WHY MAJIMBO IS THE SOLUTION: KIBAKI, MOI AND JOMO KENYATTA BETRAYED KENYANS , GAKUU MATHENGE (sent by Gordon Teti)

GAKUU MATHENGE

It is rare for a people to cling on mere words of a leader for more than a decade.

But desperately victims of the infamous Enoosupukia ethnic violence still recall the words uttered by the then opposition leader, now President Kibaki, in September of 1994.

"Kibaki’s first attempt to visit us was blocked by police when his entourage was turned back at Kongoni.

Maella tribal clashes victims board a matatu to safer places, in this 1993 photo.

His second attempt in September was successful and emotional. He shed tears at the Maella Catholic Church as he addressed us. He was inspiring when he said, guutiri utuku utakiaga (there is no night that does not see the light of day)," Mr Jesse Chege Macharia alias Fabisch recalls.

The Kikuyu idiom is usually used to lift sagging spirits, especially if immediate solutions are unavailable.

"We have never forgotten those words, we cannot forget his words, even now we are still waiting," says Ms Monica Wanjira, a mother of eight.

They were speaking on Monday morning at Maella, before President Kibaki dissolved the Ninth Parliament the same afternoon.

It was clear from their words, and also from a yellowing copy of a memorandum they sent to Kibaki through their MP, Assistant minister, Mrs Jane Kihara in 2003, that the poor victims of the infamous Enoosupukia ethnic violence looked up to the President as a Messiah.

They strongly believed the President would deliver them from the misery of their wretched lives.

The then Kiambu DC, Mr Samuel Oreta, talks to a victim, Mzee Gidraf Muthama, in 1995.
File Pictures

Not only did they look up to him as ‘one of our own’, being a Kikuyu kinsman, but also his ringing and tearful exaltation for them "not to lose hope till dawn comes" back in 1994, came to assume prophetic and ecstatic dimensions when he was elected President in 2002.

However, when President Kibaki pulled down the curtains on the life of the Ninth Parliament, and effectively on his first term in office on Monday, the hopes of Maella residents were dashed.

They did not even merit a mention in the list of issues he regretted his administration failed to deliver during its first term.

Few can miss the traumatic soul-searching as these people troop to the ballot.

"Tormentors" now in ODM

President Kibaki made his unfulfilled promise when he was Democratic Party chairman and the leader of the opposition. Today, he is seeking re-election and their votes as Party of National Unity (PNU) presidential candidate.

They must chose between PNU and Orange Democratic Movement, (ODM) in whose high table sits immediate former Narok North MP, Mr William ole Ntimama.

Ntimama is the one who warned about "people sitting on a serpent … and who must lie low like an envelope".

He said this, just days before the first wave of surprise raids on the early afternoon of October 15, 1993.

Hundreds of people were killed, homes destroyed and property worth millions of shillings lost.

Maella has since remained a festering wound, a constant reminder of the ugly skeletons and demons, yet to be exorcised in terms of justice to the victims and punishment to the perpetrators.

It is a social-political powder keg that has now given birth to an angry and bitter third generation. Enoosupukia in Narok North constituency neighbours the Maella village of Naivasha division, Nakuru District.

The proximity of the Maella Catholic Mission Church explains why those who were able to escape ran to the place where they have lived as refugees for the last 15 years.

But how do they feel today, now that President Kibaki has not addressed their plight in the five years he has been the head of state?

"It is like cutting your left hand with your right when weeding your crops. That is how we feel about Kibaki. He has not helped us. The other side is unthinkable with Ntimama being a senior member of ODM. This is the tragedy of our situation. Had we ignored Kenneth Matiba and his Ford-Asili and stuck with retired President Moi and Kanu, we would still be having our homes," Fabisch says.

Fabisch says victims of the Enoosupukia ethnic clashes have been treated by Kanu and Kibaki administrations as expendable pawns on the chessboard war for multi-partyism.

"Ntimama hated us because we supported his rival, Haroun ole Lempaka, on a Ford-Asili ticket. The bitter truth that many of us would rather not discuss is that we got ourselves into this situation by supporting opposition politics. The question is was it worth it? What do we tell our children and grand children?" he asks.

Fabisch, soft spoken, slightly built and light skinned, speaks in measured monotone never raising his voice even when an evidently tipsy villager keeps interrupts him.

He betrays a man who intensely analyses his circumstances, but one who is also stewing inside by the sense of betrayal.

The misery the people of Maella are wallowing in is real and pathetic.

Monica, who appears to command respect among her peers, perhaps due to her Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), activism, says many families are at their tether’s end and have no dignity left.

"When a person dies, the family has to put up with the corpse inside the same small rented room until the burial. We do not own land here and a burial site goes for Sh300, friends and relatives have to help. HIV/Aids orphans are many. This morning I saw an old woman using plastic to cook porridge for her orphaned grand children. It is that bad," she says.

The nearest mortuary is 60km away in Naivasha town, an expense few can afford.

To survive, many have had to go back to their former farms in Enoosupukia and make deals with the new landlords. They rent their former farm to grow crops in exchange for half the yields.

The yields pass for annual or seasonal lease payments, paid to the herdsmen who currently occupy the land.

Majority of their largely uneducated children provide cheap labour in flower and horticultural farms around lake Naivasha.

Tucked away about 60km from Naivasha-Nakuru highway, and safely behind the multi-billion flower farms operated by international and foreign firms, Maella was for ten years a scar on Kanu government’s forehead.

Kanu’s administration spared no efforts to keep the visitors away.

Due to the civil society, human rights and donor pressure, the Government wanted to do something urgently to remove the sore scare that attracted so much embarrassing attention.

"In late 1994, retired President Moi visited with the late PC, Ishmael Chelang’a. Chelang’a later detailed then Naivasha DO, Mr Hassan Noor, to screen and collect personal details of everyone.

They told us we were to be was a relocated to a settlement scheme away from Maella. Government officials took hundreds of people to ‘settlement schemes’. It later turned out that they were dumped in Thika, Kirigiti Stadium in Kiambu, Kieni in Kabete, and Ngong. When the scandal broke out they stopped," Fabisch recalls.

Internal refugees

Three weeks ago, Lands and Settlement minister, Prof Kivutha Kibwana, expressed shock, saying he never imagined Kenya had internal refugees when he visited the Kieni dumping site, accompanied by officials of the IDP.

Nakuru-based IDP’s national co-ordinator, Mr Keffa Magenyi, says there are 54,000 displaced persons living in squalid conditions.

"Our main concern is that like the Kanu Government, the Kibaki administration has been keen to dispute the existence of the IDPs. Recently, a delegation of United Nations officials had to play video clips to Vice-President, Mr Moody Awori, who had denied there existed IDPs.

We have also been concerned about the apparent frenzy to mop up funds from the Squatters Fund Trustee (SFT), but with corresponding movement to settle the needy on the ground," Mogenyi said on telephone.

"In the last two years alone, Defence Minister has sold three parcels of land to the SFT totaling over 800 acres, in Molo and Naivasha. He has taken the money but people are yet to be settled," Mogenyi says.

A report of a 2004 Task Force on Internally Displaced Persons (Likoni and Rift Valley) commissioned by President Kibaki, but which is yet to be made public, highlights priority areas that need urgent attention.

"The longer this problem takes to be addressed, it gives rise to second and third generation of displaced persons. There is need to urgently recognise that many people lost their ownership documents during attacks, need to recognise informal agreements and receipts where they exist," the report says in part.

Former Brazilian Ambassador, Mr Ngali Wanyenga, led the task force and members included Mr Earnest Murimi of Catholic Peace and Justice Commission. They handed in the report to the head of public service, Mr Francis Muthaura, in November last year.

But the political sensibilities surrounding the plight of people displaced by the ethnic violence in 1990s, and whose plight the President promised to address as the leader of opposition, has been such that only dare devils like Subukia MP, Mr Koigi Wamwere, dare raise their voices.

Assistant minister for environment and former Naivasha MP, Kihara, would not be persuaded to comment on the Maella issue, which is in her constituency.

"Some of us have no identity cards or voters’ cards. Our children too, and the local political leadership is not bothered. There are people who fear our votes, no doubt. Even when leaders’ meetings are called here, the Provincial Administration is very keen on who attends and they are called out by names," a resident of Maella says.

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