Kenya: Always the poor suffer first
When tragedy strikes, the poor suffer first. When violence breaks out, the poor suffer most.
Riots are so depressing, I think, because they are the poor expressing rage and the immediate effect of their rage is to make themselves poorer — by destroying what the poor have.
Such a spectacle appears to be gripping
More than 300 people have been killed and some 70,000 displaced since Sunday.
From the BBC site: People walk through the charred remains of a market in
The violence was triggered by claims of vote rigging in the 27 December presidential election.
Mr Kibaki on Thursday called for an end to the unrest and said that once that had happened he would be prepared to speak to the opposition.
Sooner or later, slums always erupt. That’s what I wrote in November, 2005, when
Riots occur in slums through a combination of gradually intolerable pressure and random visceral spark. Pressure rises through the unholy quintet of squalor, isolation, unemployment (which breeds boredom and anger), gangs, and crime. For forty years, ever since De Gaulle’s Algerian escapade,
And:
Severe income concentration is slowly but ultimately toxic. If we ignore the slums, for years and even decades our failure has no cost, but once the lid is off the Pandora’s box of horrors, television magnifies the effect. Anger feeds on anger, violence is briefly intoxicating, rage finds an outlet.
In writing all this, I’m cautious and conflicted. I have friends in
Police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse thousands of opposition supporters on Thursday as they tried to hold a banned rally in the Kenyan capital’s Uhuru (Freedom) Park.
Demonstrators poured out of Kibera slum and other shanty towns after dawn but were prevented from reaching the centre of
Police dispersing a crowd with tear gas and water cannons
Similar reports come from the New York Times:
Protesters ran away from tear gas in the Kibera area of
Protesters burned tires, smashed store windows and fought with the police across the city.
Some demonstrators showed restraint, yelling to the rowdier members in their ranks, “Weka mawe! Weka mawe!” which means, “Put down the stones.”
Other protesters torched businesses as police officers in padded suits chased them away from the downtown area.
“We will burn this country down!” screamed Abdullah Mohammed, a young protester. He promptly set fire to a mountain of tires.
Kenyan police used teargas and water cannons against several hundred anti-government protesters in
Whatever the cause, what is happening now is horrible:
One band of opposition supporters tore through a
Housing and civilization are tied to economics:
The effects of the insecurity here are rippling across all of
This post isn’t really about housing, but since I posted about Kenya on Monday — posted hopefully, in the face of ominous reports — I feel duty-bound to report what I see, from the safety and antiseptic distance of my computer screen. My previous post alluded to
From the BBC Web site
Striking to me when I visited
Tribal violence spirals in
But headlines can be misleading. It is certainly true that the post-electoral violence in
A more complete headline might be: “Tribal differences in
The ethnic and political violence in
The BBC goes on to express the hope I feel about democracy in an environment of communications:
Many of those governments are far from perfect.
But the advent of at least some democracy – assisted by relatively cheap technology such as FM radio stations and mobile phones which can spread information easily – has encouraged what seems to be an irreversible cultural sea-change in African attitudes to those in power. Put bluntly, that change means that people can no longer be comprehensively fooled or dictated to.
It is still possible for politicians to cheat at elections – for example through the vehicle of ethnicity. But the new freedoms, coupled with the new technology, make it almost impossible for politicians to do this without people knowing what is going on.
That is a good start, African intellectuals say, and it may one day mean the end of negative tribalism.
Is that what’s happening now? Are cynical leaders (of either or both parties) simply trying to grasp or hold on to power?
Supporters of President Kibaki (a member of
In spite of the frightening but fragmentary reports, I still have hopes — that the tension will be defused, and that the crisis will lead to a strengthening of democracy, and an awareness that wherever there are vast oceans of the poor, anyone who is not poor needs, out of decency or self-interest, to do something about it.
I have hopes. Right now, that is about all we have.
