Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Kenya's New Class War

If you are poor and stupid enough, someone might convince you that your problems stem not from any lack of merit by way of character, education, career skills, or social aptitude, but rather with someone you don't know who has the connections, the family, the money, the business, the property, the advantages you don't (although the same may be as dirt poor and scraping as yourself).

Around the world, from Iran to Somalia, Pakistan to Gaza, it sure seems an argument that not only works but produces a "realpolitik" beneficial to none other than those reaping in donations and weapons both for the ignoble cause.

By comparison with the Islamic Small Wars, Kenya's agony on the revived alter of tribalism demonstrates quite well the class-wide basis for buy-in to the New Myth of the Old Injustice.

If left to Kenya's educated middle, professional, and urbane classes, argument would suffice for violence, administrative programs would be concieved and implemented by way of revolutionary action, and there would be money to spare of ancestral pride and soccer leagues and hunt clubs alike.

Instead from out of the neglected waste of the culture . . . drunks, mobs, and machetes.

One thing I've long observed about what one may lightly if not formally call the "middle class", and that is this: the virtues are universal.

We read.

We sweep our floors.

We sew, cook, clean; help our neighbors, whoever they are, when they're hurting; treat our guests with grace; and enjoy with tolerance the differences we find in the beliefs and ways of others.

It takes another mentality altogether to lock 30 people in a church and burn them alive (truth to tell, it would take just as special a level of infantile depravity to lock as many animals of any sort in a box of some kind and burn them alive for any reason whatsoever).

Nonetheless, the global middle class, however you may care to define that oh so comfy and pleasant sounding thing that responds as much or more to sensibility than money, may have as a fatal flaw the want of wringing its hands and diving for cover behind other "classes" of person--venal politicians and martial personalities, here and there, who might well be or have been thugs if not for their paychecks--for its defense.

The acceptance of tribal animosity and rivalry as motives for violence may suit the reporters who needs must not embellish, propose, or theorize in their reports, but for the intellectuals, politicians, relief leaders, philanthropists, and so many others, including the huddled and hunkered down masses of the middle class who wither before the mobs that have been whipped up to get 'em, refraction and reflection, planning and commitment, might prove helpful before conditions destroy "domestic tranquility" and with it the opportunity to reduce human distress, distribute services, and provide for justic and security across virtually all cultural, social, and political lines.

Kenya's middle class is today no more involved in civil war than was Iraq's prior to the U.S. invasion to depose Saddam Hussein.  In that sore spot, Kalashnikov Sharia and the whole fabric of sectarian division fell to the sort of bigots and zealots who would off their neighbors to be surrounded always by people just like themselves. 

Kenya's citizens have another set of "discriminators" with which to draw their battle lines, but they may also have for near observation plenty in the way of similar misery evolved elsewhere, and they may act, should they and their leaders enable it, as a cohesive citizenry against those who would happily drive them into or include them in a civil war far other than of their own making.

Kenya's guards, police, and military and perhaps yet unknown citizens, politicians, and volunteers: one wishes you the best of luck in stemming what has elsewhere proven an execrable process displacing the values and virtues of the genteel with the mean intelligence and manners of the vicious.

# # #

---

1. Moody, Barry.  "Kenya's middle class watches turmoil in anguish."  Reuters, January 8, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya's Political Failure

Facing civil war, who would not endorse every opportunity to define issues and set to work on them?

Well, Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga would not.  [1]

In Odinga's head, so one may discern from Reuters reports, there is either nothing to discuss or discussions would not be worth the oxygen consumed: "We will not attend the talks on Friday," he said, "They are a sideshow."

Before one would condemn to death through warfare some mother's son--or, perhaps in the Rift Valley, the mother and father and all their children and as many relatives as possible--one might consider other possibilities:

• Either relegating the past election to audit, resolving the dispute through the courts, or running the election again but with sufficient oversight and accountability from the election start to finish;
• Equivalent affirmative action and the full suite of similar socialist devices designed to reduce discrepencies in economic development and service access across tribal and other lines;
• New Town land requisition and development to alleviate slum conditions wherever they form and help provide for embittered and languishing human beings both the dignity and the rewards associated with productive and socially meaningful and useful work.
• Urban and rural carrying capacity and public health--living with the earth and with ourselves are things societies do as a whole enchilada, and that whether they like it or not.

What, really, is the problem?

Is there an inability to grasp common cause across geographical or tribal boundaries?

Are the fixations on 'bad blood" and revenge so institutionally ingrained through the rants of local politicians or religious leaders that a people who have lived long in peace, albeit with some seriously festering wounds and private axes ground to a fine edge, must now accustom themselves to years, even decades, of aimless posturing and senseless acts of random violence?

Has the capacity for understanding language and how language works been damaged somehow and to the effect that political rhetoric may not be weighed against other indices in states of affairs nor criticized in light of the development of practical solutions focused to redress widespread suffering?

Say it ain't so, Kenya.

To underscore the notion, mine, if no one else's, that the violence so far witnessed in Kenya has other than a political genesis even as it responds to political stimulus, I've included in references Tim Cocks' filing, "Mutiliated bodies found a week after Kenya massacre," in which a farmer's wife discovers the decapitated and hacked remains of her husband.

The feral sadism contained in and communicated through that violence has in Kenya no foundation in either military or political philosophy.  Terrifying though it may be, it is not "terrorism" but far rather the Dionysian expression of liberation out of a kind of Hell.

No doubt the world's militaries deny but well know of the intoxication attending revels in blood, that all grown up version of the hunter arm deep in a deer's hot and humid windpipe; it takes an Oliver Stone, however, to spell it in a film like Natural Born Killers.

Crystalizing (through irresponsible rhetoric) the already wayward passions of young men into a ramped up crusade against a scapegoat cut out of equally struggling neighbors may strike as the height of political perversion.

In this too, the whole world suffers with this latest demonstration of the inability of powerful politicians unable to separate their personal bogies and wishes from more remote public interests. 

The need for political redress of cast- and class-based grievance would seem a natural part of democratic process from any git-go, but something in the licensing of Kenya's business and political leadership seems to have stalled that, at least to this point, and the result would seem to be the existence of Kibera Slum, an inexcusable construction, and the off-the-hook child's play, Lord of the Flies and Clockwork Orange style, at fascism and murder that played out in Kenya last week.

# # #

---

1.  Moody, Barry, Daniel Wallis.  "Kenya's Odinga rejects bilateral talks to end crisis."  Reuters, January 8, 2008.

2. Cocks, Tim.  "Mutilated bodies found a week after Kenya massacre."  Reuters, January 8, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya: The Kibera Abomination

Sometimes I look at the two-foot high stack of papers spilling out of a box at my feet and wonder how that material--old receipts, research, magazines, correspondence, etc.--ever got so out of hand.

I tell and promise myself, I'll do something about it.

Two years out from the fire that accounts for the new small town digs--a very small apartment about 90 minutes north of Washington, D.C.--I am just now (but at least it's for real) getting around to cleaning up that mess.

Imagine if instead of facing up to 24-inches worth of neglected papers, one had to look out across a field the size of New York's Central Park and do something about the 800,000 humans dwelling in what has become a slum, east Africa's largest, mired in disease, desparation, and filth.

The first good thing, I think, to come out of Kenya's troubles over the past week may be the sudden, globally generated publicity for what should be every good politician's and every urban planner's worst nightmare: Kibera--and I'm going to call it "Kibera Slum"--an inexcusable testament to political denial, neglect, and venality.

As events in Kenya have so amply demonstrated, a relative handful of loose nuts, criminals, and criminal bands can put to flight a quarter of a million souls practically overnight, intimidate shipping and transportation, and otherwise distress millions of democratic, stable, and peaceful people to the extent that the contemplation of civil war appears on everyone's table.

This time around, after witnessing similar processes in Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and elswhere, one knows from where the angry young men have been set loose.

What to do about Kibera Slum?

While humanitarian efforts grind away piecemeal at Kibera, this may be as good a time as any in history to consider or reconsider the following:

1. What the English called for criminals "Transporation", but this time around, produce land fit for settlement (and for God's sake compensate the owners) x 20 or x 40 and integrate those settlements into the agrarian and industrial fabric of the country;

1a. Please, no more aggregate population growth: a subject all its own, rising affluence and moderation in reproduction have been rumored (because I don't want to research the topic today) to go hand in hand, and if something like 40 new farming units are to be successful, keeping the numbers of hungry mouths to feed in a position where economics, politics, and technology may be made to work would seem part of the solution.

2. For factory and farm, bring on the pro Bono capitalists, politicians, and volunteers, and get in the administrative, educational and training systems that must plain make cities and towns work.

Raid the graduate schools; shanghai the educated; lock George Soros and Bill Gates in a room together until they come up with additional details in the plan to produce new settlements and dismantle Kibera forever.

*Carolina for Kibera serves 25,000 people a year through a health clinic, a summer youth sports program staffed by UNC-CH volunteers and other programs. The organization has closed indefinitely because of rioting in the wake of last week's disputed presidential election." [3]

"Think globally, act locally" has long been a part of the humanitarian's ethos if for no other reason than the fact that acting locally, practically anywhere in the world where guns don't prevent it, reduces the scale of the problem, which in turn makes addressing it possible.  However, incidental do-good may well encourage feeling good about having done a little good while the larger situation continues to deteriorate.

Although charities work, and far be it from selfish old me to criticize them, governments work better when they're fueled by vision, focus, and a right and balanced sense of fair play and justive leavened with integrity.

Kibera--wasnt' it ever just a little bit of urban blight on Nairobi's rim?--signals national political failure.  Should the people of Kenya finally wish to do something about it, let that planning and action be large.

I've had a little bit of fun here, but given the economic vitality demonstrated by Kenya at peace, one may be quite serious about establishing, laying out, and producing national administration for 40 New Towns, moving population to them, and moving trade through them.

Whatever the history and however nurtured the animosity, knowing that Kenya's middle and leadership classes lack in no way for intelligence and wherewithal--plus: the whole world really is watching, really is connected, finally, and really is standing by and ready to support its efforts--one may expect far better from the people of Kenya then the too familiar sinking into war and squallor that has so immobilized various of its neighbors.

# # #

---

1. Schlesinger, David.  "What $26 can start."  Reuters, July 12, 2007.

2. "Ancient Cities, Modern Slums."  Atanu Dey on India's Development.

3. Carolina for Kibera.

4. Deconto, Jesse James.  "Kenya's unrest halts UNC aid."  The News & Observer, January 3, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya: A Note on Language and Mistrust

So far today, knock on wood, the amplification of animosity in Kenya has fizzled.  Most of Kenya, it would appear, wishes for a modern peace.

Perhaps too the hotheads, drunkards, punks, and teen gangs are sleeping off the week's orgy.

This is a good moment to remember:

1.  Every fish market cryer knows that whether or not true, merely whispering about the competition, "he keeps his fish out longer than anyone" will damage the rival;

2. Politicians often offer voters the world--"Education for all!" they shout--but then act out of self-interest or the interests of their immediate families and business networks, especially when they believe no one's looking or they have the power to abuse their authority;

3. Youth seldom has the experience, perspective, or perspicacity to discern arrangements in states of affairs larger than themselves.

4. In the news business, "The streets were deserted" may be a fact, but the conclusion "transforming the block into a war zone" may turn out merely poetic or prove dangerous, malicious, or prophetic.

5. Where you find evil, look for ignorance too: the foundation for peace in contemporary developed cultures is merit, not family, clan, or tribe, which become for successful personalities the beneficiaries of business and professional efforts.  Such a capitalism turns out imperfect, even cruel and irresponsible, but in tandem with democratic process, it may be tempered to alleviate the distress and suffering of the average, the struggling, the afflicted, and the weak.  A little education and a lot of innuendo turns out a disaster in any effort to build an equitable system that would benefit all according to merits other than origin.

6. In business culture and language, variations of "They are good, but we are better" produces competition, but in the politics of cities and nations, the same produces contempt, division, and mistrust.

7. There's a difference in a sense of justice that seeks to distribute equally the benefits of affluence and liberal thinking and one that leans backward on retribution and the settling of countless scores.

I hope Kenya will return to the polls and the voting will be well secured and peacefully and scrupulously monitored by both interested as well as independent or neutral parties.

For both Kenya and Pakistan, if not elsewhere, one hopes too that keenly generous and liberal personalities will rise and prevail.

# # #

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya: More, Same, Awful

From the start, Tim Cocks notes, "At a flaming roadblock manned by drunken youths wielding machetes, arrows and nail-studded sticks . . . ."  The verb and predicate part following the subordinated phrase hardly matter.

Anticipated.  Observed.  Confirmed.

War barely needs an army these days.

A tolerant politician or two, a few bandits and brigands--or a host of rebellious youths and a handful of disgruntled citizens--and some kind of front line simply appears.

# # #

---

1. Cocks, Tim.  "REFILE - Refugees cry genocide as Kenya's Rift Valley Erupts."  Reuters, January 3, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya: Out of Slums

War is personal.

"Flames burst from a large crucifix suspended from the roof of a burning church in Kibera, one of Africa's largest slums, and a hotbed of support for opposition leader Raila Odinga." [1]

It should come as no surprise that Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has found support among the poor.  Back to Jesus Christ at least, those living in poverty most keenly perceive injustice and seek redress, magically entertaining justice in heaven for recourse or, and perhaps it's the healthier choice after all, promoting violent revolution.

For one to a few loudmouths on the American political scene, this is an old play.  For recruitment, play one of these cards: race or religion.  Perhaps in Africa, things are different and "tribe" will do for doing the same as the other two, encouraging avarice and mistrust, basing justice not in the distributive powers of governments but rather in local, malicious, and retributive actions.

"Kenya has become a nation of 10 millionaires and 10 million beggars,” said Kenyan politician Josiah Mwangi Kariuki early in the nation's history. 

The gambler who used his race track winnings to deal himself an education became a democratic and populist voice for the country, and although Kariuki himself died a millionaire, the accrual of which remains a mystery according to Wikipedia [3], his words and spirit have been embraced by opposition leader Raila Odinga, who quotes them on the current political record page of his campaign web site [2].

It so happens that in Kibera, Kenya has real problems.  In 2005, the International Medical Corps characterized the slum as the largest in east Africa, "home to more than 700,000 people living in a single square mile." [4]

Whisky Tango Foxtrot, indeed!

What responsible government on earth would allow that to happen--and then allow that misery to fester?

For once, we may have here the birth of a conflict Clausewitz would recognize as the continuation of politics through other means, and without further examination, except of the IMC statement, the Kibera "misery index" would seem to justify it.

Still, how Odinga's promotion of the common weal morphs into tribal division, animosity, and, accusations of genocidal violence in this fast breaking story presents a mystery all its own.

Google up Korir's article in the Wordpress blog Africa International [5]:

"Raila Odinga, when he was the Minister for Roads in Mwai Kibaki’s government, pulled down many expensive houses in Kenya telling Kenyans that he was doing so, “in the name of roads expansion.”

"Many of the houses pulled down belonged to the Kikuyus and non-Luo communities who, on loosing their properties, were denied compensation by the Roads ministry then headed by Raila.

War is personal.

From another source (you can do this too, of course: just Google "Raila Odinga tribal conflict")--

"With Kibaki belonging to Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and Odinga to the Luo, the second largest, the violence has taken on a distinctly ethnic hue, with tit-for-tat killings and targeted arson attacks.

"Young men armed with machetes rocks and bows and arrows could be seen manning crude checkpoints, allowing only those from the right ethnic group through." [6]

When it comes to helping the upwards of a million souls in the vermin infested Kibera slum, that seems left to charity, piecemeal, and dismal (if ever an epicenter for disease would welcome dismantling and transportation to better distributed districts hosting the labors of Bono and some hundreds of professional urban planners and social architects backed by the likes of George Soros and developers with Jim Rousean ambitions, Kibera sure sounds like it); when it comes to family, don't you know, a poltical high seat and license to destroy properties and lives without "due process"--not any process at all, in fact--may seem just fine.

From Gaza to Islamabad to Mogadishu, one may well ask: is this the world the world wants?

Whatever the answer, and with both the seemingly civilized states of Pakistan and Kenya suffering assaults from within, the world of division without end and retribution without limit would seem the one coming.

# # #

---

1. Cawthorne, Andrew, Nicolo Gnecchi.  "Protests shake Kenya, vote probe urged."  Reuters, January 3, 2008.

2. Raila 2007.

3. Josia Mwangi Kariuki.  Wikipedia, as experienced January 3, 2008.

4. IMC in Kibera, Kenya.

5. "Kenya: Does Raila Odinga “hate the Kikuyu community?”

6. "Thousands flee Kenya fearing 'ethnic cleansing'".  Al Arabiya New Channel, January 2, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Kenya: How Fragile

Finally, from Kenya by way of Reuters, something solid on which to hang the looming threat of civil war: an assembly against the government, predominantly nonviolent on the part of the protesters, and banned by the government, which has backed up its refusal of permission with measured force.

One protester said, "This is dictatorship now," but, one may say happily today that the state administration overall seems an awful long way from adopting the tactics of, say, the junta in Burma.

I've seen the intractable posturing that leads to positioning for unmistakable war twice this past year--at Lal Masjid in Islamabad, Pakistan and at Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon.  There's a done-wrong romance to it: I/we have been cheated; the government is illigitimate and not to be trusted; I/we will fix things with our sticks, our Kalashnikovs, our machetes.

In Kenya, instead of sending a disputed election into the courts--open to the public and on the record--at least a few leaders or politicians, so-called, have whipped themselves and their constituencies toward violent confrontation.  Because the process is so dumb and transparant, practically predictable, one expects a certain zeal for confrontation or revolution from students: they're wired for it, and, perhaps, student protests and assorted actions tending toward mayhem have a refreshing effect on cultures overall, old men and women having to hand it over, whatever it is, some time.

In complex and sophisticated societies, however, the reduction to "my side vs. your side" in discourse accompanied by interest in doing violence to others has the effect of a cancer: it threatens and shuts down the systems all rely on for succor; sponsored by those emboldened to take lives, it spreads to take innocent life and produce misery for those least connected to or concerned with the politics that serves primarily as an excuse to discover and indulge in the experience of an absolute, if momentary, power.

# # #

---

1. "Kenyan police battle Odinga supporters."  Reuters, January 3, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

"A Looter who broke his legs . . . ."

"A looter who broke his legs is carried by private security guards to a police car in Kisumu"

That's a fact

Check out the picture from Kenya.

This, however, packages fact with something else: "President Mwai Kibaki's government accused rival Raila Odinga's party of unleashing "genocide" in Kenya on Wednesday as the death toll from tribal violence over a disputed election passed 300." [1]

The phrase ". . . death toll from tribal violence" would seem a logical conclusion given the behavior of the two chest pounding leaders; however, there's that looter (and doubtless his and other individual's stories for every atrocity and murder committed), and I would suggest, if tapped to tell the tale, coherent discussion of tribal antagonism and politics would vanish from the conversation inside of a minute or two.

I want the looter's story.

I want to know how roving gangs of youths (and the odd individual) who may have been primed by older or local politicians and set off by election-related controversy get credited with representing tribal interests or stakes when their anarchic authority, disorganization, and the characteristics of their violence belie other than the most feral and pathetic of motives.

Claim "tribal violence" if you will, but detail for me, please, the lives of the leaders and generals, their warriors, and the specific disputes between them, and then connect whoever they are and whatever the issues with the burning of a church and the always politically expressive, I guess, act of looting.

# # #

---

1. "A looter who broke his legs is carried by private security guards to a police car in Kisumu".  Reuters, January 2, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

The Problem with Young Men

"Police and a senior security official said the blaze at the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church in western Kenya was deliberately started by a gang of youths." [1]

The problem with young men may be that they get too close to old ones before rampaging off to change the world.

Nonetheless, should you be young and reading this: the weak are always more prone to violence than the strong.

Among leaders, certain of the breed nourish their flocks on avarice, division, jealousy, and hatred, a generous dollop of poison for unbounded energies.

Perhaps where the strong are weak, they invite the violence of the weak.

# # #

---

1. Wallis, Daniel, Wangui Kanina.  "Church massacre pushes Kenya death toll near 250."  Reuters, January 1, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---

Mob Violence

The first shame: attempts by politicians to co-opt and filter riot as an expression of political cause.

The second: the stunning lack of personal wherewithal or framework for the individual's management of his own buy-in to helter skelter violence.

Far be it from me to advocate for warfare, conventional or guerrilla, but whether out of Pakistan this week or Kenya, to interpret mob violence as anything other than adolescent license--start there because that's a more sensible place than any political excuse--thoroughly disgraces and disservices the intellectual legacy available in every country in which it occurs.

When it comes to riot, there is always an excuse, a convenient scapegoat, a large enough target.

One may except from this thesis runs on banks, bread shortages, and hikes in the price of gasoline, but even then, should the contemplation of violence and violent action seem helpful, have at it clear, directed, and well organized: let some defined and true enemy (of the people; of the state; of humanity) bear the brunt of that force.

Violence is the business of armies and guerrilla bands alike.

This other business--anarchy in the street; looting; wanton destruction of personal property; murder, because it's convenient, can be done, and for the hell of it--has to to with language, lust, mind, and misapprehension.

The clever may make use of anarchy:

--good proof, so goes the tale, that the state cannot protect its people;

--not a bad way to resist the imposition of governments and the courts they would install (i.e., anarchy may turn out a good thing for the warlord business);

--a sign that people are unhappy with their leaders ( so let's get on with elections).

Here's the truth: in Nairobi today, Kenyans are hitting the stores that are open to fend off what they may perceive as a rising tide of anarchic violence under the guise of tribal rivalry and ambition.

"The use of the word genocide will horrify Kenyans, used to being viewed by the world as a stable democracy, investment and tourist destination and oasis of peace in an otherwise volatile region scarred by like the 1994 Rwanda genocide." [1]

Who are the people?

In Kenya or Pakistan--are the people not those opening businesses in the morning, going off to work, looking for work?

Are "the people" not the hungry bellies and destitute, the ignorant, and the afflicted?

Are "the people" not just people with ambitions, needs, and wants?

We have all seen what the installation, or perhaps reinstallation, of "my people vs. your people" has meant for Lebanon, Iraq, and Somalia, and here, with the help of even otherwise erudite politicians, comes the same to threaten Pakistan and Kenya, an unfocussed anger refracted into some kind of sense (nonsense) by venal political animals.

Soak the ground in enough blood, and it will bear evil fruit for generations.

Resist.

# # #

---

1. Hull, C. Bryson, Andrew Cawthorne.  "Kenya bloodshed called 'genocide'".  Reuters, January 2, 2008.

---

Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

---