WHAT NEXT?

After yesterday's protests by members of the Mungiki sect, news this morning that two human rights activists had been shot dead on a central Nairobi street. http://af.reuters.com/article/kenyaNews/idAFL636946220090306
Gunned down in their car just hours after the government had said their organisation -- the Oscar Foundation -- was a front for the Mungiki, a deadly criminal gang with a record of beheading those who defy it. Another student was shot dead when the police went to retrieve the body of one of the activists. http://www.kenyanpundit.com/. Three police officers were arrested.
Whoever is to blame -- whether it is renegade police officers, officially banned death squads, private bodyguards or as some say members of the Mungiki sect http://sukumakenya.blogspot.com/2009/03/rip-oscar-kamau-kingara-and-john-paul.html --the killings deal another blow to Kenya's increasingly paralysed and tainted government and its allies in the security services.
It's hard to know when a country is on the brink of a crisis. From years in West Africa, I've learnt that trouble usually comes when you are least expecting it. The storm clouds appear to be gathering over Kenya. It doesn't mean the rain is imminent, but the atmosphere is gloomy and there is a heaviness in the air that speaks of frustration, despondency and fear.
The U.N. special rapporteur Philip Alston, whose report on extra-judicial killings in Kenya was released last week and who met the two murdered activists when he visited Kenya -- has called for a foreign investigation by the likes of Scotland Yard or the South African police -- that's a pretty clear vote of no confidence in the Kenyan authorities on all levels.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said: "I fear we are flirting with lawlessness in the name of keeping law and order. In the process, we are hurtling towards failure as a state."
It's a damning statement from one of the leaders of east Africa's strongest economy. The question is how far has the country to go?