Tuesday 8 January 2008

Talks, conscience, and the fear of Uchawi, in Kenya

John Kufuor the head of the African Union and President of Ghana will hopefully facilitate talks today between Raila Odinga and Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki.

An interesting piece by Macharia Munene dissecting Mwai Kibaki's political agony, there is absolutely nothing to celebrate people.

When I reflect on the cost to the Kenyan people of those election results, I wonder how those who are responsible for this crisis, are able to sleep at night. Some of the people involved are Christians and Catholics, and I wonder how this fits with their understanding of their faith. Their behaviour is incongruent, and unacceptable. However, it is business as usual for the rich as the poor kill each other as Macharia points out.

Some of the looters in Mombasa, have returned their stolen goods, for fear of being cursed by those who have died. The belief in Uchawi(witchcraft) is so strong, these guys have returned their goods.

My hunch is that Emilio Stanley Mwizi Kibaki, does not share their same fear, and is not willing to return what he stole, and is hoping to go for some middle ground, whatever that may look like. The Kenyan people are waiting.

Ory Okolloh at Kenyan Pundit has started a series of powerful diaries by all Kenyans affected by this in their own voice, telling their own story.

In the meantime, the Federation of Tour operators are holding off making a decision on whether or not to lift, its current members travel ban.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Talks ? conscience ? - these sort of words are not in the vocabulary of our leaders. i think majority of kenyans have suffered, unnecessarily for a long time under selfish leaders; they have had enough and would rather die fighting for a better society than contibue scrapping a living in awful condition s in the slums. Nairobi even boasts of the biggest slum in Africa !!!

Soon, all well meaning kenyans will have to accept that our leaders are not going to do the decent thing so the only option will be war !

Tamtam said...

Anon,

You are right.

These people obviously did not have any training in leadership.

It saddens me.