SOMETHING STIRRING

There is something strange in the air in Nairobi these days, and it's not just the unseasonal onion-dressing weather (cold, windy then scorching hot when the sun comes out.)
Even to a very lay observer, something seems to be simmering -- cross-currents of tension and anger and frustration flowing into tides of international intrigue to create something of a small whirlpool. I don't think it's just a newbie's paranoia.
The fire in a downtown Nakumatt, which killed around 26 people, the oil tanker disaster in which some 122 people were incinerated while scooping up fuel from an overturned lorry near Molo, http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5131G220090204 , the steady drip-drip of corruption allegations covering everything from oil to maize, public anger over MPs exemption from taxes, drought and looming food shortages in the northern reaches of the country -- and now a terror threat http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/530862/-/u2f30s/-/ that has security guards searching cars with ever more vigour as they enter "soft targets" like the Village Market and Westgate shopping mall.
The Grand Coalition is paralysed by infighting and bickering -- not just between the two main parties of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga but also internally among their own supporters. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/531266/-/u2fmmc/-/
The cabinet has yet to agree how or whether to set up a local tribunal to try those accused of fomenting last year's post-election violence. The threat of action from the International Criminal Court in the Hague hangs over the political class and the military, perhaps increasing fear of "others". http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/-/1064/531698/-/ygb141z/-/
It does feel like a tipping point in a country that stepped up to the brink after the 2007 elections and pulled back, but only after around 1,500 people were killed in an explosion of neighbour-on-neighbour violence that exposed serious cracks in this East African success story's society. Those wounds have yet to heal properly and the delay to the tribunal's creation is not likely to help matters.
It's going too far to predict a cataclysm, but it seems there is good reason for caution. Elections are not due again until 2012, giving politicians time to work out their differences but also to siphon cash for war chests in an economy pitted with every kind of corruption. Public discontent may simmer for years if it is not inflamed by a particular event into open rage, but we already seem to be moving from grumbling to something more active. And the terrorist threats from al Shabaab and others may remain just that -- threats, but this is a country ill-prepared to deal with even non-terror related disasters as events of the last few weeks have shown.
Given the ethnic divisions exposed by the post-election violence and the persistance and entrenchment of these divisions in politics, plus a slowing economy exposed to a global recession, Kenya might be one to watch over the next six months.