As Kenya entered the New Year much of the country was on the brink of the very chaos so many hoped that it would avoid as the country continues its tentative but measurable transition to liberal democracy. Even as President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner over challenger Raila Odinga, despite the incumbent having been behind in the polls by most estimations, allegations of vote rigging grew and violence expanded. The death toll continues to rise.
Meanwhile, in some of the most irresponsible Africa coverage I have seen in some time, The New York Times fell back on hoary old Dark Continent tropes to address the Kenya crisis. The Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman chose to depict what is in reality a confluence of divisions — regional, ethnic, rural/urban, and of course above all political, among others — as the result of age-old “tribalism” marked by “atavism.”:
With the president, Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga a Luo, the election seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem.
This story grossly warps the realities on the ground in the service of fueling stereotypes that Africanists have been fighting for more than a generation. “Veins of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya”? Please. That this nonsense comes from the Old Gray Lady, the “Paper of Record,” makes it all the more galling.
