In Kenya’s sugar country, volunteers keep election relations sweet

By Baz Ratner

KIBIGORI, Kenya (Reuters) – The khaki-coloured street slicing by Kibigori city in Kenya’s sugar-growing nation is greater than a county boundary, it’s also a faultline dividing communities fielding rival presidential candidates within the Aug. 9 election.

The city’s break up loyalties and historical past of unrest make it a possible flashpoint the place armed police are conducting each day patrols. However it’s also a check case for home-grown neighborhood peace-building in a rustic cautious of the violence that adopted the disputed 2007 and 2017 elections.

In 2017, tit-for-tat violence erupted within the city between two of the nation’s largest ethnic teams – the Luo and the Kalenjin. Homes have been torched, cattle stolen and 6 individuals killed.

This time, non secular leaders and volunteer peace ambassadors from each side try to cease issues earlier than they begin. The peace ambassadors are a part of a nationwide initiative – the Peace Ambassadors Integration Organisation.

On the southern aspect of the city, residents from the Luo neighborhood largely again their ethnic kinsman and veteran opposition presidential hopeful Raila Odinga. Their neighbours to the north overwhelmingly assist Deputy President William Ruto, a fellow ethnic Kalenjin.

No politician is value a life, the peace ambassadors say.

“Each 5 years politicians come and make extra guarantees… however once you elect them they disappear,” mentioned Willis Oundo, who has volunteered as a peace ambassador with the Luo neighborhood for 14 years.

Native politicians from each side promise to maneuver the county boundary north or south, he mentioned, giving their supporters a bigger share of fertile lands wealthy with sugar cane and grazing grounds.

Oundo tells voters to disregard politics and give attention to shared curiosity: the sugar plantations and factories the place residents work aspect by aspect.

“Once we struggle, the economic system collapses,” he mentioned.

Prisca Rono, certainly one of Oundo’s counterparts from the Kalenjin neighborhood, says the identical.

“If we do not have peace, business will shut. No peace, no work,” she mentioned.

Some residents are nonetheless frightened. Shopkeepers from each side plan to shut their enterprise two days earlier than the vote.

On the Grace Gospel Ministry, a corrugated iron church on the southern aspect of city, pastor Moses Agolla mentioned Kalenjin parishioners stopped coming as political tensions rose three months in the past. Agolla was injured in 2017 when a mob attacked him and torched his home.

A number of weeks in the past, in a close-by city, leaflets have been distributed ordering individuals to vote for Ruto or depart city. On Tuesday, police arrested eight individuals in a unique space for distributing incendiary leaflets within the Rift Valley.

VOTE FOR PEACE

To assist enhance ties, Agolla has despatched parishioners door-to-door to evangelise peace, and held conferences with likeminded pastors from throughout the road.

“My message is to vote for peace,” Agolla mentioned.

Rono and Oundo agree there’s far much less hate-speech or threats to grab land than earlier than the 2017 election. Cattle-rustling, typically a spark for revenge, has diminished.

Nationally, pre-election violence reminiscent of hate leaflets, civil unrest, intimidation, assaults on candidates, has fallen by greater than two-thirds between January and finish of July in contrast with the identical interval within the run-up to the 2017 polls, mentioned Declan Galvin of danger advisory firm WS Perception.

The peace ambassadors additionally liaise between residents and safety forces, who’re often accused by rights teams of utilizing extreme pressure to quell protests.

“This election is a bit unstable,” Oundo mentioned. “You by no means know what’s going to occur … we’ll carry on speaking.”

(Reporting by Baz Ratner; Writing by Hereward Holland. Enhancing by Jane Merriman)