Having Driven Out Business, Kenyan Town Faces Consequences

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 28, 2008

KISUMU, Kenya -- Three weeks after burning down the old Kimwa Grand Hotel here, many of the admitted arsonists returned to its charred remains, scavenging sheets of scrap metal, doors and wires.

Many did so proudly, even triumphantly, offering an explanation now familiar in this city of broken windows and flowering trees: The business was owned by a supporter of President Mwai Kibaki, whom many here accuse of stealing the Dec. 27 election.

"We have to resort to this to send a message to Kibaki!" said Humphries Odongo, hauling off a share of metal.

But there was another reason he was picking through the ruins.

With his city half-wrecked and food prices skyrocketing, Odongo said he hoped to sell the scraps so he could eat.

"Unemployment is a problem," he said last week. "All these kiosks and businesses were burned, so now not even those jobs are there."

It took just a few days of window-smashing, rock-throwing, car-burning fury to drive most members of Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, out of this opposition stronghold on the edge of Lake Victoria in western Kenya.

The riots and looting were part of a wave of violence that followed the disputed election, plunging Kenya into possibly its worst political crisis since independence.

But people in Kisumu say they were also venting frustrations with what they consider to be an economic imbalance between themselves and their Kikuyu neighbors, widely perceived across Kenya to be part of a privileged political class.

To emphasize that their motives were economic as well as ethnic, Odongo and some of the other looters pointed out that they had also torched several Indian-owned businesses, including a supermarket that was one of the largest employers in Kisumu but whose owner was accused of paying substandard wages.

Now, however, people are facing the consequences of driving out the neighbors and business owners they resented: rising unemployment, food shortages and skyrocketing prices. The local chamber of commerce estimates that 5,000 jobs have been lost so far.

The damage reflects the larger story across much of Kenya, whose promising economy has been devastated by the post-election crisis. Often responsible for the damage were supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who campaigned on a promise to distribute wealth more equitably.

Kenyan manufacturers estimate that 500,000 jobs could be lost if a solution is not found soon. The tourism industry is "basically dead," said one industry analyst, who put losses at $85 million over the past month. Banana farmers who were barely eking out a living even before the crisis are now practically giving away their produce because they can't ship it out. Real-estate analysts estimate property damage at $15 million.

The figures represent a significant loss for the Kenyan economy, which had grown by more than 6 percent annually in recent years, compared with about 2 percent when Kibaki took charge in 2002.

Around Kisumu, all sorts of other Kikuyu-owned businesses have stopped operating. Trucks are no longer bringing in vegetables. Major bus routes from here to Nairobi have been closed. And blocks of downtown -- including the main thoroughfare, Odinga Odinga Street, named for Odinga's father, a political hero to many Kenyans -- are scarred with blackened shops, taxis and trucks, hotels and grocery stores.

The lingering questions are whether the business people, particularly the traumatized Kikuyus, will return, and whether Kisumu can survive without them.

"We are wishing them to return," said Jared Ochanda, chairman of the local chamber of commerce. "How that will happen is anybody's guess."

The 50 or so Kikuyu residents remaining in Kisumu as of last week were all living under armed guard at a local police station, waiting for bus tickets out.

Sitting outside the tented camp were people who had done business in Kisumu for more than 30 years: a scrap-metal shop owner, a lumber merchant, a barbershop owner and a truck driver, who said that a fleet of six trucks, which were owned by an Indian businessman and driven mainly by Kikuyus, had been torched.

"We've been here for three weeks," said one man, Daniel Thuku, 35. Since arriving, he said, he had not set foot beyond the wire fence surrounding the station, where people from town often gather to hurl stones and insults.

"They shout that they will kill us," said Samuel Kangethe, 28, the truck driver. "That's why we need to leave here and go home."

He predicted that the city would fall into a period of decline without the investment of Kikuyus and Indians.

"Even they have started saying they are suffering," he said, referring to his former neighbors beyond the fence.

Kisumu is situated in the Nyanza province of western Kenya, which is considered the land of the Luo, Odinga's tribe. For years, the Luo have complained that the region has been underdeveloped compared with Kibaki's home province in central Kenya, and many had pinned their hopes for a better life on Odinga's election.

Kikuyus who have settled in the area over the past 50 years, often with the help of loans and other favors from the Kikuyu political establishment, have fled by the busloads as their houses and businesses have been burned. Nearly 800 people have been killed and 200,000 displaced in post-election violence, most in the volatile western part of the country.

At least 70 people were killed over the weekend, as the fighting between Kikuyu gangs and those supporting Odinga spread to the previously calm cities of Nakuru and Naivasha, a lakeside tourist haven.

In Kisumu, a city of pleasant green parks, two-story buildings and once-bustling outdoor markets, tensions remained high last week.

"We don't want to see them here," said Theresa Atieno, referring to her Kikuyu neighbors as she sold tomatoes along a street.

Rose Juma Adhiambo, who was selling greens in front of a row of shuttered Kikuyu shops, said she has not been able to find pineapples, mangoes or bananas lately, because the trucks that usually bring them to Kisumu have stopped coming.

Her income has dwindled from $15 a day to about $7.

"My customers have gone back to the rural areas," she said, referring to Kikuyus and others who have fled. She was a bit sad to have seen her Kikuyu friends go, she said, but saw it as a political necessity. "Maybe after all this fracas has gone, they will come back," she said.

In another neighborhood just outside town, shop owner Joel Siderra was not so sure they would return.

His supply of bread has been cut off. By early afternoon, he had just one loaf to sell.

"God knows when they will come back," he said. "People are still very bitter."

The suffering is a sign of the inequality that has existed for years, he said, and people are fed up with it.

With access to bank loans and capital monopolized by a single community, he said, it is unlikely that the remaining residents will have the wherewithal to replace the businesses that have left, unless Odinga is able to negotiate a significant share of power.

Until then, many people seemed willing to bear the consequences of life without their Kikuyu neighbors.

"I have to accept that," said Odongo, the looter at the hotel, whose own bar was burned down during the riots because it was next to a Kikuyu liquor store. "I don't regret."