Kenyan explosion fueled by poverty, flawed election

After the Electoral Commission of Kenya certified Mwai Kibaki on Dec. 31 as victor over Rail Odinga in the Dec. 27 presidential election, giving Kibaki 4.6 million votes to 4.4 million votes for Odinga, the opposition supporters, including many of the poorest Kenyans, rose up in protests that were in turn repressed with police bullets. According to accounts in the Kenyan and Ugandan press, as well as in the imperialist-controlled media, by Jan. 6 at least 1,000 people all over Kenya from the Coast to the Rift Valley had died in the battles. Some 250,000 Kenyans have been forced to leave their homes.

Kenya is among the 20 poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income of $360 and a high degree of income inequality. Many of Odinga’s supporters were from the very poor, and not all the fighting has taken place along ethnic lines. Nevertheless, much of the big-business media in the United States try to portray this outburst in Kenya solely as the result of ethnic tension and ethnic disappointment over what is seen as a manipulated election result.

But the corporate media omit the historical background and the role the imperialist world plays in the internal conflicts in the former colonies. They hide the responsibility of the colonial policy devised by the British and reinforced by Washington to divide and conquer, pitting peoples against peoples, nationalities against nationalities, and setting up countries, not only in Africa but also in Asia and the Middle East, for internal conflict in order to strengthen the hand of imperialism. As they were being driven out of their colonial holdings in South Asia, the British divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. They split Kuwait from Iraq to hold onto its oil. They drew arbitrary borders in Afghanistan and Sudan. They made these moves to sow the seeds of future conflict that they could use to promote their own interests.

In Kenya, the British consciously followed a policy of divide-and-rule, favoring some of the 40 ethnic groups in the country over the others. Kibaki is from the Kikuyu ethnic group, which contains about 22 percent of the Kenyan population. The British, the former colonial power in Kenya, focused their exploitation and oppression and land grabbing on this ethnic group, which led to the Mau Mau rebellion from 1952 to 1959. Over 10,000 people were killed during this period and the British forced nearly 300,000 into resettlement camps.

Odinga belongs to the Luo people, which is about 13 percent of the Kenyans. His father, Oginga Odinga, was one of the Luo leaders of the struggle against British imperialism and was vice-president in the first government after independence, serving with President Jomo Kenyatta. Kenyatta, who was a Kikuyu and a leader of the Mau Mau, spent most of the rebellion in prison.

Raila Odinga, educated in the socialist German Democratic Republic but now a wealthy business owner, was himself part of the Kibaki government from 2002 to 2005.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Dr. Jendayi Frazer arrived in Nairobi Jan. 4. She has had a series of meetings with President Mwai Kibaki, who Washington has treated as an ally up to now, and separately with Raila Odinga. As of Jan. 7 Dr. Frazer was still in Nairobi, calling the elections flawed, criticizing both the regime and the opposition, and thus not publicly taking sides.

Odinga’s party has called off nationwide demonstrations called for Jan. 8, citing the “threats of violence.” But no agreement on power sharing or new elections has been announced. It appears that the African Union will also be sending President John Kufuor as a mediator.

Washington is trying to recolonize East Africa under the guise of the so-call “war against terror.” Since February 1980 it has had an agreement with Kenya for the use of local military facilities, such as the port of Mombasa and airfields at Embakasi and Nanyuki. The airbases were used very recently when U.S. special forces intervened along with Ethiopia to drive out the Islamic Courts government in Somalia. London and now Washington’s use of a client regime in Kenya to support its overall intervention in East Africa can do nothing but harm the people of Kenya, whatever nationality or ethnic group they belong to.

Whatever steps the Kenyans take to resolve the current crisis, it will be important for anti-imperialists worldwide to demand that the U.S. and Britain keep their hands off Kenya and East Africa.