[kictanet] [Fwd: Pambazuka News 338: Heart of darkness in Western Media]

alice alice at apc.org
Wed Jan 23 08:45:55 EAT 2008


western media bias...Africa

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Pambazuka News 338: Heart of darkness in Western Media
Date: 	Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:26:13 +0000
From: 	Firoze Manji <fmanji at mac.com>
To: 	pambazuka-news at pambazuka.gn.apc.org



PAMBAZUKA NEWS 338: HEART OF DARKNESS IN WESTERN MEDIA

The authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for  
social justice in Africa

Pambazuka News (English edition): ISSN 1753-6839

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CONTENTS: 1. Features, 2. Comment and analysis, 3. Pan-African Postcard

Please note that views expressed in articlea published in Pambazuka  
News reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily represent  
those of Pambazuka News or the publishers, Fahamu.

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Highlights from this issue

FEATURE:
- John Barbieri on media coverage of the Kenya crisis
- Pambazuka editors on the word “tribe”
COMMENT & ANALYSIS:
- Emma Mawdsley on British coverage of China in Africa
- John Lonsdale on ethnicity, tribe and state in Kenya
- Antony Ong'ayo on the Kenya case and media bias
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: George Ogola on parachute journalism and the  
Kenyan crisis


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1 Features
WHAT IS IN THE WORD TRIBE?
Africa Focus, Africa Action and H-Net Africa contributors on Western  
media coverage of Africa
Pambazuka editors

Pambazuka editors give you the war on the word "tribe"

What’s in a word? What does the word “tribe” carry? Here below  
Pambazuka Editor’s give you a few snippets of what is a long struggle  
to get US Mainstream media to stop using a racist and stereotypical  
lens in its coverage of Africa. You can find the fascinating  
discussion at www. http://www.h-net.org/~africa We end with an  
excerpt from an Africa Action essay on the word tribe. You can see  
the full essay at: http://www.africaaction.org/bp/ethall.htm

Africa Focus (http://www.africafocus.org/docs08/ethn0801.php)  
narrates that Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times in his  
December 31 dispatch from Nairobi [wrote that the Kenya electoral  
crisis], "seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal  
tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now  
had not provoked widespread mayhem." Gettleman was not exceptional  
among those covering the post-election violence in his stress on  
"tribe." But his terminology was unusually explicit in revealing the  
assumption that such divisions are rooted in unchanging and  
presumably primitive identities.

However Africa Focus gives an update that since the Africa Focus  
Bulletin that covered Gettleman’s use of language: “Gettleman's  
coverage of Kenya in the New York Times has avoided the  
indiscriminate use of the word tribe in favor of "ethnic group," and  
has noted the historical origins and political character of the  
continued violence in the country, as well as its links to ethnic  
divisions”.

But Peter Alegi from Michigan State University in an H- Net Africa  
posting says and then asks: “While Gettleman (Times' EastAfrica  
bureau chief) seems to have toned down his use of "tribe" thanks to  
our protests, but isn't substituting "ethnic group" for it a minor  
victory?

Also, folks might be interested in this side story: the other day, I  
wrote a brief message to Bill Keller, Times' Executive Editor (ex NYT  
correspondent from Johannesburg [1992-1995]), alerting him to the H- 
Africa thread on his paper's handling of the Kenya crisis.

Mr. Keller's insulting response included the following statement:

"I get it. Anyone who uses the word "tribe" is a racist. [. . .] It's  
a tediously familiar mantra in the Western community of Africa  
scholars. In my experience, most Africans who live outside the  
comforts of academia (and who use the word "tribe" with shameless  
disregard for the political sensitivities of American academics) have  
more important concerns."

So Gettleman's ignorance about African languages, history, and  
cultural identities doesn't seem to trouble his boss one bit. And the  
utter disregard Keller seems to have for what scholars is reinforced  
in a closing line dripping with condescension:

"If you have a string that has something insightful to say about  
Kenya, I hope you'll pass it along."

Kudos to AfricaFocus then, but it seems that the struggle for  
accuracy and informed analysis of Africa in US mainstream media is  
going to be a long and tortuous one.

Carol Sicherman, a Professor Emerita. at Lehman College underlines  
Alegi’s point with the following post to H-net Africa: She says  
writes that “On January 12, I wrote to the Public Editor of the New  
York Times as follows (I did not get an answer):

Reading recent dispatches from Kenya, I was pleased to notice that  
the Times has responded to years of complaints about the biased terms  
"tribe" and "tribal," replacing them with "ethnic group" and  
"ethnic." This editorial policy, however, seems to be confined to the  
news. Roberta Smith's article "Face Time: Masks, Animal to Video" in  
the Arts Section on Jan. 11 uses the egregiously offensive phrase "a  
tribal, almost animalistic ritual." It is exactly that equation that  
makes it necessary to remove "tribe" and its related words. In the  
case in question, removing "tribal" would have put the focus on  
"animalistic" without designating Africans as inherently animalistic.  
It is particularly odd to find such a cliché in a discussion of the  
work of Yinka Shonibare, a highly sophisticated, learned, and ironic  
artist.

I don't know how copy editors are instructed at the Times, but the  
policy adopted for the news section needs to be adopted for all  
sections.

And last but not least, in1997 Africa Action said the following of  
the word tribe: Tribe has no coherent meaning.

What is a tribe? The Zulu in South Africa, whose name and common  
identity was forged by the creation of a powerful state less than two  
centuries ago, and who are a bigger group than French Canadians, are  
called a tribe. So are the !Kung hunter-gatherers of Botswana and  
Namibia, who number in the hundreds. The term is applied to Kenya's  
Maasai herders and Kikuyu farmers, and to members of these groups in  
cities and towns when they go there to live and work. Tribe is used  
for millions of Yoruba in Nigeria and Benin, who share a language but  
have an eight-hundred year history of multiple and sometimes warring  
city-states, and of religious diversity even within the same extended  
families. Tribe is used for Hutu and Tutsi in the central African  
countries of Rwanda and Burundi. Yet the two societies (and regions  
within them) have different histories. And in each one, Hutu and  
Tutsi lived interspersed in the same territory. They spoke the same  
language, married each other, and shared virtually all aspects of  
culture. At no point in history could the distinction be defined by  
distinct territories, one of the key assumptions built into "tribe."

Tribe is used for groups who trace their heritage to great kingdoms.  
It is applied to Nigeria's Igbo and other peoples who organized  
orderly societies composed of hundreds of local communities and  
highly developed trade networks without recourse to elaborate states.  
Tribe is also used for all sorts of smaller units of such larger  
nations, peoples or ethnic groups. The followers of a particular  
local leader may be called a tribe. Members of an extended kin-group  
may be called a tribe. People who live in a particular area may be  
called a tribe. We find tribes within tribes, and cutting across  
other tribes. Offering no useful distinctions, tribe obscures many.  
As a description of a group, tribe means almost anything, so it  
really means nothing.

If by tribe we mean a social group that shares a single territory, a  
single language, a single political unit, a shared religious  
tradition, a similar economic system, and common cultural practices,  
such a group is rarely found in the real world. These characteristics  
almost never correspond precisely with each other today, nor did they  
at any time in the past.

Tribe promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring  
history and change.

The general sense of tribe as most people understand it is associated  
with primitiveness. To be in a tribal state is to live in a  
uncomplicated, traditional condition. It is assumed there is little  
change. Most African countries are economically poor and often  
described as less developed or underdeveloped. Westerners often  
conclude that they have not changed much over the centuries, and that  
African poverty mainly reflects cultural and social conservatism.  
Interpreting present day Africa through the lens of tribes reinforces  
the image of timelessness. Yet the truth is that Africa has as much  
history as anywhere else in the world. It has undergone momentous  
changes time and again, especially in the twentieth century. While  
African poverty is partly a product of internal dynamics of African  
societies, it has also been caused by the histories of external slave  
trades and colonial rule.

In the modern West, tribe often implies primitive savagery.

When the general image of tribal timelessness is applied to  
situations of social conflict between Africans, a particularly  
destructive myth is created. Stereotypes of primitiveness and  
conservative backwardness are also linked to images of irrationality  
and superstition. The combination leads to portrayal of violence and  
conflict in Africa as primordial, irrational and unchanging. This  
image resonates with traditional Western racialist ideas and can  
suggest that irrational violence is inherent and natural to Africans.  
Yet violence anywhere has both rational and irrational components.  
Just as particular conflicts have reasons and causes elsewhere, they  
also have them in Africa. The idea of timeless tribal violence is not  
an explanation. Instead it disguises ignorance of real causes by  
filling the vacuum of real knowledge with a popular stereotype.

Images of timelessness and savagery hide the modern character of  
African ethnicity, including ethnic conflict.

The idea of tribe particularly shapes Western views of ethnicity and  
ethnic conflict in Africa, which has been highly visible in recent  
years. Over and over again, conflicts are interpreted as "ancient  
tribal rivalries," atavistic eruptions of irrational violence which  
have always characterized Africa. In fact they are nothing of the  
sort. The vast majority of such conflicts could not have happened a  
century ago in the ways that they do now. Pick almost any place where  
ethnic conflict occurs in modern Africa. Investigate carefully the  
issues over which it occurs, the forms it takes, and the means by  
which it is organized and carried out. Recent economic developments  
and political rivalries will loom much larger than allegedly ancient  
and traditional hostilities.

Ironically, some African ethnic identities and divisions now  
portrayed as ancient and unchanging actually were created in the  
colonial period. In other cases earlier distinctions took new, more  
rigid and conflictual forms over the last century. The changes came  
out of communities' interactions within a colonial or post-colonial  
context, as well as movement of people to cities to work and live.  
The identities thus created resemble modern ethnicities in other  
countries, which are also shaped by cities, markets and national states.

Tribe substitutes a generalized illusion for detailed analysis of  
particular situations.

The bottom-line problem with the idea of tribe is that it is  
intellectually lazy. It substitutes the illusion of understanding for  
analysis of particular circumstances. Africa is far away from North  
America. Accurate information about particular African states and  
societies takes more work to find than some other sorts of  
information. Yet both of those situations are changing rapidly.  
Africa is increasingly tied into the global economy and international  
politics. Using the idea of tribe instead of real, specific  
information and analysis of African events has never served the truth  
well. It also serves the public interest badly.

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org
******

THE POVERTY OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM
John Barbieri

John Barbieri writes about the pervasive and dangerous myths that  
have characterized the coverage of Kenya's post election crisis in  
the US and elsewhere

First, let me honorably mention that the title of this piece is  
borrowed from Kenyan journalist Rebecca Wanjiku [1]. As most others,  
I have watched in dismay and outrage at the events in Kenya following  
the announcement on Dec. 30th of the (manipulated) election results.  
I have been equally, if not more so, dismayed, outraged and disgusted  
by how the situation and violence there has been depicted and framed  
in the international media, especially here in the United States. In  
almost all of the recent coverage and commentary on Kenya in the  
mainstream U.S. media there have been three particularly dangerous  
and pervasive myths and misrepresentations that have appeared. All of  
these myths have been previously commented on by much more eminent  
figures than I, but perhaps it will help to restate and further  
comment on all of them in one place.

Three Pervasive Myths and Misrepresentations

First, this is not ‘ethnic conflict.’ Similar to the way that most  
African conflicts get reported, there is the ubiquitous framing of  
the situation as conflict solely being driven by ethnicity. This is  
most profoundly seen in the statements of ‘tribal conflict’; it must  
be made clear that this is an extremely racist, antiquated and  
inaccurate depiction of the situation. Though there has been an  
ethnic factor to some of the conflict, this factor is largely  
overemphasized at expense of the more pervasive factor of the rich/ 
poor and the gross inequities in resource distribution across and  
among ‘ethnic lines’ (that is as if such lines could be so clearly  
drawn). As many have more articulately said elsewhere the situation  
must be re-framed as a political conflict.

More specifically, the organized violence following the elections  
must be framed as political elites manipulating their supporters  
(including paying and equipping armed militias and using the armed  
instruments of the State) to inflict violence on their behalf; it is  
so-called leaders fomenting hatred among their supporters all for  
their own personal benefit; and it is power-hungry politicians  
willing to do whatever it takes, literally willing to throw Kenyans’  
lives away in their attempt to do it, and to be so disgustingly eager  
to use that violence as a mere pressure point on the national and  
international community to get/retain power. Both parties were guilty  
of this, but in particular the man sworn in as President has employed  
the disproportionate brutal force of the police and military,  
especially the General Service Unit.

The repercussions of depicting the situation as solely ethnically- 
driven can be seen in the distorted sense of history and context for  
all conflicts in Africa and elsewhere. One of the most pervasive  
historical misconstructions is especially evident in the popular  
writings and collective memory of the Rwandan genocide, which  
continue to frame the genocide as being simply the result of  
primordial ‘tribal conflict.’ In so doing the context and history of  
the genocide is obfuscated by neglecting the ongoing role played by  
the brutal legacy of the colonial power (Belgium in the case of  
Rwanda) and of national, regional and international politics  
following ‘independence.’

Second, this is not a ‘shock.’ We need to attack the myths and claims  
being reported that the developments in Kenya are a great ‘shock,’  
and that this is a great blow to a ‘beacon of stability, democracy  
and economic growth in Africa.’ For anyone who knows the history of  
Kenya, the history of colonialism and the history since  
‘independence,’ they know that these developments are not a shock and  
that they have been long in the making. The developments are directly  
connected to the inability of the Kenyan government to come to terms  
with the brutal legacy and power distributions inherited from British  
rule, including the constitution itself. And specifically the  
developments were written all over the wall leading up to the  
election to anyone who was paying attention to the fomenting of  
ethnic tension by Kibaki/PNU and Odinga/ODM, yet too few seemed  
willing to acknowledge it. Anyone who claims that this is a ‘shock’  
is either blatantly ignorant, dishonest or practices mere wishful  
thinking to be so naïve. And anyone who claims that Kenya is a grand  
‘beacon of stability, democracy and economic growth in Africa’  
misrepresents the hardships and injustices that the vast majority of  
Kenyans desperately face on a daily basis; they also inaccurately  
depict the past five years of the ‘booming economic growth’ witnessed  
under the Kibaki regime, which through exorbitant amounts of  
corruption and increasing income inequality has ensured that the  
benefits from that robust economic growth has by-and-large reached  
only the very elite.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, is the role of the U.S. It must  
be made clear and people must fully understand the large role that  
the U.S. has been playing in Kenya and throughout eastern Africa. The  
U.S. has keenly been trying to build up allies in East Africa and the  
Horn of Africa to counterbalance other perceived ‘threat’ countries  
in the region. These key U.S. allies include Kenya, Tanzania,  
Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda and the Transitional Federal Government of  
Somalia. These allies are meant to act as a counter-balance to the  
‘threats’ of Sudan (the Bashir regime), Eritrea and the Union of  
Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia. The Bush administration has clearly  
supported incumbent Kibaki due to the fact that his government has  
been one of these key allies in the ‘war on terror’ in the East and  
the Horn of Africa. The Kibaki administration has allowed and worked  
closely with the U.S. on supposed ‘terrorist’ raids along the coast  
of Kenya. The Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Unit (with American and British  
support) has conducted these extralegal anti-terrorism operations  
along the Kenyan coast, targeting the sizeable Muslim population  
there. According to human rights organizations in Kenya these anti- 
terrorism operations have included the roundup, torture and  
extradition of Muslims (to Somalia, Ethiopia and elsewhere) without  
being charged or given a trial, similar to ‘war on terror’ operations  
elsewhere. The people, nearly all of whom are Muslims, being targeted  
are dubiously claimed to be Al Qaeda operatives or a part of other  
subversive terrorist organizations.

Similarly, Kenya was an ally during the U.S.-supported invasion of  
Somalia by Ethiopian forces to overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts  
(UIC) in southern Somalia exactly one year ago. What was, and still  
is, routinely missed in the story of the UIC is how they helped to  
implement order, stability and social services that had not been seen  
in southern Somalia for nearly 15 years; and how the UIC was  
primarily an effort to depose corrupt warlords (many of whom were  
being backed by the U.S.), not to impose an international Al Qaeda- 
like jihadist movement as many claim(ed). Kenya’s (i.e., the Kibaki  
administration’s) role in the military operations included working  
with U.S. forces along the Kenya-Somalia border and the ubiquitous  
sharing of ‘intelligence,’ but they also played a more direct role as  
well. At the onset of the invasion, the Kenyan military, seemingly at  
the behest of the U.S., closed off its border with Somalia and  
refused entry to all Somalis, including refugees, trying to flee  
southern Somalia. Soon after, the U.S. conducted air strikes in  
southern Somalia killing at least 30 people, most, if not all, of  
whom were probably fleeing civilians, not ‘Al Qaeda operatives’ as  
was alleged. In short, the Bush administration had clear ‘national  
security’ ambitions in seeking that Kibaki, as a key ‘war on terror’ 
ally in eastern Africa, stay in power. Also, add to this the vested  
American, UK and other European business interests in Kenya as well,  
who likely did not care for Odinga’s ‘social democratic’ platform  
which was posing the threat of more taxes and redistributive wealth.

The biggest blow to U.S. credibility and neutrality in the matter,  
though, came immediately after the election results were announced.  
Incredulously, the U.S. State Department quickly came out and  
congratulated the man sworn in as President on his ‘victory.’ This  
was done despite the fact that every diplomat in the country clearly  
knew of the irregularities in the election and the hastily swearing  
in process of the President. Realizing its mistake the State  
Department quickly moved to retract this congratulatory statement,  
and then issued a statement calling an end to the violence and for  
the situation to be resolved through ‘constitutional and legal  
remedies.’ However, it is quite clear that these ‘remedies’ are  
blatantly weighted in the incumbent’s favor and thus will merely  
support the status quo: Kibaki and corruption. Since January 4th the  
U.S. has been pursuing the diplomacy route with Assistant Secretary  
of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who has now departed,  
and Ambassador Michael Ranneberger leading these attempts. However,  
it is was disturbing that despite Frazer’s close watch and ongoing  
separate talks with both sides, she (and therefore the U.S. in  
general) was not able to prevent Kibaki from disastrously going ahead  
and filling the most critical posts in the President’s cabinet.

More recently it should be no surprise that the few Heads of State  
who have come out and congratulated Kibaki on his ‘victory’ are also  
key ‘war on terror’ allies of the Bush administration. These Heads of  
State include: President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (who has received  
much aid from the Bush administration and has been crucial in  
supplying troops for the AU force in Somalia), transitional President  
Abdullahi Yusuf of Somalia (who the U.S., Ethiopia and Kenya helped  
reinstate after the overthrow of the UIC), Sheikh Sabah of Kuwait,  
King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and Prime Minister Themba Dlamini of  
Swaziland. An excerpt from Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf’s  
congratulatory message to President Kibaki is worth quoting: ‘…both  
our countries must remain strong partners on the global war on terror  
and steadfast Allies in protecting freedom.’ Further still, Uganda’s  
starch dependence on Kenyan supply routes and Museveni’s close  
relationship with Kibaki must be stressed, and therefore the  
widespread reports that the Uganda People’s Defense Force is  
masquerading as police, destroying property and killing people in  
western Kenya must be seriously addressed!

As others have already made clear (e.g., Mukoma wa Ngugi [2], Wandia  
Njoya [3], etc.), it should not be assumed that Odinga/ODM is somehow  
inherently antithetical to the interests of the U.S. and of  
international capital; the extravagant fuss over Odinga’s Hummer was  
perhaps one highly illustrative example of his true nature as an  
elite who gladly enjoys connections to the West and living well above  
the rest of Kenyans. Also, it should not be believed that U.S.  
support for corrupt and autocratic Kenyan leaders started with Bush- 
Kibaki, it is well-documented how the U.S. had been keenly supporting  
and arming the preceding 24 year dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi  
during the final years of Cold War geopolitics and beyond. Lastly,  
all of this is not meant to suggest a direct U.S. connection to the  
manipulated election results, but still the overall interests and  
role of the U.S., and other international actors, in Kenya must be  
made clear. (For more facts and figures on the U.S.’s military ties  
to Kenya and incumbent Kibaki see Daniel Volman’s excellent short  
article <http://www.concernedafricascholars.org/080110_volman.php> [4].)

The Poverty of International Journalism

In all, it has been disgusting how reporters have been so eager to  
energetically document and provide inaccurate and inhumane commentary  
on the bloodshed, but have been too unconcerned in trying to actually  
understand the situation and report what Kenyans are really saying  
and thinking; although this should certainly come as no surprise. The  
inspiration and title for this article comes from Kenyan journalist  
Rebecca Wanjiku’s blog ‘The Poverty of International Journalism,’ and  
this excerpt about a broadcast on CNN is worth quoting at length:

Understanding the local language is very important when reporting  
from foreign countries. For instance on Sunday [January 6th 2008],  
there was on television an injured man and those carrying him said in  
Swahili "tunampeleka hospitali" (we are taking him to hospital?) But  
the journalist's translation was that he had been asked "are you shot  
or cut?" with the response coming back that he was actually the  
victim of a shooting. It is unlikely that this was an innocent  
mistake, the journalist may simply not have cared what was true and  
what was not, and it is unlikely either that the world audience would  
have noticed, but using video like this to underline a story you are  
making up is dishonest reporting. I have faith that Kenyans will soon  
be embracing each other, and that we will soon get back to the urgent  
yet more mundane tasks of kujitafutia riziki – putting food on the  
table. I hope CNN will be around to cover that and not simply rush on  
to the next big story. By the way, how comes CNN does not cover  
American soldiers or civilians bleeding and writhing in pain, yet has  
no second thought for the dignity of the dead and dying from other  
countries?

It has been Kenyan journalists and bloggers, like Rebecca, and other  
local reporters who have been the real champions of correctly  
depicting and analyzing the situation, and who are actually raising  
the real desperate concerns of Kenyans. Rather than condescendingly  
prescribing analysis and treatment from London, New York or even the  
U.S. embassy in Nairobi (which is, although not as geographically  
removed, as cognitively removed from the concerns of Kenyans), the  
mainstream media needs to listen, understand and make clear the  
history and context of the current situation, and stop speaking so  
ignorantly and arrogantly about it.

And good journalists need to call out fellow journalists who are  
perpetuating the pervasive myths and stereotypes (e.g., Canadian  
journalist Arno Kopecky’s Daily Nation article [5]). I would like to  
take this opportunity, then, to call out CNN reporter Zain Verjee.  
Miss Verjee, as someone who grew up in Kenya, and therefore should  
know better, it is despicable how you have been playing up the  
‘ethnic conflict’ angle in your TV reporting. Why are you doing this?  
Are you callously using the plight of your countrymen/women to simply  
boost your career ambitions? Why is it that you so seldom let other  
Kenyans actually speak, and rather choose to just speak ‘on their  
behalf?’ Why is it that as someone who has worked on campaigns to  
spread awareness of violence against women have you not been more  
vigorously reporting the disproportionate effect that the violence  
and displacement has had on women in Kenya? Why is it that I have not  
once heard you mention the role the U.S. is playing in Kenya? Miss  
Verjee I am sorry that you were hit by a teargas canister during your  
recent reporting (although it should not have been a surprise given  
your attempt to ‘get the story’), but perhaps you might now feel some  
of the brutality that so many Kenyans have endured and perhaps now  
you may start honestly speaking on their behalf and letting their  
voices be heard.

The situation in Kenya, like all political conflicts (e.g., eastern  
Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Darfur, eastern Chad, Iraq,  
Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, etc.), should be vigorously reported, but  
it must be framed and depicted accurately by incorporating a proper  
historical context and the perspective of the people there. The  
perspectives/stories of people there must be told, but they must not  
be simply trivialized and sensationalized, as is so often done,  
particularly in the simplemindedness of televised ‘reporting.’ It is  
so sad that in the business that is U.S. TV reporting we seldom  
actually hear the voices of people telling their stories from around  
the world; rather we too often get a voice-over by some clearly  
intelligible Western (i.e., ‘white-sounding’) reporter. Why not use  
subtitles!?! Why must these people be robbed from having their voices  
heard, why must we be robbed from hearing them?!? Or why not find  
articulate English speakers (there certainly are an abundance of them  
in Kenya) to speak on their own behalf, and not demean their  
‘foreignness’ by using unwarranted subtitles? And why do we have to  
wait for ‘crisis’ situations to hear these voices? Why do we hear, or  
rather really just see, only the bad? Why do we not hear and see  
good, fun, silly, playful, uplifting and empowering stories being  
told every day? Why do we not hear and see stories with depth about  
love and dreams as often as we superficially see stories about loss  
and despair?

In conclusion, news without a proper sense of history and context is  
just a list of jumbled half-truths, and news without a proper respect  
for and input from the people who are actually affected is just a  
list of callous stereotypes. In the past week, now that the violence  
has slightly eased, the U.S. media seems to be losing interest in the  
situation in Kenya. Forgive the extreme vulgarity, but the mainstream  
U.S. media appears to send the following double message: we are not  
interested in Africans or African politics, that is unless there is a  
full out Rwanda-like bloodbath (with pictures of gruesome machete  
attacks and all, of course) so we can stereotype all Africans as the  
savages we think they are. I hope that all journalists, reporters and  
editors may heed these calls and start acting responsibly and start  
reporting the truth coming ‘out of Africa.’

* John Barbieri is an independent reporter who lived in Kenya from  
Jan.-June 2007, and is the founder of the US Coalition for Peace with  
Truth and Justice in Kenya. He can currently be reached at  
kenyanpeace at gmail.com

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org

* Please click on the link for the article notes
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45590
******



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2 Comment and analysis
FU MANCHU VERSUS DR LIVINGSTONE IN THE DARK CONTINENT?
How British broadsheet newspapers represent China, Africa and the West
Emma Mawdsley

Emma Mawdsley examines the coverage of China's growing influence in  
Africa by the British print media

The words and images we use do not describe ‘reality’, they create  
it. Language (terms, metaphors, and analogies) and images (such as  
films, news photos, maps and cartoons) are caught up in struggles  
over interpretation – which means that the language and images of the  
powerful are important tools in creating and maintaining particular  
points of view amongst politicians, policy-makers and the public.  
This paper explores the way in which six British broadsheet  
newspapers have covered China’s growing role in Africa over the past  
seven years. China’s impacts in Africa are complex and varied by  
country, sector and context, and most of the newspaper articles  
reflect that. Whether more critical or approving in tone, the  
articles invariably point to both benefits and problems associated  
with China’s rise. Even those which focus on specific issues or  
countries, tend to open or conclude with at least a sentence or two  
outlining a broader assessment of the prospects and problems  
associated with the growing relationship. Even so, a detailed  
analysis led us to identify five narrative tropes that recurred  
consistently and frequently, which tended to systematically endorse  
images of African weakness, Western trusteeship and Chinese  
ruthlessness:

1) a tendency to refer to ‘the Chinese’ or ‘China’, as if the various  
Chinese actors all shared the same interests;
2) a tendency to focus excessively on China’s interests in oil over  
other commodities;
3) a decided preference for focussing on China’s negative impacts on  
the continent, and within that, on issues and places of violence,  
disorder and corruption (e.g. Zimbabwe, Sudan, Angola) over other  
negative issues (e.g. trade imbalances, undermining domestic  
manufacturing sectors);
4) a tendency to portray Africans as victims or villains; and
5) a frequently complacent account of the role and interest of  
different western actors in Africa. Representations of Africa, China  
and the West First, most press reports tend to refer simply to “the  
Chinese”, often overlooking the fact that Chinese communities and  
actors in Africa are diverse in origins, roles and interests. The  
Chinese in Africa include longer standing and more recent diasporic  
communities, often engaged in small and medium business, but with a  
range of histories and relations with China and with their adopted  
African homes. Media accounts tend to focus much more strongly on  
Chinese state firms and agencies, as well as the more recent wave of  
large private enterprises (although the distinction can be blurred).  
But interests differ – longer term Chinese diasporic populations, the  
managers of Chinese companies, Chinese labourers employed by those  
companies, and different elements of the Chinese Government may have  
very different views on, for example, political stability, corporate  
transparency or democratic accountability. Different Chinese firms  
may have competing interests over what constitute desirable  
conditions for import/export trade or commodity extraction/ 
manufactures. The following quote indicates competing interests that  
are otherwise rarely reflected in the media accounts that were  
analysed: “Venturing into Africa is a superficially attractive option  
for Chinese enterprises with limited global experience, as they can  
avoid the kind of competition and rules they face in markets such as  
the US or the European Union. But Chinese companies are also under  
great pressure to invest in Africa to fulfil political commitments  
made by China’s leaders, who provide financial incentives, including  
cheap loans, for them to go overseas. “First we must listen to what  
the country says, but we have our own company considerations” says Mr  
Wang of Chico, an enterprise controlled by the provincial government  
of Henan …[Mr Wang says] they “get criticism” from officials back  
home if they miss business targets, which often involve expanding  
overseas investment” (Financial Times, 20 June 2006: “China ventures  
on rocky roads to trade with Africa”).

Allied to this is a tendency to isolate Chinese firms as nationally  
discrete entities. In fact, joint enterprises with both African and  
western firms are becoming more common.

The second theme identified is the focus on oil and, to a lesser  
extent, natural gas and ores, over other commodities. This reflects a  
wider focus on the geopolitics of oil, a subject that the Iraq war  
and massive oil price rises have brought to the fore of western  
public attention. Although oil is undeniably an important issue, and  
a major component of Sino-Africa trade and economic growth, this is  
concentrated in Angola, Sudan, Nigeria, Gabon and Guinea. For many  
African countries, exports of fish, timber and grain, or imports of  
relatively cheap manufactured goods are just as important. The focus  
on oil lends itself to a discourse of resource competition rather  
than the recognition that China and the West have a range of  
interests and relations in Africa, including potentially  
complementary ones. Third is a very uneven focus on China's interests  
and impacts in different African nations. More positive elements tend  
to get less attention (debt cancellation, investment, lower commodity  
prices for consumers, support for a greater international voice etc),  
with a preferred focus on problem issues. Moreover, we find that  
there is a preferred focus on zones and subjects of violent conflict,  
corruption, genocide and authoritarian leadership, rather than, say,  
the less gripping images of China’s impacts on trade imbalances or  
under-cutting of African manufacturing sectors. The overwhelming  
balance of articles is on Sudan, Zimbabwe and Angola, with far less  
attention paid to, for example, Lesotho, which is experiencing  
immense hardship competing with China in textile production; or Kenya  
which is struggling to compete with China in the manufactured goods  
sector.

Fourth, within these accounts, Africans, tend to be reduced to  
villains (Mugabe, the Sudanese government) and victims (African  
populations, Darfur, the poor), an observation that fits with the  
findings of many other critical evaluations of the media. African  
agency, as leaders or ordinary citizens, workers and consumers, is  
rarely emphasised. Allusions to adolescence or childhood are common.  
Thus, discussing China’s effects on Chad:

“Chad was supposed to establish a model of good practice. But, as a  
western observer in the country puts it: “The risk is [following  
China’s oil deals] it will become an example for the worst [African]  
pupils” [emphasis added]. (Financial Times, 23 January 2006: “The  
‘resource curse’ anew”.)

The paternalistic line that the West needs to save Africa from China’  
depredations is something reflected elsewhere in the media. An  
extended Channel Four news report which was widely circulated and  
repeated, started: “To Tony Blair, Africa is somewhere which needs  
healing or saving and Sierra Leone gets a lot of British aid. But the  
Chinese are looking at the continent through different eyes. They see  
it as a source of raw materials, especially oil, which they need for  
their own development. And somewhere like Sierra Leone, fresh out of  
war – they think it’s ripe for trade and investment” (Lindsey  
Hillsum, Channel Four, 4 July 2005)

Finally, Western actors – businesses, governments, national and  
international development NGOs – are typically portrayed as benign  
within the majority of these articles and accounts. Many articles  
imply or state that while the West did in the past have supported  
authoritarian leaders, or were party to corrupt business practices,  
it has learnt its lesson and reformed. While colonialism was  
economically exploitative and morally wrong, according to many of the  
articles exploring China’s ‘new African safari’ or ‘new scramble for  
Africa’, western colonialism is claimed to at least have had a  
paternalistic/developmental dimension and well-intentioned elements -  
an attitude that has translated into an ethical concern for Africa in  
the postcolonial period.

Thus, in the contemporary setting, Western companies supposedly  
operate under a different ethical regime because of their own high  
convictions; labour laws; voluntary agreements as part of wider  
government and third sector pressure to improve business with Africa;  
consumer demands for more ethical production and trading; and/or  
shareholder pressure. None of these are said to apply to state-run or  
private Chinese companies. Above all, the dominant (although by no  
means universal, narrative) that runs through many of the articles is  
that the mistakes of the past have been addressed, and the West is  
now the architect and energiser of a new drive towards good  
governance and development, with aid now accompanied by ethical  
conditionalities, while reformed commercial practices promise  
investment, extraction and trade that will enhance development rather  
than line the pockets of kleptocratic elites. These faltering steps  
forward, which will be of mutual benefit to western companies and  
ordinary African people, are under threat from the unscrupulous  
Chinese. A few quotes give a flavour of these arguments: “But while  
the meeting [2006 FOCAC] is intended to fuel China’s global drive for  
resources, raw materials and markets, concerns are growing that the  
boosters of Beijing do not have Africa’s best interests at heart and  
that western countries will be cut out of future business”. (The  
Guardian, 1 November 2006: “Beijing’s Race for Africa”)

“There are concerns too about soft loans leading to unsustainable  
debt and generous aid programmes that undermine efforts to improve  
governance, transparency and accountability. If the World Bank and  
IMF say no or attach conditions, Beijing always says yes…. The [2006]  
Beijing Summit is a big deal for China, a deliberately showy monument  
to its value-free strategy. It would be absurd to claim that western  
greed and interest did not do enormous damage in an earlier scramble  
for Africa. But the age of colonialism is over. It should be accepted  
today that global power brings global responsibilities. Tyranny,  
inequality and corruption offend universal values. In the countries  
where it now has the ability to make a difference, China should think  
twice about offering its help with no strings attached”. (The  
Guardian, 4 November 2006: “Scrambling to Beijing: China and Africa”)

“That virtuous circle of increased assistance and better governance  
has been the hall mark of the approach taken, with varying degrees of  
success, by the West and Japan since the end of the Cold War. China  
now threatens to blow apart that consensus”. (The Telegraph, 26 April  
2006: “The dragon in Africa”)

“Soft Chinese loans to vulnerable and corrupt African regimes,  
arranged outside the painstakingly agreed Equator Principles for  
responsible lending, risk reversing progress towards extricating such  
regimes from debt. … And misconceived or badly executed civil  
engineering projects risk irreversible environmental damage … Such a  
critique is valid. Coming from the West it also has a hint of the  
hypocritical. China’s current scramble for African energy and  
resources is modest compared with Europe’s scramble for African  
territory a century and a half ago. And China’s sometimes reckless  
spending only mirrors gambles by Western banks and governments in the  
postwar era. But now Beijing risks repeating the West’s mistakes …  
when it allowed massive increases in overseas aid and investment with  
no commensurate adjustments to its foreign policy”. (The Times, 2  
November 2006: “China and Africa”)

There are undeniably elements of truth in some of this – some western  
companies are indeed bound by their charters, public pressure and  
voluntary agreements to abide by standards that can reduce their  
competitiveness with companies not thus circumscribed. Bilateral and  
multilateral initiatives on debt, trade and aid have made some  
advances towards greater equity and reparation of injustices. These  
efforts and advances should not be belittled. However, there are  
three main sets of problems with the imagery of a benign west being  
undermined by a ruthless and unscrupulous China. The first is that,  
despite advances, many western companies remain mired in corrupt and  
exploitative business practices. Without losing sight of the  
importance and achievements of incremental improvements in western  
accountability and transparency, they remain inadequate. The second  
problem is that of scope and scale – the West’s impact on Africa  
cannot be reduced to the efforts of NGOs, aid agencies or companies.  
We must look beyond these limited horizons to debt, unjust trade  
regulations, uneven power in the institutions of global governance,  
the ‘war on terror’, and increasingly, perhaps, climate change, to  
develop a better understanding of the West’s impacts on Africa.  
Third, ‘development’ is almost invariably coded as apolitical and  
positive in these articles – although interestingly such partiality  
and complacency tended to be situational, apparent when framed within  
the specific China-Africa story. Newspapers and even individual  
journalists who in other reports may be very critical of, for  
example, the halting, late and inadequate provision of medical  
supplies, or debt, or trade inequalities, appear to become less  
critical when the West is framed in the same article as China. Thus,  
while the Australian, French and South African companies may also be  
condemned for working in Zimbabwe, in none of the articles analysed  
were these framed in the same space as a critique of China’s business  
interests.

Running throughout, we can identify recurring words and phrases which  
are indicative of the images outlined above: China is ‘guzzling’,  
‘aggressive’, an ‘economic juggernaut’, ‘insatiably’ ‘thirsty’ for  
oils and minerals, and ‘voraciously’ capitalist. “China is prowling  
the globe in search of energy sources” (Declan Walsh, 9 Nov. 2005,  
The Guardian, emphasis added)

“As a voracious China scours the world for minerals, no regime is off  
limits” (Financial Times, 12 Jan 2006: “Insatiable Beijing scours the  
world for profit and power”)

“[China] is ravenous for raw materials”. (The Telegraph, 26 April  
2006: “The dragon in Africa”)

In an article headlined “China’s goldmine: Tony Blair and Bono see  
Africa as a moral cause; China sees it as a business opportunity. But  
is Beijing’s interest based on economic partnership – or ruthless  
exploitation?”, we find:

“The resurrection of Chambishi [a major Zambian copper mine] is just  
one small example of China’s explosion into Africa. From the barest  
foothold a decade ago an army of diplomats, technicians and  
entrepreneurs has kicked the continent’s door wide open, making  
Beijing a heavyweight investor and political player” (The Guardian,  
28 March 2006: “China’s goldmine”, emphasis added)

This position and language stands in contrast to accounts of western  
FDI, which is only presented as an unambiguously positive flow.  
Unlike the West, the Chinese have ‘insinuated’ their way into the  
continent. For example:

“Quietly, while the attention of the world has been elsewhere, China  
has become a major player in Africa”. (The Independent, 7 September  
2006: “The benefits and dangers of those gifts from the east”)

“China, which now foresees annual trade with the world’s poorest  
continent totalling $100 billion (£50 billion) by 2010, began  
stepping up its presence stealthily in Africa in the early  
1990s” (The Times, 25 April 2007: “From favoured patron to target of  
dissenters”, emphasis added)

Dan Large, at SOAS, argues that these images are indicative of  
western defensiveness about ‘it’s backyard’, and can be seen as part  
of a wider reaction to an emerging power. The language of red dragons  
in the continent takes us back to the geopolitical discourses that  
characterised the Cold War.

Conclusions To retiterate, amongst the database of articles reviewed  
there were alternative perspectives and stories, critical accounts of  
western roles and histories, and a recognition of the complex but  
also positive possibilities of greater Sino-African relations.  
However, the themes identified above emerged as strong and pervasive  
scripts in British reporting on the contemporary relationships  
between Africa, China and the West. Africa is one place in which  
China and western nations, notably the US, are likely to find  
themselves in a position of competition, and these images and  
languages, both popular and policy, are significant. In a recent  
analysis, Andrew Still (2005) urges the importance of maintaining  
moderate, pragmatic and respectful language and diplomatic ‘signals’  
on both sides, if we are to avoid hardening ideological dividing  
lines between China and the US in particular – Still talks in terms  
of a potential degeneration of relations that could usher in the next  
Cold War. He suggests that:

“ … some of the most difficult issues [between China and the US/West]  
lie in the realm of ideas and identity rather than the narrow  
economic and political interests, making them far less tractable. Not  
least of these will be the way in which the debate over ‘the rise of  
China’ is conducted in the public sphere. The limited repertoire of  
historical analogies on which it currently draws … creates a  
distorting prism through which the issue is viewed and provides a  
thin basis for more thoughtful analysis of how to ensure a peaceful  
power transition” (Still, 2005, p.3-4)

In the context of what is certain to be growing economic and  
political competition between China and the US (with the UK and other  
nations playing bit parts), including over Africa, media images and  
representations will play an important role in shaping public  
understandings, debates and political pressures. These in turn will  
have consequences – however negotiated or contested – for different  
countries, actors and interests in Africa.

* Dr. Emma Mawdsley is a lecturer in geography and Cambridge  
University. This article is a short version of a paper to be  
published in Political Geography in 2008. For a copy of the longer  
version, please refer to the journal, or contact the author on:  
eem10 at cam.ac.uk

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org
******

KENYA: ETHNICITY, TRIBE, AND STATE
John Lonsdale

John Lonsdale argues that key to the post-election crisis in Kenya  
lies in the changing role of the post-colonial state in relation to  
the country's ethnic terms of political trade

The extensive commentary on Kenya's troubles has tended to blame  
ancient tribal rivalry, cynical political calculation, or a  
combination of the two; with the corrupted electoral process seen as  
providing the unintended catalyst - or worse, the deliberate  
instigator that awakens latent tribal hostility. British imperialism  
has also received its expected share of criticism, for inventing the  
now-indigenous Kenyan practice of divide and rule (see Caroline  
Elkins, "What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing",  
Washington Post, 6 January 2008).

While all such explanations have some merit they may also mislead the  
unwary, since they underplay the always slippery relations between  
ethnicity as a universal human attribute, politicised tribalism as a  
contingent process, and the state - any state, colonial or otherwise  
- as a cockpit of variously contested but always unequal power. How,  
then, can a focus on such factors illuminate Kenya's continuing turmoil?

A colonial formation

In the 19th century the area that became "Kenya" was stateless. Its  
peoples' civility, their ethnicity, was shaped by their subsistence:  
farming or herding, or some mixture of both. Such ethnic groups were  
not teams, not "tribes". Loyalties and rivalries were smaller than  
that - patriarchal lineages, marriage alliances, age-groups, trading  
partnerships, client-clusters, and the like. Ethnic groups were  
constituted more by internal debate over how to achieve honour in the  
unequal lives of patron or client, than by solidarity against  
strangers. Ethnic economies indeed were as often complementary as  
competitive, with different specialisms. But such inter-ethnicity -  
which was not without its frictions - was facilitated by the absence  
of any central power that might arrange groups in hierarchical  
relations. Sustained "tribal rivalry" could not exist under such  
decentralised, underpopulated, conditions.

It was European rivalry that imported that modern Leviathan, the  
state, in the late 19th century. It was, like all states, assembled  
by force and driven by self-interest. Its British officials allied  
with African leaders too weak to be rivals; and occasionally did a  
little to rein in the otherwise self-destructive excesses of those  
potentially overmighty subjects, the white settlers. The colonial  
state, responsible to Westminster and at the same time nervous of  
India's viceroy and then (at independence) the country's first prime  
minister Jawaharlal Nehru - since British Indians far outnumbered  
white Britons in Kenya - stood to some extent athwart both Africans  
and settlers, trying to mediate the contradictions between them. Both  
settlers and Africans colonised the state and the facilities it  
provided. What had previously been a multi-polar mosaic of scattered  
nodes of socially productive energy became, within Kenya's new  
borders, a layered pyramid of profit and power, unequally divided  
between two key centres - one "white", one black - and many  
marginalised peripheries.

White settlers got 20% of Kenya's high-potential farmland. As these  
settlers failed to provide enough state revenue and blocked African  
opportunity, the British increasingly encouraged African farming on  
the other 80%. So the second economic centre became Kikuyu-land: home  
of 20% of the population; close to the capital, Nairobi; cool and  
attractive to missionaries, with more schools than elsewhere. By  
geographical accident, then, Kikuyu had a head start in making money  
(essential to advance political ambitions) and in acquiring modern  
managerial skill.

Most nationalisms start among those subjects who do best out of, and  
are most useful to, an ancien regime; their frustrations are keenest,  
their opportunity greatest. Yet while that may explain Kikuyu  
leadership of Kenya's anti-colonial nationalism, it does not account  
for their involvement in Mau Mau, its secretive, violent, offshoot.  
To that point I will return, as it is a key to understanding the  
present.

A social transformation

In the new circumstances, other and not-so-well-placed ethnic groups  
made the most of what they had. They were often driven by a local  
patriotism inspired by vernacular, mission-translated, Bibles that  
told of an enslaved people who became a tribal nation. They embarked,  
in combinations of hope and desperation, on chain-migrations out of  
pauper peripheries (not unlike the Scots or Irish in comparable  
circumstances) to colonise particular niches of employment: on the  
railway; on white farms and plantations; in domestic service; or in  
the police and army. Yet others came to dominate the livestock trade.

Officials and employers exploited these various tendencies and  
stereotyped the supposed ethnic qualities of the group concerned. The  
British helped to harden ethnic divisions made greater by differing  
potentials for social mobility. Britain did not simply divide in  
order to rule.

The emergence of ethnic consciousness also arose from local debates  
about how the genders, generations, rich and poor should relate, as  
older inequalities were transformed into new differentiations less  
sensitive to existing moral audits of honour.

Nowhere was such differentiation so sharp as among Kikuyu. Its  
effects became politically acute after 1945 when settler employers in  
the Rift Valley's "white highlands" mechanised production, and the  
extensive Kikuyu diaspora of tenant-workers in the region refused the  
worsening conditions they were offered. These "ex-squatters", failing  
to recover a home in their increasingly populated, and property- 
protective, "reserves", had to make shift in Nairobi's slums. The  
insistent question, "how then can I live as an honourable Kikuyu?"  
was what separated the militants of Mau Mau from the politically  
conservative, propertied, patrons - led by Jomo Kenyatta - who first  
inspired them.

A political competition

The horrors of the Mau Mau "emergency" war of the 1950s that ensued  
proved the repressive potential of a colonial state too closely  
allied to the settlers, its strongest clients. But the relative  
calmness of decolonisation in 1963 similarly proved the advantages of  
an outgoing state power that was not solely dependent upon its local  
roots - a clear contrast with Rhodesia's fiery end. The post-colonial  
state - rooted in a competitive society, for good historical reasons  
- is once more different. For the state has been the sole agency by  
which Africans could aspire to climb the commanding heights of the  
economy against racially entrenched interests - in land, commerce and  
finance. In recent years it has continued this role by ever more  
devious means, to meet external demands for "liberalisation". Access  
to its power matters. It is concentrated in an executive presidency,  
now directly elected, capable of manipulating all public  
institutions, including a parliament elected from single-member  
constituencies that either singly or in contiguous groups coincide  
with what have become tribal territories.

In consequence, the competition for a share in this power became  
governed by internal ethnic accountability and tribal rivalry.  
President Kenyatta and his Kikuyu elite soothed the frustrated honour  
of their Kikuyu poor with settlement schemes in the former "white  
highlands" (of which the bulk, historically, had belonged to less  
favoured Maasai and Kalenjin groups). His successor Daniel arap Moi,  
finding less room for the poor of own Kalenjin, did more to create  
for them an ethnic elite.

Politicians generally justify their privilege by carving ethnic  
benefits from state largesse. But (in Kenya as elsewhere) this  
extractive approach faced increasing pressures. The ferocity of  
competition for a share of state power rose over time - as population  
has grown, as the fertilising rains of the post-colonial  
Africanisation of opportunity long ago dried up, as the terms of  
trade for primary commodities turned sour. It was fairly easy for  
Kenyatta to ensure that all, more or less, enjoyed a turn "to eat" in  
the ethnic coalitions on which a parliamentary majority relied. It  
was more difficult for Moi. As the political stakes rose, so it  
became more tempting to attract and reward one's ethnic followers  
with officially-deniable opportunities for thuggery at the expense of  
those who were now tribal rivals in land, urban property, or petty  
trade. With every "bought" election, popular anger grew among Kenyan  
citizens - to an extent that they created pressure for a  
constitutional change which would strengthen parliament at the  
expense of the presidency.

A national transition?

A new president, Mwai Kibaki, was elected in 2002 to clean the Aegean  
stables. But in that effort he has disappointed all but his Kikuyu  
cronies. Now, in the presidential election of 27 December 2007, he  
appears to many to have broken the tacit rules of national  
competition - the last straw. That the opposition was, it seems,  
merely less successful in rigging the ballot will not make  
reconciliation any easier. Some of the subsequent opposition violence  
is politically directed. But the worst, by Kalenjin "warriors"  
against Kikuyu "immigrants" into the Rift Valley, may have outrun  
such elite-engineered tribalism to become an eerie echo of Mau Mau -  
in being an internal, generational, ethnic revolt against the  
compromises by which its own recently-manufactured Kalenjin elite  
came to terms with the "old wealth" of Kenyatta's Kikuyu.

There are, then, two very different dynamics currently at work in  
Kenya: internal ethnic dissidence and external tribal rivalry.  
Neither can be disarmed without rewriting the rules of political  
competition for the power of a rather different ("post-post- 
colonial") state. It would have to be less closely allied to its  
strongest clients, and offer its services more disinterestedly to all  
Kenyans. These might in consequence come to think of themselves more  
as citizens, less as ethnically-defined clients. It is a very great  
deal to ask.

Kenya faces two possible futures. On the one hand, the normal inter- 
ethnicity of most daily lives may have been poisoned by the recent  
violence, forecasting a broken state. On the other, the shock may  
have persuaded Kenyan elites of the old, Burkean, truth that a state  
without the means of some change is without the means of its  
conservation. There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in the opposition's  
success in getting its man elected as the speaker of the new parliament.


* John Lonsdale is emeritus professor of modern African history and  
fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. This article was first published  
in OpenDemocracy

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org
******

THE KENYA CASE AND MEDIA BIAS
Antony Otieno Ong'ayo


While the whole world is aware of the crisis is in Kenya, thanks to  
the international and local media, most of their reporting is  
accurate, however, there is need for an honest analysis of the  
situation in Kenya

The media

It is sad at this moment in time to apply outdated tactics of  
muzzling the people who are expressing a democratic right. In the  
case of Kenya, gagging the media would not help Kibaki and his  
cohorts, since the level of awareness and resolve among Kenyans not  
to return to the dark days of dictatorship is so high. The courage of  
the Kenyan media and journalists despite setbacks initiated by  
Internal security Minster (Michuki) is worth noting, but more so the  
way in which they reported events during the campaigns and eventful  
day of vote counting. However, there are problems with headlines  
(both local and international) that have appeared since the outbreak  
of post elections violence.

The ethnic dimension is appearing to be the main focus of  
international press and they are also reporting that it is a Kikuyu- 
Luo issue but that is not true. Besides the fighting in the slums in  
Nairobi, Nakuru and Mombasa whose inhabitants are from all  
backgrounds though dominated by communities from western Kenya,  
Killings taking pace in the Rift Valley; Coast provinces are not  
perpetrated by the Luos. The fact that Raila is a Luo is not a  
justification enough to tag a whole community, just because one of  
them is a leading personality in the current stalemate.

Such bias will direct attention in the wrong direction, and could be  
used to gang up against other communities, as has been the case in  
the past. There is no mention of killings taking place in Nyanza  
province especially in the Lake Town of Kisumu where Police has been  
shooting protesters at the orders of the internal Security Minister  
(Michuki).

Condemnation of violence should be applied across the board. Victims  
of the violence are from all over especially in the slums, but where  
it is perpetrated by the state in a selective manner, condemnation  
should be focused on security forces and those who give such orders)  
These kinds of statements misinform the world of the actual facts on  
the ground and hinder insights that could help get Kenya out of the  
situation.

Secondly reducing the current post election conflict to a Kikuyu-Luo  
affair is cheap analysis that is devoid of facts and reflections of  
what happens on the ground. Most of the current Western media  
analyses do not taken into account the underlying factors such as the  
failure of institutions of the state, such as the electoral  
commission of Kenya whose mediocre performance has plunged the  
country into bloodshed, a draconian constitutional framework that has  
been at the service of ethnic chauvinists and jingoist in power since  
1963, the centralised power and networks that benefit from it, whose  
abuse and actions have led to marginalisation of certain groups from  
national resources, equitable public appointments, and the grand  
scheme involving local and international elites who exploit Kenya  
under the “old order”, interests/forces that want to keep the status  
quo and their role in the current problem.

Bias and partisan analyses are also observed in the local media  
especially the media owners association, Kenya broadcasting  
corporation, Kenyan citizens in the diaspora through various blog  
sites and debaters in the local Newspapers where intellectuals,  
opinion and church leaders have taken sides, instead of guiding the  
debate in a more honest way so that all Kenyans can identify where  
the problem lies (draconian laws, out-dated political system,  
poverty, inequality, corruption, unequal distribution of resources  
countrywide and lack of access to essential services among others).  
Kenyans suffer under these conditions regardless of their tribe, and  
that is why those who live in the slums are from all tribes, even  
though previously marginalized by earlier regimes such as the Luo,  
Luhya and other minority groups make up the majority in those dwellings.

Leadership and national interest

The question that people need to ask is why did Kibaki sought to be  
Kenya’s president, in 1992, 1997, and finally became one in 2002? Was  
it because he lacked money? Was he someone with an agenda for the  
“whole “ nation?

And if he had one, what was the agenda? Was that agenda realised  
between 2003 and 2007? Why are Kenyans having a problem with his  
agenda presented during the campaigns and the people around him  
majority of whom have been rejected in their own backyards? Why did  
most Kenyans have a problem with giving him another mandate? Why  
would someone who is a billionaire and aged 76, not want to leave a  
legacy that would be remembered in positive terms? What is so painful  
to forego that Kibaki would not want a clean election? More important  
to ask is why the current “elite” and morons around Kibaki are afraid  
of change of the current system and/or leadership to go into the  
hands of “lesser” communities? And lastly, why was the current regime  
rejected by majority of provinces and communities? Even though there  
are arguments that Kenya’s economy has grown at 6% over the past two  
years, the gap between the rich and poor has widened, with more  
people falling below the poverty line. The slums did not get smaller,  
nor did North Eastern and North-Eastern provinces get piped water  
from lake Victoria, the Samburus did not receive hospitals and tarmac  
roads, no fish industry was built along Lake Victoria and loans given  
to fishermen. 40 years is a long time for the Samburu, Turkana,  
Rendile and Somalis to wait for basic and essential services to reach  
them, it is a long time for Kamba people to wait for water and  
receive food hand outs during starvation, it is a long time before  
the fishermen along Lake Victoria receive funding through a fishing  
Board to take care of their interests in agriculture as done to  
coffee, tea, pyrethrum and dairy farmers; it is along time to wait  
for any major industry in Western Kenya; it too long time for  
Mijikenda to have resources from Coastal investments recycled back to  
alleviate their poverty, thirst for water, better schools and hospitals.

Obstacle to dialogue

In my view Kibaki is hostage to a number of factors that seems to  
contradict his call for putting the nation first. First and foremost  
are the networks of buddies and business comrades and elite form Mt  
Kenya who have been on the Gravy train since 2003. For what explains  
the refusal to find a middle ground while knowing so well that the  
outcome of the elections are not acceptable to everyone including  
their own people? The people holding Kibaki hostage are the ones  
Kenyans need to address in their quest for finding a peaceful  
solution to the current crisis. These people have a lot to loose if  
the man goes, thus the reason they are against recount, judicial  
review or re-run of presidential elections. Kenyans regardless of  
their ethnic background come distant in their priority of needs and  
actions. The opposition also has a role to play in the process and  
that will depend on the kind of proposal they put on table, which  
should be scrutinised by Kenyans since the issue at hand is about how  
Kenyans are governed and therefore Kibaki or Raila are just but  
people they expect to govern them through their mandate which  
includes listening to their views and respecting their will as  
expressed through the social contract via the vote and representative  
democracy.

A Government of National Unity, or a recount of ballots papers will  
not solve any problem. It is a well-known fact that ballot papers  
especially those used for tallying presidential votes were already  
tampered with and might mot be traced. Secondly Keep never keeps any  
promise. He did not keep his promise to Kenyans after he made  
promises upon election in 2002; he never honoured agreements with his  
comrades upon enthronement, he renegade on the fight against  
corruption, poverty and tribalism. He does not have the will to keep  
his promises therefore arrangements such as a government of national  
unity will just be a soft landing for him, it will be a process that  
legitimises his hold onto power at the expense of democracy and the  
will of Kenyans who came out to vote on the 27^th December 2007.  
Kibaki and his handlers, do not care about democracy, it is a word  
they use at their convenience. The best arbitrator in this case is  
the voter. All mediators coming to Kenya should not let Kenyans down  
by proposing frameworks that will maintain the status quo. It will be  
a mockery to democracy and great betrayal to the many Kenyans who  
have lots their lives since the 50s, to liberate the country from  
colonial yokes but also from the yokes of fellow Kenyans such as  
Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki.

The Killings

Kenyans should stop Killing each other. The culprits are few people  
who are out busy with self-aggrandisement at the expense of a whole  
nation.

Although the current killings are unacceptable since they are an  
outcome of a stupidity of failure by Kenyan politicians to grasp the  
communality interest, Kenyans and more so those who abuse the  
political system and state institutions and resources should know  
that "Kenya belongs to all who belong in it" and all should be given  
equal treatment. There is no justification for the minister of  
internal security to use outdated and counterproductive tactics of  
targeting specific ethnic groups with paramilitary force and orders  
to kill. The images on television screens, shows that most of these  
people could be apprehended and taken to court.

Senseless beating and shooting based on orders of a politician with  
colonial hangovers will exacerbate acts of revenge instead of  
resorting to the rule of law to settle disputes or address acts pf  
violence that are currently being perpetrated by some Kenyans who  
exploit the chaotic situation. The paramilitary police used by  
Michuki on the Luo (historical tactic, used by Kenyatta, in the 60s  
and early seventies) is selective and directed in one direction  
towards a group of people but that too will create more anger and  
feelings for revenge.

Struggles in the Rift Valley are also about past wrongs against the  
minority communities like Ogieks who were chased out of the forest  
and the places given to the central province groups. Maasai and  
Kalenjin whose prime land were taken by the British, and later by the  
elite around Kenyatta. These grievances have never been addressed and  
due to the complex nature of ethnic blend in those regions, Moi for  
instance exploited this mix to cause chaos in order to vilify the  
onset of multiparty in Kenya. Ethnic clashes in 1992 and 1997,  
produced suffering and anger which have been kept low, but now fully  
exploited in the face of a dashed hope for change. These people  
thought there could be some equity with change of government but that  
hope is gone, so we expect anger, but also revenge as result of past  
clashes that were instigated by Moi prior to 1992, and 97 elections.

Democratic test What I fear most is that if Kibaki is allowed to  
rule, Kenya will return to the dark ages, all the democratic gains  
will be lost. They will know that they can always rig elections and  
get away with it no matter what people do including protest, they  
don’t mind whether people die or not, since they will be able to get  
away with it.

Kibaki’s behaviour in relation to vote tallying and results in the  
2007 elections makes democracy look sick in Africa. It brings to mind  
the question whether there are free and fair elections? Or whether  
franchise or high voter turn out as witnessed in Kenya can turn a  
regime out of office? What about the role of institutions to support  
such a process like an independent police, electoral commission,  
judiciary and a parliament that is sensitive to the needs of the  
country, free and non-partisan media, respect for the rule of law by  
all parties involved in the electoral process? Even though democracy  
has never been perfect although being adopted by nations and peoples,  
its institutionalisation depend more on local history, culture and  
geography and not analyses and prescription as it is applied in other  
contexts. In the case of Kenya, the political, economic and social  
systems are complex and full of nuances, combined with other forces/ 
vested interests/pressure groups that exert more power, thus making  
the ordinary voter appear to be a pawn rather than a "king" maker.

Therefore if Kenya is to build on the already made gains on the  
democratic front, a solution to the current crisis must be found in  
tandem with the reality on the ground. The reality that the  
“presidential election was rigged” and the incumbent is hell-bent on  
hanging to power no mater what cost, but also the reality that the  
opposition is making claims which have been proved right by the  
electoral commission itself and the various poll observers that  
Kibaki did not win the elections”. Although, calling for peace or on  
the major players to urge their supporters to clam down is a first  
step, but the call for peace should not water down the main cause of  
the problem which is “rigged elections” which is a threat to  
democratic gains. Being soft on this point would embolden the  
antagonists especially the “winners” and based on their history of  
arrogance and lack of decorum in addressing national issues, they  
will brush aside the issue at stake and this will fuel anger which is  
not only expressed by the opposition, but the very people the winners  
want to “rule” at all cost.

Way out

Asking Raila or Kenyans to forget this and forge ahead, and wait for  
another 5 years by many partisan authors in various local dailies and  
international blogs is not sincere and honest since such calls are  
directed at one party and not the other two. Why are people not  
asking Kibaki to resign? Why not ask for recount and audit of the  
votes? If the Electoral commission is not honest, how sure can we be  
of the courts in Kenya? Kenyans know that the system is rotten thus  
the overwhelming vote and a clear message that they want something  
different. They should not be denied this difference by hiding behind  
discourses that keeps on mystifying the problem. If Kibaki goes on  
without the approval of Kenyans, he is not making it better for those  
already hurt in one way or the other through killings and destruction  
seen in the past days. These things will haunt the nation after he is  
long gone and people around him or groups supporting him will not  
escape blame and demands to be held accountable. Peace can only come  
when the two parties agree to talk, engage and get into a process  
that will heal wounds on both sides of the divide (the people, the  
Opposition and PNU politicians). Allowing Kibaki to go ahead and bury  
his head as if nothing serious has happened will only exacerbate the  
arrogance of the group around him as witnessed during a recent press  
conference and the exchange between PNU Ministers and the press. Such  
one sided approach and attack on the opposition will only help  
strengthen the status quo, the exploitation, discrimination and  
inequality along tribal lines, which will exacerbate problems even if  
calmness would return today.

What is urgently needed are; Curfew in Opposition areas to be lifted  
and regular police patrols with a humane face be initiated in hot  
spots to give people confidence in the state institutions for their  
safety. The general service unit has no role in the process since it  
is a catalyst instead of providing safety.
The Kenya Pipeline Corporation should immediately resume pumping oil  
to western Kenya and Uganda. Cutting this supply is not different  
from scorched earth policy and if someone in the government has  
ordered such action, which was observed already before the election  
days then he/she or they are fueling the crisis instead of solving  
it. This should apply to other services like electricity, food items  
among others Kenyan civil society organisations, Law Society, The  
Kenya National Human Rights Commission and invited institutions to  
help in the process of reconciliation and putting in place a  
framework that would bring back the credibility of the electoral  
process and an acceptable conclusion A re-run of presidential  
election supervised by a team of independent observers and  
representatives of the two parties (ODM and PNU) within an agreed  
time frame. It is now clear from ECK that they did not know who won.  
The ECK had put aside funds for a run off, and that money can be used  
to SAVE KENYA.

* Antony Otieno Ong'ayo is a Researcher in the New Politics Programme  
at the Transnational Institute

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org
******



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3 Pan-African Postcard
PARACHUTE JOURNALISM AND THE KENYAN CRISIS
George Ogola

George Ogola decries the simplistic western approach to covering news  
on Africa, as exemplified by the reporting of the Kenyan post- 
election crisis

They were probably the longest days of my life. Red-eyed from lack of  
sleep and desperate for updated information on the Kenyan elections,  
I meticulously watched international TV networks and spent hours  
surfing the net for relevant sites covering the elections. I could  
sense curiosity turn into anxiety then fear before an unprecedented  
implosion. Kenya was at war with itself.

The Economist called it ‘a very African coup’ while Raila Odinga  
called it ‘a civilian coup’. Both PNU and ODM claimed victory.  
Confusion reigned as chaos erupted. Months of excitement had turned  
into uncertainty for some and distress for others. But as I agonised  
with my people, there was a parallel drama unfolding.

When controversy over the presidential elections threatened to  
destroy our fragile nation-state, ‘parachute’ journalists descended  
on Nairobi eager to cover yet another ‘trouble spot’ in the blighted  
continent. As the country went to the polls, Africa collectively had  
no more than tickers in the major international news channels.

A week prior to the election, only Al-Jazeera had taken some trouble  
to tell the Kenyan story. Reuters Africa proved another notable  
exception. But the familiar would soon follow, vicious and unrelenting.

When protests met the announcement of the presidential results, CNN,  
BBC 24 and Sky News sent some of their finest to Nairobi. But the  
frame of reference had been pre-determined. A narrative had been  
established. Kenya had descended into tribal anarchy reminiscent of  
the Rwanda genocide.

Neighbours had turned onto each other just because they belonged to  
different tribes. ‘Tribal violence’ became the definitive mantra and  
was the basis for reports across the world.

I recall a BBC 24 news anchor asking a reporter when the results were  
announced whether a military coup was an immediate possibility.

Meanwhile, pundits were carefully selected. As a rule, they were  
middle class white folk mostly ex-diplomats previously based in  
Africa and ‘respected’ London-based Africanists working with the  
city’s many ‘Think-Tanks’. There was the occasional African  
interviewed on a late night show. The frames of reference could not  
be destabilised.

People were being targeted and killed indiscriminately by tribal  
mobs. The savagery both in the deed as well as coverage was taken to  
new heights when a Church was set ablaze in Eldoret killing more than  
40 people.

International reporters flew to the town and milked the tragedy. They  
reconstructed the gory scenes, the savagery unbeknown to man since  
Rwanda. Footage of rotting corpses in maize fields and overflowing  
morgues were aired without reservation. The dead were denied dignity.  
If you were Kenyan, you cried; and I wept. But I cried for my country  
as well as the job I love.

The kind of coverage I saw on Sky, BBC 24, Euro News and a host other  
channels was not magnanimity. I was convinced it was not a desire by  
a section of the international media to tell the world the true story  
about the conflict that was slowly consuming Kenya. This was about a  
good story; it was about the exploitation of a people crying out for  
help.

It was equally about a western anthropology that figures conflict in  
Africa only in tribal terms; an Africa whose existence is so basic it  
must not be understood beyond the discourse of the tribe.

I witnessed the power of a selective morality that tends to view  
Africa from a paradigm of difference, a unique rationality that  
embraces the kind of savagery the world was witnessing.

Feature stories, commentaries and editorial pieces revelled in  
descriptions of gore; of eyes gorged, bodies burnt beyond  
recognition, of limbs severed with machetes. The description sounded  
more like a sport. Context and detail was ignored as the number of  
deaths became fodder for good stories.

Highbrow newspapers suddenly became tabloids with pictures of fleeing  
Kenyans, children sleeping rough and lines of women with bowls  
queuing for food making the cover pages. TV news anchors asked  
reporters on the ground how many were starving, how many more had  
been killed, and how many more villages had been razed.

Helicopters were more useful flying over burnt out villages to  
capture footage of frightened villagers than provide assistance. When  
many news channels heard whiff of planned protests, the question was  
not what it was about but how violent it would be. The threshold of  
death was continuously being revised, indeed rewritten.

Amid this, the obvious was deliberately being negated. Why was  
violence in Nairobi largely restricted to the slums of Kibera and  
Mathare? Was it possible that the Kenyan poor were at war with the  
rich and with themselves, though speaking in a voice that is anathema  
to a revolution? Why was violence so seductive? Why were the middle  
classes marooned in their suburbs, silent and invisible?

Why was the violence so vicious in the rural areas and especially in  
the Rift Valley? Was it really possibly that because of disputed  
presidential elections, Kenya would suddenly implode? Was there a  
historical trajectory to this conflict? No, the unambiguity of Africa  
as a problem continent could not be challenged at a time when it was  
such a good story.

The assumption that informs the continent’s interpretation is that  
this is a continent whose civilisation cannot be so sophisticated as  
to have class wars; neither can it justifiably fight for anything  
remotely democratic. I’m still torn between weeping for my country  
and an institution I still love dearly.

* Dr. George Ogola teaches at the University of Central Lancashire

*Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at  
http://www.pambazuka.org
******



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