Once upon a time, there was a strong institution known as a political party founded on principles as opposed to belonging to an ethnic group or an alliance thereby. Kenya’s first political parties on the eve of independence were such institutions. They were parties of principles albeit tinged with some ethnic element. Unfortunately, this ethnic […]
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Admire and love him or disparage and hate him, Raila Amolo Odinga is the most seasoned prominent politician still active on the national scene. The man has a career spanning over thirty years something that is unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. It is, therefore, little wonder that Kenyans are wont to bestow him with […]
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The Kenyan elections at the beginning of March 2013 were saluted as historic but they weren’t. They were only “historic” in as far as the elections were undertaken under the new constitutional dispensation. The most distinctive element of the latter is devolved power and deconcentration of governmental functions from Nairobi closer to the grassroots. As […]
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I distinctly remember watching on television with concern how young men from the Coast province of Kenya were ambushed and rounded up by security forces who busted them in the midst of military training with homemade wooden rifles a few years ago. Given the ragtag nature of this wannabe “army,” my initial reaction was to […]
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What Ails Kenya?
Ethnic Conflict Analysis
1st August 2008
By Nicholas Kariuki Githuku
University of Nairobi
For Rotary Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Chulalongkorn University-Bangkok, Thailand
June 24th –September 17th Session
The post-election violence that broke out after the hotly contested 27th December elections and the subsequently disputed results is, arguably, what most people know about Kenya in terms of conflict. Indeed, for a long time, the country has been thought of as an island of peace in a sea of political turmoil. Beyond this recent flare-up of violence relayed to major world capitals around the world by the electronic and print media, little else is known about the root causes and nature of ethnic conflict in Kenya, which are structural and embedded in Kenya’s history.
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