Mungiki: Kenya's growing crisis

The story of the virtual take over of rural communities in central Kenya by the Mungiki is one of injustice, resistance and the vilest atrocities.

In a journey of a week, the Nation followed the route of expansion of the sect and heard stories of unmentionable horror, of atrocities committed by the criminal sect and those who have risen against it.

In Maragua, Mukurweini, Othaya, Mathira and other places, Mungiki has grown in the last 10 years in leaps and bounds, taking over communities and subjecting them to the worst economic and the most inhuman violation.

And villagers, suffering in shamed silence, exploited through illegal taxes and extortion, humiliated by the rape of their womenfolk and mindless violence, are boiling with rage.

Mobs of vigilantes are responding to the Mungiki with as much violence and barbarity as those of the sect itself.

Caught between the two is the government, speaking in careful platitudes but stopping short of decisive action.

Local politicians also appear not quite clear where the danger lies: Is it in the Mungiki, extorting protection fees on villagers, murdering and viciously brutalising those who do not bend to its will, or is it in the band of vigilantes and their public executions?

In Kirinyaga, public displays of heartless murder and Mungiki hunts have been elevated to a communal sport, similar to the public beheadings of the Middle Ages.

For years, the Mungiki have held sway in the area, but it now seems they have met their match in vicious vigilante groups, whose enthusiasm with the machete and the garrote are every bit as vicious as those of the criminal sect.

The vigilantes of Kirinyaga are likening their uprising against the Mungiki to the Mau Mau liberation of the 1950s.

In the beginning, a suspect would be arrested and taken for trial at the vigilante Kangaroo court — popularly known as The Hague, in Kamuiru, a village between Baricho and Kagumo trading centres.

“We are still executing them, but we are using a different method now,” a vigilante leader told the Nation, but declined to elaborate.

The ‘different methods’ he referred to are an even more chilling version of their “justice” system. Unlike in the past when the whole village would come to witness the execution of a suspect, nowadays this is done in secret, and in the dead of the night.

In the days gone by, according to the vigilante leader, a suspect would be given the chance to call at least three witnesses in his defence.

And once he was found guilty, he would be allowed three choices on how to die: be hacked to pieces, be burnt alive, or be given a rope to hang himself.