APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 84 84 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL in the process try to predict what color of cow or camel they have stolen. Thus youths act as perpetuators of certain violent cultural practices with the blessing of their communities and in the name of ensuring the community’s survival.34 Power elites have been blamed for abusing vulnerable, generally poor, misinformed youths, and even those plagued by diseases and other conditions. In doing so, they prevent the nation’s young from fully realizing their potential. In fact, 92 percent of respondents indicated that the main challenge they faced was unemployment, 87 percent said poverty, and 83 percent identified police harassment. People in such situations are vulnerable to manipulation by those with more power and resources. Articulators of Community Grievances During the 2007 campaign, politicians formed ethnic-based organizations and mobilized resources with community associations and businesspeople to generate and support youth involvement. This included indoctrination against other ethnic groups, creating a confrontational environment that made it acceptable to avenge past injustices. Sixty-seven percent of all respondents interviewed chose to see themselves (youths) in the role of ‘articulator’ of society’s feelings and frustrations, thus justifying violence in the name of protecting their communities’ interests. In reality, however, they were taking instructions from elites to further the latter’s selfish attainment of political power. The youths who saw themselves as definers of their ethnic group propagated the hate speech of politicians, accepted ethnic stereotypes, and believed the political propaganda aimed at them, all of which was geared toward agitating them to intimidate members of the opposing political parties and ethnic groups aligned with other camps. According to a Nairobi Peace Initiative (NPI)–Africa survey in 2009, two categories of youths (that is, secondary- and college-level graduates) have suffered the brunt of exclusionary policies (such as omission from decision making and governance), limited access to public information targeting them and to public sector jobs, and sporadic arrests of unemployed youths by the police.35 From 2000 to 2005, some quarter of a million (241,492) people had completed either a primary- or secondary- and college-level education, with close to 1 million (959,599) ready to enter the labor market with an aggregate grade below C-plus.36 This category of youth faces high levels of unemployment due to their weak academic credentials, making them vulnerable to abuse by those willing to provide them with money or other basic means of survival. The survey found that the majority of those who participated in heinous acts of post-election violence 34. Community Initiative Facilitation and Assistance, ‘The conflict analysis situation of the Upper Eastern in Kenya report, 2010’, Marsabit, Kenya, 2010, 19. 35. Nairobi Peace Initiative–Africa, ‘A review of challenges faced by Kenyan youth: Peace agenda in youth development’, Nairobi, 2009, 10–35. 36. ‘Transformation of higher education and training in Kenya to secure Kenya’s development in the knowledge economy: Report of the Public Universities Inspection Board’, Nairobi, 2006, 23. A C-plus at the high school level is a fair performance and the minimum required for going on to public universities. The universities do not, however, have the capacity to absorb all who have attained this grade, so they in reality require a B-plus, thus excluding some potential students who might end up being exposed to vulnerabilities, in particular joblessness.