Posted on 12/27/2002 10:21:23 PM PST by twntaipan
International Association of Machinists
Frustration boils over in slums left out of the vote
James Astill
Saturday December 28, 2002
The Guardian
People from the Nairobi slums who had found their names missing from the electoral roll were pleading for their right to vote yesterday when a private army entered the polling station.
"We have come to stop the rigging," announced a ragged man at the head of 300 determined-looking youths in the pay of Raila Odinga, the candidate for the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (Narc) opposition in Kibera. "Do not resist."
The returning officer hared off across Old Kibera primary school's muddy playground, clutching the electoral register to his chest. But Mr Odinga's thugs massed around him.
"No more rigging! The people must vote!" they shouted; and then, "Lynch him!" At which the volunteer officer bolted into a polling booth and tried, unsuccessfully, to lock himself in.
Heated arguments ensued, but as the police were summoned it seemed that his skin had been saved.
There were angry scenes at most of the polling stations in Nairobi yesterday as thousands of registered voters found their names omitted from the electoral roll. But only in Kibera, a slum with about 1m residents sprawling at the foot of President Daniel arap Moi's Nairobi mansion, did the anger turn violent.
Kibera is to many a symbol of Mr Moi's ruinous 24-year rule, and its residents rank among those most determined to end it. Early yesterday at least one of Mr Odinga's activists was murdered.
By first light gangs of slum-dwellers were patrolling Kibera's shoulder-breadth alleys, looking for signs of vote-rigging.
As Mr Odinga was casting his vote, his supporters seized a car which they claimed was unloading stuffed ballot boxes at a nearby mosque.
"Our security is very large, so we were able to intercept this vehicle," said a man who gave his name as Apollo Nandi.
"But we believe there are other boxes inside the mosque to be smuggled into the polling station."
Mr Odinga - who has threatened to lead a "million-man march" on the presidential residence, State House, if the governing party, Kanu, rigs the election - poured fuel on to the flames.
"Two million Kenyans have been disenfranchised in an effort by Kanu to rig the poll," he said at a press conference yesterday. Election observers said the true figure of Kenyans barred from voting was at most a few tens of thousands.
But as a tropical downpour turned Kibera's streets to slurry late yesterday, that did not dissuade Mr Odinga's ethnic Luo supporters from mounting a blockade of the mosque.
"There are bad people there, we know they want Kanu," said Andrew Onyango, referring to the Nubian Muslims who are Kibera's landlords. "We don't want war, but we are considering storming the mosque."
Last year, at the outset of the election campaign, about 20 people were killed in clashes involving Kibera's Nubians and Luos, after Mr Odinga (then minister in the Kanu party) urged his tribespeople to stop paying rent.
Outside Kiber, the complaints of frustrated voters could not hide the triumph of the thousands of Kenyans streaming into mostly well-run polling stations.
"We never believed we would see this day. Not everybody, but most people, are voting for change," said Martin Njihiu at a polling station in the Embarkasi slum in Nairobi.
"This is the day I have been living for, it is a great feeling."
At the district's secondary school policemen - who are traditionally Mr Moi's loyal enforcers - tried to calm those who could not vote.
"Everything's going very smoothly, but it would be a shame if this ruined the day - something needs to be done," said a heavily decorated officer, who asked not to be named. "Today I'm glad to be Kenyan."
In Machakos, 50 miles south of Nairobi, election officials expected a near-70% turnout by noon.
Recent bouts of election violence - including stones being thrown at the Kanu presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta last week - were discussed light-heartedly by voters waiting outside a tent polling station on the town green.
Referring to the opposition coalition, led by Mwai Kibaki, Gorbir Singh said: "Whatever the result will be, at least we know Machakos is for Narc." He showed a little finger inked purple, proving he had voted.
Further west the celebrated paleontologist and former politician Richard Leakey queued with Masai herders to cast his vote at a tin-hut polling station.
"This is an opportunity for Kenyans to indicate the feelings that have built up over the years," he said. "There's a new mood in the country."
In Kajiado, a trading post in the Masai heartland, herders in scarlet robes and beaded neck-halters left daggers and clubs at polling station doors and stepped inside to vote.
An illiterate elderly woman, her looped earlobes dangling almost down to her shoulders, listened carefully as election observers read her the options.
Then she collapsed into laughter. "The names are so strange," she said, and then added: "Kibaki."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
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