Kenyan govt denies country is in crisis

The death toll from more than five days of violence in Kenya rose above 300 today as the government denied the country was in crisis.

Victims included dozens of people who were burned to death inside a church where they sought sanctuary.

The trouble, sparked by claims that President Mwai Kibaki rigged his election victory, quickly took on a tribal element in what has been one of Africa’s most stable democracies.

In the church attack a mob set fire to the building in a town about 185 miles from Nairobi, killing up to 50 members of Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe.

But government spokesman Alfred Mutua said: “Kenya is not burning and not at the throes of any division.

He added that clashes had only affected about 3 per cent of the country’s 34 million people.

The independent Kenya Human Rights Commission and the International Federation for Human Rights said in a joint statement more than 300 people had been killed since the vote last Thursday.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has said he would go ahead with plans to lead a protest march in the capital tomorrow, even though the government has banned it.

In Nairobi’s slums, which are often divided along tribal lines, rival groups have been fighting each other with machetes and sticks as police use tear gas and bullets to keep them from pouring into the city centre. The capital has been a ghost town for days, with residents stocking up on food and water and staying in their homes.

Government spokesman Mr Mutua said the security forces had arrested 500 people since skirmishes began.

In the Nairobi slum of Mathare today, mothers clutching babies and suitcases were evacuated by riot police while youths armed with machetes and axes heaped abuse on the police as the slum burned.

While Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga have support from across the tribal spectrum, the young people responsible for the violence tend to see politics in strictly ethnic terms. Kenya has more than 40 tribes, and political leaders have often used unemployed and uneducated young men to intimidate opponents.

Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group, are accused of using their dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others. Mr Odinga is from the Luo tribe, a smaller but still major group that says it has been marginalised.

Mr Kibaki, 76, won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years of rule by Daniel arap Moi. He is praised for turning the country into an east African economic powerhouse, but his anti-corruption campaign has been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty.

Mr Odinga, 62, cast himself as a champion of the poor. His main constituency is the Kibera slum, where 700,000 people live in poverty, but he has been accused of failing to do enough to help them in 15 years as a member of parliament.

Mr Kibaki was inaugurated for a second term on Sunday, soon after election results were announced.

The head of the country’s electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, said he had been pressured by both sides to announce the results quickly, and perhaps wrongly.

Meanwhile, African Union head Ghanaian president John Kufuor delayed his trip to Kenya where he planned to try and mediate today.