STIRRING IN THE SLUMS

By Barney Jopson 2365 words 23 July 2009 (c) 2009 The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved One by one, complying hesitantly with the odd request of their visitor, the 20 young men get up from the ridge of grass that forms an amphitheatre at the centre of their slum and sing the Kenyan national anthem. As its Swahili words begin to flow they praise bonds of unity, the shield of justice and the virtues of service. But the soaring sentiments jar cruelly with the reality of the singers' lives. Before the paean to the "glory of Kenya" as the "fruit of our labour" has left their thoughts, they are asked to say what they do. "Hustler," answers one. "Super idler," says another. "Minibus tout, without a minibus," says a third. Fifteen of the 20 are unemployed. The men from Nairobi's Kawangware slum represent the five biggest tribes of Kenya. They are united in agreeing that their biggest problem is a lack of income and that the blame for their predicament lies in one place: the country's failing multi-tribal coalition government. The power-sharing government was formed in February last year to end a post-election wave of intercommunal violence that killed 1,100 people, displaced more than 300,000 and shattered Kenya's reputation as a haven of stability in a rough neighbourhood. US President Barack Obama's paternal homeland plays a crucial role as east Africa's manufacturing base and a transport hub for a vast region: Uganda, Rwanda, eastern Congo and southern Sudan all rely on its road and rail links and its port at Mombasa for access to the rest of the world. Kenya is home to the biggest United Nations offices in Africa and is the base for agencies doing aid and development work across one of world's most troubled, conflict-prone zones. Kenya's leaders signed up last year to an ambitious reform agenda that promised the most dramatic transformation of the country since the end of colonialism in 1963 by tackling the underlying causes of the crisis: land disputes, inequality and a skewed distribution of political power. Instead, the government has been paralysed by corruption, in-fighting and a poisonous lack of goodwill - as even some of its own more straight-talking members admit. "The coalition is dysfunctional," says James Orengo, lands minister. "If it had committed to a clear vision and agreed on structures for decision-making, then all these problems would not be there." George Nyongesa, the visiting political activist who was urging the 20 young men on, says he asked them to sing the anthem to hammer home a point: "That there is a complete contradiction between the founding ideals of Kenya and the present operation of our politics." Eighteen months ago, slum residents like those gathering to listen to Mr Nyongesa - a community organiser from a group called the People's Parliament - were hacking each other to death in the inter-ethnic violence sparked by a disputed outcome to the election. Now, popular anger at the failings of the cross-tribe government appears, with a degree of irony, to be prompting some of Kenya's urban poor to question the role of ethnicity in politics. This is not to say that tribal affiliations themselves are dying away: they remain rooted in language, customs and neighbourhood support networks. Those bonds are at their strongest in rural areas. Even in the most deprived areas of the capital - many of which abruptly segregated during last year's violence - citizens are becoming more united by their loathing of the government than they are divided along tribal lines. Unscrupulous demagogues could still whip up ethnic animosity. But equally, the popular discontent could be harnessed to build a political reform movement that transcends tribes. David Njogu, one of the young Kawangware men, offers a blanket indictment of the government that owes nothing to his ethnicity or theirs. "They're not performing. Just looking after their own stuff. Not looking at the basic things we need," he says. "This country has a lot of money but we don't see it. This is the time for the youth to rise up." John Githongo, a top anticorruption official turned whistleblower, says it is too early to talk of class "solidarity" but notes: "Right now, what we have is a growing awareness: it is inarticulate, could be violent, disorganised and anarchic. There is no template for what's happening in Kenya." If the sentiments are allowed to smoulder without structure, they could explode into violence just as gruesome as last year's. If they are organised into a political force, they could make the 2012 presidential election the one in which a cabal of leaders, some with their political roots stretching back to the independence struggle, are ejected from power. To explain the context, Mr Nyongesa points to a dilapidated minibus that honks at a stray goat before swerving close to a row of roadside kiosks. Across its front are emblazoned the words: "Our problem, Kiraka." Kiraka is a term derived from the names of the three men, each from a different tribe, who were rival presidential candidates in the 2007 election and are now united in power - Mwai Kibaki, the president; Raila Odinga, prime minister; and Kalonzo Musyoka, vice-president. But the word doubles up as a derogatory play on the Swahili for patch. "The cloth is torn so you bring a patch," says Mr Nyongesa. "They are the old patch, hanging on. What we need are new clothes." This is not the first time in Kenya that a government's performance has generated huge popular discontent. But several factors make the country different today, not least that Kenyans are better informed and enjoy more political freedom than in the past. Moreover, the cabinet for the first time explicitly accommodates all of the biggest tribes. This undermines an assumption that has been a linchpin of post-colonial politics in Africa: that the poor will back a member of their own tribe seeking power because patronage will repay the community. "We've always said, 'my man will win and he'll give me a job, I'll have food, I can pay rent, I can take my child to school'," says Mr Nyongesa. "But now all tribes are in the ruling class and it's not brought any relief on our side." Mr Githongo says the coalition "has been sadly helpful" in showing that "the ruling class becomes a tribe once they ascend to power, and it is a tribe that guards what it has jealously and accumulates corruptly with a voraciousness born of impunity". Helping to raise the potency of the divide is growing resentment at politicians who have manipulated Kenyans over the course of decades by stirring "us versus them" tribal hatreds. "When the youth went into the streets they were shot, killed, used by the politicians," says Mr Njogu, the young man in the slum. "We have learnt that these guys are going to psych us to fight. Then they just go off and leave us. So it is better to be together against them." Mwalimu Mati, head of the Mars Group, an anti-corruption organisation, says: "A lot of the youth are waiting for someone to tell them the next big idea. What is the plan? Sometimes it can be a criminal enterprise, sometimes religion, sometimes a political movement." It could also even bring the ethnic militias, who played such a strong role in last year's violence, back to the forefront. An illegal gang called Mungiki, which has harnessed the disillusionment of young men in Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu community, is running extortion rackets and bullying members of its own tribe into compliance. Other ethnic militias have proliferated across the country. Ngunjiri Wambugu from the Kikuyus for Change activist group says: "Violence is usually the output of a lack of dialogue. The issue is, can we have a non-violent confrontation with the political leaders?" To make that possible, his organisation is working with others from the Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba communities to turn shared anti-government feelings into a constructive political force. Mr Nyongesa, who is trying to do similar things with the People's Parliament, says that if the grievances of the urban poor are to play a part in 2012, they need a leader who can transcend tribalism. "People still ask me: who will be our Obama?" he says. "I say: it's up to you to identify him." A movement would also need a set of values linked to basic livelihood issues. But Mr Mati worries about the emergence of a demagogue: "You could dupe the population into a massive vote by promising unga [maize flour] at Ks20 [$26 US cents, 16p, 18 eurocents] per kilogram and then do what you like." Sceptics say any attempt to build a political structure around signs of class identity will quickly reveal that the sentiment is shallow and not wired into people's instincts in the way notions of the tribe are after decades of conditioning by politicians. "If there's a crunch and confrontation my guess is that the more important rallying point will be ethnicity rather than class - at this time," says Maina Kiai, former head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. He believes that the most significant socioeconomic divisions will turn out to be within ethnic groups rather than across them. "They will fight each other, but also say 'Let's get something to eat'. So you'll see looting and people crossing from the slums into the wealthiest neighbourhoods." Renewed violence could be triggered at any day by a crisis in the coalition, be it over land reform, a new constitution or prosecuting the masterminds of the post-election clashes at the International Criminal Court. In rural areas such as the Rift Valley - where the violence was at its worst, grievances remain intense on all sides and tribal militias are rearming - it is hard to imagine a coalition of the downtrodden. But it is the Kikuyu youth - including those in groups such as Mungiki - who are likely to have a decisive impact on Kenya's future, because last year's crisis was as much about anger over their tribe's perceived monopoly on power and wealth as it was about a rigged election. If they ditch their own tribal elite to join forces with other poor young men that will mark a turning point for Kenyan politics. If they buy into one of their community's most powerful narratives - that Kikuyu survival is being threatened by every other tribe - then little will change. The actions of the president's closest Kikuyu allies, the so-called Mount Kenya mafia, suggest they perceive the grassroots threat, but are also digging deep into their ethnic bunker. Jimmy Kibaki, the president's 46-year-old son, was recently dispatched to talk about "we, the youth" and position himself as a leader of the disenfranchised poor. He was greeted with derision by youth groups. Mr Nyongesa says he and People's Parliament members have been harassed by the authorities ahead of public meetings. Non-Kikuyus complain of being stripped out of the upper echelons of the police and the army in anticipation of another conflagration. These are reminders that any bottom-up movement that gains traction is likely to be met by the full force of the state. But the young slum dwellers of Kawangware who sang the national anthem in the rain know they have one big advantage. "There are two tribes, the rich and the poor, and we the poor have the numbers," says Sam Onchwari, an underemployed barber. "It's the numbers that can put pressure on the government, and we have more than enough." Coalition 'intrigues' convert presidential loyalist into political rival During the crisis last year that saw Kenya pushed to the brink of civil war President Mwai Kibaki could count on no more fierce an ally or tougher negotiator than Martha Karua. The former magistrate was at the tally centre defending the integrity of an election her party was accused of stealing, and then at the negotiating table securing the most powerful jobs in the coalition for its ministers. So when, this April, the 51-year-old said she was ditching Mr Kibaki - a fellow member of the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest - and quitting in disgust as justice minister, her about-turn shocked the country. To Kenyans her resignation confirmed that power-sharing was not working. Ms Karua is now trying to capitalise on their discontent and position herself for the 2012 presidential election in which she is likely to run on a reform ticket. The coalition is inefficient and riddled with rivalries, she says. It is "a system where you are given the work minus the support to do it, where there are intrigues and you are being undermined continuously after you are given a job to do," she tells the FT. Citing her thwarted efforts to tackle police death squads, an ineffective judiciary and corruption within the coalition, she says: "I think the nexus in all of them is impunity . . . The unwillingness to change anything." She attributes the inertia to the self-interest of ministers. "If you have people who feel exposed by reforms they are going to fight them. There are those who feel the police reforms are going to expose the wrong things they have done previously. There are those who feel the fight against impunity will find them, whether it's with regard to violence or corruption." Mr Kibaki and Raila Odinga, prime minister - foes in the 2007 election - are equally to blame for the lack of action, she says. She also rejects the idea that the coalition has been paralysed by in-fighting between their parties, describing it as a "clever ploy" used as a decoy by both sides. Yet in spite of her damning assessment of the coalition, she has "no regrets" about her role in creating it. "I stood up at [the tally centre] for what is right, for me and my country, not just for the president," she says. Reply to Your PostDelete Post Post #2 Philo Ikonya wrote2 hours ago I like this article for many reasons. One, George Nyongesa is a real Mbunge who is not waiting for some cheap mirage of change.. not at all. And it brings us back to our young people and their pain. And how we have let them down. Our principals appreciation of their plight, our parliamentarians and our other classes of those who have and ( have not earned and are not paying taxes) is very poor. They do not see it as something immediate that needs to be put in the ICU. I remember my pain as a youth, the feeling of being trapped in a village life that so contrasted with my school life ... going to school was a reason to be slightly more comfortable...and very in some years when i got a scholarship. This PAIN IS REVOLUTION fuel. I want to see a Kenyan society where an MP works and pays taxes and does not indulge in all manner of businesses. I know that salaries must slashed but that is not all, opportunities must be created for the young to rise and be in charge. And it is not only the youth in trouble. It is the whole country. I have just called a person i know who cooks well ( I had a contact for him) and he told me he was just on the road walking from one of our slums to see if something would happen to him on the road. My call is what happened. This is an old man. I can only call a few people, help one girl to fetch water, once... but this nation must allow its brains in planning to take over and lead the way...we have learnt; it is not about tribes, it is about a system that allows some to move ahead, far too ahead and ties the rest of us down! Bunge La Mwananchi, Wananchi Pamoja!