Competidores actuales: Nivel de competitividad Alto

Kenya’s transition to multi-party politics has been violent, and the Great Rift Valley has been at the centre of historical land and ethnic clashes. Naivasha still bears visible scars from these most recent conflicts in 2007 and 2008: deep on the valley floor as you drive towards the town, you can see on its periphery an IDP camp that is home to thousands who were internally displaced as a result of this post-election violence. However, what happened in the 2007 General Elections and its aftermath was not unique in Kenya’s political history, being rooted deeply in colonialism and land-related conflicts beginning well before the country’s independence in 1963.

When the British arrived in Kenya around 1895, the traditional land tenure systems in Kenyan society were entirely reorganized. The main objective of settlers was to cultivate the agricultural land of the Great Rift Valley, and as a result new land policies and legislation were immediately developed. For example, in 1902 the First Crown Lands Ordinance stated any unoccupied land belonged to the crown, disregarding traditional land rights, and consequently many ethnic groups suffered great land losses. Because the Rift Valley’s agricultural territory was especially attractive to settlers, hundreds of thousands of acres of land were already distributed among British aristocrats in the Naivasha area by this time by the colonial government. For example, 100,000 acres were given to the infamous Lord Delamere alone, who subsequently acquired over 200,000

more acres in the early 1900s extending from Naivasha up the Rift Valley (Rutten and Owuor 2009).

These huge land losses coupled with other policies of the colonial government, including forced labour, taxation, and a mandatory identity card, resulted in protests from local Kenyans. This led to the 1932 Land Commission that investigated these grievances, but ultimately further exacerbated land-related conflicts by promoting the segregation of ethnic groups and land holdings. For example, the administration established native reserves based on ethnicity, which ultimately served as a cheap, landless, labour pool for settler farmlands and there was a further influx of migrant squatters in search of wage labour. This colonial restructuring of access to land was at the core of the Mau Mau rebellion, when Kenya was officially under a state of emergency from 1952-1959 during a period of violent, anti-colonial insurgency. As a result, the colonial government

ultimately agreed to introduce the first resettlement schemes by 1960, at the same time the first Kenyan political parties were forming around ethnic lines and the politicization of the control of land (Kanyinga 2009).

The first two political parties in Kenya were the Kenya African Democratic Party (KADU) and the Kenya African National Union (KANU). KADU advocated for the return of land to its pre-colonial inhabitants, which would give the Kalenjin and Maasai control of the Great Rift Valley, while KANU promoted currently established property rights, as their supporters were mostly Kikuyu who had migrated to the Rift Valley under colonialism. KANU won the first elections in 1963, and under the new independent administration of President Jomo Kenyatta resettlement schemes were initiated. By focusing resettlement on landless Kikuyu to the Great Rift Valley, the new Kenyan government and settlers provoked hostility between this ethnic group and Kalenjin, who maintained that they had pre-colonial rights to the arable Rift Valley. Karuti Kanyinga (ibid.) succinctly summarized these hardening ethnic boundaries, noting that:

The solution to landlessness thus resulted in ethnicity becoming an important factor in the land problem and also in national politics. It hardened inter-ethnic

animosity between the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin, the main groups competing to secure rights in the former white highlands (332).

From the 1970s onward, intense land buying competition ensued between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin throughout the Rift Valley through land purchase programmes, which only deepened this ethnic animosity (ibid.).

In 1978, Vice President Daniel Arap Moi became Kenya’s second president and was able to suppress land grievances until the early 1990s, when Kenyan citizens demanded the introduction of multi-party politics. In response, Moi and KANU used the land question to gain political support based on ethnicity, again using the Rift Valley to pit Kikuyu against Kalenjin. This campaign became violent in 1991 when KADU supporters invaded farms and forcibly evicted mostly Kikuyus from the Rift Valley. After Moi was again elected in 1992, ethnic violence erupted throughout the country and approximately 300,000 people were affected and displaced (Adeagbo and Iyi 2011). In 1997 during the weeks after the General Elections, another KANU victory mobilized around the land question, violence targeting the Kikuyu and forced displacement again erupted in the Great Rift Valley. In 2002, Mwai Kibaki ended the 40-year KANU reign since Kenya’s independence, becoming the country’s third president relatively peacefully, with only approximately 325 people dying from election-related violence during this time (Kamungi 2009; Rutten and Owuor 2009).

3.1.1

The 2007/2008 Post-Election Crisis

While the 1992, 1997, and 2002 elections all saw some degree of land related conflicts and ethnic polarization, the issues of land and ethnicity and the ensuing post-election violence in 2007 was the worst Kenya had ever experienced. Two main political parties, the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya (ODM) led by Raila Odinga, and the Party of National Unity (PNU) led by Kibaki, became the main actors throughout this election. ODM’s ethnic alliances included the Luo, Luhya, Nandi, and Kalenjin, while PNU’s supporters were dominated by Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru. Again, the issue of land rights was used as a political tool pitting these ethnic groups against each other,

election, hundreds of people had already died in politically fuelled violence and soon after Kibaki was sworn in for a second term on December 30, 2007, post-election violence exploded throughout the country (Kanyinga 2009).

On New Year’s Day 2008, 39 people seeking asylum inside of an Eldoret church, mostly Kikuyus, were burnt to death by ODM supporters. In Naivasha revenge killings of about 50 people, mostly Luos, were subsequently carried out by PNU counterparts, with such spontaneous violence continuing until April 2008. This post-election violence was mostly concentrated in the Great Rift Valley, where Kikuyus were violently forced from their lands and in counter attacks, Luo, Luhya, and Kalenjins were also forced from Kikuyu- dominated areas. Illegal roadblocks were set up by perpetrators on both sides along the Nairobi-Eldoret and Nairobi-Kisumu highways, targeting members of the opposition’s ethnic groups. By the time of the resolution, a coalition government negotiated by former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan, nearly 2,000 people had lost their lives and 600,000 had been internally displaced (Kagwanja and Southall 2009; Rutten and Owuor 2009).

In addition to the magnitude of 2007/2008 post-election violence, it is also important to note that this election was distinctive for Kenya in a number of other ways. While land and ethnicity remained at the forefront of political debates, for the first time religion was used as a mobilizing issue in attempts to align with Christians and Muslims. Generation also became a political tool with nearly 60% of the population age 15-35, and the ODM especially campaigned to attract younger supporters. This too was the first time

independent opinion polls were used during the campaigns and became contested by both major political parties. Furthermore, the 2007 General Elections were the first to be held during the explosion of new information and communication technologies, and the use of text messages and the internet disseminated election-related information more rapidly than ever before (Cheeseman 2008; Kagwanja and Southall 2009). Finally, the 2007/2008 post-election violence was, for the first time in Kenya’s political history, analysed the most thoroughly from a gendered perspective.