Kenya boycott call dismissed as 'sabotage'
Kenya’s government today condemned an opposition plan to boycott companies linked to President Mwai Kibaki’s allies as “sabotage”.
Meanwhile the violence and killings triggered by Mr Kibaki’s disputed re-election more than three weeks ago continued.
So far more than 600 people have, and several people were beaten and hacked to death with machetes in a Nairobi slum over the weekend, residents said.
Police managed to quell more than two days of fierce fighting around a Catholic monastery that killed 22 people and left 200 homes burned in the Rift Valley, 190 miles north-west of the capital.
The dispute arose after opposition leader Raila Odinga accused Mr Kibaki of stealing the vote.
As Mr Kibaki’s power becomes more daily entrenched, the opposition’s best hope may rest in working out a power-sharing agreement that might make Mr Odinga prime minister or vice president. International mediation has so far failed.
Mr Odinga has called for another “peaceful protest” on Thursday, saying, “let them bring their guns and we will face them.” The protest will take place in defiance of a ban and despite the deaths of at least 24 people in three days of protests last week – most of them blamed on police.
He also has urged supporters to boycott companies owned by Kibaki allies, including Equity Bank and bus companies CityHoppa and Kenya Bus, prompting the government response that it would be an illegal act.
Yesterday’s bloodshed in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, like much of the fighting since the vote, was between the Kikuyu and Luo tribes. President Kibaki is a Kikuyu and Odinga is a Luo.
In the Rift Valley, around the Catholic Kipkelion Monastery, fighting since Friday has pitted Kalenjin people native to the area against Kisii and Kikuyus who settled there in the 1960s and 1970s.
Police appeared to have quelled the violence by yesterday afternoon but still were recovering bodies.
A reporter at the scene counted 14 people dead from machete wounds, three bodies stuck with arrows and five people shot dead by police.
Land always has been a tool of Kenyan politicians, who distribute it as favours to their own and allied tribes, and use it as a weapon, settling their supporters in hostile areas in order to win votes at election time.
In the Rift Valley, Kalenjin people who feel they have been wrongly stripped of their land generally support the opposition.
