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INTRODUCTION NARRATIVE AND MEMORY If there is something that has been persistent and enduring as the human capacity to engage in violence and destruction, it is the tendency to make sense of such events through narrative. For every violent event there is a story told in varied ways from a range of angles before and after the event. The narratives collected by Twaweza Communications in this Volume tell yet another side of the story about the violence that engulfed Kenya towards the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. The narratives are part of a Daraja Initiative involving media monitoring, reflections and documentation of the traumatic post-election violence period often associated with the contested presidential results of 2007. The goal of the Project is to contribute to the protection of the constitutional rights of all Kenyans and to the development of a just and democratic country. Because violent conflicts constitute ruptures and continuities and are often preceded by tensions over the uncomfortable co-existence of political, economic, social and cultural systems and relations of power as well as what is perceived as valuable, mobilization for violence is driven by narratives of the legality and correctness of action such that notions of history, justice and memory are functions of narrative construction, power and authority. Narratives of violent conflict, such as happened in Kenya, are not absolute: they are contested, contradictory and incomplete. But they must be told so that the multiple voices from the citizens are heard. That is the purpose of this project. As we seek to reconcile and heal the country, we must record what happens around us. The narratives show that the violence was not just about the presidential results. To understand it, one would need to examine long standing grievances related to land, access to pasture, political manipulation of ethnic difference, impunity among those identified as having organized political violence in the past, the winner-take-all political system, poverty and unemployment among the youth, the high stakes and closeness of the presidential race making it impossible to clearly ‘see’a winner, the excessive powers of the presidency making the introduction: narrative and memory 1 2 Healing the Wound office immensely attractive to individuals and communities interested in controlling national resources, and the structural weaknesses of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). The character flaws of the ECK leadership were also contributors because what was said in just was poignant to viewers and listeners. Politicians ignite mistrust among ethnic groups and encourage violence to reach their goals and maintain or acquire power. In certain cases, this means physically removing people from specific constituencies prior to the polling day, the denial of identification cards and voters cards and the manipulation of the voters register. Clearly, when the aspirations and objectives of politicians are locked firmly with the fears, anxieties and dreams of ordinary people in their quest for a better life, a recipe for violence becomes potent. This potency can be immensely increased by the existence of small arms, an inefficient and biased police force, an uninspiring judicial system and poor infrastructure. These factors have been in Kenya for a long time and must be addressed urgently and constitutionally to avoid a recurrence of election related violence. At the peak of the violence captured in these narratives, about one thousand two hundred (1,200) lives were lost, thousands of people were injured, property worth billions of shillings was destroyed, houses were set on fire, over four hundred thousand (400,000) people were internally displaced and a large number sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The transnational transport system was disrupted through road blocks and uprooting of a railway line and there was overwhelming evidence of rape in the conflict areas. In internally displaced persons (IDP) camps the lives of women and children were in jeopardy due to rape, disease outbreak and hunger. Many families were suddenly rendered destitute. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) published a report titled “ On the Brink of the Precipice: A Human Rights Account of Kenya’s Post 2007 Election Violence” (August 2009) detailing the mayhem unleashed on the Kenyan people by government forces and fellow citizens. In spite of its weaknesses, including the failure to capture the chronology of events leading to the post-election violence and inability to detail specific violence-related activities of national and local leaders as well as retired military and police officers during the carnage, it is an important document extensively used by the Waki...

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