Us vs. Them

I got back from Eldoret last night, tired but satisfied after three days of interviews. Eldoret is a mid-sized agricultural town in the Rift Valley, the epicenter of post-election violence last year. I am working on a story for Christianity Today.

 

Everybody in Eldoret remembers vividly the eruption that came immediately after the presiding government announced that it had won the December, 2007 election. Within minutes they heard shouting and saw fires burning. People were running everywhere. It is widely believed that the government stole the election, which brought a huge emotional reversal from the euphoria of the election campaign. But the reaction was as much tribal as political, for the two are completely intertwined. This affected Eldoret more than anywhere else because it is such a mixture of different communities. Eldoret was the center of what was once known as the White Highlands—vast tracts of good farmland that British colonists took for themselves. When the British left after independence, much of their land was bought by or given to Kikuyu. The Kikuyu, who are good business people and farmers, have done well there, but they have never been fully accepted by the local Kalenjin people. So the disappointment of the election was interpreted through the belief that the Kikuyu, who have dominated Kenya for much of its history, were unwilling to relinquish power. And that connected to many historical and cultural grievances.

 

The result was that roving gangs of young men attacked Kikuyu families, burned their homes and businesses, and ordered them to leave, never to return. Those who resisted were sometimes killed. (Some other communities were also attacked, but mainly the Kikuyu.) Hundreds died (from both sides) and hundreds of thousands (mostly Kikuyu) became Internally Displaced People (IDPs) living in tented camps for months. People I talked to were still reeling from the memories of violence. And I saw many houses that remain burned-out shells more than a year later. (Here’s one.)

 

As I learned, though, more than a few Christians bravely shielded their neighbors. Many churches became refuges, protecting hundreds or even thousands of frightened people who had lost everything. And almost immediately pastors, who had been (everybody admits) negligent in warning against tribalism, began to meet to pray and take action. This photo is of Pastor Martin Shikuku and his wife at the Glory Baptist Church, where they sheltered 73 people. Her father was killed a few hundred yards from here.

 

Overall, there’s no doubt that church leaders were willingly manipulated by political leaders before the election, which means that they participated in tribal thinking (us versus them) and endorsed politicians (“God’s anointed servant”) along tribal lines. Prominent church leaders have made public apologies for their failure to provide better guidance. It wasn’t so much what they did (though there were some egregious behavior) as what they didn’t do. The church pretty well mirrored society at large. It got sucked into the politicians’ game.

 

There’s a mindset here in which politicians are treated as godfathers, not serving their constituencies so much as becoming their champion. It’s a mindset that politicians use. For example, yesterday the Minister of Agriculture was up for a vote of censure in parliament due to some very questionable dealings he had with the distribution of corn bought by the government on the international market. (There’s famine here, and it’s a very emotional subject.) He’s a Kalenjin, and the Kalenjin in Eldoret interpreted the issue as an assault on them as a community. While I was there I saw groups of men gathered on street corners, talking excitedly about the issue. They stood 100% behind their man, and there were apparently even threats to mistreat people who came from his accuser’s community.

 

It’s very normal to prefer “my people,” whether my ethnicity is involved or something as flimsy as my college affiliation. African tribal identities are deep—communities speak different languages and have significantly different customs. Today there is a lot of intermarriage, and that may erode tribalism’s power for the next generation. For the present, though, ethnic and cultural differences give lots of room for African politicians to manipulate. It reminds me of the way in which white segregationist politicians held the entire American South hostage to a highly self-destructive approach throughout the fifties and sixties by playing off “us versus them.” And the more recent American “culture wars” have some of the same political flavor (though thankfully nobody has gone on a murderous rampage). We all do well to ponder that famous question, “Who is my neighbor?”