Affordable Housing Institute : US

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 Kenya now, at least to judge by the news reports.  As reported by BBC News:

 

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 Nairobi’s Kibera slum

 

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 Paris’s banlieuex saw rioting:

 

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, France has been taking in North African Muslims and warehousing them –out of sight, out of mind — in hideous public-housing high-rises.

 

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 Kenya, some of them in responsible positions.  First reports are always wrong, especially when they are fragmentary and come a great distance. 

 

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 Nairobi by a massive security presence.

 

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 Nairobi, Kenya.

 

NAIROBI, Kenya — Nairobi degenerated deeper into violence on Thursday as riot police used tear gas, batons and water cannons to turn back thousands of opposition supporters who tried to rally in the Kenyan capital.

 

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.

 

Kenya is predominantly Christian, heavily Catholic.  Some of the Kenyans I know worry about the Muslim influence.

 

Kenyan police used teargas and water cannons against several hundred anti-government protesters in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

Whatever the cause, what is happening now is horrible:

 

One band of opposition supporters tore through a Nairobi slum, attacking residents and raping several women, residents said. The residents caught one of the thugs and hacked him to death. The man’s body lay on the street for some time because police officers said it was too dangerous to wade into the slum to retrieve it.

 

Housing and civilization are tied to economics:

 

The effects of the insecurity here are rippling across all of East Africa. Fuel trucks, food, supplies and industrial materials are unable to cross from Kenya into Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and other countries that depend on Kenya for their trade.

 

Nairobi is astride the main east-west highway through sub-Saharan Africa, starting in Mombasa and ending in Kinshasa.

 

Kenya’s tea and coffee growers are having problems getting their commodities to the market.

 

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 Kenya’s geographic and tribal divisions, which are stark.

 

From the BBC Web site

 

Striking to me when I visited Kenya two years ago was how, despite massive income inequality and complex and deep tribal divisions, the country was cheerful, optimistic, and evidently progressive.  As the BBC put it:
 

Tribal violence spirals in Kenya,” screams the front page banner in the International Herald Tribune. “Kenya plunges into interethnic violence,” says Le Monde. 
 

But headlines can be misleading.  It is certainly true that the post-electoral violence in Kenya has taken on a tribal character.  Members of the incumbent (and controversially re-installed) President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe have been pitted against other smaller tribes.  But that is only part of the story. 
 

A more complete headline might be: “Tribal differences in Kenya, normally accepted peacefully, are exploited by politicians hungry for power who can manipulate poverty-stricken population.” 

The ethnic and political violence in Kenya has renewed debate about whether multi-party democracy can be successful in an African context where ethnic loyalties are strong. 
 

Opposition supporters were blocked by tear gas as they tried to attend a rally in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday
 

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 Kenya’s predominant Kikuyu tribe) and Mr Odinga (from the Luo community) have accused each other of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the post-poll unrest. 
 

Looters in Kibera
 

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.
 

Will the votes mean change?

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