Kenya: A Culture of Violence or a Violent Culture?
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25 November 2008: Kenya: A Culture of Violence or a Violent Culture?
Prior to the post-election violence that broke out in January this year many actors hailed Kenya as a beacon of democracy. The question is whether this praise was based on an accurate assertion? The fact that a country has never had a successful coup or had never been involved in major inter-state conflict does not mean that it is a democracy par excellence. Whilst the failure to manage democratic transitions has caused violence in many other countries, Kenya has always experienced violent conflicts in its peripheral regions. These peripheral regions are inhabited by the poor (political and development outcasts) who are routinely punished by systems that make escape from poverty impossible - systems that help the non-poor more than the poor and that seal off all escape routes from the culture of violence. Importation of this violent culture of expressing dissent or of organizing life into urban spaces is what exacerbated the post-election violence witnessed earlier this year.
Kenyan political parties have often used violence as a means to leverage their interests and push forward their agenda and this has occurred in every election since 1992. The waves of the massive displacement and the destruction of property was thus something every good analyst should have been able to predict prior to the December 2007 election.
Violence is a means of expressing opposition and dissent on most issues in the country and in many areas. Politicians use it to demonstrate their muscle, school children to complain about unsatisfactory conditions, ethnic groups to claim their territory and to command the use of natural resources such as pastures and in churches. It is also used to determine who should lead and obviously control the ‘generous offerings’ from the public. Leadership wrangles in sects also have their own kind of violence. At the domestic level, it is used to settle land disputes, inheritance disputes and to punish errant children and wives. School officials too believe it solves the indiscipline problem without regarding the hormones that drive the teenagers to go haywire. The result is the country ends up with entire generations that have been socialized into a culture of violence. When the same generations step into positions of power, all they understand is brute force to get their way. The worrisome issue is that the violence destroys everything, not just lives, but infrastructure that the country cannot afford to rebuild. The destruction of infrastructure signals seething anger with the skewed resource allocation models that have marginalized some communities for decades.
Meanwhile these marginalized communities have known no other way of life and thus continue to espouse the use of violence as a show of manhood. For instance, cultural practices amongst pastoralists condone the use of violence to amass wealth. As one pastoralist pointed out, ‘It doesn’t matter if the woman I want to marry costs a hundred head of cattle. I will gladly give away all I have and start to rebuild again through raiding’. The idea may sound noble and every woman would be proud to be treasured in this manner, but the question is: When will the cycle of violence stop? Though this may seem disconnected from the violence in the urban and modern spaces, it is simply two sides of the same coin. By not paying attention to the cultural traits of such communities, we have forced them into an alien mold because they are not organised in the same way as all of us. Hence we consider them as disorganized and thus not meriting the benefits of modernization.
Impunity breeds violence and this is rampant in Kenya. When a country fails to punish its big men and wrongdoers for massive fraud and crimes, it is only normal that disregard for rule of law escalates. Irrespective of the grandness of the crimes, no big man (read politicians and businessmen) has ever been convicted in Kenya. All the big financial scandals in the country were not committed by the little people whose main vice is petty corruption. Neither have Mwanachi, (the public) ever had the capacity to mete out physical punishment on their opponents or to swindle the government. That the country fails to honour and respect its laws can only result in anarchy and this is witnessed at all levels. And when a country buries its head in the sand and ignores the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, we shouldn’t be surprised when violence erupts across all fronts. The silence and inaction itself from the government is a form of violence. Not taking action is a deliberate policy option.
The author and analyst Patrick Chabal was right when he argued that disorder and violence work for the benefit of the ruling elites in Africa. If, for instance, the violence in Northern Kenya stops, it will be difficult for many politicians to campaign since there won’t be a hot issue to manipulate and no promises to make. Likewise, it would be difficult for the big men to make money through selling commodities to the region at exorbitant prices because security and bad roads are expensive overheads.
Another good example was shown by those anticipating displaced persons to return to their homes prior to the 2007 elections. They made sure it wouldn’t happen by destroying all structures that had been left standing. The police trivialize these as sporadic incidents yet it is the same nature of violence that is witnessed when major ruptures occur in the society. Religious interlocutors, who may offer a partial solution, have suddenly become indispensable to quell the anticipated violence as communities lean more on political interlocutors or perhaps predators. Paying attention to the culture of violence is essential as it has implications for the structuring of relations among individuals and groups. When we analyse the violence in Kenya, it is safe to conclude that much of what we observe is forced violent behavior and not necessarily behavior that is determined by choice.
Dr Annie Barbara Chikwanha, Senior Research Fellow, Africa Human Security Initiative, ISS Nairobi
