Why everyone’s talking guns

Mid-last week, the British Broadcasting Corporation broke a story pointing to the possibility of arming, with conventional weapons, of both the Kalenjin and the Gikuyu communities in the Rift Valley.

The story was picked up the next day by local media houses — with key quotations to back up the BBC claims being given by Ken Wafula, who works with a human rights organisation in Eldoret.

The government, predictably, came out to deny the possibility — arguing that its intelligence did not indicate that the story could be true.

By Friday, Wafula had been called in for questioning by the District Commission’s Intelligence Officer, and is now facing possible charges relating to the circulation of false and alarming information and/or incitement should he be unable to substantiate the quotations attributed to him by local media houses.

The government’s immediate denial is, of course, belied by the speed at which Wafula was picked up for interrogation.

On the one hand, it is somewhat reassuring to know that the government did take the claims seriously enough to investigate them.

On the other hand, however, the initial denial — and, worse, the charges against Wafula — can only contribute to the hesitancy of Kenyan citizens to come forward with information.

For it is not that the possibility has not been discussed before — in both public and the private domains.

The May 2009 report of the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Monitoring Project, commissioned by Kofi Annan from South Consulting, expressly mentions this concern.

Under the section “trends in disarmament,” the report notes the interception of five arms caches in Nandi district in February 2009, pointing to the possibility of arms flows into the country from neighbouring countries still in armed conflict.

The report also notes that discussions on violence from those surveyed made frequent references to guns.

So much for the public domain.

In the private domain, it is not just those of us who work on human rights who have been receiving information on militias arming within the Rift Valley from contacts and network members on the ground.

Talk of arming has, apparently, become common in certain business and professional circles as well.

Within the past two weeks alone, in otherwise social encounters, I personally have received (admittedly anecdotal information and hearsay) about the same.