Why Kenyans bake their bread in street battles

So, will Kenyans keep their eye on the butter, or the bread?

The histories of the two countries might offer an answer.

In Uganda, when we are politically aggrieved, we go into the bush, raise an army and fight the government. In Kenya, people take to the streets.

When elections were stolen in Uganda in 2001 and 2006, all the news was about rebel armies being formed to fight President Yoweri Museveni’s “illegitimate” government.

The rebels were assembled somewhere in the north, and in the forests of the DRC, official reports claimed.

The thing about rebellion is that it is easy to ignore it.

After a few months, it pops up in the press once a month, and you hear nothing again. Meanwhile, life goes on in the cities and towns.

Street action, on the other hand, you can’t ignore, because it can shut down a capital for days (as it did Nairobi in Kenya’s post-election crisis) and all the eyes that matter — local and international press, diplomats — can see it.

Just as well, because street action is more dangerous.

A rebel movement has guns and can defend itself.

Street protestors have nothing, and are sitting ducks for trigger-happy police and soldiers.

Still, if Kenyans’ penchant for the street doesn’t wane, then they might actually not just have the butter to eat the new constitution with, but the bread too.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is executive editor of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Division. E-mail: cobbo@nation.co.ke