Kenya - class war not tribal war ?

Another news report from Kenya draws attention to the other aspects of the unrest that cannot be described as simply tribalism .

...Many factors contributed to the violence — frustration over poverty and corruption, ethnic rivalries exploited by politicians, criminal gangs and competition over land — but most of all the feeling of Kenya's poor that Kibaki's much-touted economic boom is passing them by.

"We are the weak," complains 25-year-old Owino in the gloom of his tiny shack where Odinga stares down from a poster on the wall. Owino has dog-eared dictionaries and books on philosophy to read by the light of a gas lantern. He dreams of going to college but knows he can never afford the fees. "We work harder than a donkey but we can never be rich," he says..."We are not fighting Kikuyus, we are fighting the government," he insists, as rain turns the mud and sewage to sludge outside his door. "They were not for change, they were for the status quo." ...Owino occasionally makes $6 a day as a construction worker, and lives in a slum so violent it's nicknamed Baghdad. "Kibaki gave us promises but they ended up in dust," Owino said. "Now they want calm. What about justice?"

...When Steve Maina finishes a round of golf at Kenya's exclusive Windsor club, a waistcoated waiter hurries over with a tall iced drink while armed guards watch discreetly from the shrubbery, a few minutes' drive from one of Nairobi's oldest slums..."The election campaigns implied it would be like a light switch: You move out of the slums overnight, you'll be driving a car," says Maina, 38, his gold wedding ring flashing as his golf ball sails through the air. By the sculpted lake at the Windsor, which costs nearly $5,000 to join, Maina's friends swap tales of previously friendly neighbors who forced Kikuyus out of homes and tried to take over businesses. In the west of the country, which has seen the worst violence, his golfing partner's hairdresser had her salon taken over by neighbor from another tribe and another friend forced from her home because she was Kikuyu. "People were expecting to take over property," said Maina, who employs five people to look after his own home. "Instead of saying why don't we create more of that wealth, they want to grab it and distribute it. I was worried this could turn into a class war."
...Maina, an executive with a private medical firm, insists that he has never been helped by his tribe or government connections. No one is stopping anyone else from making money, Maina points out. He says he takes his own children into the slums to help on a church project supporting a school. "We work our butts off. Many hours, over the weekend, at night you are on that laptop," he says to nods of agreement from friends. "The violence will subside, but the injustice will remain, and if those injustices are not addressed, we will be back here again," he says sadly. "The election gave them (the poor) a sense of hope and it was taken away."