Killings Spur Fears Kenya Is Adopting Culture of Violence

Stanley Mwangemi, who has lived in this tourist haven for two decades, fondly recalls that residents once could stroll the tree-lined avenues of this port city at midnight without anxiety, sleep with their doors unlocked and trust almost any stranger as a friend.

But suddenly, those days are gone. “It’s become so dangerous here,” he says.

A mysterious spate of killings that has terrorized residents of Kenya’s peaceful coastal region for two weeks has triggered fears that this nation--long a bedrock of stability, tourism and foreign investment in East Africa--is fast adopting the culture of violence that has devastated many other African nations.

At least 42 Kenyans, including 10 police officers, have been killed and millions of dollars in property damage has been caused in the latest outbreak of violence, which follows months of political, social and economic instability. If left unchecked, analysts say, the turmoil could easily snowball into anarchy.

Kenya has been beset by a host of political and economic concerns as it prepares for presidential elections later this year. Opposition groups have challenged President Daniel Arap Moi, the incumbent who is seeking a fifth and final five-year term in office, to make constitutional and administrative reforms before the vote, whose date has yet to be set.

But the Moi government has been reluctant to make democratic changes. Instead, its excessive force against advocates for reform and reports of its widespread financial corruption have fueled worldwide condemnation. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank recently shelved loans to Kenya, causing the shilling to plummet and scaring away potential investors.

Ordinary Kenyans already face increased poverty and deprivation. Mortality rates are up, nutrition levels down and school attendance is dropping. This unhappy situation could only worsen with the upheaval in Mombasa, a tropical tourist mecca with pristine beaches and a bustling night life.

Although no foreigner has been harmed in the recent violence, many governments, including the United States, have warned their citizens against traveling to Kenya’s coast. By Friday, tourism officials said, at least 500 people had canceled bookings at hotels in the region in a significant blow to the travel industry, which brought in $465 million last year and is Kenya’s No. 2 source of foreign currency after tea exports.

Michael Kranzler, a San Franciscan who came to Mombasa to make digital recordings of nature and ended up staying three months, admits that he and his travel companion feel less safe.

“We’re a little more concerned than usual, because these things have a tendency to overflow,” says Kranzler, noting that security has been beefed up around the private house where he is staying. “It is possible that people might use this kind of situation as a cover and take advantage of it.”

The violence exploded here Aug. 13 when armed men stormed a police station in Likoni, just south of Mombasa Island, which is linked to the city by a ship channel. A number of people, including seven police officers, were fatally shot or hacked to death. Guns and ammunition were stolen.

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The attack was brazen, says Peter Kimanthi, national police spokesman, who notes: “A bit of planning went into this thing, and it must have started several months back. It is not that some people just got up one morning and decided to kill police and burn kiosks.”

Despite a police sweep and crackdown, the motives behind the violence here remain unclear. Some analysts say the upheaval has all the signs of the government or the opposition--and each is blaming the other--exploiting ethnic tensions for political purposes. And “that is a very dangerous precedent,” because “the process could reverberate in other parts of the country,” says a Western diplomat based in Nairobi, the capital.

Since the Likoni raid, random attacks have spread to towns in the Mombasa area in a strip extending 90 miles south and north on the Indian Ocean coast.

Most of the civilian casualties have been ethnic Kenyans from outside the area. Handwritten pamphlets have reportedly been distributed calling for coastal Kenyans to chase outsiders away as they have deprived locals of privileges and key jobs, including posts with the police. “It seems that there is deep, long-simmering discontent on the coast where local people feel they are being treated like second-class citizens,” the diplomat says. “That is the wellspring of the anger that has been expressed in these attacks . . . and some people are manipulating this anger.”

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The outsiders have tended to favor the political opposition while coastal Kenyans back Moi’s Kenya African National Union party. Moi’s close associates have been accused of masterminding the latest violence to rid this government stronghold, which has 21 seats in parliament, of opposition support.

“One cannot vote in an area where he didn’t get his voting card,” explains Bishop Julius Kalu, coastal region chairman of the National Council of Churches of Kenya. “So by chasing away [outsiders] they will end up not being able to vote at all.”

Similar tactics were used in Rift Valley province before the 1992 presidential vote when ethnic Kikuyus, Luhyas and Luos--who support the opposition--were attacked in Moi’s home province by members of his Kalenjin group; 1,500 people were killed and 250,000 forced to flee.

After 10 years of living in Likoni, Mary Wambani says she is ready to move back to her native village in western Kenya, thereby sacrificing her vote in exchange for her safety. She, her husband and five children took refuge, with their household belongings, at the Roman Catholic church in Likoni after receiving a threatening leaflet.

About 3,000 other Likoni residents have fled to the overcrowded church grounds, fearing reprisals; two people were shot dead and a military police officer seriously wounded during one of several attacks on the church by unknown bandits.

The arrests of more than 400 suspects, including two Mombasa-based ruling party members and some opposition politicians, have brought authorities no closer to explaining the recent rash of killings. But as the blame continues to creep toward the country’s ruling elite, average Kenyans have been left to ponder their country’s fate.

“Some of our people have been wondering if it is time for Kenya to have its share of the trouble that many other countries around us have had,” Kalu says. “Maybe some people want to ensure that our grace period is now over.”