Violence Erupts in Kenya After MP Murdered, Power Outages Across Countinent

by Rob Walker | January 31, 2008 at 12:29 pm

432 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Adding to tensions already stretched to the breaking point and beyond, a second Opposition member of Parliament was killed today by a police officer. Despite police insistence that the murder was not politically motivated and was, in fact, a crime of passion due to a love triangle, violence has broken out all across Kenya.

See previous NowPublic coverage here.

There's some really nice rounding up and context provided over at Noli Irritare Leones.

Opposition MP David
Kimutai has been shot dead by a traffic officer. A female companion,
also shot, is in ICU. This is the second opposition MP to be killed
this week; earlier, Opposition MP Mugabe Were was shot and killed by
two gunmen at his house in the Nairobi suburbs. One of the suspects in
the killing of Were has been released, and two others are still in
custody. The death of Were sparked violent clashes in Nairobi suburbs,
and people are fleeing Eldoret in the wake of the death of Kimutai.

Breakingnewskenya has the story as well.

Efforts to end the tribal violence that has wracked Kenya since December’s disputed elections suffered a further setback today when crisis talks were postponed following the killing of an Opposition MP by a police officer in the Rift Valley.
The shooting of David Too - the second Opposition MP to die this week – led Kofi Annan to suspend today’s negotiations to allow both parties to attend to the fallout and calm their constituents. The talks, which have already suffered numerous delays, would begin afresh tomorrow, the former UN Secretary General announced.
Despite police insistence that the killing was a crime of passion, the killing triggered a fresh surge in the post-election bloodshed that has pitted tribe against tribe, leaving up to 1,000 people dead and 300,000 homeless.

A police officer in Kenya shot dead an opposition legislator on Thursday, the second killed in a week, triggering fresh protests and interrupting talks to try to end more than a month of violence.
Warning of catastrophe, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he would travel to Nairobi on Friday from an African Union summit in neighbouring Ethiopia to help his predecessor Kofi Annan, who has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis.

A lack of regular power from state-owned power company Eskom has resulted in unscheduled load shedding and many homes and businesses losing electricity. This has made the day to day lives of Kenyans increasingly frustrating on top of being worried about new outbreaks of violence.

Is this the beginning of the end? I was in total shock when I heard that Eskom has told mines in South Africa to shutdown their mines for between two and six weeks. This all in an effort to conserve the little power that South Africa currently has. Businesses of all sizes have been suffering over the last couple of weeks in South Africa due to the continued power cuts. Now the mining sector which is a huge contributor to the South African economy is now also starting to be hit hard. Eskom’s reasoning is that they can not guarantee power to the mines and do not want to run the risk of the mines having a power cut when miners are down in the mines.

Amusing as it may be, the joke cuts to the heart of serious matter. All over the continent countries are struggling with unstable power supply. In the last week, South Africa has had to close down many of its major mining operations due to load-shedding. In this climate, leveraging digital technology is a very real challenge. Can we innovate around this or are we content to staying in the dark?