Kenyans have been frightened by the extent and scale of post-election violence and displacement, but what has shocked them most is how fast the economy has faltered.
Tourists exited in droves when violence broke out after Kibaki assumed power. On an Airbus to Nairobi from Johannesburg that can hold 300, there were 30 passengers; all but five were Kenyan residents. Airlines serving Nairobi are at present running at a loss.
For this tourism-reliant economy, December and January should be peak earning times when northerners escape frigid winters and South Africans and Australians flock to the beaches of Malindi and Mombasa and the game-viewing havens of the Masai Mara, or scale Mount Kenya or Kilimanjaro (which most access from Tanzania).
Instead hotels are empty and staff hover anxiously in empty restaurants fearing job losses if tourists don’t return. “You’re welcome,” the Kenyan greeting to every visitor and in response to every thank-you, is said with greater urgency and poignancy.
Patrick Koinange, a Nairobi taxi driver and a Kikuyu (it has become necessary in Kenya to mention ethnic affiliations in a conflict that is heavily tribal) complains bitterly that he has had no work since Christmas Eve. “When the violence came people were too frightened to leave their homes. I returned to work on the 7th and since then have had two fares. People are starting to starve; they have not been able to work.” And many food stores are still closed, or have been looted.
His cousin, in the town of Eldoret, “is a young man who was doing well; he had four minibus taxis and a clothing store, but the rioters” — which sounds like “lioter” in his Mount Kenya accent where ls sound like Rs — “came and destroyed his shop. They looted clothes worth five million Kenyan shillings; they burnt two of his taxis. Now he is destroyed. Insurance won’t pay for this; it is riot damage.”
Multiparty democracy, he has decided, “is a bad thing; it causes trouble. Under [former president Daniel arap] Moi the economy was going down but it was peaceful. Kenyans are peaceful people. This situation is very bad.”
The centre of Nairobi and wealthy areas such as Muthaiga where the Kikuyu live (who form 20% of the population and are the same tribe as President Mwai Kibaki) have remained quiet because of a strong police presence. The large, sprawling slum of Kibera, reputedly the largest slum in East Africa and where a good deal of violence occurred, is still a no-go area. Even ambulances are timid about entering it.
Médecins sans Frontières, which closed the slum’s primary clinic when violence peaked, reopened the clinic on Wednesday this week but allows no Kikuyu staff in. Their lives would be in grave danger. In Kibare, people have scant services; a survey by Dr Elizabeth Masuku last year showed that HIV is high in men living in Kibare, in part because they have low access to clean water to wash — on average twice every 10 days — and dirt and the virus accumulates under foreskins, making HIV infection more likely.
There is not a supermarket still standing in the slum; all have been torched or looted. Maize-grinding centres found in every Kenyan town have been destroyed and hunger is now a significant issue. National roads are too dangerous to drive along without military escorts. Some areas of Nairobi are still no-go zones even for ambulances.
A 22-year-old man who saw his mother and two sisters raped and murdered in front of him before their house was torched in Kibare last week has the bad breath of a person who has not eaten for days. He speaks in a low monotone to a voluntary counsellor. His life has ended, he says; he wants to die.
Anger and fear fuel each other. Kibaki, a Kikuyu, came in promising change in 2002 and hasn’t delivered. In good part, Kenyan anger is that of people oft betrayed. More than once, former president Daniel arap Moi resisted leaving office. Kibaki (72), who came in on promises of reformation and change, is now playing the same game. His announcement on December 27 that he had been re-elected, which European Union election observers and significant members of the Kikuyu-dominated Electoral Commission contest, sparked the violence.
On Wednesday, people in a Nairobi restaurant spontaneously applauded when television broadcast a demand from the head of the Kenyan Law Society that Kibaki step down and new elections be called.
This is the same anger that saw South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki heckled at Polokwane. But what has made it more deadly is the cleaving along ethnic lines of the present situation in Kenya. It is a tribalism that has been carefully nurtured in recent years by politicians.
The leadership of the South African government and the African National Congress would be wise to take careful heed of the Kenyan situation. Mbeki’s refusal to comment on it — or to send aid — should be viewed with more than a little apprehension.
The words of Nelson Mandela at the 50th anniversary gathering of the United Nations on October 23 1995 have been ignored by African leaders, and now need to be heeded. He said: “What challenges us, who define ourselves as states-persons, is the clarion call to dare to think that what we are about is people — the proverbial man and woman in the street. These, the poor, the hungry, the victims of petty tyrants, the objectives of policy, demand change.”
African leaders have failed to take action against Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. There is scant pressure against Kibaki because the precedent of a continent speaking out against those who ignore democracy and rig elections could turn against them if they too decide to ignore the will of their people.
Over 55 years of African independence, the leaders who said they were bringing liberation have mostly enslaved their people. Events at Polokwane and Kenya, although disturbing, are harbingers of hope. Africans are tired of the lying games of their leaders. They want real democracy; they want palpable change not just in the creation of an ultra-rich black elite, but also in the extension of basic human rights to all — clean water, decent education, leaders who get fired and jailed if they are corrupt, effective healthcare.
These are not huge demands, but to fulfil them will create a revolution in African lives and ultimately in the prosperity of the continent — which over the past 20 years has slid backward into deeper poverty, according to the World Bank. Change also demands ethical leaders, a rare trait in African governance.
Little has changed since Robert Rotberg, director of the Programme on Interstate Conflict at Harvard University’s JF Kennedy School of Government, wrote in 2000: “If sub-Saharan Africa is ‘in a mess’, to quote Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding president, it is a mess made by its leaders. Where visionary leadership lifted Asia out of poverty since the 1960s, too many African heads of state presided over massive declines in African standards of living while carefully enriching themselves and their cronies.
“Some of Africa’s current and recent leaders are capable, honest and effective. But kleptocratic, patrimonial leaders — like President Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe — give Africa a bad name, plunge its peoples into poverty and despair, incite civil wars and bitter ethnic conflict. They are largely responsible for declining GDP levels, food scarcities, rising infant-mortality, soaring budget deficits, human rights abuses, breaches of the rule of law and prolonged serfdom for millions — even in Africa’s nominal democracies.
“These authoritarians, many of whom win or manipulate elections and claim a democratic facade, have proved hard to control and harder to oust … The elected autocrats, sometimes termed illiberal or quasi-democrats, have built-in advantages that are hard for even popular opposition movements to overcome: incumbency; state financing for official political parties; state control of television, radio and newspapers; friendly security forces; crackdowns on opposition rallies; control over the voter rolls; and such tricks as gerrymandering, stuffing ballot boxes and fiddling with the election count. Most of all, ruling parties know how to intimidate voters, particularly semiliterate rural voters acquainted with only one ruling party since independence.”
Eight years after he wrote those words, little has changed. Dan Connell and Frank Smyth wrote in Foreign Affairs, March 1998, of African leaders who promise change: “Once entrenched, each preached some form of nationalism, only to evolve cynical regimes which did little for their own people while shamelessly enriching their leaders’ inner circles.” We’ve experienced this in South Africa. Our challenge is not to allow the deterioration Kenya is experiencing and of which Rotberg warns.
In the meantime, you can help. There are desperate shortages of food, medical supplies, blankets, sanitary towels, clothes, cooking utensils … please donate either to the fantastic Nairobi Women’s Hospital (which is also treating many men and boys who have been raped or abused) — lkiama@nwch.co.ke — or www.urgentactionfund.org (specify that this is for Kenya relief).
Charlene Smith is in Nairobi
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.
(Rumi)
Come home safe CS.
One of the saddest things in this report is what it has driven Patrick Koinange’s cousin, the man who ran a minibus and clothing store business, to believe: “Multipsrty democracy does not work: it causes trouble.” There is the despair that so sustains, is so much the core cause, of what are still, with foolish, outdated admiration, called Africa’s ‘big men’.
Though it is almost profane to dwell on this point among so much misery, the only possible service our commentators, analysts and journalists can render – if there are any ‘warnings’ SA society can take from Kenya – is to expose whether and in what way that businessman’s conclusion is false.
The ‘lesson’ from Kenya is not the harm that comes from a surfeit of ‘democracy’ but from a deficit of it – that it is dangerous for people to accept as meaningful a meaningless word -’democracy’ – when reality falls short of it.
What is wrong in the way government works? What institutions are missing? How much are what politicans like to call ‘the people’ really involved in governing themselves? – these are the questions that confront SA after the factionalism of Polokwane. They are there without Kenya’s sad example.
How over time have other societies managed to get things together so that inevitable change can be handled without another bloody fight?
Mathare is a wealthy area?? I’d hate to see what you consider poor!
I do not understand your warning for South Africa using Kenya as an example. In Kenya the elections were National and the ‘war’ is along tribal lines.
In South Africa it is an ANC matter with no distinct lines of dermacation. Mbeki faction vs Zuma faction? What is the defining feature?
The defining feature is that their black.
Oh crap. I should not say things like that, huh?
the problems with us africans is that instead of thinking of ways to better our lives and that of our fellow africans, we are only thinking of ways to bring each other down.
the issue about the tribes is not even relevant here, bcs we are not the only nation with so many tribes, look at the indians for instance. they have more than hundred tribes in their country but they have managed to from turn things around from being slaves to the english into being one of the smartest nations on the planet.
they have managed to work together to better their own lives and that of the fellow citizens by putting all the tribal lines aside and focus all their energies into development and education.
if africans could think like the indians, then we would be better off. if we can combine all our enrgies and use our resources to change everything around, we would be better people in the future.
i would ask all south africans to start focussing on nation building and lets stop fighting each other bcs we need to remember that in any conflict that takes place here in africa, on the people who are the lower levels will loose their lives, but all the politicians will be highly protected while we go ahead and kill each other, and after the wars, we are still poor.
look at the arabs, they don’t have any green/fertile lands, but bcs they work 2gether to harness what ever they have in their countries, they are not hungry like us africans even though we have all the fertile land in the world.
unless we start changing our mindset, 50 years from now, we will still be poor and we will still be blaming our former colonisers for all the mess in africa, and by the time we open our eyes (“if” that will ever happen)all our minerals riches will be finished and there won’nt be anything left to help up develop africa.
africans, why do we let everyone in the world get so smart & advanced right in our eyes while we keep fighting each other. they are all developing their countries, and all we do is fight.
We are part of Africa and to say it wont happen here is the same as saying crime is not going to
affect me and as such I do not have to take any
precautions.
Forewarned is forearmed and as such we all should
be extra vigilant that we do not suffer a similiar
fate.
“African Democracy” strikes again. Africa isn’t ready for democracy, we’ve seen this every single time someone reinstalls themselves in power. They would not be able to do this if they subscribed properly to the concept of it.
It scares me how quickly it goes for a loop and becomes, in effect, inter-tribal warfare as soon as things turn remotely nasty. Democracy cannot work as long as one tribe considers themselves better suited to “rule” than another tribe. The fact that “ruling” is not what they are supposed to be doing seems to escape most African leaders, who still appear to have a “tribal” or “village chief” mentality.
Democracy puts these leaders in place in the beginning, but I’m not quite sure what it’s called after that. Dictatorship maybe?
Liansky: you forget Yugoslavia. There the tribes clashed and killed each other and guess what – there were no africans involved. Palestine, Pakistan, northern Ireland, WWII, the list goes on.
Now if Charlene was black would you have made the same comment?
Pleeeeze write your own articles, we are deperate to see life through your eyes.
Dumisani: While the ANC is currently united against the ‘white tribe’, as that ‘threat’ recedes will old conflicts of say Zulu vs Xhosa re emerge.
JZ very quickly spoke to the IFP and will he side with the Matebile (Zulu) in Zim against the Shona. See how quickly we could change.
Why Africa still uses colonial borders beats me. Europe is structured on tribal lines. Why do we adherr to colonial borders and have peoples like the Swazis living in 3 different countries.
The African countries that have done the best over the last 50 years are the ones dominated by a single majority tribe. Botswana, Malawi.
Look at the DRC – disaster – why because the only thing that unites them is that they all speak French.
We should redraw SADC along tribal lines in a European union type government system and then watch southern africans shine.
Dumisani Mkhize -
The common feature is the lack of what everyone thinks (or thought) the two countries have -’democracy’ – which entails, at its most basic,
an acceptance of opposition as legitimate; the institutions for opposition to replace incumbent government; a tradition of peaceful change.
Please be advised that Mt Kilimanjaro is accessed through Tanzania because it is in Tanzania and not Kenya.
Kilimanjaro is not synonymous with Kenya>
I fail to understand why there has been a rush to warn SA while using Kenya as an example of what will happen. i think such scare tactics really serve more harm than good.
The situation in Kenya may seem to be along ethnic lines but this has been fuelled for a long time primarily by the politicians.
just because a country has many tribes doesnt necessarily mean that rule of law will degenerate and anarchy will prevail. Look at Tanzania, it has over 120 tribes (with distinct languages etc) and noone hears conflicts along tribal lines and the largest tribes are not necessarily the wealthiest of the most educated.
and i wish you would get your facts right, Muthaiga is not predominantly Kikuyu and to say that is to forget that the powerful and rich families transverse all tribes. where do you think Raila and his father before own property?
Owen is dead right. Mixing different tribes / cultures in one geographical area is a certain recipe for disaster. It matters not one bit what the tribes’ skin colours are – vide the old Yugoslavia whose inhabitants were almost exclusively white.
While we’re at it establishing a Southern African Union along the lines of the EU, let’s give the white Afrikaner tribe its own homeland as well. We are approximately 5-10% of the total population of the artificial conglomeration of nations called South Africa, so a geographical area comprising 5%-10% of the total surface area would do nicely.
Give us that 5% – it doesn’t matter where – and I will bet big money that that little parcel of land will be by far the richest and best-governed state in Africa within 10 years at most.
I see that most people seem to be also contributors of the http://www.newnation.com and the http://www.southafricathetruth.net. The reason i stopped being a journalist was because i met a lot of ‘white’ journalists that wrote about the African’s situation from the comfort of their homes.
Owen speaks about the Zulu vs Xhosa, WHEN WAS THIS CLASH!!
Also the lenght to which the likes of Owen would go to link Zulus to Zimbabwe (I assume he is white because of his spelling of ‘Matebile’)
The black electorates should also take responsibility . Look at JZ for instance, I do not recall any statement from him as to how he plans to uplift the poor and what he plans to do differently from Thabo, yet the overwhelming support. I think we get the leadership that we deserve.
I appreciate any article that seeks to shed some light into the Kenyan crisis. We know little of Kenyan politics as it is, and cannot formulate proper opinion on this particularly crisis, but I continue to learn.
However, I know enough about the SA situation – what happed post ’94 and the currect change effected in Polokwane. For the writer to say “We’ve experienced this in South Africa…” in relation to the observation by Dan Connell and Frank Smyth that African leaders promise change “only to evolve cynical regimes which did little for their own people while shamelessly enriching their leaders’ inner circles…” is misleading at very least but is most probably misinformed.
The ANC delegates at Pholokwane always had the power to effect change – both in leadership and policy – at any national and/or policy conference. This mandate they gor from the grass roots branches, the very people who are at the receiving end of government policy. The Pholokwane revolution was the democratic expression of the grassroot for change, not only of policy but also of leadership. It was always accepted before the national conference of Pholokwane that policy changes (mainly economic and the strengthing of democratic institutions) were demanded by the ANC branches (as winessed in the policy conference a few months before the Pholokwane conference).
Democracy is alive in SA, now more than ever.
Why was one of the first reactions from the West and others an attempt to get Kibaki and Odinga to form a unity government? Why not fix the election? Surely the legislation provides for disputes – there are disputes in elections all over the world all the time. Are the ballots not stored somewhere safely? Can they not be looked at, recounted. The people of Kenya have made their mark on the those ballots, they are owed a properly elected government. The ECK should be dissolved and a proper organisation established to oversee the process. The attorney general has called for a recount.
Why is the new government, in its hard-handed determination to rule the country, not launching a plan to get food and shelter to the people of Kenya? Why do we have to see UN trucks carrying tons of food? This is Kenya not Chad or CAR for goodness sakes.
Kibaki is very foolish to think that Kenyans will not fight back against an improper election. Kenyans are of the most politically aware people anywhere. If respected political processes were institutionalised the significance of ethnicity would not be a major factor. What others have said about the need for homogenity is not true. The established democracy are working at creating integrated diverse societies, it has to be that way. No walls around city states in this day and age. Europe is a conglomeration of smaller kingdoms and states. Italy and Germany were only united into the states as we know them today in the 19th century etc.
The Luo and Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kissii, Meru, Maasai … have all lived together for hundreds of years. It’s only a broken political system that causes a shattered society. Fix the system. If the whole African leadership insisted on it, it would happen.
One last thing, we need the Afrikaaners right in the middle of our society where they will have the most impact and contribute to building a great country. I hope that don’t banish themselves to the Klein Karoo or something.
Charlene,
Fair article but for the usual suspect narratives. We seem to profer and prefer a suspect master narrative derived from Western anthropology that constantly figures conflict in Africa in ethnic, nay tribal terms. Not to suggest that there is no ethnic element in the Kenyan conflict. More fundamental however should be an assertion of the class character of this conflict which seems to find voice in ethnicity. Those being killed and those killing in abandon are also the poorest. The Kenyan middle class is notorioulsy multi-ethnic and even amid the mayhem remained ‘peaceful’ if invicible. Charlene you may want to know that Raila Odinga’s son Fidel has a wife who is Kikuyu and closely related to the Kenyattas. For this lot, and for millions of other Kenyans conflict takes a completely different dimension. Kenya’s conflict must be located within the trajectory of history, the attendant injustices of both the Kenyatta and Moi regimes that created a situation in which many poor Kenyans declined their Kenyanness and retreated into ethnic identities since it is these that provide them nationhood. Kibaki merely cemented this inequity and is now reaping its rewards. The lumpen have become revolutionary though speaking in a voice anathema to a revolution. The poor are at war with the rich and at the same time at war with themselves. That should be the narrative. The ethnic dimension is incidental. Oh, and there is no such place as Muthage -it is Muthaiga. Similarly there is no Kibare but Kibera.
We’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring the Zimbabwean warnings. What makes you think that Kenyan warnings will be treated any differently?
Anton: They have. It’s called Orania.
Any White Afrikaner homeland will be seen by certain groups as a place where they’ll see Eugene Terreblanche wannabes fomenting insurrection at every turn. Something they’re terrified of.
If they get too successful, I doubt they’d be allowed to continue existing. Some excuse would be made to boot them out, something will be made up about old tribal homelands or something, or the land will simply be confiscated.
Whether they build walls to keep people in, or build them to keep people out, certain groups will always want what they’ve got.
*cue frothing-at-the-mouth accusations of them all being right-wing Afrikaners and separatists anyway*
Having spent the last 6 years in a number of countries in the Southern African Cone, and before that a further 6 years i other parts of Africa, I believe I have the right to make some observations based on my experience. I think the author is right; there are always lessons to be learned from another’s experiences and South Africa is on a new and tender road since 1994, it is always helpful to watch out for pitfalls.There is no need to reinvent the wheel but the trick is to figure out what the lessons might be and how to apply them. As such I have 2 comments to make about some of the ‘blog’ posts;
1) Democracy, in my country’s carrying out of the concept, is a proces by which each person, enacting rights and obligations as citizen, shares in the decision-making concerning his/her country and its common good. Democracy does not “arrive”, once elected and float like a soft blanket over the country, immediately confering benefits and soothing ills; it does not ‘impose’ values, such as ‘stealing is wrong’ but rather embodies & reflects those values shared in common already by the citizens. If it is wrong for ordinary people to steal, it is wrong for businessmen and civil servants and politicians to steal, even more so as they are supposed to work for the good of all.
Democracy also seems to take root in a rather ‘flat’ society, with people are fairly equal in status. (though I would hasten to add, not necessarily in material possessions). And its benefits take years to be seen. My own country has come a very long way since the wide-spread poverty and ignorance of the Great Depression-era of the early 1930s and the 1933-45 Second World War. It has come that way through focus, a vision of the society my grandparents wanted to see, by planning, hard work, and by sharing and enacting values which would help the country become the kind of societ they wanted it to be. Many very wealthy, and some ordinary courageous, selfless people worked for nothing to make that happen. The concept of Public Service was perceived as a very high calling, and a noble career to pursue. The monetary rewards were very slim indeed, but the possibility to make a difference was enormous.And that is still an important value in my society. At that time, they were joined intrinsically by the various churches who were also intent on making society into what we envisionned as The Just Society, so-named by our Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau. I think, to a large extent we were successful. So the common good was supported by three partners; government, church and family all sharing the same values and reinforcing each other. There was lawlessness and gangs and murders; it was not Paradise, but the community worked tirelessly to make those undesirable aspects disappear; and thought governments changed from Conservative to Liberal to Conservative, the core values remained the same and we continued to plug away at resolving the problems & making the country a better place. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned that might be useful for African countries; two I would suggest are common values which benefit the community and hard work and perseverence. You may perhaps see others. What I hope you don’t see and equate is the “abundance” of material goods and equate those with democracy,without realizing that the material abundance is a very thin and top layer of something else which took a much longer time and much more effort to achieve and maintain.
A society, such as many traditional societies in Africa and elsewhere, very mult-layeredl hierarchical ones, which sees it as a right of their leaders to amass goods from the public purse as their ‘droit du seigneur’, these societies behave differently. There was a saying in one of the former Communist bloc countries where I lived “if you don’t steal from the government, you’re stealing from your family”. That is certainly different from the concept in Canada, and has nothing to do at all with ‘democracy’. If honesty and integrity are truly values shared by citizens in any country, then it is up to those citizens to ensure that those values are put into practice throughout their society, especially in their governments; no ‘acy’ of any sort will come in as a magic fix. As Ghandi is quoted as saying; “be the change you want to see in the world.” If you want good government services, be a good, hardworking efficient civil servant; and so forth. Demcracy is to vehicle by which a citizenry channels its own values to the common good; it does not bring with it alien values which it will magically and immediately bestow on the citizenry.
My second comment concerns multi-ethnicity; it is utter nonsense to believe that only mono-ethnic cultures thrive in peace. Canada is a country with several dozen different races living peacefully together because of the very point which I made above; peace…which is the first word in the preamble to our Constitution (Peace, order & good governance…) is one of our core values and we work hard and constantly to ensure that it happens. Yugoslavia descended into turmoil because of the political uncertainty after the death of a dictator, and the resultant battle for power which turned into a nasty war because people began to asssemble as ‘ethnics’ rather than as Yugoslavs. I have lived there & I know something about it. Ireland has shown that you can achieve peaceful coexistence, you have to decide you want it, and work to bring it about.
As Africans throughout the continent, you have the choice; you can yammer on endlessly bestowing blame, about cultural legacies and colonial imperialism and tribal ethnicities,(all of which existed in Canada too, don’t forget for we were until 1987 a British Colony only we were called a Dominion) re-drawing countries along ethnic lines and so forth, or you can focus on clear and achievable objetives, cooperation, honesty, integrity, hard work and making your lives better. That is the empowerment of democracy and you have my best wishes. maybe 2008 will make a difference.
Suzane: Talk to us about Quebec and the number of time succession comes up?
Sabelo: Do not attribute a wrong spelling to racism when it can be explained by incompetance. I was incompetant not racist and don’t have a spell checker. Kenya was a model of tribal harmony until politician starting using tribal speech in their campaigns.
I talk about redrawing africa’s borders not to seperate tribes but for tribes to form coallitions that unite them. The colonialist drew borders right through tribes and yet no one tries to fix that BUT we will change town names. Why must an Ovambo family live in 4 different countries because some collonialist decided that. (Angola, Nambia, Botswana, Zambia.)? Why not have tribes form provinces where they control local stuff like eductaion, policing etc and then join with other tribes to form Union states that share a fiscal and foreign policy. Essentially that is SA today. I just add what about Lesotho when most Sothos live in the Free State. Swazi’s, Tswana’s, Ndebele / Matabele.
Bob is Shona and we all know that he exercuted thousands of Matabele but the Matabele brothers in SA, the Ndebele and Zulu’s seem quite happy with that state of affairs (or are they?). etc etc
I don’t advocate a seperate ‘white state’ other than that which exists in the western cape as a province of SA. I advocate that SA should grow by assimulating more tribes on a more federal basis.
The lesson is one of delevery vs power consolidation. If African leaders just put as much energy and resources into bettering the lives and circumstances of their fellow people instead of fighting and holding on to power Africa would rise above its poverty and be a world show case. Has zero to do with political ideology and all to do with just delivery.
Brent
Annan launches new bid to resolve Kenyan conflict today. Can anyone explain to me while it’s still not an option to recount the votes under international supervision and declare the legitimate winner?
The history of post colonial Africa will undoubtedly be repeated in South Africa.
There is nothing at all in the attitudes and statements of those in power and the grass roots to make one think otherwise.
Not one thing.
From the hero worship of cheap and sometimes violent crims like Winnie Mandela , Yengeni , Boesak , Shaik to the……burning alive of “foreigners” to the Election of Zuma and the recent Chuene affair.
You don’t HAVE to look to Kenya for warning signs.
If anything the disaster could be worse …a huge influx of desperate people from Zim , millions of SAffers living in poverty , HIV/AIDS , access to firearms and a culture of violence is one helluva witches brew.
The best advice is to put distance between yourself and the place.