Analysis Of Jessica Posner s `` And Kennedy Odede s Find...

In Jessica Posner’s and Kennedy Odede’s Find Me Unafraid, there is a part of Kennedy’s narrative that details the unrest associated with the political election in Kenya. He speaks of how many people within the Luo and Kikuyu tribes were turning to violence, killing one another, even innocent children, as a way to show their frustration with the unjust system they were born into. From forced circumcision to burning down homes with families inside to slashing people with machetes, lives were being taken in gruesome ways, in the name of justice. Reading about a tragedy, one so similar to what was seen in Rwanda a decade earlier, led to the question, â€Å"What was the most influential cause of the Luo-Kikuyu massacres after the 2007 election?†. I plan to explore whether the massacres were simply a result of unhappiness about Mwai Kibaki becoming president or if there were deeper, more substantial causes of the massacre. At the start of my research, the main factor in the massacres seemed to be the racial divide. With the incumbent president Mwai Kibaki being a part of the Kikuyu tribe, a tribe that accounts for nearly twenty-two percent of the Kenyan population (Elkins 2008), and winning the 2007 election, people could easily cite injustice. Since most political parties in Kenya are drawn along ethnic lines, with Mutahi Ngunyi, a Kenyan Political Scientist stating that â€Å"[political parties] are actually ethnic coalitions with...big political party names†(Warner 2008), historians