'No Raila, No Peace!' Big Man Politics and Election Violence at the Kibera Grassroots

Smedt, Johan De

doi:10.1093/afraf/adp043

Cited by 95 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…It is the largest informal settlement in East Africa, with population estimates ranging from 200,000 to 800,000 people living within one square mile. The area was uninhabited until the 1920s, when it was awarded to Sudanese Nubian soldiers who fought in the Great War [47]. The name Kibera originally meant “swamp” in the Nubian language, referring to the wet marshlands in the locale.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benefits and constraints of intimate partnerships for HIV positive sex workers in Kibera, Kenya

Benoit

Roth

Hallgrímsdóttir

et al. 2013

Int J Equity Health

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IntroductionResearch on the intimate partnerships of female sex workers (FSWs) tends to focus on the risks associated with these relationships. This paper takes as its starting point that the situation of FSWs is better understood by including knowledge of the benefits of their intimate partnerships. Specifically, we employ the conceptual framework provided by emergent research examining intimacy as a complex fusion of affective and instrumental dimensions among sex workers. This perspective allows us to frame information about FSWs’ intimate partnerships within a behaviour-structural approach that is helpful for identifying how intimate partnerships can be a source of both benefit as well as increased risk to FSWs.MethodsOur results are based on a mixed-methods study carried out in the summer of 2011 in Kibera, Kenya. We conducted face-to-face interviews (n=30) with a non-probability sample of FSWs stratified by age who self-identified as Human Immune Virus positive (HIV+). We asked about participants’ involvement in current and past intimate partnerships, and whether these relationships had a positive or negative impact on their health and well‒being.ResultsParticipants currently in intimate partnerships had fewer clients and thus lower incomes than those without intimate partnerships. Participants presently with partners were also more likely to receive some financial support from partners, to report lower intimate partner violence, and to narrate higher partner emotional support and greater assistance with medications. These participants were also more likely to have disclosed their sex work and HIV+ statuses to their partners. Intimate partnerships, on the other hand, showed increased risk of economic vulnerability and emotional dependence for FSWs. This became especially problematic for those participants in fragile relationships. Despite these variations, none of the differences between the two groups were statistically significant.ConclusionsIntimacy and transactional relations are bound up with one another and intersect with the structural realities and vulnerabilities; this is the case for sex workers in well-resourced and resourced-constrained countries alike. Rather than treating intimate partnerships as distinct from transactional relationships, FSWs’ relationships should be viewed on a continuum of risk and support.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benefits and constraints of intimate partnerships for HIV positive sex workers in Kibera, Kenya

Benoit

Roth

Hallgrímsdóttir

et al. 2013

Int J Equity Health

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“…Land-insecure civilians were more likely to be victimized during post-election violence than their land-secure counterparts (Klaus, 2017). Prior to the 2007/8 clashes, Kenya had long been characterized by a gradual decline in the state's monopoly of violence (Mueller, 2008;Kagwanja, 2003;De Smedt, 2009). Since the late 1980s, urban crime had become a serious problem and gangs consolidated, most prominently the Mungiki, a Kikuyu gang which came to control businesses and collect 'protection fees'.…”

Section: Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

Restrained or constrained? Elections, communal conflicts, and variation in sexual violence

Krause

2020

Journal of Peace Research

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Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual violence varies significantly across cases of election violence and communal conflicts but systematic research is scarce. Post-election violence is particularly likely if electoral mobilization further polarizes longstanding communal conflicts and political elites do not instruct security forces to intervene decisively. I comparatively analyse two prominent cases of post-election violence in Kenya (2007/8) and Nigeria (2008) that exhibit stark variation in sexual violence. Patrimonial networks and norms of violent masculinity that increase the probability of (gang) rape were present in both cases and do not explain variation. Civil war research has identified three explanations for the variation in sexual violence: situational constraints; ordered sexual violence or restraint; and bottom-up dynamics of sexual violence or restraint. I examine these for the context of post-election violence. I argue that the type of communal conflict triggered by electoral mobilization explains variation in sexual violence. In Kenya, pogroms of a majority group against a minority allowed for the time and space to perpetrate widespread sexual violence while in Nigeria, dyadic clashes between similarly strong groups offered less opportunity but produced a significantly higher death toll. These findings have important implications for preventing election violence. They demonstrate that civilian vulnerability is gendered and that high levels of sexual violence do not necessarily correspond to high levels of lethal violence. Ignoring sexual violence means underestimating the real intensity of conflict and its impact on the political process.

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“…But there are profound geographical patterns and processes under‐examined for the 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007 and now 2013 elections, such as we find in analyses of the much‐discussed politicization of ethnic identities (Kanyinga and Long ; Tarimo ; Whitaker and Giersch ). There are absolutely crucial micro‐geographies of neighborhoods in Kenya, the understanding of which proves fundamental to the political deployment of socially constructed ethnicity in the post‐election violence after the December 2007 national elections – as de Smedt's () outstanding analysis of Kibera in Nairobi or Simiyu's () work on rural Kwanza constituency do document. The geography of land clashes is essential to any complex appreciation of intersections between ethnic and electoral politics, and yet it is largely political scientists engaged in analyzing land's political and electoral geographies (Boone ; Harbeson ).…”

Section: African Electoral Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Expanding Links Between Political Geography and African Studies

Myers¹

2014

Geography Compass

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Africa receives limited attention from political geographers, and African studies scholars pay too little attention to political geography. In reviewing the recent literature on African political geography, several themes emerge. This essay concentrates on three of these: the new scramble for Africa, political ecology, and electoral geography. The first two are areas in which a fair amount of political geography work has been done, but where more focus on particularly urban dimensions is warranted. The third arena of research is found to be highly under‐represented in recent scholarship, despite its palpable potential for yielding new insights and greater synergies between African studies and the sub‐field of political geography.

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'No Raila, No Peace!' Big Man Politics and Election Violence at the Kibera Grassroots

Cited by 95 publications

References 0 publications

Benefits and constraints of intimate partnerships for HIV positive sex workers in Kibera, Kenya

Benefits and constraints of intimate partnerships for HIV positive sex workers in Kibera, Kenya

Restrained or constrained? Elections, communal conflicts, and variation in sexual violence

Toward Expanding Links Between Political Geography and African Studies

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