The politically insitaged violence that rocked Kenya seven years ago is slowly being dumped in the dustbins of history for political expediency. Alleged villains have since paraded themselves around the world as the victims – and won more than sympathy at home and abroad. But the real victims still cry for justice.

Many thought her bravado was pure madness, that unknown young woman on the television screen. “Why do we have to keep on being tear-gassed because of you? We want to work!” She screamed at the leaders of the opposition party outside Nairobi’s Stanley Hotel as they prepared for a banned protest march against the disputed victory of the Mwai Kibaki’s presidency.

“Ask Kibaki!” William Ruto and Najib Balala retorted. “No! Don’t tell me about Kibaki! I am tired of being chased around. I want to go on with my life…”

“Ask Kibaki!” A crowd of men shoved the poor woman to the ground, and she had to run away, as they slapped and threw kicks at her. A few moments later, paramilitary police rendered the city of Nairobi un-inhabitable.

That moment symbolises the situation of our mothers, our sisters, of women in Kenya during these ethnic cleansing sanitised as “post election violence.”

“800 people dead, and over 250,000 people displaced in their own country” drone international news channels. Cold statistical figures that do not show how Kenyan women are suffering rapes, murders, lack of food for themselves and their family, and loss of property.

Kenyan women have been stoic despite patriarchal inhibitions of our society. They head families; they kick off their husbands from illicit brew dens, and hawk vegetables and foodstuffs to feed us. They vie for political posts despite the violence and intimidation. But now, they are the envelopes upon which messages of hate are delivered to enemy camps.

How else can you explain 1 January 2008? Location: Kenya Assemblies of God Church, Kiambaa, Eldoret Town. Scene: a group of people runs into the church under attack from their neighbours, only to be locked in, and burnt alive. Fade out on charred remains of 35 people, mostly women and children, including the smoldering wheel chair of an ailing woman whose sons had taken here there in the hope of sheltering her from the violence.

It is neither a film, nor a reality television. It is real news.

As the violence entered the capital city guarded by hundreds of paramilitary police, the gender based violence that had characterised the pre-election period where women political leaders and voters suffered assault now exponentially spiraled out of control.

Nairobi Women’s Hospital issued an alert that the reported number of rapes had more than doubled, from an average of four rape cases per day to more than ten. News abounds of young girls, under the age of 18, to women over 70 years old, being gang raped as they flee conflict areas.

Most of the quarter a million displaced people lucky enough to flee have been hurdled in refugee camps in football fields, police stations, churches and schools. Reproductive health facilities here are not readily available, and for the pregnant women childbirth is a matter of life and death. The Rift Valley Provincial Hospital reported at least six women arriving there for delivery within the first week of the camp being set up.

Sanitary towels are not available. There is no money to buy from the surrounding shopping centres as the refugees have nothing. Leading supermarkets already post appeals for well-wishers to buy sanitary towels and deposit in special bins for donation to refugee camps.

Food has fast become an issue. The Red Cross is having problems reaching some refugee camps as rowdy youth barricade roads, and at one time even overwhelmed relief trucks and looted the food. Even when the food does get to the camp, the women and children have to wrestle and jostle in the queues.

In “safer” residential areas, women now fear to go out to buy food for fear of police and violent demonstrators. Towns like Nakuru and Naivasha towns are under a 7 p.m to 7 a.m curfew. Food prices have rocketed countrywide. Sukuma Wiki, a staple vegetable, now costs ten shillings a small bunch up from five shillings.

In the low-income housing estates of Nairobi’s Huruma and Mathare, women landlords went to collect rent from their tenants, only to be told by rival tribesmen that “the building now has its owners, we are the landlords.”

A pregnant woman was flung from the fifth floor of her own block to her death. As one of the women put it, “it’s unbelievable that there are people living in the comfort of my houses while I am a refugee being rained on in a Police Station’s yard.”

Tired of it all, some 200 women refugees evicted from Kibera slums decided to go back to their homes and appeal for peace across tribes. Just like the unknown young woman who dared stand up to the political leaders and ask if there is any justification to this violence and chaos, they too ask WHY Kenya has succumbed to this anarchy and breakdown of order.

However, Mr. Politicians do not want to hear them, or do not care. Women are invisible to the political class, but very visible to the aggressors seeking targets.

*Simiyu Barasa is a Kenyan filmmaker and writer. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that provides fresh views on everyday news.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Nairobi, 4 February 2008; On the last day of the year 2008, we sat previewing a wedding video I had made for my fiancée’s brother, Martin, who was leaving with his bride Sally for South Africa a few days later. Like bad movie editors, we constantly switched from footage of elegant Maasai dancers from the bride’s family and Gikuyu dancers from the grooms family, to television news of paramilitary police in their jungle fatigues keeping rowdy crowds from the Electoral Commissioners of Kenya announcing the election results.

The opposition’s huge lead narrowed and flipped in favour of the incumbent. Suddenly, commotion: brutal force as the Electoral Commission Chairperson was shielded out of the hall. Then he popped up at the Kenya Broadcasting Company, and announced Mwai Kibaki the winner of the presidential elections. Even faster, the president was sworn in.

Cell phones went crazy, everyone calling each other and asking if what we were seeing was true. Then a call: a Luo neighbour had sent his Gikuyu wife packing, ostensibly because the Gikuyus had stolen the presidency from Raila Odinga, a Luo. Then we began to hear the news of mass killings and burning of properties against rival tribes.

The next day I rushed to the supermarket to stock up on food and airtime for my phone. Gunshots and smoke from the neighbouring Kibera slums numbed my stomach. In this forced eviction and ethnic cleansing, where would I go? Hadn’t people like me, mothered by a Taita from Coastal Kenya and fathered by a Luhya from Western Kenya, been Kenya’s pride?

I needed to call mom and ask if she is safe in Western Kenya. It took me two hours of queuing, only to get to the till to find out I could not call my mum. There was no credit. My heart sunk.

In Kisumu, spouses were kicking their Gikuyu loves out. In retaliation, Gikuyus in Central province started hitting back at wives and husbands of the “enemy” tribe. Marriages and relationships are breaking, and with them, the myth of national unity.

In June last year, I accompanied my friend Machogu in his wedding negotiations. His wife is from a different community. “We hear you guys love beating your wives, please treat our daughter well in our community we aren’t known to beat women” “Ha ha! We hear your people steal money please never send her to steal from our son!”

We had laughed it off saying it is only the old people and that they were just joking. Now, our age mates are the ones unleashing their youthful energies in disemboweling and chopping of heads of the rival tribes. Were we naïve to the reality of the hatred in the rest of our country?

The Happy New Year calls from friends are strange this year. “I don’t even know what I saw in Mercy. It is over from today. She can go marry Kibaki.” “John is horrible. If his tribe performs the way he does in bed, no wonder they lost!” Oh? Were we just engaging in intellectual necking when in college we dated across tribes, while in reality when the tribal war drums throb, we dance to the rhythms?

Munene calls. We try to laugh as we muse over the sad situation in our country. “My friend, imagine if you had gotten married to that Kale chic you used to date in college. Now you’d be dodging arrows in Eldoret as your in-laws chase you down the valleys!” The laughter screeches to an uneasy silence. Such jokes are now walking straight out of people’s lips and hacking people to death.

As we talk, my cousin’s wife calls from her rural home where she had gone to spend Christmas with her family. “Is it safe to come back to Nairobi?” She asks. “Yes it is,” I tell her. “Well, here things have gotten tense; people are kicking out all foreigners to revenge what has been done to our tribesmen!”

I sigh. In Taita, some excited youths hounded a particular tribe to the football stadium and told them to “go back to their ancestral land.” My cousin’s wife, if she had been up country, would have been among those - especially now that the husband is far away in Darfur, a soldier keeping peace there!

I go back to bid Sally and Martin goodbye. In South Africa, there are no Gikuyus and Maasai to harass their marriage. Maybe there, they shall build a generation of children like me who can proudly say they are truly Kenyan.

Here it is now a matter of walking in groups where you find solace in speaking the same mother tongue, knowing you can fight off attacks from gangs of the other tribes. However, for some of us, true Kenyans, where do we run?

* Simiyu Barasa is a Kenyan filmmaker and writer. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that provides fresh views on everyday news.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org