Kenya: Flashpoint

In Africa's biggest slum, lines are being drawn. Morris Otieno, a trader and businessman, won't say if he is one of the Luo tribesmen in the township of Kibera, on the southwest edge of Nairobi, who have torched shops, battled riot police and dragged rival Kikuyu tribe members into the street to kill them. But he will say that the Kikuyu must go. "We have to move them away from our areas," he says.

Talk like that is raising the fear that Kenya is teetering on the edge of tribal war. By Jan. 2, after four days of rioting across this East African nation, some 300 people had been killed and 70,000 had fled their homes. In the town of Eldoret, a mob set fire to a church in which hundreds of Kikuyu had sought refuge, burning 50 of them alive. Police bullets have claimed dozens more lives.

The immediate cause of the violence is what international and local observers are calling a blatant attempt by President Mwai Kibaki, head of the Party of National Unity, to rig the Dec. 27 general election. With a high turnout, the vote was initially hailed as a success, but the mood soured as the counting went on. When opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement jumped to a lead of nearly 1 million votes, results were delayed from several of Kibaki's strongholds. When the final result was announced, Kibaki, 76, had squeaked through with a victory of just 232,000 votes over Odinga, 62. Kibaki was sworn in about an hour later in a hasty ceremony. His first act in office was to ban live television and radio broadcasts. The European Union has raised "concerns about the accuracy of the final results." The U.S. embassy in Nairobi said there were "serious problems experienced during the vote-counting process." Most damaging, five members of Kenya's Electoral Commission — which Kibaki had tried to pack with loyalists — have come forward to demand an inquiry into the vote.

All of which would be scandalous anywhere, but it's particularly sad in Kenya. The nation has been one of Africa's brighter stars, a favored foreign-investment and tourism destination, where the economy grew an estimated 6.2% last year. When Kibaki was elected President five years ago on promises to end government corruption, crowds of close to 1 million cheered at his swearing-in ceremony.

But Kenya's political divisions overlie its tribal ones. Kibaki is a member of the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest with 20% of the 37 million population, which has dominated the political scene since Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963. Odinga is a Luo — they make up 10% of the population. The two tribes have shared a tense coexistence, segregating themselves and rarely intermarrying. Luo have long complained that Kikuyu hoard political and economic power for themselves. And Kibaki never made good on his promises to stamp out corruption — a failing that has turned several other tribes in Kenya against him.

Since independence, there have been outbreaks of violence between Kenya's 42 tribes, including in 1992 when 2,000 people were killed. But the ferocity of the anger directed solely at Kikuyu is new, and the church killing in particular has ominous echoes of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when moderate Hutu and Tutsi were also massacred in churches where they had gathered in the thousands to seek safety. "Maybe in Burundi or Rwanda," commented one U.N. official. "But I never thought this could happen in Kenya."

Hope that the violence will end depends on whether Kibaki and Odinga can strike a deal. The two men were coalition allies in the 2002 election, but fell out when Kibaki failed to appoint Odinga Prime Minister. Five years later, positions are hardening further. Kibaki virtually disappeared after he was named winner, making no televised announcement. Odinga, meanwhile, has declared he will not negotiate with his rival until Kibaki admits he lost the election and steps down. Odinga said he was "pained by what is happening," but swore to force Kibaki from office, and called for a million of his supporters to gather in Uhuru Park in central Nairobi on Jan. 3 to inaugurate him the "people's President." The Kibaki government promptly announced a ban on the rally and, on Jan. 2, accused Odinga's party of "well-organized acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing." Odinga, for his part, sounds eager for confrontation. Asked if he should encourage his supporters to cease protests, Odinga told the bbc: "I refuse to be asked to give the Kenyan people an anesthetic so that they can be raped."

Odinga's supporters are just as defiant. "We cannot accept [the election result]," says Otieno, the Kibera businessman. He vows that if the march does not go ahead as planned, there will be worse conflicts to come. "We will go peacefully into town. But if the police interfere, you can guess what will happen. All hell will break loose."