POST-PRESIDENCY VISIT
Barack Obama urges an end to Kenya’s ethnic politics
Opening a school in his father’s home village of Kogelo, Kenya, ahead of his visit to SA, the former US president also warns against graft
Kogelo — Former US president Barack Obama urged Kenya’s leaders on Monday to turn their backs on the divisive ethnic politics that have frequently spilled over into violence and to clamp down on corruption. Opening a school in his father’s home village of Kogelo in western Kenya, Obama praised a rapprochement between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga but said they must do more to heal the rifts between Kenya’s 40-odd ethnic groups. In the worst recent outbreak of ethnic conflict, 1,200 people were killed in fighting that followed disputed elections involving Odinga and Kenyatta in 2007. "It means no longer seeing different ethnicities as enemies or rivals but rather as allies; in seeing the diversity of tribes not as a weakness but as a strength," Obama said. The US’s first black president, whose eight years in office preceded Donald Trump’s election in November 2016, was in Kenya to open the centre, which is run by his half-sister Auma through her charity,...
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