Before I start on the topic of analysis, I would like to draw attention to some very disturbing news. This news is best left to readers’ interpretation as I am at loss at what to say to it.
1. An earlier report by Reuters stated Kenya’s embattled government has activated a murderous criminal gang to protect its supporters during a bloody confrontation over disputed elections, a leading human rights activist said on Wednesday. Maina Kiai, head of the government-funded National Commission on Human Rights, said the Mungiki, an ethnic Kikuyu gang notorious for beheading its victims, had returned. “They are coming out again and being used by the state. We have firm evidence of that, some of their people came to us,” he said.
2. A BBC report from a Kenyan (who wishes to remain anonymous) in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha describes how members of an outlawed sect - the Mungiki - are forcibly recruiting members of their Kikuyu ethnic group to kill non-Kikuyus - allied to the opposition. Gangs of Kikuyus are outside the prison and burning houses nearby but the police - there are many of them there - but it is like they are relaxed. They are not doing anything, just shooting, shooting, shooting [up in the air] but not stopping these people from getting closer to the prison.
3. AFP reports the following: NAIVASHA, Kenya– Lying on a blood-stained stretcher, Caleb’s face is convulsed in pain. “The Kikuyus circumcised me by force,” he says, moments before losing consciousness in the hospital’s sweltering heat. On Sunday night, “a group of eight men with pangas (machetes) entered. They asked for my ID,” he says, explaining that his attackers wanted to see his name and determine which tribe he belonged to. “They slashed me and they circumcised me by force. I screamed a lot and cried for help: ‘Mum, I don’t want to die far away from home’,” he says. Caleb complains that the police arrived on the scene but eventually left him in a poll of blood and made away with the machetes and other weapons left behind by the Kikuyu gang.
4. Nation reports that In Kisumu, a watchman was shot dead by police as demonstrators took to the streets protesting against the Naivasha and Nakuru killings. They burnt vehicles and forced schools to close. At Kapsoit trading centre on the Kisumu-Kericho highway, a man who was among a group barricading the road was killed by police, while five vehicles were burnt…In Nakuru, the death toll from three days of violence stood at 84…
5. The Timesonline reports that Naivasha residents say that the attackers were Mungiki bussed in from Limuru, a Kikuyu stronghold close to Nairobi. Police are taking the accusations seriously. An officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “It certainly looks like they were … and that they were brought here from outside.”
I really thought there had been a previous attempt to destroy the Mungiki. Was it just a gimmick?
Media
When one talks about how powerful media can be, we can sum it up in one sentence: The mass media play a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion: the media communicate the world to individuals and reproduce the self-image of society. Media information are influential mediums as they have been largely responsible in structuring the daily lives and routines of many, as found out by various sociologists.
Kenya opened a forum for many radio stations to broadcast information when the government banned live broadcasts. Live broadcasts were seen as essential in a time when everyone was biting their nails in anticipation of what would come next in the post-election crisis. How wise that was is what I want to examine. I posit that that was a most un-wise move as the proliferation of information broadcasts on the smaller radio stations grew concurrent with the need for the information people lacked in the live broadcasts. The vilifying of the media-houses, whose information are highly scrutinized by the rest of the world was also increased leading to a mistrust by the general public. What would hey have then done? Turn to their radios. Here comes the shocker:
According to humanitarian news and analysis by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Inflammatory statements and songs broadcast on vernacular radio stations and at party rallies, text messages, emails, posters and leaflets have all contributed to post-electoral violence in Kenya. While the mainstream media, both English and Swahili, have been praised for their even-handedness, vernacular radio broadcasts have been of particular concern, given the role of Kigali’s Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines in inciting people to slaughter their neighbours in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. “There’s been a lot of hate speech, sometimes thinly veiled. The vernacular radio stations have perfected the art,” Caesar Handa, chief executive of Strategic Research, told IRIN. Among the FM stations that Handa singled out for criticism were the Kalenjin-language station Kass, the Kikuyu stations Inooro and Kameme and the Luo station, Lake Victoria.
“The call-in shows are the most notorious,” said Handa. “The announcers don’t really have the ability to check what the callers are going to say.” Handa heard Kalenjin callers on Kass FM making negative comments about other ethnic groups, who they call “settlers”, in their traditional homeland, Rift Valley Province.
“You hear cases of ‘Let’s reclaim our land. Let’s reclaim our birthright’. Let’s claim our land means you want to evict people [other ethnic communities] from the place,” said Handa. Vernacular music has also been used to raise ethnic tensions. The two Kikuyu stations, Kameme and Inooro, played songs “talking very badly about beasts from the west”, a veiled reference to opposition leader Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) colleagues, who come from western Kenya, said Handa. Radio Lake Victoria played a Luo-language song by DO Misiani, which referred to “the leadership of baboons”.
KNCHR singled out a Kikuyu song by Miuga Njoroge, broadcast on Inooro FM, as worrying. “I hear it was sponsored by the [governing] Party of National Unity,” said Mucheke. “The gist of it is Raila [Odinga] is a murderer. He is power hungry. He doesn’t care about other tribes. He only cares about his tribe, the Luo community. It says that Luos are lazy. They don’t work. They are hooligans. That when they rent houses, they don’t pay rent.”
IRIN then says that by allowing such sentiments to be voiced on air, observers say, they earn a degree of legitimacy that can be used to justify attacks on other ethnic groups. I totally agree with them. The media sanctions in place by the government now are at the wrong door. These stations should be closed with immediate effect, being that they sure have played a role in the escalation of the violence. Or they should be used as an effective means of stopping the violence. How to do this is a question I am still turning in my mind and will post an answer if and when I get it. However, the Eastandard has a put a foot forward towards this. Their editors had this to say:
“For the umpteenth time, we are compelled to address our leaders and the nation over the political madness that has been going on for a month now — since the December 27 election — and which shows no signs of abating.
It is important, from the outset, to make it clear that the crippling political crisis threatening to shut down the country is not the making of the Kenyan people — they rendered their verdict by casting their votes to choose their leaders in the parliamentary and presidential election…Leaders have lost control of their supporters and few can call for calm and be listened to. This is how low the country has sunk…The magnitude of this challenge suggests that unless our leaders deliberately make hard choices for the sake of preserving the security of our people and the Kenyan nation, we could see a vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence”.
They said to the leaders, “They must also ponder the following: Who gains when our people continue to be killed and suffer? Will it matter much — in a situation where the country is destabilised — to hold or ascend to the presidency?… If they truly care, they should hold joint rallies to salvage the country from going down the precipice. They should demonstrate humility and climb down from the pedestals they are perched on…We also wish to appeal to the people — however inflamed their passions may be — to calm down”.
While there may be no reports of the ODM leaders using radio stations to escalate violence, I believe that a wise move would have been at an earlier stage to use them to calm people down. Human Rights Watch report that many Kalenjin community leaders told them that if the area’s ODM leadership or the local Kalenjin radio station KASS FM told people unequivocally to stop attacks on Kikuyu homes, then they believe the violence would stop. “If the leaders say stop, it will stop immediately,” said one Kalenjin elder”.
I uphold the Eastandard’s effort. Who is next? Will they reach down into the flaming souls of the populace? I am still thinking…
19:33 
16:17 
16:04 
15:34 
Both a well done demonstration, and a really impressive looking product. Skyfire allows you to see the full PC web on your mobile phone. It handles all types of complicated things, ranging from ajax to Flash to DHTML. They showed us live head-to-head results versus the top phones and other mobile web browsers including the iPhone and Opera Mini. Honestly, the had me when they pulled up a complicated site like ESPN.com so quickly on it. It’s launching in public beta today, so give it a try.
This is a real-time automated translation service. It allows you to chat with people and translates back and forth in real-time. This is a very intriguing product, you type text in your language, and others see it in theirs. I don’t know about you, but I can think of a number of ways that this could be highly useful in Africa. I’m going to talk to them at their booth to find out a little more about available languages, and the ability for users to adjust the settings to take into account local language differences. 
8:58 
kenyaelection07
6:24 
1:53 
1:46 
