Finally… a knowledgeable observer with something sensible to say about the post-election crisis and violence in Kenya.
At Spiked Online, Frank Furedi writes that what we have seen in Kenya is most certainly not genocide – a term first used by President Kibaki himself and parroted by most of the international media. Rather, it is a competition over scarce resources as often-corrupt politicians continue a long tradition of mobilized local populations on the basis of tribal affiliations.
I may be personally biased, having done some academic work within a similar theoretical framework, but I think it makes sense. Further, it warns us against falling too easily into hysteria and simplification. It is here that Furedi makes some interesting comments on vocabulary and the role of NGOs.
“This new view of conflicts in the South and the East is based on a disoriented Western imagination, which discusses political violence through dramatic and sensationalist metaphors, such as ‘Holocausts’, ‘Genocides’, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and ‘Mass Rape Camps’. Consequently, when it comes to violence in Africa or Asia, genocide has become the default diagnosis of events. From the Congo to Darfur to Kenya, bloody conflicts are recast as harbingers of holocaust.
“Through today’s promiscuous use of the term ‘genocide’, conflicts become transformed into morality plays about human destruction, and tend to be seen as being both incomprehensible and inevitable. Western reporters see only a sudden, inexplicable outburst of violence – a kind of murderous descent into hell – and overlook the structural causes of crises in the Third World.
“Many African politicians have learned to talk the talk of Western media outlets and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and now try to use this language to secure an advantage in a conflict situation…”
Furedi’s piece is a bit more dense than the typical newspaper account, but, I believe, all the better for it. His comments on vocabulary and conflicts in Africa have obvious implications for how we speak of the conflict here in Darfur. Any thoughts?
In case you missed the link above, you can read the original article here. Thanks to the excellent Rob Crilly, a freelance journalist on the ground in Kenya, for the tip to this piece.
1 response so far ↓
AK (FromSudan) // January 13, 2008 at 2:28 am
As Crilly points out, classifying a conflict as genocide or ethnic cleansing (terms which have become very politicized in the Western and apparently non-Western worlds) is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a conflict. It almost always oversimplifies the conflict into good vs. evil, right vs. wrong. This distorts things, so the average American or European can take 4 seconds from their day, feel pity, say “Oh my God, how terrible,” and continue with their day uninterrupted.