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COMMENTARY
January 12, 2008
Kenya
It is the “age of science” -- I say this facetiously -- which means the age of numbers. Lots and lots of numbers are collected, then used to form patterns. We stare at the numbers, looking for patterns, until our eyes cross over. Science is the study of numbers in patterns, constantly evolving as more numbers come to light. In contrast with, say, philosophy, which deals with things in themselves. Modern thinking tends to be scientific, in the sense that it is not philosophical. In politics, pollsters rule, because they are the experts on the numbers, and techniques are employed to sort the numbers this way and that. Statisticians rule in the economic sphere. The bureaucracy itself reduces human beings to cyphers, to be manipulated by “policies” -- much as the labcoats do with rats. Modern taxation has become a strict science. There is no poverty any more, only a “poverty line”; nor wealth, except in a statistical relation. Modern warfare is also conducted on statistical principles, by which the generals try to calculate the attrition of the enemy. A target is such-and-such percent destroyed; we can analyse cost-benefit, using body counts, etc. The prestige of science is such that even journalists are inclined to present themselves as scientific. I think that's why, rather than say controversially who did what to whom -- as we did in the more philosophical, pre-scientific journalism -- we now prefer to report the casualty rates alone. Today's example will be Kenya. According to the best estimate I have seen, the death toll from post-election violence has passed 500, and the number of displaced persons is upwards of 250,000. Injuries are a judgement call -- widely varying estimates there. Loss of property and goods, mostly to arson, runs to still-uncountable billions of Kenyan shillings -- we'll have to wait for later reports. The bloodshed is concentrated in five of the country's eight provinces -- eureka! a pattern is beginning to emerge. The overall kill rate remains well short of “Rwanda.” That the election result was disputed, may go without saying. The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, son and heir of Odinga Odinga as the leading politician from the Luo tribe, thought the numbers were fixed, and ordered his tribal allies to riot accordingly. Observers from the European Union confirm there were irregularities, but have yet to assign patterns to them. The incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki, heir of the Kikuyu tribal governing class, considers himself re-elected, and has cooperated little with a succession of African “elder statesmen,” trying to resolve a crisis that perhaps cannot be resolved through negotiation. The pattern of mob violence is worth a further glance. Often what is reported in the media as chaos, does not look like chaos when more carefully observed. An example would be what happened in the village of Kiambaa, near Eldoret, in western Kenya -- one of the few incidents visible to an old-fashioned, philosophical journalist. On New Year's Day, there were at least 50 fatalities. But they were not random. All were apparently caused when a mob surrounded a church, full of people. Members of this mob washed the church with gasoline, then set fire to it, with the people still inside. Those inside were all members of the Kikuyu tribe. Those outside were mostly Luo. Scientifically, it was a chaotic incident -- a clash of some kind. Philosophically, it was a massacre, might I be so bold to say. Science, and reductionism, go hand in hand. Because Mr Odinga calls the most recent political party he has formed around his personal power base the “Orange Democracy Movement,” and has charmed leading Democrats in the U.S. (including Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was a member of the Luo tribe), he is presented in most media as the “white hat.” Given the standard Third-World legacy of nepotism and corruption, Mr Kibaki gets the “black hat” in this simplification. But under that nearly authoritarian Kikuyu rule, Kenya was until only a few weeks ago the stablest and most prosperous country in the East African region. Mr Odinga was raised from his childhood (in East Germany) as a Soviet agent. The Soviets aren't there to control him any more; he has his own games going, including an interesting one alleged on the Internet (with documentary evidence) with a certain Sheikh Abdullahi Abdi, suggesting dimensions of the conflict previously unobserved. The numbers of the dead, wounded, displaced, and dispossessed, are all very scientific; but we need to learn more about the underlying philosophy. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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