Killing hope in Kenya

NY Times:

Mugabe Were, a freshman parliamentarian, could have been one of the keys to unlocking Kenya’s crisis but on Tuesday he was shot dead in his driveway.

Mr. Were was an opposition politician who had resisted his party’s often belligerent talk. He had married a woman of another ethnic group, built bridges in the slums with his own money and sponsored teenage mothers to go to college. As Kenya slid into chaos this past month after a disputed election, he shuttled between leaders of different ethnic groups and was actually organizing a peace march the night before he died.

“Whoever did this,” said Elizabeth Mwangi, a friend, “has killed the dreams of many.”

The details of his death are still sketchy, but the killing appears not to have been a robbery but an intended hit.

The news of his killing spread fast and violently, with opposition supporters rioting across Nairobi, the capital, intensifying the clashes of the past weeks.

In the widespread troubles that have erupted in the country since the election in December, Kenyans are now literally ripping their country apart, uprooting miles of railroad tracks, chopping down telephone poles, burning government offices and looting schools.

Militias from opposing ethnic groups are battling in several towns and Kenyan army helicopters fired rubber bullets at crowds on Tuesday to disperse them. There have been reports of forced circumcisions and beheadings.

The economy is paralyzed, more than 800 people have been killed and many Kenyans fear their country is tumbling toward disaster.

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Opposition supporters immediately deemed the killing a political assassination, intended to intimidate Kenya’s opposition movement, which is challenging the election in December that Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, narrowly won. Police officials say they are investigating the death closely and are ruling nothing out.

A huge crowd formed in front of Mr. Were’s ranch house on Tuesday morning and built roadblocks of burning tires and heavy stones. It was the first time that rioters had reached an affluent neighborhood in Nairobi, and it was not just rowdy unemployed youth from the slums who were taking part. Bespectacled men in suits lit fires in the street.

“This is how we express our outrage,” explained Evans Muremi, a social worker, who stacked burning tires while wearing a jacket and tie.

The election crisis seems to have brought out the worst in Kenya. Mob rule was a feature of life here even before the disputed vote, with crowds routinely stoning to death suspected robbers, but never to the current extent. The same is true for ethnic tensions, which have always existed in Kenya but have never exploded like they have in the past weeks.

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The thin veneer of civilization has been ripped from the face of Kenya exposing a raw ethnic hatred that is killing people and the country. “This is how we express our outrage”? The outrage started over an election where both sides cheated and one was better at stuffing the ballot boxes than the other. Unfortunately, there is no end to outrage in Kenya now.