NAIROBI—The good news is, Kenya’s new cabinet was finally announced on Sunday. It was the deal everyone had been waiting for, the one that would seal the agreement reached on February 28 in the presence of Kofi Annan. With political peace, there should now be real peace on the ground.
The bad news is, there isn’t. The very next day, Kenya’s dark and mysterious Mungiki clan (a gang/sect/mafia with a reputation for beheading its enemies) made a dramatic gesture of power and unity: They flooded the streets of Nairobi and several other cities, setting up pre-dawn road blocks on every major route in the capital and wreaking lethal havoc for most of the day.
Kibaki’s presidential was still echoing on the news channels, “Let justice be our shield,” when the waitress at my coffee shop told me about the dead body she passed on her way to work, its head lying some metres from the rest. And one of my colleagues had to run for her life when a bus dropped her off directly in the path of a stone-throwing mob of Mungiki.
There were a thousand explanations, none of which made sense. The one the Mungiki gave for their own rampage was to avenge the killing of one of their leader’s wives. But there are strong signs that it was an element inside the Mungiki itself that killed her, so the genuine motive was..?
It’s probably better to think in terms of habits, not motives. There was a strong sense of déjà vu in today’s tire fires, the burning cars and the spontaneous, grizzly body count (we don’t yet know how many people the Mungiki killed, but the police shot twelve)… this wasn’t the first time those angry young men had run amok. They had plenty of practice in the first weeks of 2008.
That’s not the kind of routine you want settling into a country with a massive proportion of unemployed, frustrated young men. It’s true that Monday’s adventures were nothing compared to those of January, and will no doubt be forgotten by the end of the week; but it showed that the Mungiki are more organized than most would have thought—huge numbers of them appeared simultaneously in several flash points across the country, without anyone hearing a whisper of it beforehand. Not the best portent for the dawn of a new Kenya.
And Zimbabwe? Déjà vu all over again. Thankfully it’s taken a more peaceful track than Kenya’s post-election, but the parallels of a delayed result, growing suspicion, and mounting tension are striking. It sure would be cool if the international community could step up and step in, as opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pleaded, “before bodies start piling up in the streets of Harare.” This time, however, it’s up to the neighbors, since Mugabe won’t listen to anyone from outside Africa (except the Israelis, who install his security systems).
Ah, Africa. But before you think it’s all blood and war, don’t forget that the Olympic torch is here now and enjoying peace for the first time since the start of its ill-fated journey. It touched down in Tanzania on Sunday with minimal fanfare and none of the wonderful protests I so enjoyed watching from afar. Alas, the Africans don’t give a damn.
And why should they? It’s only a little far-fetched to suppose that Tibetan freedom is the one cause we’d cheer Africans for fighting in the name of. But much as I would love to see China ease off on Tibet, and Darfur, its own Falun Gong, and all the rest, it’s hard to see why Africans should single China out among all the countries that have contributed to this continent’s suffering. Now that the torch is on African soil, I say, let the bearers do what they can do better than anyone else in the world: run with it.
Just don’t try coming through Nairobi.
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