It came as no surprise to some of us, who have lived through it all before, when William Ruto and his sidekick Rigathi Gachagua began speaking the language of violence and daily inventing scenarios designed to strike fear and anxiety into the general public.
Equally unsurprising was the reported discovery in Rift Valley of leaflets threatening extreme consequences to anyone not voting a certain way. I am sure many people had a sense of déjà vu.
Ruto is heir to the concept of the Nandi Hills Declaration of 1969, which laid claim on behalf of Nandis to all the settlement land in Nandi District and opposed the incursion of non-Kalenjins, especially Kikuyus, into the area.
And it is this attitude that has been at the root of the problems Kenya has had with election violence throughout the past 30 years – all of it with some kind of link to Ruto, all of it divisive and exclusionary, and all of it starting in Rift Valley, from Molo and Burnt Forest in 1992 via Kiambaa in 2007 and now threatening again this year.
So-called ‘ethnic clashes’ began in earnest in 1991, when the push for multi-partyism was gaining ground. Kanu was caught out by a wave of support for the nascent opposition and some of its young followers established a group that was determined to ensure the Independence party was not defeated in the 1992 elections. Youth for Kanu (YK) ’92 was birthed.
Ruto, apparently possessed of the appropriate temperament, quickly became a leading light in an outfit that struck dread into the populace. Well-funded and well-armed, YK’92 was brutal in the terror it inflicted on anyone not toeing the anti-multi-party line. Any such ‘undesirables’ were termed ‘madoadoa’.
The 1998 Akiwumi Commission of Inquiry into the tribal clashes of 1991-2 reported a witness as saying the non-Kalenjin in Rift Valley were threatened with dire consequences if they even talked about multi-partyism. YK’92 operatives were deeply involved in the policing of this.
The report noted that “Paul Kipkemei Murei, a Kalenjin himself, told us that, in or about 1991-11, he heard that the Luo, the Kisii, and the Kikuyu, who were the ‘madoadoa’ because they were perceived to be supporters of multi-partyism or its sympathisers, would be driven away.”
Nearly two decades later, very little had changed. The Waki Commission of Inquiry into the post-election violence of 2007/8 said that several witnesses narrated how the pre-election campaigns in Rift Valley were characterised by tension, with the “Kalenjin saying that, on election-day, they did not want to see ‘madoadoa’.”
In both instances, the threats were curtain-raisers to the extermination of thousands of people and the permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands more. And it is no surprise that a similar scenario is occurring today. For ‘multi-partyism’ in 1992, perhaps substitute ‘Raila Odinga’ in 2022.
In 2007, I was working with Raila Odinga, leader of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and then MP for Kibera, on his autobiography. This meant I was taking nearly verbatim notes at every meeting he attended, including with the ‘Pentagon’, the group he formed with his four closest allies at the time – Joseph Nyagah, Najib Balala, Musalia Mudavadi and William Ruto, with Charity Ngilu also later invited to join.
The Pentagon operated out of offices in a house off Ole Dume Road in Kilimani, Nairobi. It was a buzzing place – leaders and MPs and party officials in and out, meetings and discussions all day every day, young activists planning support activities, IT experts setting up a parallel vote-counting system, diplomats and African leaders visiting, local and international media continually banging at the gate – a million things going on. People were upbeat and confident of an Odinga victory.
That was before December 30, 2007, when, as the chairman of the then Electoral Commission, Samuel Kivuitu, later told his church congregation, “the devil stepped in” and people woke up to find Kibaki had somehow overtaken Raila’s nearly one-million-vote lead in the presidential count and was then secretly sworn in as president under cover of darkness, less than half-an-hour after the fraudulent result had been announced.
Kivuitu later admitted that he had been pressured to announce this result and that he did not really know who had won. Those outraged at the theft took to the streets to vent their displeasure. Violence spread, with the result we all know.
At the Pentagon, a dismayed team sat silently glued to TVs as the ongoing violence was reported by brave news crews. Meeting after meeting was held to discuss how to stop people fighting. Press statement after press statement was drafted at Raila’s direction, condemning the violence and calling for peaceful protest. His colleagues still came in and out, but they came in battered and beaten from visiting the front line of the violence, returning to report to the others what they had heard and seen.
Kivuitu later admitted that he had been pressured to announce this result and that he did not really know who had won. Those outraged at the theft took to the streets to vent their displeasure.
On January 4, French ambassador Elisabeth Barbier arrived to offer her support. She was met by Raila, Ruto and Charity, and the head of the European Union Commission also joined the group. I took notes.
Raila told Barbier that “without fear of contradiction, our stand is unequivocal – we are for dialogue. It is the only way out”. He told her he had confirmed to Gordon Brown (then UK prime minister), Condoleezza Rice (then US secretary of state) and the German and Canadian foreign ministers that he would talk to Kibaki. Charity added, “We need to partner with Kibaki’s people in a true way and we shall see the difference.”
Ruto was apparently not so keen. He had some background he wanted to share. He said, “Rift Valley Province is a very interesting scenario. It has seen the biggest backlash of the outcome. Let me give you a little of the background. For the past five years, the majority have felt this government has worked against them … That is why the people of RVP voted with passion – for him [indicating Raila] and against Kibaki.
“When Raila Odinga became a symbol against Kibaki, there was a lot of passion. Moi could not believe what happened …. The Kibaki group really wanted RVP. He was willing to close his eyes to his differences with Moi. He didn’t succeed.”
The same day, a group from the Pentagon met civil society leaders, who included Muthoni Wanyeki, Mugambi Kiai, Millie Odhiambo and Njeri Kabeberi. The ODM team had Ruto, Charity, Omingo Magara and Oburu Oginga, with Raila joining later. I took notes.
Ruto boastfully repeated to the group what he had told Barbier, with added details: “In RVP, it is an interesting phenomenon. It didn’t start with the announcement of the election. It’s strange. It had built up over time. Kibaki got worked against.
“… Six of us [who have been] elected have cases in court, but there is anger against Kibaki and people said they were going to elect [us] anyway. [The other side thought] you cannot compare William Ruto to Moi. [But] if the people of RVP defied Moi and cornered him [Kibaki], they could not stand in the way of what RVP wanted.
“How could William Ruto contain RVP? [Kibaki’s side thought]. [We went] to Kass FM. It was a phenomenon. They [Kibaki’s side] could not understand [it]. [We] cleared [out] everybody associated with Kibaki. It was more about Kibaki than Raila Odinga.”
These comments by Ruto came two days after the burning of the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church in Kiambaa, with 30 women and children, mostly Kikuyus and likely Kibaki supporters, incinerated inside.
Before the fire, rumours of an impending attack on local homes and shops had sent women and children to the church as a place of refuge, while their menfolk remained outside to defend them.
But in an explosion of ethnic violence, hundreds of people, many of them Kalenjin neighbours known to the Kikuyus they now sought to kill, arrived with bows and arrows and sharpened sticks, overwhelming the men trying to protect their families.
When Raila Odinga became a symbol against Kibaki, there was a lot of passion. Moi could not believe what happened …. The Kibaki group really wanted RVP
The mob pelted the church with rocks and then blocked the exits with petrol-soaked mattresses, piled on dried maize leaves from the nearby fields and turned the place into an inferno, pushing back in anyone who tried to escape.
They slashed with machetes the men desperately trying to rescue their families, and chased others into neighbouring fields, where they hacked them to death and chopped them into pieces.
After the church fire had died down, relatives went in to search for their people. None of the blackened corpses, grandmothers and mothers who died holding their children close, was recognisable.
A week later, distraught women were still searching the fields for parts of their husbands, a wife perhaps recognising a dismembered leg by the trousers her husband had been wearing. Police officers had the grim job of picking up the slashed and decomposing human remains and taking them to the mortuary in Eldoret.
The Kiambaa killings led to revenge attacks and no community escaped unscathed, including Kalenjins. Kenyans of different ethnic backgrounds who had lived peaceably side-by-side for generations found themselves at odds with each other. It was the result of their having been incited by people who cared nothing for those forced to kill or be killed, and the incident led directly to Ruto’s being indicted at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
Against this never-to-be-forgotten background of terrible events, the kind of rhetoric about killing that has been recklessly engaged in by Ruto and Gachagua in the run-up to the 2022 elections is nothing if not chilling. It is, in fact, the very definition of incitement.
As everyone knows, the 2007 election dispute was eventually solved through the formation of a coalition government after the intervention of Kofi Annan. ODM’s first meeting with Annan took place at the Serena Hotel on January 23, 2008. At the end of the meeting, Annan said he would meet Kibaki the following day and hopefully get the two leaders to the table for talks as soon as possible.
In the debriefing afterwards, ideas were exchanged among the ODM team, especially over whether now was the time to call off the mass action ODM had supported. Tinderet MP Henry Kosgey reported that people were still angry, especially because Kibaki, despite the ongoing negotiations, had already taken his place in parliament.
In fact, reported Kosgey, “People are going to Sudan to look for guns.” Ruto was unequivocal. “No choice,” he said. “We have to go for guns.”
Wherever there is violence, it seems Ruto’s name features. It began with the infamous YK’92. Then came Kiambaa and Ruto’s trip to The Hague. Soon, witnesses started disappearing or being found murdered. Ruto’s name keeps cropping up in other cases – I won’t name them. And now here he is again, along with his running-mate, making wild accusations and telling implausible stories that can only have an ill intent.
We cannot afford for this kind of violence to continue. Even leaving aside whatever has gone before, those who cannot accomplish their stated aims without stooping so low as to begin setting the stage once again for inter-ethnic violence and killing clearly have no right, ‘God-given’ or otherwise, to be in the business of national leadership.
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Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Elephant’s editorial stance. The Elephant has offered the Kenya Kwanza campaign an opportunity for response but received none.
