After more than four decades in power, the country’s post-presidential election violence has driven thousands of Kikuyus away from businesses and farms in the western part of the country and into churches and police stations where they wait for evacuation to the country’s central highlands.
Though the attacks came after an 11th hour presidential victory for incumbent — and Kikuyu tribe member — Mwai Kibaki, Kikuyu believe that rival tribes have used the presidential elections to drive them away from their land.
“Land is very important to us,” said Anthony Kirunga, a Kikuyu living in Nakuru. “It’s not our fault that other people are jealous.”
That jealousy has festered since Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu and Kenya’s first president distributed much of the country’s best farmland among members of his own tribe after Kenya’s independence in 1964. The Kikuyu tribe has since moved into positions of political and economic power and members of other tribes resent perceived government favoritism toward Kikuyu.
“We hate these people,” said Robert Tutuny a Kalenjin farmer in the western part of the country.
Opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, promised to end Kikuyu dominance and fairly distribute the country’s wealth among people of all tribes. Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement had been favored to win a majority of seats in the country’s parliament. But incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, surged ahead in the last hours of voting to retain the presidency.
Millions of Kenyans accused the president of having rigged the election. But, in western Kenya — where Kikuyu are the minority — others went out to exact revenge on any Kikuyu they knew.
Mobs of Kalenjin tribesmen descended on Kikuyu farms in western Kenya killing dozens of people with knives, clubs and primitive weapons. Almost 500 people have been killed. More than 200,000 have been displaced.
Western diplomats have persuaded Odinga to call off anti-government protests scheduled for this week. At the same time, President Kibaki has requested outside mediation from Ghanaian president, John M. Kuffuor — a close friend and president of the African Union. Kibaki has even invited Odinga to become a part of his government. But, Odinga has made it clear that he will never accept Kibaki’s legitimacy.
“I was the one who won the election and should instead be offering the same,” Odinga said.
As the two most powerful men in Kenya continued to haggle over the presidency, Grace Mukuna, wife of Kikuyu farmer Jeremiah Mukuna, 75, waited to see if her husband, who was attacked as he sat on his porch last Sunday, will come out of his coma.
She has decided to join other refugees as they flee to the central highlands.
“I will never come back,” she said.
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