allAfrica.com: Kenya: Peace By Local Means (Page 1 of 2)

AS POLITICIANS TRAVERSED the country recently preaching peace and tolerance, a Nairobi-based organisation was busy putting together a traditional peacebuilding initiative that has helped stem bloodletting in several areas.

Porini Association's alternative approach uses the traditional peacebuilding systems of different communities in the country.

"Parliament may pass legislation to help the country attain peace and reconciliation while politicians may go around the country preaching peace, but unless cultural and traditional aspects are integrated into the peace process, it will not work," said Porini programme officer, Kariuki Thuku.

He says the decades-long peace processes in the Rift Valley have failed largely because they were not rooted in the peace traditions built by local people over centuries, some of which are still in use.

Kariuki says the organisation's peace initiative was once applied in the Kariobangi slums of Nairobi after suspected Mungiki militia killed 25 people from the Luo community on March 3, 2002 following a dispute over rent.

"With the collaboration of the local Catholic Church and elders from the warring groups, we took families of the deceased and injured people to Nyeri where they met Kikuyu elders for peace negotiations," said Kariuki.

The Kikuyu elders were also brought to the site of the killings in Kariobangi in a ceremony attended by among others the then Brazilian ambassador Salim Zagar and the former chairman of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, Prof Yash Pal Ghai.

Two weeks ago, President Mwai Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and several politicians visited the areas worst hit by the post-election killings, asking local people to give peace a chance and pledging government assistance in helping affected people rebuild their lives.

However, the two leaders were treated to boos and heckling in some areas. There are also claims that government officials in Rift Valley abetted the killings and therefore cannot be entrusted with the task of promoting co-existence. Kenya, unlike Uganda and Burundi, does not have any law on peacebuilding.

"How can the thinking that brought about the problem in the first place, solve it?" asks Thuku, arguing that the institutions the government has been relying on to build and maintain peace are of a colonial origin, and totally disregard peace initiatives embraced by the local people.

BUT WILL THE PORINI-PROmoted initiative, which is based on traditions that are no longer observed by all the local people work?

According to Thuku, those who doubt the efficacy of such initiatives are largely the urban-based elite who have lost touch with the thinking of the majority of rural people.

"Even the most devout Christians in rural areas find no difficulty in embracing traditions and cultures that are useful for them," he says.

Incidentally, Porini Association's work has informed the setting up of peace committees in many areas of northern and northeastern Kenya.

The region was prone to clashes sparked by cattle rustling. But following lobbying by Porini in 2003, the government set up the committees in selected hotspots (for instance Isiolo district) and has been financing their operations.

"If such permanent committees had been set up in different parts of the Rift Valley, they would have probably helped to stem the post-election mayhem," says Kariuki.

The concept has its roots in a November 1993 initiative by the African Initiative for Alternative Peace and Development (Afripad), which was then an affiliate body of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). The latter is a North American-based Christian organisation that focuses on peace, relief and community development.

A former MCC-Kenya country representative Janice Jenner, is credited with the peace initiative after she urged other MCC members to contribute their thoughts on how African material culture could be utilised for conflict resolution.

MCC-Kenya had initiated the Material Culture Project in Nairobi and was seeking ways of expanding it. At the same time, a number of areas in Kenya were experiencing politically-motivated ethnic conflict similar to those that erupted in January.

In order to document the "peace artefacts" it had collected from different communities in Kenya, MCC appointed a specialist Prof Sultan Somji in 1994 to do the display, preservation and the naming of the artifacts. Prof Somji was then heading the Ethnographic Department at the National Museums of Kenya.

As an ethnographer, Prof Somji had himself collected a well of information on the material culture of different ethnic groups in Kenya while working at the Museum.

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