PWANI SI KENYA: Is Pwani in denial of its role in rebellion?

PWANI SI KENYA: Is Pwani in denial of its role in rebellion?

I stopped for lunch at Mbuzi Wengi after the deadly attack on police at Malindi Casino. Mbuzi Wengi might be Malindi’s equivalent to Nairobi’s Burma Market. The cuisine is Coastal and Swahili dishes in makeshift restaurants. The surrounds might not reflect the cooking but the hoards flocking there are testimony to the quality and value for money served in the not-too-seemly establishments. As often happens in such places, the conversation drifts to the news of the day. Total strangers debate politics or social issues in good-natured tones, each fighting to have the last word.

The attack by suspected separatist rebels was on the menu. For some reason, the police thought it prudent to parade the bodies of the six assailants killed. It is said they wore amulets and identifying headbands. They were bare-chested as is beloved of tribal warriors.  Much of the so-called evidence came from smooth-faced middle-income types who probably had not set foot at the Malindi Police Station where the dead lay for hours. There was debate as to whether the raiders were of coastal descent. Many were sceptical, claiming the dead did not have coastal features. In our tribal nation, you quickly learn to identify a person by their features. Many were persuaded by the assertion the attackers were not Coastal.

I too would like to believe the attack was carried out by foreign savages. Yet something that happened on Election Day persuades me otherwise. In what appears to have been a concerted effort to disrupt or stop voting in Kilifi and Mombasa counties, a number of polling stations were attacked. Voting in many other stations stopped early for fear of attack. Like many in my village I dismissed the attacks as the work of outsiders. That was until a person killed after an attack at Miritini in Mombasa was identified as a young man from our village.

The dead young man did not fit the profile of what has come to be associated with the Mombasa Republic Council- the separatist movement. He was a devout Muslim, a father of one and a shopkeeper. He was not the typical unemployed youth scavenging for a living that has been drawn to the separatist cause. He was disciplined, neat and responsible. True; he did have a defiant glint to his eye but that, we thought, must have come from his higher sense of discipline- not waywardness. Yet he too was a radical sympathiser of the MRC.

Months back at the beginning of the voter registration process, I joined a local community group at a fundraiser in a rural church in Malindi.  When we had a chance to address the congregation after the meeting we urged them to register and participate in the elections. There was an uneasy silence. A lady asked for our response to the grievances raised by the MRC.  In typical NGO-speak we cautioned that lack of participation in the political process is what had led to the present status. There was a heated debate on the merits and demerits of participation in the elections. Telling as it is; the debate highlighted the attraction of ordinary church-going folk to the agenda of the MRC.

The MRC held; participation in the political process only served to legitimise marginalisation and discrimination. At the time, there had not been a single act of violence attributed to the MRC. Many believed the organisation to be a peaceful movement of the dispossessed. When the electoral commission organised a mock-election to educate voters on the new voting procedure, a polling station in Malindi was attacked. A policeman was injured in the daytime raid and a firearm stolen. On the eve of the election another night time attack on revellers leaving nightclubs left three dead. This makes the attack at the Casino the third in Malindi in a matter of months. The MRC will simply not go away.

It is noteworthy that Malindi has never been a hotbed of radical politics. At the height of the riots in protest at the killing of radical Islamic preacher Aboud Rogo, Malindi did not even stir. Malindi is hopelessly addicted to and dependent on the tourism sector and cannot rouse the fear of any visitor. Even the common criminals, it seems, appreciate the sensitive nature of the tourism business. Thousands of tourists roam untouched even as swarms of locals scrounge on little more than a meal a day. Why then the sudden shift towards violence?

Many among the indigenes believe the radical Islamist movement has infected the political movement that was MRC with a dose of its vehement opposition to the state. It is not lost on observers that while the grenade attacks attributed to the Islamic radicals al Shabab have dwindled, political attacks by the MRC have peaked. Of course the police would have us believe recent attacks are sorely the work of the MRC.  Something is clearly the matter with the coast and it is not as straightforward as the police would have us believe.

 The locals are in denial as to the participation of their kin in the violent acts. The debate on MRC has dwindled to a few murmurs as security services move to confront the organisation. This could be partly out of fear but it also gives free rein to the movement or others out to hijack its cause to further an agenda unhindered by local censure. The sooner we shift from denial to deeper introspection the better for the coast. The MRC must be debated and not by government or the police but by the community it purports to represent.