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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Tana River Clashes Expose Lack of Leadership

By KK Blogger

The silly season is here. Civil servants are leaving their 'plum' jobs to join politics. Well, the move betrays all that is wrong with Kenya. You see everybody wants a piece of the pie without making any effort to bake the same.

So will new and different faces like those of people (soon to be former insiders) like Alfred Mutua and countless others make any real difference in the overall governance of the country as well as in the lives of the Kenyan people after the 2013 general election?

Sadly, the ongoing carnage, and massacre of the Pokomo and Orma people of Kenya is a residual effect that occurs when a so-called dysfunctional democratic government has failed its people, not just once, not twice or even six times, but has failed its citizens over and over and over again in the course of the last five decades in terms of providing basic human rights and basic services such security among others.

Hence one of the many reasons why people in affected communities end up taking matters in their own hands with deadly consequences rather than opting to seek legal solutions from the judicial system that has been nonexistent in so many remote regions of the country such as in the Tana Delta for decades.

Of course there is no justification whatsover for the ongoing violent hostility and revengeful murderous assaults on children, women, the elderly and unarmed men among the two communities that have resided on either side of the Tana River.

However, those charged with the overall adminstration, security, community policing and most of development - which has been 100% nonexistent - in the region are to blame for the frequent outburst violence between the two communities who have been each other's nemesis since the era when the powerful King of Massylii relinquished his rule that had extended all the way up to the Tana Delta.

On the other hand, lest we forget, talking of the rest of us, who live far away removed from some of the remotest areas of Kenya, the ongoing bloodshed in the Tana Delta is neither politically engineered nor ethinically motivated at all.

Basically, it has been about the struggle for survival and scramble (deadly at times) for the control of scarce resources, namely grazing space and fertile farming land along the Tana River.

Cycle of violence

Further, murderous assaults similar to the current one among the Pokomo and Ormo have been allowed to take place in the past within different regions of the country, such as the 2007/8 post-election violence, Likoni (Mombasa), Mt. Elgon, Trans-Mara, Moyale, Marsabit, Isiolo, Mandera, Laikipia, Aldai, Trans-Nzoia, Mathare, and Kibera (third largest slum in the world, - our national pride and world monument of abject poverty - hell's village (inferno) on the African continent).

All carried out in the struggle for the control of scarce basic resources in the afore mentioned regions.

And unfortunately, it will be business as usual for the next president, senators, governors, parliamentarians, women representatives, elected local officials, and new police commissioner (or inspector general).

Including the well connected, the wealthy, elite, so-called civil society, social-cum-political activities, tribal political chiefs, tribal war lords, common ignorant foot soldiers, and above all the sanctimonious religious leaders.