Protesters Riot After Kenya Cabinet Announcement

From Reuters:

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Opposition supporters rioted in the western city of Kisumu on Tuesday after Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki named several members of a new cabinet, dashing hopes of an end to post-election bloodshed.

Witnesses said protesters built burning barricades and stoned cars in Kisumu, a stronghold of opposition leader Raila Odinga, after Kibaki named 17 new ministers.

Local reporter Baraka Karama told Reuters police shot dead one protester in Kisumu. Residents of Nairobi's Mathare and Kibera slums said hundreds of opposition supporters took to the streets, some brandishing machetes.

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My Comment: The Europeans when they entered Africa a few centuries ago were just another tribe that was better organized, had better technology, and were adept at putting all the different ethnic groups and warring factions at a semi-level of peace and cooperation. This peace has lasted for a number of years until the African states struggle to achieve their independence in the latter half of the 20th century.

For better or worse ethnic strife was bottled up for the past few centuries. The fact that this is now breaking down to a pot of ethnic cleansing and ethnic discrimination on a state level should not be a surprise to people who have studied African history.

Kenya is not the exception to the rule, but I will recognized as the benchmark for future strife in Africa. Darfur probably being the worse case scenario.

I personally feel that these conflicts are just the tip of the ice-berg. Tribal rivalries and conflict have always been present in Africa among the thousands of groups that live there. With the introduction of modern technology and weaponry .... the possibility of massive state sponsored killing is not a hypothetical but a "when it is going to happen" scenario.