Deadly Marionettes: State-Sponsored Violence in Africa File:///H:/Publications/Final%20Text/AFRICA/Deadly%20Marionnettes/D

Deadly Marionettes: State-Sponsored Violence in Africa file:///H:/Publications/Final%20text/AFRICA/Deadly%20Marionnettes/d...

DEADLY MARIONETTES

State-Sponsored Violence in Africa

ARTICLE 19

October 1997 © ARTICLE 19 ISBN 1 870798 34 1

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

1 INTRODUCTION

2 CASE STUDIES

2.1 Zimbabwe

2.2 South Africa

2.3 Kenya

2.4 Malawi

2.5 Rwanda

2.6 Nigeria

2.7 Cameroon

3 SOME COMMON THEMES

3.1 Informal Repression and Propaganda

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3.2 Informal Repression as "Traditional" Conflict

3.3 Informal Repression and "Traditional" Authority

3.4 Informal Repression and Elections

3.5 State Exploitation of Grievances

3.6 Restoring the Rule of Law

3.7 Exchange of Information

3.8 Informal Repression as Early Warning

3.9 The Role of the Media

NB This version of the report does not contain footnotes. For a full copy see the pdf version or contact ARTICLE 19 for a hard copy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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The bulk of this report was written by Richard Carver, Head of Africa Programme at ARTICLE 19. The case studies on Rwanda and Cameroon were written by Linda Kirschke, Africa Programme Researcher. The entire report was edited to take into account comments by Maina Kiai of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Innocent Chukwuma of the Civil Liberties Organisation, Jenni Irish of the Network of Independent Monitors and Njonjo Mue, Legal Adviser to ARTICLE 19's Africa Programme, as well as the extensive discussion at Scottburgh. ARTICLE 19 and the Network of Independent Monitors would like to thank the Ford Foundation for the financial support which made the Scottburgh workshop and this report possible. We are also grateful to Comic Relief for its funding of further training for informal repression monitors.

Open SADF [South African Defence Force] support to Chief Minister Buthelezi and Bishop Lekganyane will clearly have a negative impact on their power base and must not be overlooked. Any support must be clandestine or covert. Not one of the leaders must, as a result of SADF support, be branded as marionettes of the South African government by the enemy.

(South African military intelligence document on secret backing for Inkatha and the Zionist church, December 1985)

Evidence has been received that homes and farms of senior government officials, political leaders and administrative officers have and are being used as hideouts for warriors, depots for weaponry, sanctuaries ... where warriors return in the event of facing resistance ...

(National Christian Council of Kenya on the Rift Valley "tribal clashes", 1992)

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access rights, discriminatory treatment, which are the normal causes of these communal clashes.

(Professor Claude Ake, Nigerian peace negotiator, on the Ogoni-Andoni conflict, October 1993)

PREFACE

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Freedom of expression is a right that is not only to be enjoyed by the literate or those with literary talent. Likewise, there are many more ways to censor than by the blue pencil or the legal injunction. Africa is a continent where the written word still only has an incidental part to play in the lives of most people, but this does not mean that their hunger for information or their wish to express their views are any the less.

This report is about censorship of the spoken word. It describes a phenomenon which has no agreed name but one which has become increasingly widespread across the continent in recent years. Governments secretly employ surrogate agencies, such as ethnic or religious militias, to attack supporters of opposition political parties or government critics. Thereby they perpetuate at a local level the restrictive structures of one-party rule, while proclaiming their fidelity to democratic principles at a national level.

The name we have given to this phenomenon is "informal repression" — a term which was coined in South Africa in the late 1980s. This report is the product of a workshop at Scottburgh in South Africa in 1996, which gathered 33 human rights and community activists from seven African countries. While there was general agreement on the common characteristics of the phenomenon, on the name there was none. So, in the absence of a better alternative we have stuck with "informal repression", inadequate as it may be.

The purpose of the workshop, and of this report, was to help create a common recognition of "informal repression" as a human rights issue. There is a parallel with developments in Latin America in the early 1970s. Under pressure from human rights campaigners to end imprisonment of political opponents, a number of governments in that region began organizing "death squads" composed of security personnel acting informally to carry out the "disappearance" of political opponents. This required both a reorientation of the human rights movement and the development of new techniques of research and campaigning. Now "disappearances" are clearly categorized as a form of human rights violation, with a specific United Nations mechanism created to address the problem. Research methods were developed to deal with the specific obstacles created by such covert means of repression: for example, the use of forensic pathology and anthropology for human rights purposes has evolved immeasurably over the past 20 years.

This report examines a similar, but not identical, phenomenon which has developed in Africa, especially over the past decade. It looks in some detail at the evolution of informal repression in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Nigeria and Cameroon, as well as referring to similar phenomena in countries such as Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Sudan and Mauritania.

The Scottburgh workshop was organized by ARTICLE 19 jointly with the Network of Independent Monitors, a South African human rights group largely dedicated to research into informal methods of repression. The steering committee for the project also comprised the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the Civil Liberties Organisation from Nigeria. Since the workshop, these four organizations have begun a programme of training human rights and community monitors from Kenya and Nigeria in techniques of monitoring informal repression.

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1 INTRODUCTION

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"Informal repression" — the term may not be a familiar one, but the phenomenon has become only too evident across Africa in the past decade. As governments have come under increasing scrutiny, both domestically and internationally, for their human rights performance, they have resorted to covert and surrogate means of repressing their opponents.

Often this has entailed stimulating ethnic violence, either favouring one faction against another in long-standing and latent rivalries or inciting new conflict between communities which had previously lived together in harmony. Sometimes ethnicity is not the issue: in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, communities of the same ethnic background have been set against each other on political grounds; in northern Nigeria the government has fomented religious rivalry.

Typically this phenomenon of state-sponsored communal conflict has emerged at the same time as a transition from a single-party political system to a multi-party one. Often it appears to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, justifying the government's claim that democracy would be accompanied by ethnic strife. It also ensures that at a local level a single party continues to dominate, whatever the appearance of pluralism in the capital city.

But whatever the precise political context, the attraction of "informal repression" for governments is that they can evade direct accountability. If human rights violations can be characterized instead as "violence" or "tribal clashes", this conceals their real nature and implies that everyone bears an equal responsibility for resolving them. By presenting this violence as the consequence of "traditional" rivalries, African governments also pander to the common Western caricature of a "dark continent" riven with primordial tribal conflict and unready for democratic governance. This has made Western governments — and even some human rights organizations — reluctant to investigate or campaign against such abuses.

The following are some examples of the growth of "informal repression" in recent years:

• In South Africa, the police and intelligence agencies provided training and funding over a decade for the armed activities of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

• In Kenya, warriors from President Moi's Kalenjin ethnic group have attacked and driven a quarter of a million people from their homes in the Rift Valley and Western Kenya, effectively disenfranchising them in the 1992 elections; similar violence in Mombasa threatens the second multi-party elections expected in late 1997.

• The Malawi Congress Party, probably acting on advice from Kenya, mobilized members of the nyau secret dance cult to attack and intimidate opposition supporters in the campaign for the country's first multi-party elections in 1994.

• In eastern Nigeria, security forces have armed tribal militias from groups opposed to the Ogoni, who are campaigning for compensation for environmental damage caused by oil exploitation.

• In Rwanda, before 6 April 1994, the government armed and mobilized extremist Hutu militias at the same time as it engaged in peace talks with rebel forces. It is these militias which were responsible for the genocide of Tutsi after 6 April 1994.

• In northern Cameroon, traditional chiefs or lamibe have detained opposition activists and critics using their arbitrary power, as well as using their palace guards to intimidate the local populace.

• In Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), militias orchestrated by the provincial government expelled hundreds of thousands of citizens of Kasaien origin from Shaba province.

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This phenomenon of "informal repression" is, by its very nature, difficult to investigate. The government is able to present itself as above the conflict, an impartial enforcer of law and order. It is often both very difficult and risky for human rights groups to gather sufficiently detailed evidence to call the government to account for human rights abuse.

The problem of evidence is exacerbated by the fact that such informal restrictions on free expression are often a rural phenomenon. Increasingly, in many African countries, there is a gap between the towns, where a free press and political opposition are allowed to function relatively openly, and the rural areas where freedom of expression is not permitted and the ruling party and surrogate bodies continue to restrict political activities. When the urban press tries to report on informal repression, as in Kenya, it too becomes subject to reprisals.

Informal restrictions on freedom of expression can also operate in less overtly violent ways. For example, the control of food relief or other forms of patronage can be used to influence political activity and to mute criticism. The use of traditional authorities to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation can be as effective as outright violence in restricting free expression and often creates a culture of self-censorship amongst journalists.

2 CASE STUDIES

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2.1 Zimbabwe

The Rhodesian government in the 1970s developed "informal repression" primarily for propaganda purposes — to discredit the nationalist insurgents. The independent government of Zimbabwe inherited these methods, using them to target known government opponents. The development of informal repression in South Africa seems to owe much to former Rhodesian security personnel.

The counter-insurgency tactics of the Rhodesian security forces in the 1970s provided an early example of the use of covert human rights violations in Africa. As early as the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) recruited former nationalist guerrillas as "pseudo-terrorists" to carry out low-level unpopular actions which could be attributed to the insurgents — a strategy derived from orthodox Western counter-insurgency doctrine as it was developed in Malaya and elsewhere. These "pseudo-gangs" evolved into the celebrated Selous Scouts. By the late 1970s, these gangs appear to have been involved in major atrocities, such as the massacre of seven Roman Catholic missionaries at St Paul's Mission near Musami and that of 13 Pentecostal missionaries, including four children, at the Elim mission on the eastern border. However, the main purpose of these attacks — which are evocative of later tactics used by the South African police and military intelligence — was more to discredit the nationalist guerrillas than to repress specific targets.

When the government of independent Zimbabwe was confronted with low-level insurgency in the western province of Matabeleland, its principal response was to despatch the Fifth Brigade of the army, which massacred thousands of civilians. However, the government had also inherited some of the tactics of its Rhodesian predecessors. This was not surprising, since it had retained important Rhodesian security personnel, including Ken Flower, the head of the CIO and originator of the "pseudo-gang". Security force units in Matabeleland appear to have used "pseudo-gang" tactics, both for propaganda purposes and to target specific political opponents. This latter approach had been adopted by the Selous Scouts in the final stages of their counter-insurgency war. For example, in February 1980 a Swiss Roman Catholic missionary known for his support of the nationalist guerrillas was shot dead — allegedly by the guerrillas but probably by the security forces — at Berejena mission in the south-east of the country. It was this approach which was revived in the mid-1980s.

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For example, in April 1985 armed men killed seven people at a bar in Mahamba owned by Micah Bhebhe, a leading member of the opposition Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). Despite repeatedly alleging that the armed insurgents or "dissidents" were linked to ZAPU, the government nevertheless portrayed this attack on a ZAPU-owned business as being the work of insurgents. Eyewitnesses reported that armed paramilitary police were drinking in the bar at the time of the attack, but left when the attack began. The police unit was encamped some 200 metres away but failed to intervene.

In November 1985, the headmaster of Thekwane school, Luke Kumalo, and his wife Jean Kumalo, were shot dead in an attack attributed by the government to "dissidents". Again, Luke Kumalo was a ZAPU member and had recently been in trouble with the authorities for his refusal to comply with military orders to close down the school food shop. (One of the army's counter-insurgency tactics was to inhibit the flow of food into affected areas.) As in the Mahamba killings, a nearby army unit failed to intervene, although shooting continued at the school for two hours. The official explanation was that the military had been tracking a "dissident" unit earlier the same day which they suspected was responsible for the attack. But if the army was aware of a rebel presence in the area, this only made its failure to intervene more incomprehensible. Eyewitnesses described the attackers as numbering about 25 and being clean and in uniform — a far cry from the small dishevelled bands of "dissidents".

No one was ever arrested in connection with the killing of the Kumalos although, inexplicably, a number of members of the school staff were detained without charge for some weeks afterwards.

A series of "disappearances" of ZAPU supporters in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in early 1985 was also attributed to the "dissidents". However, affidavits sworn by relatives of some of the "disappeared" made it clear that their abductors were driving vehicles — never used by the rebels — and did not speak the local language, Sindebele. The government repeatedly claimed that the "disappeared" had been recruited by "dissidents". However, after the end of hostilities, when the rebels were amnestied and returned to normal society, none of the "disappeared" was among them.

The Matabeleland region returned to peace in 1987 after the conclusion of a unity agreement between ZAPU and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). There was no public accounting for any abuses by the security forces, including "disappearances" or "pseudo-gang" operations. The report of a judicial commission of inquiry into army abuses in Matabeleland was suppressed and has never been released until this day, despite a government promise that its findings would be made public. Further reading:

Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Zimbabwe: Wages of War (New York: 1986).

Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe/Legal Resources Foundation, Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace (Harare: 1997).

2.2 South Africa

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It was in South Africa that the term "informal repression" was coined. The National Party governments of the 1980s and early 1990s had a wide repertoire of covert methods of repression, including police and military "hit squads" and fomenting of political violence through arming and training sympathetic factions. Both tactics targeted the anti-apartheid activists of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and, from its unbanning in 1990, the African National Congress (ANC). Support for surrogate factions also helped to foster the propaganda notion of "black-on-black" violence, with the inference that Africans were inherently fractious and unfit to govern.

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The most important instrument of informal repression in South Africa was Inkatha (later the Inkatha Freedom Party — IFP), the ruling movement in the KwaZulu homeland. Inkatha drew state support from two sources: overtly through its role as the KwaZulu government and secretly through arms and military training. The IFP succeeded in garnering a narrow majority in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature in the April 1994 democratic elections, although the fairness of the result in the province is questionable, given that there was extensive fraud and intimidation. Thus the IFP controls the provincial government and has apparently continued to use its position to pursue tactics of informal repression.

The origins of the political violence are to be found in the "township revolt" of the early to mid-1980s, with its sharp political division between the young "comrades", usually claiming allegiance to the UDF, and the "vigilantes". Often, as in the townships of Port Elizabeth and the squatter settlements of Cape Town, the latter were in fact state-sponsored militias, although sometimes they were simply older and more conservative township residents. However, in the townships of the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) region around Johannesburg, there were also violent territorial conflicts between the youth of the UDF, aligned with the ANC, and the black consciousness Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO). The state encouraged the development of vigilante organizations, often recruiting conservative blacks as police reservists or kitskonstabels (literally "instant constables"). In the mid-1980s there was a sharp decline in township deaths as a result of direct police action after the controversial massacres at Langa (March 1985) and Mamelodi (November 1985). But this was matched by a corresponding increase in deaths at the hands of pro-government black organizations. The security forces also tried to exploit the alienation of township youth by supporting anti-UDF/ANC gangs, such as the Black Cats in Ermelo, the A-Team in Chesterville, the Eagles in Harrismith and the AmaSinyora in KwaMashu. At the same time, the leadership of the UDF and the civic associations increasingly distanced themselves from the violent excesses of the "comrades", such as "necklacing" (burning a car tyre around the victim's neck).

In Natal, this violence took hold in the mid-1980s and has continued almost unremittingly. In Durban the violence began with a student boycott organized in protest at the murder of human rights lawyer Victoria Mxenge. The protesters rioted and were in turn harassed and attacked by Inkatha members. In the provincia capital, Pietermaritzburg, the violence originated in a recognition struggle by UDF-aligned trade unions which were similarly harassed by Inkatha. The violence continued through the 1980s, fomented by local warlords, many of whom occupied positions in the KwaZulu homeland administration. Often the political conflict became overlaid on existing local disputes or acquired peculiar local dynamics.

In July 1990 violence suddenly erupted between ANC and Inkatha supporters in the PWV townships, shortly after Inkatha transformed itself into the IFP. The ANC accused the IFP and the government of replicating the Natal violence in order to weaken the newly legalized opposition. The violence began to assume an ethnic dimension which had not been apparent elsewhere, since most IFP supporters in the PWV region were Zulus — often migrant workers in the single men's hostels.

One element in the conflict has undoubtedly been social deprivation. In KwaZulu-Natal, the IFP impis or armed bands are often composed of squatters and shack-dwellers from the poorest sections of the community. The division between the ANC and the IFP has also been to some extent an urban-rural one. Township dwellers in the formal sector of the economy and with (marginally) better education have tended to favour the ANC, while more conservative rural communities are more inclined towards Inkatha.

However, these social factors alone do not explain the violence. The political rivalry between the IFP and the ANC is clearly fundamental. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Inkatha came to prominence in the 1970s, seen by the international community as a "moderate" alternative to the ANC. However, Chief Buthelezi was also a functionary of the apartheid system. He was Chief Minister of KwaZulu from 1972 and later Minister of Police as well. The KwaZulu state exchequer provided funds for Inkatha.

Before the 1994 elections the role of the KwaZulu police (KZP) was crucial. The involvement of the KwaZulu police in running "hit squads" was established by an investigative unit established by the Transitional Executive Council (TEC) prior to April 1994. It was also admitted by the last commissioner of the KZP, General Roy

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During. Elements of the former South African Police also supported "third force" activities. More overtly the KwaZulu police murdered political opponents of Inkatha, tortured prisoners and failed to intervene to stop Inkatha attacks.

However, Chief Buthelezi and Inkatha were a more sophisticated and successful phenomenon than the political leaders in the other tribal "homelands". Chief Buthelezi constantly refused to accept nominal independence from Pretoria, as his counterparts in Bophutatswana, Transkei, Ciskei and Venda had done, understanding that this would be political suicide. The 1994 election results showed how Chief Buthelezi had succeeded in building mass support in a way achieved by none of the homeland leaders who accepted "independence" and who were swept away by the ANC.

Until about 1980 Inkatha had maintained good relations with the ANC, functioning in effect as a legal internal wing of the exiled movement within Natal. However, since its original incarnation in the 1920s, Inkatha had been a conservative movement drawing its main support from the traditional chiefly structures in the province — which were the colonial structures of local government — and from African traders and land-owning petty bourgeois. In its capacity as the KwaZulu governing party, Inkatha was closely aligned with large business interests in the province in such spheres as education. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the anti-apartheid struggle in Natal focused particularly on the student movement — placing Inkatha, as the authority responsible for education, in opposition to radical students. In Pietermaritzburg, which became the early focus for the UDF/Inkatha conflict, ANC loyalties were not especially strong, but labour militancy played an important part in awakening political allegiances. As a pro-business party, Inkatha opposed the 1986 May Day strike called by the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a UDF affiliate.

Chief Buthelezi has built support by a selective use of Zulu tradition. He has, for example, promoted the Zulu monarchy at the same time as elevating himself into the pseudo-traditional role of "prime minister", thereby reducing Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini almost to a ceremonial function. (Of late, however, there has been tension between the King and Minister.) Similarly, he has perpetuated the mechanisms of colonial "indirect rule" through the chiefs or amakhosi. But his use of chiefs is highly selective. When, in the late 1980s, Chief Minister Buthelezi's conception of the political role of Zulu chiefs was challenged by the ANC-aligned Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA), Chief Mhlabunzima Maphamulo, the CONTRALESA president, fell victim to a political assassination, apparently organized by the state. The amakhosi may provide a traditional legitimation for the IFP, but the muscle is provided by a series of warlords, most of whom are neither chiefs nor members of the royal family.

Although the IFP's strongest support is in the rural areas, the warlords are not a purely rural phenomenon. Durban is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. In the 1980s, 100,000 people a year were migrating into the city. The Durban Functional Region, whose population numbered less than a million in 1970 had grown to more than three million 20 years later. By 1989 more than half the population of KwaZulu-Natal lived in urban centres. Of these, 2.8 million people — out of a provincial population of about 8 million — lived in dense informal settlements.

These extensive squatter settlements, which are far greater than anything to be found in Johannesburg or Cape Town, are largely the result of a peculiarity of apartheid in Natal. The KwaZulu homeland extended to the fringes of the major cities, so that some of the most important black areas were under the administration not of the white Natal provincial government, but of the Inkatha-controlled homeland. Thus, whereas influx control had theoretically denied blacks residence in South Africa's other major cities, the fringes of Durban were part of the Zulu "homeland" and therefore the "proper" place for Zulus to be. However, the KwaZulu administration had neither the inclination nor the funds to provide adequate housing, sanitation, education, health or other social infrastructure in the peri-urban settlements. Instead they fell largely under the control of the warlords.

The Lindelani settlement, on the northern fringes of Durban, offers a useful case study. It first sprang up around 1982 and by 1986 had 120,000 inhabitants. From the beginning it fell under the control of Inkatha warlord Thomas Shabalala. In 1990 Shabalala annexed new land for the settlement which he claimed now numbered

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350,000. Extension of territory was often by violent means. In 1989 an attack was launched from Lindelani into neighbouring Ntuzuma, driving people from their homes and burning them down to acquire new land for settlement. In the early 1980s, one of the causes of conflict was an attempt by the KwaZulu administration to bring a number of the formal black settlements in "white" Natal under KwaZulu homeland control. The residents of townships such as Chesterville and Lamontville strongly resisted incorporation.

Lindelani residents in 1991 had to pay 20 rand protection money to Thomas Shabalala. Additional payments had to be made in order to run a business, for example in 1986, 400 rand was required to open a shop. The effect was to bring most business in the settlement under Shabalala's personal control. By 1988 he owned the only butchery and bottle store in Lindelani, as well as a development company and a fleet of taxis.

However, Shabalala was not a mere gangster. In order to maintain his authority in Lindelani he depended upon the compliance of the provincial government, formerly the homeland administration. In return he delivered the settlement to the IFP. The party dues he collected by strong-arm methods were financially useful and the votes politically valuable. Needless to say, the ANC has not been able to function effectively in Lindelani. Shabalala was a provincial member of parliament and a member of the party's national executive. Equally, Shabalala retained good relations with the security forces. His IFP impis could be seen armed with police issue rifles and transported in KwaZulu Police vehicles. In 1996, however, Shabalala was expelled from the party after leading his supporters on a violent rampage through central Durban.

The example of Lindelani shows clearly how the multiple causes of violence are bound together: political rivalry, state complicity, social deprivation, rural-urban migration and crime. The political economy of the warlord system depends upon sympathetic control of local or provincial government structures, as well as the local security apparatus, in order for the shacklords or indunas to operate their systems of patronage and "protection".

The violence in the PWV region had somewhat separate causes. A major underlying factor was undoubtedly the migrant labour system. Workers in the single-sex hostels lived in poor conditions. Five hostels in the Soweto township near Johannesburg officially accommodated 13,000 workers but in fact housed about three times that number. Some 125,000 migrant workers lived in 31 hostels in the townships around Johannesburg. The migrants were from remote rural areas, often in KwaZulu, and had little contact with township residents. In a report on the violence in the East Rand, the non-governmental Independent Board of Inquiry (IBI) and Peace Action argued that there has been a change in the character and composition of the hostels in recent years. They pointed out that many hostels remained isolated from the political developments in the 1980s and became bastions of conservatism amidst the generally radical townships.

However, as in KwaZulu-Natal, social factors were not sufficient to explain the violence. The outbreak of hostilities in August 1990 followed directly after Inkatha's declaration that it had become a national political party and the launching of an intensive recruitment campaign. The hostels were targeted for recruitment and in Thokoza on the East Rand, for example, the first clashes were between residents of the Khalanyoni hostel and the Phola Park squatter camp. Hostel residents who refused to join the IFP were attacked and sought refuge in the squatter camp. When they tried to retrieve their belongings from the hostel they were attacked again. The IBI and Peace Action observed:

The SAP [South African Police] were perceived by the residents of Phola Park and Thokoza's Beirut section to be partial to the hostel residents. The violence was characterised by mass impi attacks on Phola Park and the surrounding area. Counter attacks from ANC aligned Phola Park residents followed a similar pattern and it was soon impossible to determine whether attacks were of a defensive or aggressive nature.

Many observers have noted that upsurges in violence have coincided with crucial events in the process of political transition, concluding that often attacks have been deliberately timed to disrupt peace negotiations. Amnesty International printed a graph, based on data from the Human Rights Commission, the South African

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Institute of Race Relations and the South African Police, which clearly illustrated the correlation. In their study of violence on the East Rand, the Independent Board of Inquiry and Peace Action took issue with this interpretation, which they described as "too simplistic", because it "fails to take into account local conditions which are very often the catalyst and engine to upsurges and the perpetuation of violent acts".

There is no doubt, however, that the role of the various arms of the state in fomenting or perpetuating conflict has been crucial. In 1991 a series of reports in the Johannesburg Weekly Mail showed that the IFP had received direct funding from the police security branch and that Inkatha members had been trained by the South African army in Namibia.

In two reports in December 1993 and March 1993, the commission of inquiry under Judge Richard Goldstone, established under the 1991 multi-party national peace agreement, found that the IFP had been the recipient of covert funding and training from the police and military intelligence. The December 1993 report condemned the involvement of the KwaZulu police in hit-squad assassinations. The officers involved were among a group of 200 who received training from the South African Defence Force in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia in 1986. Goldstone's findings confirmed allegations which had appeared in the press for the previous two years. The role of the Caprivi trainees as a covert repressive force has since been clarified by further public testimony, most recently by Daluxolo Luthuli, the trainees' "political commissar", in evidence to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The long-term influence of this group is shown by the fact that some 55 are still serving in the South African Police Service, mostly in violence-affected areas of KwaZulu-Natal.

A military intelligence document dated December 1985 gave a detailed analysis of the need to build up a paramilitary capacity for Chief Buthelezi and Bishop Lekganyane of the Zionist Christian Church:

Inkatha and the ZCC's willingness to actively resist revolutionary elements provides a golden opportunity for the State to pull a meaningful and influential section of the black population into a counter-insurgency and mobilisation programme ...

The document describes in detail how Inkatha could be given a covert military capacity but emphasizes that this collaboration should be kept secret so that Chief Buthelezi's anti-apartheid image would not be tarnished:

In the March 1993 report, the Goldstone Commission named senior police officers who it said had provided weapons and other assistance to the IFP in "a horrible network of criminal activity". The allegations contained in the report include: gun-running to hit-squad members, the illegal manufacture of weapons, the issuing of false documents and the orchestration of violence. It was alleged that a police unit based at Vlakplaas in the Transvaal was involved in organizing hostel and train violence. The Vlakplaas police unit recruited IFP officials, including the party's Transvaal leader, Themba Khoza, who distributed weapons.

The failure of the South African police to intervene impartially to protect victims of IFP attacks was well documented, while the KwaZulu police often actively participated in Inkatha's military activities. Amnesty International reported that township residents:

compared the rarity with which the police searched and seized weapons from the black migrant workers' hostels, which in many areas had been taken over by IFP supporters, with the vigour, indeed brutality, with which the same police raided the homes of ANC supporters, especially when they were suspected of being members of self-defence units or the armed wing of the ANC. The anger at this lack of even-handedness by the police was compounded by the occasions when residents saw the police as actively colluding with their attackers.

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The April 1994 majority-rule elections had dramatically different effects on political violence in different parts of the country. In the PWV — renamed Gauteng — changes in both provincial and national government signalled a virtual end to the violence. In KwaZulu-Natal, by contrast, most of the election period was marked by violence — the IFP only agreed to participate days before the election — and by fraud on the polling days. In order to keep Chief Buthelezi and the IFP within the political process, the ANC and the Independent Electoral Commission let the result of the election in KwaZulu-Natal stand, although it gave the IFP a narrow majority and control of the provincial government. Although President Nelson Mandela has succeeded in weaning King Goodwill Zwelithini away from his previous, apparently uncritical support for the IFP, political violence in the province has continued. Local elections originally scheduled for November 1995 had to be rescheduled twice, although they finally took place in relative peace in June 1996.

The death-toll from political violence has declined since 1994, but this reflects in part a changing pattern to the violence. Targeted assassinations by hit-squads — including those trained in Caprivi — at the invitation of local political leaders have become more common. Violence monitors have reported the continued training of IFP Self Protection Units in remote camps in reserves run by the KwaZulu Department of Nature Conservation. There has also been an increase in attacks on moderate IFP leaders who favour peace initiatives. Chief David Molefe, killed with his sister and three other party supporters at Impendle in October 1995, was apparently targeted by hard-liners because of his moderate political stance, as well as the fact that he was a Sotho, not a Zulu. IFP hardliners were also arrested in connection with the 1995 killing of party members at Mvutshini in KwaXolo on the South Coast. However, much violence continues to be in the nature of "political cleansing", eliminating pockets of support for the minority party in any given area. Before the June 1996 local government elections, the non-governmental Human Rights Committee identified 30 areas of the province where the ANC could not campaign and 22 which were corresponding "no-go areas" for the IFP.

The continuing role of the state in fomenting informal repression is complicated by the division of powers between central and provincial government. This was exemplified by the massacre of 18 presumed ANC supporters at Shobashobane on the South Coast on Christmas Day 1995. There were close links between the IFP perpetrators of the killings and local police. The police Complaints Investigation Unit recommended to the Attorney-General that criminal charges be laid against senior police offices at Port Shepstone for failing to heed intelligence reports that the massacre was in the offing. There was no criminal case against the officers although disciplinary charges were brought. However, there was no apparent prospect that these would be heard before the end of 1997, two years after the killings. In addition three officers were charged with complicity in the massacre itself, although these charges were withdrawn soon after the start of their trial. On the other hand, the investigation of the murders by a special police unit answerable to central government was thorough and professional and succeeded in securing the conviction of 13 people, including local warlord Sipho Ngcobo. A similar special unit based at Mandini on the North Coast has also been successful in securing convictions of perpetrators of violence.

The malign role of the apartheid state in stimulating violence has been underlined by the revelation in early 1997 that Sifiso Nkabinde, a prominent ANC leader in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, had been a paid police agent. Nkabinde had been one of the most hard-line and uncompromising of ANC leaders in the province, a mirror image of the IFP warlords. Nkabinde was expelled from the ANC and promptly joined the National Consultative Forum (NCF) led by General Bantu Holomisa, former leader of the Transkei "homeland", who had himself been expelled from the ANC. A number of ANC councillors in Nkabinde's Richmond stronghold resigned in support of him. One of the two who did not was the victim of a political murder in May 1997. In July five more ANC members were massacred, including two Richmond councillors elected in by-elections following the earlier resignations. By August 1997, conflict between the ANC and NCF had gone beyond individual assassination into open territorial battles, with hundreds of people displaced from their homes in the Richmond area.

The June 1996 local elections were a period of hope, with leaders from both main parties stating their commitment to peace in KwaZulu-Natal. This signalled the beginning of a continuing process of peace negotiations between the ANC and IFP. One danger, however, as with previous local peace agreements, is that "third force" elements — either far-right paramilitaries or renegade members of the security forces — will ensure

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that conflict continues. A lasting peace will entail bringing such forces under control, which in turn will require a police service which is answerable to the communities it serves.

Another danger is that a final peace agreement will include some form of special amnesty for political offences committed in KwaZulu-Natal. Experience since 1994 has shown that effective police investigations and prosecutions can reduce violence by reinforcing respect for the rule of law. A new amnesty, which goes beyond the existing amnesty powers given to the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission, would be likely to reinforce the culture of impunity and fail to address the causes of violence. Further reading:

Independent Board of Inquiry and Peace Action, Before we were good friends: An account and analysis of displacement in the East Rand Townships of Thokoza and Katlehong (Johannesburg: March 1994).

Human Rights Watch/Africa, South Africa: Traditional Dictatorship (London and New York: Sept. 1993).

Amnesty International, South Africa: State of Fear (London: June 1992), (AI Index: AFR 53/09/92).

Richard Carver, "KwaZulu-Natal — Continued Violence and Displacement" (UK: Writenet, July 1996).

2.3 Kenya

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Informal repression in Kenya has taken the form of government sponsorship of Kalenjin and Maasai ethnic militias in the Rift Valley, which have attacked communities presumed to support the opposition. This began in 1991 with the apparent aim — successfully realized — of influencing the outcome of the 1992 elections. But the attacks did not end then. A resettlement programme has failed to return all the displaced to their homes and as a further multi-party election approaches in late 1997 more informal violence has begun in Mombasa.

Political violence in the Rift Valley and other areas of western Kenya has cost at least 1,500 lives since 1991 and has caused massive displacement among the local population. At one point the number displaced may have been as high as 300,000.

The violence is ostensibly caused by land disputes between the settled agricultural communities of Kikuyu, Luo and Luhya people and the pastoralist Kalenjin and Maasai. This is often described as "tribal clashes" and there is no doubt that allegiances in the conflict generally follow ethnic lines. However, it is not coincidental that many Kikuyus, Luhyas and Luos are supporters of the opposition parties, while President Moi is a Kalenjin and Vice-President Saitoti a Maasai, as are many of their immediate circle. To call the violence "tribal" conceals the fact that one of its principal effects has been to alter the political demography of the region in the government's favour. To call it "clashes" conceals the fact that the predominant pattern of the violence has been attacks by Kalenjin and Maasai warriors on unarmed communities.

The onset of the violence, in September 1991, coincided almost precisely with the amendment of the Kenyan Constitution to permit multi-party politics. President Moi, who had made this change only under concerted foreign and internal pressure, presented the "tribal clashes" as evidence that multi-party democracy was divisive and that Kenyans were unready or unsuited to it. However, the initial violence was the result of explicit incitement by leaders of the ruling Kenyan African National Union (KANU) determined not to cede their

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political monopoly in the Rift Valley. At a political rally in September 1991 a group of Rift Valley KANU politicians announced that they were "banning" members of the opposition from entering the area and threatened Kikuyus, Luos and Luhyas living there. In the year leading to multi-party elections in December 1992, KANU leaders continued to issue threats and ultimatums. For example, in June 1992 a government minister threatened that non-Maasai in the traditional Maasai area of Narok would not be allowed to vote there unless they owned land or property. The next week Maasai warriors attacked Kikuyus at a voting registration centre in Narok, killing three and injuring four.

The independent press, the opposition and human rights groups repeatedly alleged that attacks were being instigated by the government and the ruling party. In March 1992, an assistant minister in the government, Ojuang K'Ombudo, disrupted the National Assembly, shouting that Luo people were being murdered by Kalenjins. He criticized the police for failing to arrest attackers identified by local residents.

In September 1992 a parliamentary select committee, chaired by Kennedy Kiliku, reported on the violence. (At this time the National Assembly was still a single-party, KANU body.) The committee concluded that 800 people had been killed and that many government officials, security officers, provincial administrators and others had "abetted, perpetrated or instigated" the violence. The Kiliku report singled out Vice-President Saitoti and minister Nicholas Biwott for responsibility, along with a number of other senior officials. Parliament rejected the report.

Reports by Kenyan church groups have also criticized government complicity in the violence. In March 1992 the country's Roman Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter in which they alleged that the conflict was "all part of a wider political strategy" involving "well-trained arsonists and bandits" who were "transported to the scenes of crime from outside the area". The letter concluded:

There has been no impartiality on the part of the security forces. On the contrary, their attitude seems to imply that orders from above were given in order to inflict injuries only on particular ethnic groups.

In June 1992 the National Council of Churches of Kenya published a report on the violence. It claimed:

There is evidence that there was cordial interaction between the warriors, security and administration officers ... .

On the strength of interviews with members of the security forces the NCCK researchers concluded that non-Kalenjin personnel in the police and paramilitary General Service Unit were not allowed to carry arms when dealing with the ethnic clashes. Non-Kalenjin police officers on patrol — who were unarmed — were always accompanied by armed Kalenjins.

Describing attacks by Kalenjin warriors in the Molo and Olengueroni areas, the NCCK report said:

The attackers appeared disciplined and obeyed instructions. These constitute regimented discipline usually found in those who have undergone rigorous military training ... Military helicopters were involved in some of the operations ...

Often attackers were dressed in an informal uniform of red or black T-shirts. The organized character of the Kalenjin attackers generally contrasted with the spontaneous (and less effective) style of counter-attack mounted by Kikuyu, Luhya or Luo.

Under pressure the authorities did take some action against those involved in the violence. However, although

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attackers of all ethnic groups were arrested, criminal charges were pressed disproportionately against Kikuyu and members of other groups who had been the main targets of attacks. Often Kalenjin accused of serious offences, including murder, have been released on bail.

The NCCK report claimed that most of those displaced — whom it estimated at 50,000 at the time — had had their identification documents and papers relating to land ownership destroyed, so that they were unable to register to vote or to reclaim their land. It concluded: "Many potential voters are disenfranchised thereby affecting the electoral process in those areas substantially." According to the Commonwealth Observer Group which monitored the elections, the ruling party won 16 Rift Valley parliamentary seats unopposed as a result of violent intimidation.

Violence continued after the elections, suggesting that intimidation of voters was not the sole motivation behind the attacks. Immediately after the elections there were reports of Kalenjin warriors hunting Kikuyu whom they suspected of voting for the opposition.

A new element in the violence in the post-election period was that it began to affect urban areas. Nakuru, the provincial capital of the Rift Valley, was hit by four days of rioting in May 1993 after the police had demolished the kiosks of street traders and hawkers, allegedly singling out non-Kalenjins.

In March 1993, at the state opening of parliament, Maasai warriors attacked opposition supporters in the parliamentary precincts in Nairobi. One magazine described it as "a scene reminiscent of South Africa's war-loving Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party". A newspaper alleged that a senior cabinet minister had paid the warriors to carry out the attack — and the police to stand by and not intervene. In an earlier incident Maasai warriors had attacked and beaten the Democratic Party candidate contesting the seat held by Vice-President Saitoti. The Vice-President, himself a Maasai, denied allegations that he had instigated the attack but described those responsible — who had put the opposition candidate in hospital — as "patriotic Kenyans".

Another dimension of the violence has been attacks on those who try to monitor and report on it. A number of the attacks on the independent press have resulted from their coverage of the violence. For example, Reverend Jamlick Miano, editor of the Presbyterian church magazine Jitegemea, was arrested in May 1993 after an issue of the magazine had criticized President Moi's allegedly divisive policies. It referred to the 1990 demolition of Nairobi's Muoroto slum in which several people were alleged to have been killed, as well as the clashes in western Kenya and the demolition of vendors' kiosks in Nakuru.

Earlier, in February 1993, the prominent environmentalist Wangari Maathai went into hiding after President Moi had publicly accused her and the NCCK of fomenting the Rift Valley violence. She said that she feared for her life. On 25 February her colleague, John Makanga, was arrested by plain-clothes police without a warrant. They beat him severely in the presence of witnesses. On 1 March he appeared in court bearing new injuries, apparently caused by beatings in custody. He alleged that he had been denied food for three days after his arrest. He was charged with distributing seditious publications accusing the government of complicity in the ethnic violence and remanded in custody. Earlier John Makanga and Wangari Maathai had visited the Kikuyu victims of ethnic clashes in Uasin Gishu district in Rift Valley Province and distributed leaflets about a Tribal Clashes Resettlement Volunteer Service.

Government harassment of Wangari Maathai even extended beyond the borders of Kenya. At the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993, thugs broke up an exhibition of photographs of the Rift Valley violence which Wangari Maathai had organized.

President Moi responded to criticism of the government's alleged inaction or complicity in the Rift Valley violence in a speech on 2 September 1993 when he declared some of the worst affected areas — Molo, Burnt Forest and Londiani — to be "security operation zones". In the following months there was clearly a decline in violence in those areas. However, the security measures also appeared to be aimed at those who were trying to monitor abuses. The first people to be arrested under the government's policy of creating "security operation

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zones" were 13 opposition members of parliament visiting Molo on a fact-finding mission. Under the policy, which remained in force until early 1995, no one from outside the area could visit Molo, Burnt Forest and Londiani. The government's District Officer in Molo dissolved the local peace council, a group of elders formed to reconcile victims of the clashes, replacing it with a resettlement committee under his own control. The problem is that resettlement is not merely a technical question, but entails some resolution of the land disputes which are at the root of the conflict. Many victims of the violence have still not been resettled for precisely this reason.

On 10 September 1993, Bedan Mbugua, editor of The People, and Reverend Timothy Njoya were arrested near Elburgon, on their way to Molo. A few days later the Nakuru District Commissioner, William Kerario, said that the press was free to visit Molo, as long as he was notified in advance. However, the government could not allow anyone "just to sneak in and out as this will be defeating the purpose for declaring the area a security zone". On 20 December the High Court lifted the restrictions on Mbugua and Njoya on the grounds that the regulations creating the security zones had not been gazetted at the time of their exclusion.

On 21 September a reporter for the Daily Nation was apprehended by armed police at Kerisoi Trading Centre in Molo South and escorted from the area. The reporter had been there to cover distribution of relief supplies by the Red Cross and the Roman Catholic church. The following month another Nation reporter, Joseph Ngugi, was arrested and charged with entering a security zone illegally.

Mutegi Njau, the news editor of the Daily Nation, was arrested in April 1994, along with the paper's Eldoret correspondent, and charged with subversion. The paper had run two stories on official involvement in political violence in the Burnt Forest area of the Rift Valley. The first alleged that a senior official in State House had been responsible for initiating attacks on Burnt Forest communities. The second provided further details, claiming on the basis of eyewitness testimony that a helicopter had been seen ferrying attackers. Since the Kalenjin warriors who were supposed to be spontaneously responsible for the attack would not normally have had access to a helicopter, the general inference was again of official involvement. Mutegi Njau was bailed for a large sum and required to report to Nakuru police every two weeks — despite the fact that he lived in Nairobi. After some months the charges were dropped.

Mutegi Njau later commented that reports of violence continued to seep out of the security zones, yet reporters were not supposed to be able to verify this information:

The government ignores or attempts to stifle the information until it reaches the papers whereupon an editor is arrested with no attempt by the police to provide information from their own sources who control the area.

The security zone prevents the flow of information and makes accurate reporting difficult. It creates an atmosphere of fear that means people are afraid to tell of their experiences as the clashes continue for fear of being arrested. The zone is seen by the press and opposition MPs as a means of suppressing information and to keep people out to prevent the free flow of information.

The government was concerned about a visit to the clash areas by a group of musicians led by Sammy Muraya, who were members of the National Democratic and Human Rights Organization (NDEHURIO). They recorded testimony from those displaced by the clashes and then wrote and recorded a number of songs condemning the violence and calling on rich people to help the victims. A cassette of the songs circulated clandestinely. The aim was to sell it to raise money for the clash victims but the musicians had to go underground and faced arrest for visiting a security zone. However, some copies of the cassette were played in matatus (minibus taxis). Vendors selling the tape were harassed and, in at least one case, tortured by police.

On 18 September 1993, the founder of NDEHURIO, Koigi wa Wamwere, was arrested in Burnt Forest with several of his associates, including lawyer Mirugi Kariuki. A former member of parliament, Koigi had been one of the last political prisoners to be released from custody earlier in the year, as was Kariuki. Seven of those

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arrested were brought to court four days later and charged with possession of weapons. They were released on bail. Koigi wa Wamwere and a total of 14 others were rearrested in November 1993 and charged with the (non-bailable) offence of attempted robbery with violence, which carries a mandatory death sentence. Koigi wa Wamwere and three others stood trial on this charge, in a hearing which failed on many counts to meet international standards for a fair trial. One of the four was acquitted. The other three were eventually found guilty on a lesser charge and imprisoned. They were later released on bail on health grounds pending the hearing of an appeal.

The extreme partiality of the authorities towards the Rift Valley violence has also been shown in their attitude towards those displaced from their homes. The NCCK found in mid-1992 that "Resettlement of the victims is hampered by the lack of trust in the government which has been a result of the involvement of government officers" in the attacks. The NCCK report noted:

Further no proper security has been provided to the displaced people in the event of return to their homes particularly in the Mt Elgon region. Many of the victims have no resources to enable them reassemble [sic] homes as all their property has been destroyed. Families have lost parents leaving orphans who will be unable to re-establish new homes. Others are aged and therefore incapable of re-establishing homes.

In 1993-94, the government entered into a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in a multi-million dollar resettlement programme for those displaced by the violence. This reinforced the notion that it was some other agency than the government which had caused the displacement in the first place. However, the programme was short-lived as the UNDP pulled out, citing the government's lack of good faith. Besides, the programme had been unable to address the causes of the forcible removal of the Rift Valley communities, nor did it signal an end to the attacks.

In the meantime, the displaced population of Enoosupukia was housed from October 1993 at Maela Camp near Naivasha. On 23 December 1994 police rounded up camp residents and forcibly transported 2,000 to Central Province (regarded by Kalenjins as the "traditional" home of the Kikuyus). The residents were not told where they were being taken. Families were separated and initially the displaced were not provided with shelter or food.

The camp at Maela was razed to the ground, although approximately 1,000 displaced people remained there. The remaining population were beaten and harassed by the authorities. The UNDP and Médecins sans Frontières (Spain) were denied access. Police went to Kirigiti Stadium, one of three locations the displaced had been moved to, and questioned residents about their ethnic and family background.

Meanwhile, local authorities in other areas were beginning to insist on displaced people dispersing. For example, on 28 December the District Officer of Uasin Gishu ordered 118 families at the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) community centre in Eldoret to disperse by 4 January 1995.

On 4 January 1995, police dispersed 700 of the people moved from Maela Camp out of the three holding centres in Central Province: Ol Kalau, Ndaragwa and Kirigiti. At Kirigiti Stadium the camp was razed to the ground. The UNDP, the government's supposed partner in the programme to resettle displaced people, had apparently not been informed of the government action. This seems to have been one of the reasons for UNDP withdrawal from the scheme.

Two days later some 650 displaced people at Thessalia mission were victims of a night attack by men armed with bows and arrows. Some accounts described the displaced as having been dispersed from Maela. However, there has been a long-standing displaced community at Thessalia which the government refuses to include in the resettlement programme, on the grounds that they are squatters, not victims of the "clashes".

There is no doubt that the violence in the Rift Valley stems in part from genuine social and economic grievances. In the immediate post-independence period many Kikuyu settled on land previously grazed by the cattle of

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Kalenjin, Maasai and other pastoral groups. The fact remains, however, that the agricultural and pastoral communities lived together in peace until the significant political changes of 1991. KANU leaders evolved a theoretical justification for the notion that Kalenjin and Maasai should control the Rift Valley. This was known as majimboism or ethnic federalism. It was a revival of the approach taken by the pro-colonial Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) at the time of independence in 1963. President Moi was a prominent KADU leader at the time. Instead of a genuinely plural multi-party system, majimboism envisages a constitution which is perhaps best described as a confederation of local one-party states: hence, the continuing denial of basic human rights at the local level. It is an approach which bears striking similarities to the federalist outlook of the IFP in South Africa.

No serious observer of the Kenyan scene doubts that there is deep official complicity in the Rift Valley violence. But President Moi still succeeds in portraying himself and the KANU leadership as being above the fray and even in garnering international humanitarian assistance for feeding and resettlement of victims of the violence. The prospect that he and his government may be held formally accountable for the massive human rights violations of the past six years is remote.

President Moi's response to animosity aimed against Kikuyu "settlers" in the Rift Valley has been endlessly to advise them to "dance to the tune of the locals" — a thinly veiled hint that there would be no problems if the "settlers" supported the ruling party just as the "locals" are said to do. This lends credence to the suspicion that the violence is not so much "ethnic" as politically motivated, aimed at repressing those perceived as supporting the opposition.

Apart from the ill-fated government/UNDP partnership, official attempts to resettle the displaced victims of clashes have been equivocal and ambivalent at best. Nor has the government committed itself to resettling them on their original land which would have sent a clear signal that it would safeguard the constitutional right of all Kenyans to live and own property anywhere in the country. Instead it has offered alternative settlements on land whose ownership is itself contested.

As at February 1996, according to the local member of parliament, most of the 10,000 families evicted from Olenguerone in Nakuru District in the Rift Valley in 1993 had not returned to their land. But while the government was dragging its feet over the issue of resettlement, non-governmental organizations, notably the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and Action Aid, were embarking on resettling some of the displaced families. Action Aid's project, which was due to end in September 1997, aimed at resettling 1,800 families who had been displaced after clashes in Bungoma and Mount Elgon. NCCK's ongoing work aims at providing displaced families with building materials to enable them to rebuild their homes.

But these NGO efforts, laudable as they are, are modest and cannot resettle all the affected families. The government has given little support and in some cases has failed even to guarantee security for returnees, making it impossible for the NGOs to proceed.

Even as these efforts to resettle victims of the initial cycle of violence were underway, more systematic violence flared up first in the Rift Valley between the Pokot and Marakwet tribes in April 1997, and then in Mombasa and Malindi in the Coast Province in August 1997.

The Marakwet/Pokot clashes seem initially to have been no more than an escalation of traditional cattle rustling between the tribes which the government seems to have deliberately chosen to sit out, causing it to spiral out of control. More than 20 people were reported to have been killed and 500 families displaced. President Moi visited the affected areas shortly afterwards and accused the leader of the opposition, Kijana Wamalwa, of having incited the violence.

The Mombasa/Malindi violence seems to have had a more direct political component. It began in the wake of concerted pressure on the Moi government to institute constitutional reforms to level the political playing field before the general election due by the end of 1997. On 26 July the reform lobby had succeeded in holding a rally

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in Mombasa. The government had previously outlawed similar meetings which were violently broken up by the security forces.

The violence also came in the wake of the suspension of loan agreements by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), citing lack of commitment on the government's part to eradicating corruption. More than US$200 million was withheld by the IMF as a result.

On the night of 13 August 1997, a group of about 200 armed men raided the Likoni area of Mombasa and killed 13 people. They also burned down a police station, a police booth, several buildings and kiosks. Eyewitnesses recounted a seemingly well-organized strategy which was ostensibly aimed at flushing out "people from upcountry". It was clear that this was not ordinary criminal behaviour. In the frequent raids that followed, 43 people were reported to have been killed in two weeks.

President Moi once again blamed the opposition for inciting the youth in its quest for power, but to serious observers it is clear where the blame lies. The timing of the violence is telling. It came at a time when the government was on the defensive and clearly in need of a diversion from the pressing issue of constitutional reform. It is also clear that a state of insecurity would strengthen the government's hand in constitutional reform talks which were looking almost unavoidable.

Even within Mombasa, the violence seemed to have been concentrated around the opposition strongholds of Likoni and Kisauni; there were also leaflets circulated reportedly warning non-natives of these areas to vacate their houses and return to their "ancestral homes". This was seen as a repeat of covert operations by government-supported gangs in the run-up to the 1992 general election, aimed at disenfranchising a significant number of the electorate and creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity to justify repression. Further reading:

Human Rights Watch/Africa, Divide and Rule: State-Sponsored Ethnic Violence in Kenya (London and New York: 1993).

Human Rights Watch/Africa, Failing the Internally Displaced: The UNDP Displaced Persons Program in Kenya (London and New York: 1997).

ARTICLE 19, Censorship in Kenya: Government critics face the death sentence (London: ARTICLE 19, 1995).

Richard Carver, "Kenya Since the Elections", Refugee Survey Quarterly, 1/1994, Geneva.

2.4 Malawi

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The Malawian authorities in 1993-94 tried to use a traditional militia — a secret Chewa dance society — to intimidate the opposition and influence the result of the first multi-party elections. Human rights groups and the Electoral Commission unmasked this attempt and prevented informal repression from having a significant impact on the elections.

Malawi is a rare success story, where human rights groups identified and confronted informal repression in time to put a stop to it. In June 1993, Malawians voted in a referendum on their political future, choosing between a

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continuation of 29 years of single-party rule by the Malawi Congress Party and a change to a multi-party system. The vote went overwhelmingly in favour of change — except in the country's Central Region, the MCP heartland. The vote for retaining one-party rule seems to have been influenced not only by long-standing loyalty to the MCP, but also by intimidation from several sources. Formal parts of the state apparatus were deployed against the opposition, with the widespread arrest of pro-democracy campaigners on criminal charges. They were also the victims of violent intimidation, by the Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP), a national paramilitary organization, by the youth wing of the MCP and by members of the secret nyau dance cult.

After the referendum result, presidential and legislative elections were scheduled for May 1994. Human rights and pro-democracy campaigners were concerned about a recurrence of intimidation in the Central Region. The police were reined in and, in December 1993, the army forcibly disarmed the MYP. However, the MCP youth wing and the nyau cult remained a threat.

Nyau is a male Chewa cult best known for its masked dances. Its members, the gule wa mkulu, are initiated at adolescence and schooled in extreme discipline, obedience and secrecy. It had been employed before to terrorize opponents of the MCP, after the Life-President Hastings Kamuzu Banda had driven his opponents out of the government in the mid-1960s. In 1964 and 1965 the gule wa mkulu would go to villages suspected of supporting the ousted ministers and threaten local people.

An overlap between the membership of nyau, the MCP Youth League and MYP is clear. This is scarcely surprising, given Banda's own view that "no Chewa man has the full status of man if he has not been through its initiation and instructional processes". Youth Leaguers attending party rallies could be seen and heard ululating in the characteristic manner of the gule wa mkulu.

What is even more sinister, although less easy to determine with any certainty, is the extent to which nyau functioned as a parallel command structure within the prison service or the police. Banda himself described nyau as a "primitive masonic brotherhood" — indeed, he himself was not only a nyau initiate but also a freemason. The experience of the British police shows how effectively freemasonry can function as an unofficial network of loyalty which can work parallel with or even contrary to the official organs of command. Nyau, like freemasonry, employs highly lurid threats of death to compel secrecy and loyalty to the cult. Thus it would have been a highly effective means of ensuring obedience to orders which were of their nature embarrassing and could not be exposed to any sort of formal scrutiny.

Between November 1993 and February 1994 ARTICLE 19 documented several incidents of violent harassment of the opposition in the Central Region. In Mchinji a 14-year-old girl was beaten with bricks as she walked home from an opposition meeting. In Dedza, a village chairman of the UDF was beaten up as he walked home from a wedding party. In both cases the attackers were identified as MCP members; in both cases the victims were hospitalized; and in both cases they reported the assault to the police, who took no further action.

On 16 November 1993 in Dowa, MCP supporters armed with spears, catapults and iron bars attacked members of the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) who were trying to hold a public meeting. Fifteen were injured; one had his chest crushed with an iron bar and was vomiting blood. Eyewitnesses said that the attackers were ululating in the style of the gule wa mkulu. A number of other cases were documented, including some where attackers were wearing their nyau masks. After the Dowa incident, Foreign Minister Hetherwick Ntaba was reported as stating that gule wa mkulu were entitled to "rebuff" those who were holding meetings which would "confuse" people in the Central Region.

ARTICLE 19 argued that the revival of nyau as a repressive and political phenomenon represented an attempt by the MCP to evade international scrutiny of its human rights record. It seemed likely that this strategy derived directly from that pursued by KANU in the Rift Valley, since a series of meetings between MCP and KANU officials are known to have taken place in Lilongwe and Nairobi during the early stages of the Malawian campaign. Initially there is little doubt that the use of the gule wa mkulu threw many international monitors off the scent: diplomats and international bureaucrats had conceptual difficulty with the notion of human rights

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abuses committed by dancers in zoomorphic masks. Even when it did report on the role of nyau, the Joint International Observer Group rather missed the point by talking about the danger of national culture being "misused and cheapened by being made partisan". It described the issue of nyau involvement in the campaign as being a "delicate matter". Nevertheless, attention was drawn to the issue in time to have an impact on campaigning. The condemnation of Malawi's own Electoral Commission was, fortunately, timely and unequivocal. They understood that there was nothing "delicate" about beating up opposition supporters with iron bars. It seems probable that early intimidation had an impact on the election result in the Central Region, where the MCP retained most of its parliamentary seats, but unlike Kenya violence did not continue up until the election. Further reading:

ARTICLE 19, "Freedom of Expression in Malawi: More Change Needed", Censorship News, issue 32 (London: Feb. 1994).

2.5 Rwanda

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Rwanda's genocide in 1994 began as a classic example of informal repression. President Juvenal Habyarimana reluctantly embarked on a transition to multi-party rule under international donor pressure. At the same time ethnic militias backed by factions within the government embarked on massacres of pro-democracy activists and members of the minority Tutsi community.

Under strong internal and international pressure, Rwanda made its formal transition to multi-party politics in June 1991, when the Conseil National de Développement (CND — Parliament) amended the 1978 Constitution to abolish the one-party form of government. In July, the CND passed the Political Parties law, which legalized opposition political parties. Five opposition parties were officially registered the following month. Also in mid-1991, the ruling party of President Juvénal Habyarimana, the Mouvement révolutionnaire national du développement (MRND — National Revolutionary Movement for Development), changed its name to Mouvement révolutionnaire national du développement et de la démocratie, (MRND(D) — National Revolutionary Movement for Development and Democracy), ostensibly to demonstrate its support of the process of political reform.

In late 1991, the government engaged in negotiations with leaders of several opposition parties on the possibility of adopting a transitional coalition government in which the major opposition groups would be represented. Initial discussions between the government and the opposition failed to produce an agreement by the end of the year and on 30 December 1991, the Prime Minister-Designate formed a government without opposition participation. A transitional coalition government which represented major opposition parties was finally established in April 1992. President Habyarimana named Dismas Nsengiyremye, representative of the Mouvement démocratique républicain (MDR — Republican Democratic Movement), as Prime Minister and the latter formed a government with three other opposition parties: Parti social démocrate (PSD — Social Democratic Party), Parti libéral (PL), and Parti démocrate chrétien (PDC — Christian Democratic Party). The MRND(D) retained half of the cabinet posts and the four opposition parties were allocated the other half. Executive power was shared between the President and the Prime Minister. Although at times it became paralyzed on contentious issues, this coalition government made progress in a number of significant areas. It took steps to improve the legal framework for human rights. Towards the end of 1992, it succeeded in negotiating a cease-fire with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This was a Uganda-based rebel army composed of mostly Tutsi exiles which had invaded Rwanda in October 1990 and began a guerrilla war against the Rwandan army.

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After April 1992, there were fewer cases of arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly of journalists and human rights activists, who before had been frequently targeted by the authorities. In 1992, for example, there were only three reported cases of interference with journalistic activities by government authorities after April. Minister of Information Faustin Rucogoza initiated a draft law which would abolish all import tax on paper and ink. In addition, in 1993, he developed a revised draft Press Law in consultation with legal experts, human rights activists and several journalists' associations.

Just as formal respect for freedom of expression was improving, however, informal repression was introduced in 1992, with the emergence of militias affiliated with the former ruling party, the MRND(D), and its extremist offshoot, the Coalition pour la Défense de la Republique (CDR), which was formed in early 1992 but never participated in coalition governments. Far from being random groups of young thugs or vandals, the interahamwe, "Those who work together", and the impuzamugambi, "Those with a single purpose", were centrally organized, with a national president, vice-president and leaders down to the neighbourhood level. The militia members were formally recruited, paid and armed, and many received military training. These two militias played an important role from 1992 onwards in orchestrating state-sponsored violence against Tutsi which claimed hundreds of lives. Their presence was first noted during the Bugesera massacres in March 1992, in which several hundred Tutsi and opposition supporters were massacred.

Moreover, the militias intimidated and assaulted government critics, particularly journalists and human rights activists. Government critics also faced attacks by another clandestine organization, "Network Zero", a death-squad run by members of the presidential entourage. Its main leaders were Alphonse Ntirivamunda, son-in-law of Juvénal Habyarimana and Director of Public Works, and Elie Sagatwa, the personal secretary and brother-in-law of the President, as well as other brothers of Agathe Habyarimana, the President's wife. The existence of the Zero Network was first reported by Christophe Mfizi, former Director of the Rwandan Office of Information (ORINFOR), who coined the term, and then established more definitively in October 1992 by Filip Reyntjens. In April 1993, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Bacre Waly Ndiaye, reported that although he could not prove that the militias or the death-squad had been behind particular attacks on individuals, he had little doubt about the strength of these clandestine organizations. He stated that there were "sufficient indications to enable the Special Rapporteur to conclude that a second power exists alongside that of the official authorities."

This "second power" soon came to represent the biggest threat to independent journalists and human rights activists in Rwanda. The death-squad and militia groups used death threats, physical attacks and political assassinations to terrorize and intimidate government critics. In 1993, all the cases of attacks on journalists reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists involved physical assaults or killings rather than arrest and imprisonment. For example, on 6 April 1993, television producer Callixte Kalissa was shot dead close to his house in the Remera neighbourhood of Kigali. He had found a grenade near the entrance of his home several days before he was shot. In early May, Ignace Ruhatana, editor of Kanyarwanda, a publication by the human rights group of the same name, was attacked by a group of unidentified people who also tried to steal his documents on human rights issues. Several months later, in mid-November 1993, the prominent human rights activist and public prosecutor Alphonse-Marie Nkubito was the target of a grenade attack just outside his home. He was seriously injured but survived the attack.

Although often it was not possible to prove precisely who was responsible for a given attack, in some instances militia leaders openly admitted that they were planning to harass or eliminate particular individuals. In late 1993, Ali Yusuf Mugenzi, journalist at Radio Rwanda and BBC stringer, was targeted by the interahamwe on account of a report which he had filed with the BBC on a violent confrontation between MRND(D) and MDR supporters in Kigali which assessed the role of the interahamwe in intimidating opposition members. Ali Yusuf Mugenzi was tipped off by two contacts within the MRND(D) who informed him that he had upset party leaders by his BBC report. They insisted that Ali Yusuf Mugenzi see Sued Ndayitabi, the interahamwe leader responsible for the sector of Biryogo, in order to apologize. The militia leader is reported to have admitted that he had ordered several members to assault Ali Yusuf Mugenzi, but was persuaded by the MRND(D) member present to cancel the plan.

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Despite efforts by members of the transitional government and several public prosecutors to halt the militia activity, the situation deteriorated seriously in late 1993 and 1994. Distribution of arms and ammunition to the militias had been reported as early as 1992 but accelerated dramatically in 1993 and early 1994. Also in late 1993, the military training became more vigorous as militia members began to be sent in groups of 300 to a military camp in the north-east region of Mutara. In early 1994, additional training of militias was reported by the Presidential Guard at the Kanombe camp (barracks) in Kigali as well as in military camps in Gabiro, north-east Kigali and in Bigogwe, Gisenyi préfecture. The militias became visibly more powerful during this period, to the extent that they threw up roadblocks in many areas of the capital and regularly harassed people who were trying to pass. After the assassination of CDR leader Martin Bucyana in February 1994, about 30 people were killed by militias in the neighbourhood of Gikondo, a CDR stronghold in Kigali, and dozens of Tutsi families living there were forced to move to other areas of the capital. In February 1994, journalist Joseph Mudatsikira of Rwanda Rushya described the situation,

Terror reigns in the city of Kigali and the surrounding area. People have been killed, injured, and dispossessed of their goods; houses have been looted and destroyed. ... Those responsible for these excesses are known: the MRND and CDR militias, supported by the Presidential Guard and the gendarmes.

The militias also became stronger outside the Kigali area. Human rights activist Joseph Matata, Executive Secretary of the Association Rwandaise pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme (ARDHO), reported that in December 1993 repeated threats by militia leaders in his home Préfecture of Kibungo compelled him to flee the area and live for several months inside his office in downtown Kigali.

After the death of President Habyarimana in a plane crash on 6 April 1994, the scale of "informal repression" became qualitatively different, reaching genocidal proportions. Much contemporary reporting of the genocide — and even subsequent analyses — have tended to stress the history of hostility between Hutu and Tutsi communities, emphasizing, for example, the role of inflammatory radio broadcasts in inciting the killing. Yet there is abundant evidence that the genocide was a carefully planned operation, directed by informal state networks against both Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Intelligence to that effect was relayed to UN headquarters in New York by the commander of the UN peace-keeping force in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, as early as January 1994, three months before the genocide began. The UN Secretary-General took no action. The Rwandan genocide, then, was the ultimate and grisly triumph for "informal repression". Subsequent attempts to assign blame to hatred peddled in the Rwandan media serve as an attempt to cover the lamentable failure of the international community to heed the abundant warnings of impending disaster. Further reading:

ARTICLE 19, Broadcast Genocide: Censorship, Propaganda & State-Sponsored Violence in Rwanda 1990-1994 (London: ARTICLE 19, 1996).

G Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis 1959-1994: History of a Genocide (London and New York: Hurst, 1995).

African Rights, Death, Despair and Defiance (Revised Edition), (London: African Rights, 1995).

Fédération internationale des droits de l'homme, Africa Watch, Union interafricaine des droits de l'homme et des peuples, and the Centre international des droits de la personne et du développement démocratique, Report of the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990 (7-21 January, 1993) Final Report (London and New York: Human Rights Watch/Africa, March 1993).

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2.6 Nigeria

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The trial and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni minority activists prompted widespread international revulsion. Yet hundreds of Ogoni had already died in a campaign of informal repression orchestrated by the security forces who stimulated rivalry with a neighbouring ethnic community. Elsewhere in Nigeria, the authorities have been adept at using religious and ethnic divisions to weaken the opposition and target individuals and communities opposed to continuing military rule.

The politics of contemporary Nigeria are largely fashioned around ethnicity. Yet there is surprisingly little discussion of what ethnicity is and how successive governments, especially recent military ones, have used it for repressive purposes.

At independence in 1960 Nigerian politics was structured around three large ethno-political blocs: the Northern Hausa-Fulanis, the Western Yorubas and the Eastern Igbos. Electoral demography was such that an alliance of two blocs was needed to rule. Thus, government in the early post-independence years was controlled by the Northern elite with first Eastern and then Western support. This was upset in 1966 by a pro-Eastern military coup d'état, which was rapidly overturned by Northern officers. A rapid descent into civil war was triggered by northern pogroms against Igbos (incited by inaccurate and inflammatory radio broadcasts reporting attacks on Northern Muslims in the East), followed by the secession of a large part of Eastern Nigeria under the name of Biafra. Up to two million people died over the next three years before the secession was quelled.

The period since the civil war has seen a process of fragmentation of these ethno-political blocs, partly a result of deliberate political action to reduce the risk of a new civil war, and partly the consequence of smaller groups beginning to assert their claims. Estimates of the number of ethnic groups vary, but 250 is a frequently cited and not unrealistic figure. In political terms ethnicity is in many respects a function of competition for scarce resources and a manifestation of the use of patronage and corruption which has come to characterize public life in Nigeria. Since 1983, when the military overthrew the civilian Second Republic, successive governments have also exploited ethnic rivalries for political and repressive purposes, as well as actively instigating ethnic or religious violence on occasions.

The best-known of the smaller ethnic groups which have begun to press their claims in recent years is the Ogoni. The Ogoni, in common with a number of other groups from the Niger Delta, have a well-articulated grievance over the despoliation of their home area in the course of oil exploitation since the 1950s. They argue that they are too small to benefit politically and economically from the federal structure, and that they have not received income from oil revenues or been compensated for environmental damage. Their grievance is not only against the current federal military government but also against their larger neighbours, notably the Igbo. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Ogonis' most notable leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was a Federal Government official during the Biafran secession.

In 1990 the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was established with widespread popular support, launching an "Ogoni Bill of Rights" as its manifesto. This called for "political autonomy" for the Ogoni within the Nigerian Federation, including the right to control and use of a fair proportion of Ogoni resources for economic development. MOSOP has been inaccurately portrayed by the military government as seeking secession from the federation. From 1993 MOSOP embarked on a campaign of mass popular protest which was also the signal for an escalation of government repression in Ogoniland. MOSOP activists were repeatedly arrested and in one incident 11 people were injured when troops opened fire on a demonstration called to protest against the laying of a new oil pipeline.

However, the main form taken by government repression at this stage was the manipulation of ethnic rivalry between the Ogoni and neighbouring groups, including the Andoni, the Okrika and the Ndoki. The clash with the Andoni, which degenerated into violence in July 1993, followed the decision by MOSOP to boycott the June

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1993 presidential election (a decision which also split MOSOP, leading to the resignation of its president and vice-president and the assumption of leadership by Ken Saro-Wiwa). The Andoni leaders claimed that Ogonis blocked roads preventing Andonis from going home to vote. They also alleged that Ogonis had attacked Andonis in the course of demonstrations against the government and oil companies. MOSOP, for its part, alleged that the military authorities encouraged and took part in Andoni attacks on them in retribution for the election boycott — a view which has subsequently been proved correct. On 7 July 1993 there was fighting at the Kaa waterfront market which spread to Ogoni and Andoni villages with the loss of over 400 lives. Several villages were destroyed. On 9 July Andonis attacked a boat ferrying Ogonis back from Cameroon, killing some 200 of them.

In October 1993 a government-sponsored peace agreement was signed — although not by Ken Saro-Wiwa. The government-appointed negotiator, Professor Claude Ake, condemned the agreement and commented:

I don't think it was purely an ethnic clash, in fact there is really no reason why it should be an ethnic clash and as far as we could determine, there was nothing in dispute in the sense of territory, fishing rights, access rights, discriminatory treatment, which are the normal causes of these communal clashes.

Human Rights Watch interviewed soldiers who claimed to have taken part in Andoni raids on Ogoni villages in 1993. Residents of Kaa said that there were men in uniform attacking their villages along with Andoni fighters in August 1993.

Clashes between Ogoni and Ndoki in April 1994 followed a similar pattern. It was alleged that the security forces encouraged Ndokis to attack Ogonis over a long-standing land dispute. Some 20 people died and at least eight Ogoni villages were destroyed. The security forces followed the Ndoki attackers into Ogoniland, burning down more villages.

On 21 May 1994, four senior non-MOSOP Ogonis were murdered, including Chief Edward Kobani, former vice-president of MOSOP, who had resigned over the June 1993 election boycott. The authorities arrested the president and vice-president of MOSOP, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ledum Mitee, although they were detained for eight months before being charged with the murders, along with four others. Given the unreliability of the evidence against them, it remains an open question whether, as MOSOP has alleged all along, the murders were in fact instigated by the military in order to sow division within the Ogoni community and provide a pretext for further repression. A Nigerian government memorandum written shortly before the murders recommended a "ruthless military operation" in order to suppress opposition to the activities of Shell in Ogoniland. The memo was written by Major Paul Okuntimo, chairman of the Rivers State internal security task force. The document called for military sabotage of oil company equipment — which could then be blamed on Ogoni activists — the "wasting" of political opposition and the use of "psychological" tactics and surveillance to justify turning Ogoniland into a military zone. Certainly, the murders provided the trigger for a massive escalation of military operations in Ogoniland. The Rivers State Internal Security Task Force was reinforced and embarked on a series of raids on Ogoni villages in which they beat, raped, detained and killed ordinary Ogoni. At least 50 Ogoni were killed and some 600 detained between May and June 1994. Major Okuntimo boasted of his proficiency in killing people, while the Rivers State military administrator, Lieutenant-Colonel Dauda Komo, publicly justified the use of terror to force the Ogoni into submission.

A total of 15 men finally stood trial before a Civil Disturbances Special Tribunal in Port Harcourt in connection with the murder of the four Ogoni chiefs in May 1994. Nine, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, were sentenced to death and hanged on 10 November 1995 in defiance of international appeals. The members of the tribunal were nominated by the military government and those convicted had no right of appeal against the decision and sentence — which was carried out less than two weeks after the tribunal's verdict. A detailed report by a senior British observer at the trial, Michael Birnbaum QC, documented the numerous abuses of law and procedure. The latter stages of the trial coincided with a new military clamp-down in Ogoniland. Twenty more Ogoni activists currently face trial in connection with the same murders.

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Any hope that increased international concern about the Ogoni would moderate the behaviour of the military was dispelled on 4 January 1996, the annual Ogoni Day celebration, when soldiers opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in Borri, killing six. Many others were beaten and arrested. Later that evening the military raided several villages and the following day broke up Borri market.

It is testimony to the effectiveness of Nigerian military tactics that international outrage focused on only one small part of the situation in Ogoniland — the trial and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues — to the exclusion of the orchestrated ethnic clashes and the brutal military operation. It was scarcely remarked that this tactic of ethnic manipulation had already been used effectively elsewhere in Nigeria.

In the country's Middle Belt, for example, police were alleged to have sided with members of the Jukun ethnic group in pogroms against another group, the Tiv, in the early 1990s. The Tiv argued that a Jukun candidate had been elected head of the local government in the town of Wukari only because many Tivs had not been registered to vote because they had been displaced in fighting.

The conflict in Zango-Kataf in Kaduna State in northern Nigeria illustrates the explosive mix of religious and ethnic rivalry, as well as the highly partial approach taken by the authorities which has succeeded in inflaming conflict.

The town of Zango-Kataf is an enclave of mainly Muslim Hausa-Fulanis in an area where the majority population is Katafs, who are mostly Christian. Tension between the two communities has been long-standing. In February 1992 rioting broke out over a local government decision to move the market from a Hausa-Fulani area to one dominated by Katafs. Sixty people died. Further worse rioting broke out in May, apparently after Kataf attacks on the Hausa-Fulani community. The violence spread to Kaduna, where it was mainly directed by Hausa-Fulanis against Christians. Several churches were burned down and Christian ministers killed. The official death toll was 300 but unofficial estimates were as high as several thousand. Over 60,000 people fled their homes.

The official response to the violence was to arrest several hundred Katafs, most of whom were held without charge. Six prominent Katafs, including Major-General Zamani Lekwot, a former ambassador, were charged with complicity in the riots before a specially constituted Civil Disturbances Special Tribunal. The prosecution withdrew its case, but the accused were rearrested by security agents as they left the court. In September 1991 they were charged again, with a total of 14 people being sentenced to death by two Civil Disturbances Tribunals, including Major-General Lekwot. The hearings had all the same defects as the tribunal which heard the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, since they were constituted under the same law. In this instance, the government commuted the death sentences to five years' imprisonment. Further reading:

Human Rights Watch/Africa, The Ogoni Crisis: A Case-Study of Military Repression in Southeastern Nigeria (London and New York: 1995).

Human Rights Watch/Africa, Military Injustice: Major General Zamani Lekwot & Others Face Government-Sanctioned Lynching (London and New York: 1993).

M Birnbaum QC, Nigeria: Fundamental Rights Denied (Report of the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa and others) (London: ARTICLE 19, 1995).

Richard Carver, "Nigeria: On the Brink of Civil War?" (UK: Writenet, 1996).

2.7 Cameroon

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In northern Cameroon the main agency of repression has been the traditional chiefs. As in other situations of informal repression, the central government has been able to claim that it is not responsible for the actions of the chiefs, even though their powers are established by law. The targets of these human rights abuse are often officials or supporters of opposition political parties.

In rural areas of northern Cameroon, powerful Muslim traditional leaders or lamibe are used to silence government critics and to suppress opposition party activities. In contrast to other regions of the country, such as the mostly anglophone North-West Province, where traditional chiefs are themselves often outspoken government critics or opposition supporters, in the North Muslim traditional leaders have enjoyed close alliances with government authorities since the colonial era. These traditional leadership structures have evolved from centrally organized pre-colonial kingdoms or lamidats, such as Garoua, Bindir and Rey, which were formed in the 18th century and later expanded during the jihad launched by Fulbe leader Uthman dan Fodio (1804-1809). These political entities were led by lamibe (singular, lamido), whose control of the political structures and the armed forces was generally complete. In addition, the lamibe serve as spiritual leaders and traditionally have been viewed as intermediaries between God and the people, a belief which reflects the strong influence of local traditions on the practices of Islam.

In Cameroon today, these traditional leaders are recognized by law and granted broad and ill-defined powers. Decree No. 77-245 of 15 July 1977, "To Organize Chiefdoms," states that traditional leaders are mandated to aid administrative authorities in "guiding the people" (Article 19). Moreover, under Article 20, they are ordered to assist in "transmitting the directives of the administrative authorities to their people and ensuring that such directives are implemented." They are also responsible for "helping, as directed by the competent administrative authorities, in the maintenance of law and order" (Article 20). Traditional leaders are appointed by high-level government officials, including the Prime Minister, Minister of Territorial Administration, and préfets. They are evaluated on a yearly basis by administrative authorities. However, there are no mechanisms through which residents can lodge grievances about local chiefs, other than the courts.

Powerful chiefs, particularly in the lamidats of Rey-Bouba and Tchéboa (North Province), as well as in those of Mindif and Pouss (Far North Province), are reported to have committed gross and widespread abuses against opposition supporters since the introduction of a multi-party system in the early 1990s. These violations have included restrictions on freedom of association, detention in private prisons for long periods of time, forced labour, forced marriage, and severe beatings, sometimes resulting in death. In many remote areas, where administrative authorities and gendarmes do not have a strong presence, lamibe act as de facto government authorities and exert control over the local populations through their armed palace guards or dogari. Although illegal under national law, these private militias operate freely and are responsible only to individual lamibe. They usually number around 30. In the Lamidat of Rey-Bouba, however, which extends throughout the Département of the Mayo-Rey, an entire administrative division of 36,524 km2, the number of palace guards is reported to be as high as several hundred.

It is in this area that some of the worst cases of abuse in Cameroon have been reported. Opposition political activity is effectively banned throughout the entire Department. The three members of the Assemblée Nationale (parliament) who represent this area were all elected as members of the major opposition party, the Union nationale pour le développement et le progrès (UNDP — National Union for Democracy and Progress), which won 68 out of 180 parliamentary seats in the first multi-party legislative election and has widespread support in the Muslim north. They have been neither allowed to travel freely in this Department nor to meet constituents there. On 8 January 1996, UNDP parliamentarian Haman Adama Daouda attempted to travel to the area with a large convoy of UNDP party leaders, including the other UNDP parliamentarians for the Mayo-Rey, to campaign for his party in the local elections. The convoy was attacked by palace guards, it is believed on the orders of the Lamido of Rey-Bouba, and he was badly beaten before local gendarmes finally intervened. He died six weeks later as a result of head injuries sustained during the attack.

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In the run-up to the second multi-party legislative election in May 1997, UNDP candidates were also targeted with violence as they breached a ban on opposition political activities imposed by the Lamido. On 12 May 1997, a few days before the poll, a number of dogari attacked the delegation of Nana Koulagna in Mbang-Rey and killed two UNDP members of the delegation. The group reportedly fought back in self-defence and three dogari died. The UNDP members had been trying to reach Touboro, where Nana Koulagna was the legislative candidate. After the incident, Nana Koulagna and 14 other UNDP members were placed under preventative detention and accused of murder. The 17 May election results in the Mayo-Rey were annulled and held again on 3 August. Nana Koulagna and the other 14 remained in detention at the end of August 1997. ARTICLE 19 was concerned that these activists may have been imprisoned because they attempted to carry our their political campaign despite the ban by the Lamido.

Since 1992, when Cameroon held its first multi-party legislative and presidential elections, there have been frequent reports of UNDP supporters in the Mayo-Rey being detained in private prisons, generally located in the palaces of the lamido or of local dignitaries. Many have been chained or severely beaten. In 1992, 70 people are believed to have been detained illegally in this manner. In mid-1997, 10 political detainees were reported to be held in private prisons run by the Lamido of Rey-Bouba, some of whom had been held for nearly five years. Two other political detainees are reported to have died whilst being held in illegal prisons. A number of other UNDP supporters have been briefly detained and released. All of these individuals are believed to have been targeted on account of their support for the UNDP political party.

The restrictions on freedom of assembly in the Département of the Mayo-Rey even extend to non-governmental organizations working on development issues. In late October 1994, staff members of the registered Garoua-based group, the Comité pour le développement de la région de Mayo-Sala et Mayo-Zoro (CODERSAZO), were harassed and detained in the Mayo-Rey by palace guards who claimed to be acting on the orders of the Lamido of Rey-Bouba. A few days later, another staff member was detained for several hours and beaten by palace guards. On both occasions, the representatives of CODERSAZO had been trying to distribute educational materials to schools in the area. In late November 1994, the organizers of CODERSAZO met the Lamido of Rey-Bouba to discuss their activities in light of the recent incidents with palace guards. The Lamido announced that he was no longer prepared to allow the organization to operate in his area, alleging that the NGO was serving as a "front for opposition parties".

In other areas of northern Cameroon, similar abuses occur regularly. In June 1994, in the town of Ngong, near the city of Garoua, 17 UNDP supporters were detained for several hours by palace guards of the Lamido of Tchéboa and flogged. The palace guards are reported to have told the 17 individuals that they should give up their support for the UNDP and instead rally behind the ruling party, the Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais (RDPC — Cameroon People's Democratic Movement). The Lamido is believed to have ordered the detentions after a RDPC meeting which he had hosted the previous day had attracted only a low attendance by local residents.

Women in particular suffer severe punishment for sometimes less outspoken actions in support of the opposition or simply because they fail to demonstrate support for the RDPC. In September 1994, Françoise Menoudji from Ngong was beaten by palace guards and detained for two days at the lamido's private prison for wearing clothing with UNDP slogans in her own home. Before being released, she was warned that if she was caught a second time wearing UNDP clothing, she would be detained and never released. In another case in August 1993, Elise Inna, a restaurant owner in Ngong, was reported to have been detained, whipped and imprisoned for seven days by palace guards because she was unable to provide catering services for a meeting of the RDPC party. She was told by palace guards that she "has a hard head and does not respect what is said to her," and that "all single women support opposition parties."

Efforts by victims to bring court cases against traditional leaders in northern Cameroon have been unsuccessful. In Cameroon, the judiciary is subject to strong pressure from the executive. In cases relating to abuses by traditional chiefs, this means that court action has sometimes been indefinitely postponed, for example, pending approval by the Minister of Justice, a delay which is in breach of normal procedures. Such interference by

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government authorities has thwarted attempts by one man, Bakari Madi, to bring to court a traditional leader in the town of Mindif who had him chained to the wall of his home for about six months. In other cases, sentences against traditional leaders have been pronounced by the courts but never applied. The Lamido of Tchéboa has been convicted in two separate cases for detaining local residents and forcing them to perform labour. However, the sentences of a year's imprisonment and fines totalling US$4,500 were not enforced.

As these violations are rarely reported in either the national or international media, non-governmental organizations have a particularly important role to play in documenting the situation in northern Cameroon. Local human rights monitors, however, have been subject to many restrictions by government authorities when seeking to report on abuses by traditional chiefs or to provide legal representation to the victims of such abuse. Representatives of the Maroua-based human rights group, the Mouvement pour la défense des droits de l'homme et des libertés (MDDHL), have been detained and beaten by local gendarmes when trying to investigate abuses by traditional leaders and gendarmes. Moreover, the President of the MDDHL, lawyer Abdoulaye Math, who has been instrumental in providing legal representation to victims of abuse by traditional leaders, in early 1997 was arrested on charges of fraud and selling pharmaceutical products without a licence. He was released about one week later after an international campaign. Although he was due to stand trial in May 1997, the case could not go forward because judicial authorities reported that his file had disappeared. Further reading:

ARTICLE 19, Northern Cameroon: Attacks on freedom of expression by governmental and traditional authorities (London: ARTICLE 19, 1995).

3 SOME COMMON THEMES

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We have used the term "informal repression" to describe a broad spectrum of human rights violations. What links them — what places Zimbabwean "pseudo-gangs" and the Malawian nyau dancers in the same category as the Cameroonian lamibe and the Rwandan interahamwe — is their deniability. Governments simply protest that these are agencies which are beyond their responsibility and control. What differentiates them from other deniable forms of repression such as Latin American "death squads" is that governments can assign responsibility for the violations to someone else: to the opposition, to tribal militias or whomever. A number of themes can be identified which, while not necessarily common to all the situations we have examined, help give us guidance in anatomizing "informal repression".

3.1 Informal Repression and Propaganda

Very often informal repression is not simply a way of disguising state involvement in repressing opposition groups; it also serves a positive propaganda purpose. Most commonly this is the notion that the people are naturally divided and at odds with each other and that firm government is needed in order to avoid social and political collapse. This was perhaps clearest in South Africa where the sudden expansion of so-called "black-on-black" violence in 1990 coincided with the end of the ban on liberation movements and the freeing of political prisoners. It reinforced the apartheid notion that black South Africans owed stronger loyalty to their own "tribal" group than to the nation, and that firm white-led government was needed to maintain the political

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fabric.

A similar explicit propaganda message underlay the Rift Valley violence in Kenya. President Moi had acceded only reluctantly to multi-party democracy after strong pressure from the country's main financial donors. His argument was that only one-party rule kept the country united and prevented its fragmentation into warring tribal factions. When violence erupted it became a fulfilment of his prophecy.

The violence caused by "informal repression" is also often used to justify further repressive measures on the part of formal security agencies. Thus the activities of "pseudo-gangs" in Zimbabwe, which were attributed to armed rebels, served to justify widespread abuses by the Fifth Brigade of the army in Matabeleland. Clashes between the Ogoni and Andoni in Eastern Nigeria — as well as the activities of the Nigerian army's own "pseudo-gangs" — provided the rationale for a major military offensive in Ogoniland.

3.2 Informal Repression as "Traditional" Conflict

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Governments very often seek to give repression a "traditional" character in order to conceal its true nature as human rights violations. External observers are often reluctant to address issues which they regard as being in some sense "cultural". Thus Western embassies were initially perplexed by the role of the nyau dancers in Malawi, just as the Kalenjin warriors in the Rift Valley with their bows and arrows seemed to be a manifestation of primordial rivalries between tribal groups. The popular Western understanding of the Rwandan genocide remains one of visceral and insuperable rivalry between "tribes", stoked up by radio propaganda. This view sees all conflict in Africa as the outcome of centuries of hostility. This is a caricature, both racist and ahistorical. Most African "tribes" postdate the arrival of Western missionaries and colonists — indeed most ethnic labels were the creation of outsiders rather than of Africans themselves.

As an explanation of conflict in Africa "tribalism" might appear to require no further investigation. It thus serves to conceal the responsibility of contemporary governments. This is why so many African governments are happy to perpetuate this retrograde view of Africa and of Africans. The notion that conflict is simply Africa's primordial condition is a justification for the existence of a strong repressive state. It is closely related to the previous point, in that it seeks to prove that Africans are not mature enough to enjoy human rights and to make democracy work.

3.3 Informal Repression and "Traditional" Authority

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Just as there is a widespread perception in the outside world that all Africans live in "tribes", there is an equally widespread view that all "tribes" have "chiefs". In fact, chiefs in Africa are almost invariably local government functionaries, whose status and authority is defined by law and who draw an official salary. The relationship of these chiefs to "traditional" authorities may be more or less tenuous. The role of chiefs in local government derives from colonial systems which depended upon amenable indigenous authorities to transmit their decisions to the masses. Thus only those which were well disposed towards colonialism survived. Conversely, many of the chiefly structures which have passed into post-colonial Africa are not, in any useful sense of the word, "traditional". As one historian has written: "What were called customary law, customary land-rights, customary political structure and so on, were in fact all invented by colonial codification."

Mozambique provides a particularly striking example of how chiefdoms become subject to political

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manipulation. Portuguese colonialism established a layer of salaried chiefs known as regulos, who did not necessarily correspond to traditional authorities. At independence in 1975 many of these regulos were replaced by chiefs more amenable to the new order. In those areas later controlled by rebels of the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO — Mozambique National Resistance) yet another set of chiefs known as mambos were installed — once again these may or may not have corresponded to the original blood-line chiefs. When territory changed hands, so would the identity of the chief.

Life-President Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was one who realized the potency of the ideology of tradition. In the early post-independence years he, like his colonial precursors, used the chiefs as the principal representatives of government in the districts. Although the balance of power shifted over time, President Banda continued to use the colonial local court system — which applied customary law for the settlement of disputes and petty crime — transforming them into "traditional courts" which punished political dissent and all sorts of capital offences. These courts, presided over by chiefs, were presented as enshrining a specifically Malawian concept of justice, as opposed to the alien precepts of "Western" justice. It was conveniently overlooked that the chiefs who comprised these traditional benches were salaried government officials who owed their appointment to the President. Despite the fact that the traditional courts flouted the most fundamental standards for fair trial, some foreign governments refused to press for the release of political dissenters imprisoned by these courts on the grounds that they had had a hearing under Malawian law.

The freezing of chiefly power structures in law has often had the effect of promoting one ethnic or political group at the expense of others. South Africa provided the classic example of this. In KwaZulu-Natal, the KwaZulu AmaKhosi and Iziphakanyiswa Act of 1990 was based on the Native Administration Act of 1927 and vested executive authority of each tribe in its chief or inkosi, who draws a government salary. The provincial government has power to appoint or dismiss any person. It may also unilaterally define tribes, amalgamate them or redefine territorial boundaries between them (somewhat at odds with the idea that this is a "traditional" form of administration). Any person who lives within the territory of a particular tribe is subject to the authority of the inkosi, whatever his or her ethnic origin. Minister Buthelezi, in his previous capacity as Chief Minister of KwaZulu, frequently used these powers to ensure that the "traditional" chiefs functioned in practice as servants of his Inkatha Freedom Party. Amakhosi had extensive power to ban gatherings and limit political activity within their jurisdiction.

The notion that anyone is subject to chiefly authority, whether or not he or she is from that ethnic group, has also been a major source of tension in Nigeria. In Wukari the Tiv and the Hausa fall under the authority of the Jukun traditional leader, because of a system bequeathed from colonial indirect rule, as in KwaZulu-Natal.

Similarly in Cameroon, the precise authority and powers of the lamibe are ill-defined, although the office of chief is established by statute. Nevertheless, in practice the lamibe often exercise almost absolute power in their territory and interfere with opposition political activities and basic rights to freedom of expression and association.

3.4 Informal Repression and Elections

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"Informal repression" has frequently been used to alter electoral demography and to influence the outcome of multi-party elections in favour of the ruling party. This was most striking in Kenya, where 16 ruling party candidates were elected unopposed in 1992 after opposition candidates withdrew because of intimidation and many members of ethnic groups suspected of being aligned with the opposition parties were driven from their homes and were unable to vote. The Malawi Congress Party, probably acting on advice from the Kenyan ruling party, KANU, attempted to repeat these tactics in Malawi using the masked nyau dancers.

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Similarly in South Africa, although informal repression originated long before the April 1994 democratic elections, the Inkatha Freedom Party used intimidatory tactics to influence the outcome of the election in Natal and probably to condemn the province to several more years of political violence.

In Nigeria, state-manipulated violence in Rivers State focused in part on the June 1993 presidential election. Ogoni minority rights activists attempted to boycott the election. Military backing for the rival Andoni community played upon the grievances of the latter, who argued that the Ogoni had prevented them from participating in the elections.

Given that displacement of populations is often the aim of informal repression, resettlement programmes which fail to address the underlying human rights issues are usually destined to fail. This has been the case, for example, with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resettlement operation in Kenya.

3.5 State Exploitation of Grievances

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In order to manipulate communal hostility, state agencies may often play upon genuine grievances. Thus the "aggressor" communities may often be genuinely disadvantaged. For example, the Kalenjin and Maasai communities of the Rift Valley are confronted with a problem common to pastoral groups throughout Africa, with the extension of settled agriculture depriving them of traditional grazing lands. The hostel dwellers and squatters mobilized in South Africa against ANC-supporting township communities were the most marginal and alienated sections of apartheid society.

A similar phenomenon could be seen in two other instances. In Sudan in the 1980s, the central government in Khartoum gave covert backing to tribal militias of the Baggara, known as murahaleen, against the Dinka in Darfur and Kordofan. The Baggara had been economically and politically marginalized since colonial times. Their aspirations coincided with government strategies to marginalize Dinka opposition. The consequence was a famine among the Dinka which, at its peak, reached the highest death rates ever recorded in the world.

In Mauritania in 1989 there were state-sponsored pogroms against people identified, often erroneously, as being Senegalese. Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese and black Mauritanians, mainly from the Peul ethnic group, were expelled from Nouakchott and the south of the country across the Senegal river. Between 100,000 and 150,000 Mauritanians remain on the Senegalese side of the river, their lands having been expropriated by members of the white Moorish Mauritanian elite. Mauritania is a country where formal slavery persisted until as recently as 1980. Most of the attacks were carried out by the most marginal of the country's social or ethnic groups, the haratin, or black former slaves.

The conclusion would appear to be that any attempt to confront informal repression will also have to address the grievances which make some disadvantaged groups prone to government manipulation.

3.6 Restoring the Rule of Law

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Informal repression is usually characterized as "violence" or "conflict" which therefore needs to be addressed by techniques of "conflict resolution". While it may well be that the different parties have genuine grievances that must be resolved (see 3.5 above), human rights violations can only be curbed by decisive action to restore the rule of law. This includes full disclosure of the extent of official involvement in covert repression — for example

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through a Truth Commission or other authoritative investigation — and an end to the impunity of those responsible for abuses. Proposed solutions such as the "special amnesty" in KwaZulu-Natal are a denial of the justice which society is entitled to demand for its own protection. General amnesties for human rights violators effectively reward violent and anti-social activities by agents of the state and thus make it more likely that such activities will be repeated in the future.

3.7 Exchange of Information

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There seems little doubt that governments cooperate in developing repressive tactics. The best-documented exchanges have been in southern Africa where, for example, many methods which had been originated in the course of the Rhodesian counter-insurgency war were developed further by the South African police and military intelligence in both South Africa and Namibia. It is not fanciful to suggest that the "township violence" of the early 1990s had its origin in the Rhodesian "pseudo-gangs" of the 1970s. General Jac Buchner, head of the KwaZulu police in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was an important figure in the Rhodesian counter-insurgency operation of the 1970s. One of the most effective means of covert repression — RENAMO in Mozambique — was set up by the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organization and handed over to South Africa in its entirety in 1980.

Collaboration between the Kenyan and Malawian ruling parties was apparent in 1993-94. A series of meetings were held between party functionaries, which were followed by the emergence in Malawi of tactics very similar to those which had been employed in the Kenyan Rift Valley. It is not improbable that other exchanges of tactics may have taken place.

There is a practical lesson in this for African human rights groups. They also need to exchange information in order to expose the development of new repressive methods by their governments. There is an example in the way Latin American human rights organizations in the 1970s campaigned against "disappearances" and death squads. Informal repression — state instigation of communal violence — must be uncovered for international scrutiny.

3.8 Informal Repression as Early Warning

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Informal repression is not merely a footnote in the contemporary political history of Africa. In one instance, Rwanda, it has been the harbinger of a human rights disaster without precedent for half a century. Elsewhere, in Zaire and South Africa for example, it has been a signal of continuing obstacles to democratic transition. In countries such as Kenya and Nigeria, the long-term impact of state-sponsored communal conflict may not yet have been felt.

In some of these instances, including Rwanda, state involvement in surrogate militias was thoroughly documented by human rights groups before they degenerated into massive disasters. Generally it has not been human rights groups but the international governmental community which has failed to take informal repression seriously. This has hampered the credibility of governmental pronouncements on human rights issues. In Zaire, external concern about alleged massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees was blunted by the earlier failure of Western governments to denounce informal repression in North Kivu which targeted the local Tutsi population — not to mention the lamentable failure of the international community over the Rwandan genocide.

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3.9 The Role of the Media

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The mass media have enormous power for good or ill in situations of state-sponsored communal violence. The most notorious example of the latter was in Rwanda, where Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) broadcast propaganda to stir up ethnic hostility. Once the genocide of April-June 1994 had begun, RTLM helped direct the Hutu extremist militias towards their targets. In Burundi also sections of the media have been used to reinforce the propaganda of extremist factions. However, in both cases the role of the media may have been exaggerated — indeed, the misrepresentation of the media role serves to conceal the extent of government involvement. Emphasis on RTLM propaganda, pernicious as it undoubtedly was, may have distracted attention from the highly organized nature of the genocide. Likewise in Burundi, emphasizing the need to suppress hate propaganda — with the banning of a number of extremist newspapers — is an easier option than confronting the complicity of sections of the state apparatus in arming and organizing violent factions.

Most often, however, the media have been targets of state interference for their attempts to uncover informal or covert repression. In Kenya, the government imposed restrictions on access to the "security zones" of the Rift Valley in order to stop press reporting — and then penalized reporters for not being able to check their stories. In Nigeria journalists have been sentenced to long prison terms for reporting on the activities of secret military tribunals.

Yet the press has often been an effective weapon in uncovering informal repression. Much reporting from the Rift Valley has been accurate and of a high quality. In South Africa, alternative newspapers such as the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad played a crucial role in uncovering state complicity in stimulating violence, at a time when formal investigative bodies such as the Goldstone Commission were downplaying this aspect.

In general, the media can also play an extremely important role in influencing public and international perceptions of informal repression. The language used can often be crucial. Phrases such as "tribal clashes" or "black-on-black violence" serve to conceal the authorship of covert human rights abuses. Language which clearly describes the nature and causes of communal violence is a first step towards resolving such conflict.

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