Citizen and self: Violence, identity and legitimacy in the Rift Valley's post-election crisis 2007-08

In the last days of 2007 and the first months of 2008, supporters of rival presidential candidates Raila Odinga and incumbent Mwai Kibaki clashed throughout Kenya, leaving approximately 1,100 dead and 300,000 displaced.2 Most of this violence occurred in the Rift Valley, where it was structured along a division between the 'autochthonous' Kalenjin and Maasai and the 'outsider' Kikuyu and Kisii. The key problematic posed by the crisis concerns the relationship between the national political arena and the use of violence along ethnic divisions. While the salience of ethnicity in the violence seemingly points to a state in collapse, this article contends that the crisis reveals more about those involved in the conflict, or belligerents' attachment to the Kenyan polity, than their imagined 'ethno-nationalism.' This article isolates and analyses the essential dynamics of patrimonialism, specifically how narratives of ethnic entitlement developed as a means of accessing the state. Although these narratives hardened ethnic divisions they carried a subtext of belonging within the national community. The use of violence against ethnic 'Others' in the Rift Valley implies neither the instrumentalisation of ethnicity for substantial political benefit nor the retreat to an ethnic selfhood devoid of national attachment. Instead, both the system and era of patrimonialism in Kenya have resulted in the 'privatisation' of violence. This has in turn created a form of citizenship which attains ethnic identity through violence, and can rely on the central norms of the state to legitimise it.