RIFTS AND THREATS

To paraphrase the late master-of-the-miserable Frank McCourt: worse than being a freelancer in a city of freelancers is being a mother-of-two freelancer, who has yet to overcome her parenting guilt, in a city of freelancers. And worse than that is being a mother-of-two freelancer with parenting guilt and a child who refuses to stay in school, and taunts one after another day of dossing by singing "Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool. No sir, no sir, I don't like my school. I don't like the teachers, I don't like the class. I'd rather stay home and eat all the grass."
So back to the blog, after firing off a series of pitches into the cyber void. (Would it kill people to respond, even if it's just to say no? Has the financial crisis in journalism killed off good manners?)
Anyway, enough whinging. Or at least, enough of that kind of whinging.
It's worrying to see reports of threats against those planning to testify to the International Criminal Court about the post-election killings in Kenya. It's not perhaps surprising, given what's at stake, but it doesn't bode well for the judicial process.
Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo has said that witnesses have not come forward as expected -- Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had asked those with testimonies to present these to him by Friday this week. Kilonzo said some witnesses had received threats, but he did not say from whom. And that many would only come forward once a witness protection programme was set up. Moreno-Ocampo, who is going to present his case for opening an investigation into crimes against humanity in Kenya to ICC pre-trial judges next month, is due to give a press conference in the Hague tomorrow. Maybe he will address this issue.
It seems that as potential prosecutions near, the atmosphere in Kenya is becoming ever more poisonous.
Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara, who tabled a bill earlier this month to set up a local Special Tribunal to judge those responsible for the post-election killings, said this week that he had received fresh death threats. The Daily Nation says at least five MPs have reported receiving death threats this year. The paper said Imanyara tabled a letter in parliament in June that claimed an 18-member Kwekwe hit squad had been assigned to assassinate him, Ikolomani MP Dr Boni Khalwale, former cabinet minister Martha Karua and Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu. Internal Security Minister George Saitoti said this week that he was surprised security had not been beefed up for the ministers as he had requested, and promised to look into the matter.
The government has in the past said that the dreaded Kwekwe -- a secret police squad blamed for executing suspected Mungiki members among others -- had been disbanded. And new police commissioner Mathew Iteere says they are taking the new threats against Imanyara very seriously.
Death threats -- by phone call or SMS -- are not new in Kenya. In March, Reuters reported that human rights activists had gone into hiding, or even left the country, after receiving death threats following the publication of a very critical United Nations report on extrajudicial killings by the police. The Oscar Foundation, a human rights group, organised a protest against police killings in the wake of the report's findings. Later that day gunmen shot dead foundation members Oscar Kamau Kingara and Paul Oulu in a Nairobi street.
There are other signs of something being rotten in the state of Kenya.
Just look at what has been happening in Isiolo, and other parts of the Eastern Province. Earlier this month, at least 10 people were killed by cattle raiders in Gambella, in the region around Isiolo.
It was just the latest in a series of attacks. Officials say around 50 people have been killed in the area since August. The government has offered a 30-day amnesty to holders of illegal weapons in the area to surrender them. And Minister Saitoti has said a massive operation to mop up any remaining illegal weapons will be launched when the ultimatum expires. He also said that local leaders were inciting people to raid cattle. He said some of these leaders are "people who hold positions in government."
It's a sensitive region for many reasons, both political and topographical. It's also a region where China is looking for oil. China's CNOOC spudded a $26 million exploration well near Isiolo that will be the deepest yet in Kenya.
On the political front, things are getting nasty too. It seems Prime Minister Raila Odinga has definitively fallen out with his erstwhile allies in the Rift Valley over the eviction of illegal settlers from the Mau forest. The battle seems to be most bitter between Odinga and Agriculture Minister William Ruto, the prime minister's one-time right-hand man and now his fiercest critic. Ruto sees the evictions, which Odinga and the coalition government argue are necessary to preserve the important water tower that is the Mau, as a betrayal of his Kalenjin people who voted for Odinga, a Luo, in the last election. Ruto had already said he would run for president in 2012. He now says the Kalenjin will not support Odinga, who is expected to run as well.
Of course, all of this is playing out in the shadow of the ICC prosecutions. Politics, at the moment, is little more than positioning it seems.