriting history. It must involve building a sophisticated and inclusive regional economy, instituting a robust social welfare system to protect the vulnerable, and most importantly, building a shared sense of belonging.