Kenyans! The Killing season is here… (get away with murder.)

26 people were massacred last night. They were lured out at 2.am in the morning by a neighbours burning house. Unknown to them, the occupants of the house were dead and burning with the house, and that the Mungiki sect members who had killed the occupants lay in wait for those who responded. The Mungiki then pounced on those who responded and hacked 26 to death with machetes and axes. As I write this, I have just witnessed the dead and the living in that village; the dead were dead, bloody, and scattered all over the place (bringing to mind the Rwandan Genocide) and from how things looked, these people died the most painful deaths. The living were scared to the bone, crying, and mourning, and looked hopeless.

Over the past week, members from this very village had ganged up and killed 15 suspected Mungiki members. They went round, dragged these members from their houses, and killed them in the most ruthless of ways. Some were hacked to death and the rest were burned. As I watched this unfold, I was too aware of what would unfold next. One, I understood that the police were doing nothing, and that more deaths were in the offing. Two, I knew that the Mungiki retaliation was a matter of when and not if, and given their killing expertise and the impunity that they have enjoyed lately, I feared that they would kill by the dozen. They did, and those mourning are bound to regroup after burials, and the cycle of violence will continue.

I wrote “it is a time to kill or get killed” a while back, and one person insulted me and accused me of complaining too much. I had written about the way murder is becoming the easiest crime to get away with in Kenya but people did not want to hear any of it. Another comment on the same blog post but republished by Storymoja Africa said that I was a bit radical (though he understood where I was coming from.) But I now dare tell you that the all the extrajudicial deaths around the country, not just by the police but also by mob justices, the Mungiki, robbers etc. were leading to this moment, the killing season. Yes, the killing season is here and for how long is now the question.

40 people have died in the past week and in two adjacent villages alone and here is what happened.

The Mungiki sect set up shop in this village as they have in many other villages in Central Kenya and some parts of Nairobi and even in Nakuru. After setting up their operations in this village, they started charging “taxes,” (protection money) which is in effect protecting you from them since those who fail to pay are beheaded. People were being charged daily fees just for living in ones house among other ridiculous charges. People can only be oppressed for so long, and as Booker T. Washington once said, “a man will only ride on your back if it is bent.” The men in these villages, having ran out of patience with the sect and the police too who had failed to protect them from this sect, decided to take matters into their own hands. They searched for members of this sect and butchered them in broad daylight. And as I earlier stated, retaliations from this dreaded sect was only a matter time.

If I were the police, I would have anticipated these retaliations and would have gone ahead to take measures to mitigate them. I would have requested for more police patrols in the area and even brought in help from other stations if capacity was the issue. I would imposed a curfew if need be, and I assure you that 26 people would not have been butchered under my watch. And here is the thing, when people are being hacked with machetes, they scream, and I do not get how the police can miss that. If I were the police, I should have in the first place known that the Mungiki were running a parallel Government in this village and would have prevented this eventual catastrophe that is bound to travel across the country. If I were the police, I would be smarter about eliminating the Mungiki sect once and for all, which to me means removing those who fund it, those who organize its operations across the country, and later, as the chips fall, the foot soldiers. Merely looking for any suspected Mungiki adherent in the streets and executing them in the woods only adds insult to injury, and makes it difficult for the few good cops who are trying to do things eight to do their jobs.

But I am not the police, and the police did not do any of the above, and as a result, 40 people are dead. The police have failed.

I wrote last year at the cycle that propagates crime in this country Impunity in Kenya and which has led desperate people to be murderers. You see, and as I wrote then, when people who ought to be arrested are let loose because they bribed the arresting cops, the community uses mob justice to deal with them. When people are convicted and later on make escape plans in cohorts with warders, for a fee, the community uses mob justice to weed these convicts out. When the police arrest someone they believe to be guilty but he either pays the Judiciary and walks or walks on a technicality, the police find executing of these suspects a more effective way of administering justice. When the same police and warders do not earn enough in a month to even feed their children, all the above become acceptable, for that extra fee, money that will enable a man feel like a father to his kids and as a husband to his wives. Some even abandoned police work completely to go into better paying jobs, robbery, kidnapping for ransom, assassins for hire etc.

You would think I am talking about Somalia, but I am talking about Kenya. That is the extent of failure in our systems and the chaos and anarchy that naturally follows has already started.

People would not organize themselves to kill the Mungiki sect members if the police were doing their jobs, and the Government protecting its people. People would not be subjected to double taxation – to both the Government and to the Mungiki sect if we indeed had a functioning government. But the government is acting as if this thing cannot be curbed. Those in charge are talking in ways that suggest that this thing is beyond them to curb. And that is the dilemma that one faces when the very sect you financed for political mileage needs to be brought to book. The sect just as well as you actually know that neither has the moral authority to check the other for neither are holier than thou. That is what I believe to be the reason that this sect has gained so much prominence in the country. And with that, I feel I can assertively ask; are these the kind of jobs that the President promised Kenyans since this group has grown exponentially after he came to power?

And now that the Internal Security Minister is talking tough and heading to the place where the massacre took place, I am reminded of the phrase we used to say in campus when playing rugby – “shining after the whistle.” We used this to refer to those players who produced their best moves after the final whistle was blown, when it helped nobody. And our cops and the internal security Minister are masters of shining after the whistle, when the dead are getting ready to be buried.

Even as I leave you to ponder on the above, death is in the air. 15 sect members were killed, and the sect retaliated by killing 26 villagers. And I am positive that the remaining villages are now planning another counter attack on the sect, with greater casualties. And as with all wars, this is bound to escalate. Those killed are miles away from where I am typing from, but even so, emulating Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemoller, a German protestant pastor who wrote the timeless words below while imprisoned by the Hitler regime, I must write this blog and all the disturbing content herein for as he then wrote,

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Now put that in future tense. It is only a matter of time before Mungiki demand to Govern the country. They have already come for those in central province and every other place that they have set up base, and I dare rise and speak for them so that there can be someone to speak for me too when they come for me. And I will be damned if I do not speak out against it and against the cops and politicians who have never understood the sanctity of human lives. These guys are growing in number and are running villages and towns like Government. Where is the Government? Who is the Government?