How can you try to right a wrong, when you have not spoken to those who were wronged?

Elizabeth Kemunto stares blankly at the mud walls of her tiny house at a crowded Kenyan camp, where scores of families still wait for resettlement and justice four years after horrific poll unrest.

“I had a beautiful home with three rooms, a farm and a husband,” said the 55-year-old widow, who now lives in a camp for displaced people outside Nakuru, some 160 kilometers west of Kenya’s capital Nairobi.

“Despite promises and assurances by the government that I will get new land to settle on, this has not been done,” she adds, waving at the one-room shack she shares with her four children and elderly mother.

Like the rest of Kenya, Kemunto was waiting anxiously for a decision by the International Crimimal Court (ICC) on whether to confirm charges of crimes against humanity against six prominent Kenyans accused of organising the violence.

Kenya plunged into violence after the December 27, 2007 general elections with political riots turning into ethnic killings after the poll results were disputed.

Rival groups launched reprisal attacks in which homes were torched and people hacked to death in the country’s worst violence since independence in 1963.

“It was a difficult time -- my husband being a Kikuyu and I being a Kisii, we were the targeted group in Rift Valley, as Kalenjins were on the war path,” Kemunto said, referring to the different ethnic groups living in the area.

Emotion chokes her voice as she recalls hearing that her husband had been killed at home while she was away at a nearby village.

“It was the worst period of my life -- I could not get home to find out whether the bad news was true or not,” she adds, recalling how gangs of young men armed with machetes blocked roads and attacked people “without provocation.”

“It was three days before I could finally go looking for him,” she says, a search that resulted in discovering her 70-year-old husband’s mutilated remains in a heap of other bodies.

But there is also anger that almost no one has faced trial for the bloody post-election events, and disillusionment that little has been seen of promises by politicians to support those affected by the violence.

“Whatever the court’s decision, it cannot give me my husband back,” Kemunto says. “As long as I do not have him, no act can purport to give me justice,” she adds.

The Hague-based ICC announced on Jan. 23 that Kenya’s then-deputy prime minister, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, William Samoei Ruto, Francis Kirimi Muthaura, and Joshua arap Sang are to face trial over the post-election violence.

At Pipeline camp, another squalid settlement that sprung up after people were forced from their homes, 20 kilometers from Nakuru, Joyce Kamurira squeezes into a tent she shares with her three children and five grandchildren.

The 54-year-old who lost her home, livestock and farm during the violence says the ICC process is meaningless for her.

“How can you try to right a wrong, when you have not spoken to those who were wronged?” she said. “We were attacked, I watched my two neighbours who tried to come to my aid killed.”

But the fierce support for rival leaders that emerged during the violence remains: from the tent-dwelling Kamurira repeats her support for Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the country’s founding father who is listed by Forbes magazine as the 26^th richest person in Africa.

“He (Kenyatta) should not be accountable to that court,” said Kamurira, who comes from the same Kikuyu ethnic group as Kenyatta.

“He fought for us, he was the only reason we were able to flee, as otherwise we would probably all have been killed.”

As she prepared lunch for her grandchildren, Kamurira said she feared that the ICC’s confirmation of charges against the four Kenyan leaders might lead to a backlash during upcoming elections.

“Some communities might feel wronged by a confirmation of charges, which would spell doom for us during the elections,” she said.

“We are more interested in the truth, not vilification. I want to know who planned, ordered the attacks and why. Punishment is not of importance to me as I have already forgiven those who attacked me,” Kamurira added.

Sospeter Omari, a leader in Nawam displaced peoples camp, warns old rivalries between different groups have resurfaced in recent months, with campaigning beginning for elections.

“I am afraid it is going to be a case of every tribe for their person (candidate). That can be catastrophic in an election year,” he says.

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