Women are battling death threats to run for Parliament and governor in Kenya’s March elections. Women currently constitute only 10 percent of Kenyan Parliament. Organizations advise female candidates to hire bodyguards and to wear pants in case they need to run from an attack.
Pascalia Makonjio, 33, was pregnant with her third child when she declared her candidacy during July 2011 for the parliamentary seat of Nambale constituency.
As soon as she gave birth, she launched her campaign in the Busia district in Kenya’s Western province for the March 2013 elections.
Makonjio, who runs a small grocery shop in Busia, says she’s running because politicians victorious in the last elections haven’t kept their campaign promises, like initiating poverty-eradication projects in the constituency. She started with mobilizing local youth and women to demand change.
But she says that some women and youth advised her not to run for the seat. Instead, they encouraged her to vie for the women’s representative seat, created in each county under the 2010 constitution to boost the number of women in Parliament.
“They advised me to leave the parliamentary seat for men,” Makonjio says. “But I told them that we have had male [members of Parliament] for years, and they had not changed the lives of Nambale people. Our cotton ginnery has collapsed, and the local polytechnic is in poor condition.”
Discouragement soon escalated to insults, death threats and trespassing.
Late last year, she spoke at a funeral, where politicians tend to comment on local issues. She criticized the current leaders for failing to help sugarcane farmers, the main occupation in Nambale. At around 1:30 a.m. following her speech, Makonjio says a group of men invaded her property.
“I heard people jump into my compound,” Makonjio says. “I looked out through my bedroom window and saw three men who were wearing masks. I called the police, and they quickly came to my rescue.”
The thugs came back the following night, she says. She called the police, and they repulsed them again.
Makonjio says that around the same period, one of her male opponents asked her to drop her bid and to abandon politics.
“He told me that I was just a poor girl and an outsider, since I was not born in the area,” she says. “My husband and I bought land and built a home there a few years ago. I told him that I would not back down and continued with my campaigns.”
Then, she received a text message from an anonymous sender threatening to kill her. When she showed police the message, they investigated and told her the sender was from the area. Police haven’t arrest anyone yet and are still investigating the threat.
The mother of three says she has hardly had a peaceful night since she announced her plans to run for the parliamentary seat. Because of the threats, Makonjio’s husband took their children, including their 9-month-old, to Kitale, a town more than 70 miles northeast of Busia where he works for the government as a water engineer.
“One rainy night, I was tipped that the thugs were about to raid my house,” Makonjio says. “I felt so helpless, as the policeman that I used to call had been transferred. I ran out of my house in my nightdress and spent the night in a trench.”
Makonjio has since hired three men to accompany her during her campaigns and a night guard for her home. The police also call her every night to check on her.
Despite the safety risks, she is determined to run for Parliament in order to protect others. She says she wants to end poverty in the constituency, which is driving girls into sex work.
Women planning
to run in Kenya’s general elections on March 4 are battling insults, death threats and nighttime prowlers. Cultural tendencies for men to dominate politics leave even some women refusing to vote for a female candidate. Young male candidates aspiring to break into Kenyan politics face challenges as well, namely raising funds and overcoming tribal divisions. Various organizations are working to promote and protect female candidates.
For the first time, Kenyans will be voting for senators, governors and women’s representatives – positions created by the new constitution that the country adopted in 2010. They will continue to vote for existing members of Parliament and the president.
The 22 female members of Kenya’s Parliament make up just 10 percent of its 224 members. The new women’s representative seats aim to increase the number of women in Parliament, as each of Kenya’s 47 counties will elect a woman for the position.
But, like Makonjio, female candidates running for other positions say they are also facing safety risks because of their campaigns.
Alice Ng’ang’a is contesting once again for the parliamentary seat of Thika constituency, a town 25 miles northeast of Nairobi, the capital. She lost in a by-election in 2010 for the seat there, previously called the Juja constituency.
Ng’ang’a receives continual threats and insults regarding her candidacy. This is because people perceive women as easy to intimidate, she says.
“My opponents hire boys to come heckle me down and insult me during my campaign meetings,” Ng’ang’a says. “I know this is meant to intimidate me, but I remain strong.”
One day in October, Ng’ang’a says she was meeting with youths when a group of about 10 men stormed the meeting and demanded to know why she hadn’t invited them. She called the police, who came and ejected the men.
Ng’ang’a then hired security guards to trail her everywhere, especially when she is attending campaign meetings.
Atieno Otieno, a lawyer running for governor of Kisumu, a district in western Kenya’s Nyanza province, says she began receiving death threats during October. The text messages said that she should drop her bid or risk being killed.
Around the same time, gunmen killed a male Orange Democratic Movement party official aspiring for the Kisumu Central parliamentary seat. Otieno says this heightened her fear about the threatening texts.
“I had to hire extra security and reported the matter to the police,” Otieno says. “They told me they were looking into the matter, but they have never got back to me.”
She has not received any threatening text messages since October.
Otieno lives alone in her village in Nyanza. Her husband works in Nairobi, and her children attend school there.
“I wish the government could do something to help us,” she says.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe says the police are investigating all the reported cases of threats against women running for office, and the culprits will be prosecuted. He refused to comment further.
Only women running for positions other than the women’s representative seats have reported receiving threats, says Lilian Juma, acting programs manager of the Association of Media Women in Kenya, which has been supporting the women in their campaigns.
In addition to these threats, female candidates seeking offices traditionally held by men receive little support from other women in their communities.
Grace Oduor, the owner of the Gracious Hair Salon in Uthiru, a suburb west of Nairobi, says that women should leave the larger decisions to men.
“Women cannot make good leaders,”
she says. “They can only be good managers. Even in the family circles, women run their homes very well, but major decisions are better left to men.”
Most women at the salon agreed that they wouldn’t vote for a woman.
Meanwhile, young male candidates also struggle to break into politics, but against traditional hurdles such as resources and tribal affiliation.
John Kiarie, a 33-year-old man who is vying for the Dagoretti North parliamentary seat in Nairobi, says he hasn’t received any threats. Rather, one of his biggest challenges is a lack of resources.
“I’m a young aspirant competing with people who have been doing politics for decades,” Kiarie says. “They have a lot of money to mobilize voters, while I only rely on volunteers.”
Tribal loyalty is another obstacle.
“The other challenge is that voters are divided along tribal lines,” he says. “If you belong to a certain tribe, people from other tribes will not vote for you."
The Association of Media Women in Kenya, which uses the media to promote an informed and gender-responsive society, is conducting a training program for aspiring female candidates to empower them. It is also placing their profiles in local newspapers to introduce them to voters in a program supported by Diakonia Compassionate Ministry, a faith-based nongovernmental organization aligned with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya.
Juma says that the association advises women running for office to walk around with bodyguards. It also encourages them to wear appropriate clothing, such as trousers, so they can run if in danger.
She says the Association of Media Women in Kenya sends information about women who have received threats to its partners, such as UWIANO Platform for Peace. Four partner committees and programs, including the U.N. Development Programme, formed the platform to promote peace before the 2010 referendum on the new constitution. “Uwiano” means “cohesion” in Swahili.
Juma says the number of women contesting for political seats is still low despite the space that the new constitution created for women’s participation in politics. An exact number of female candidates is hard to estimate because some may drop out.
“We would like to see more women coming up,” Juma says.
Alice Ng’ang’a (center) is running for the Thika constituency parliamentary seat in the March elections.