Anger at vote-rigging in Kenya has worked to rip a thin scab off many years of frustration at poverty, corruption and inequitable land ownership that dates from the colonial era, Globe and Mail Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen wrote in her Saturday feature on the crisis.
"Some 800 people are dead, 300,000 are displaced in Kenya now, and millions of dollars worth of property has been destroyed. And in nearly every case, the story is that anger over cheating in the presidential election has caused people who have lived side by side for decades to turn on each other in a vicious frenzy, shooting and beating and burning, and driving them from land and homes they have occupied for generations," Ms. Nolen wrote.
"The Kenya I travelled through this week was not a country I recognized from more than a decade of travel here, the Kenya that was prospering and ambitious and dignified and peaceful. No one I have met seems able to believe that they have found themselves here — or able to imagine a way out."
Stephanie Nolen was online to answer your questions about Kenya, the election, and the explosion of anger that focused — as Ms. Nolen writes — not on the abrogation of democracy, but on ethnicity.
Stephanie Nolen is the Africa correspondent for The Globe and Mail. She has reported from more than 40 countries around the world, including two dozen in Africa. She has a particular mandate to cover the impact of the HIV-AIDS pandemic in Africa.
Last year, Ms. Nolen was awarded the PEN Canada/Paul Kidd Courage Prize for her extensive coverage of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Her book 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, was a finalist for this year's Governor-General's Literary Award for non-fiction.
Ms. Nolen's coverage of AIDS in Africa won the 2003 National Newspaper Award for International Reporting, and she won the award again a year later for reporting on the aftermath of Rwanda's genocide. She was also nominated for the 2004 award for Explanatory Journalism for work on AIDS. She was the recipient of both the 2003 and the 2004 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting, for reports from war zones in Uganda and Sudan. She was nominated a third time, in 2006, for the NNA in foreign reporting.
Prior to her posting in Africa, Ms. Nolen covered development issues and conflicts, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also reported on issues including the wars in Sudan, the political crisis in Zimbabwe and the peace process in Sierra Leone. She now lives in Johannesburg, where she continues to learn isiZulu, her fifth language.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on Globe journalists or participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
M. Ternam, from Waterloo, Ontario: Thank you for taking time to answer our questions, Stephanie. What is former United Nation chief Kofi Annan's role in potentially helping to quell the violence and regain stability in Kenya? Could the international community argue that his presence is merely legitimizing the illegitimate government of Mwai Kibaki?
Ms. Nolen: It would seem that Mr. Annan believed going into this that he could help to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis - international mediation was set to be his new occupation, post-UN. But Kenya would appear to have been a bad choice. Neither leader appears serious or willing to compromise. I'm not sure he's offering any more legitimacy to Mr. Kibaki than he is credibility to Mr. Odinga, who wouldn't appear to deserve to be treated this seriously at this point either. Mr. Annan is widely respected in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, but it's questionable whether anyone could have hammered out a real deal between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga.
