The Dark Legacy

• They were brutalised or killed by Moi’s agents and yet Wako has refused to pay compensation awarded by courts.
• The victims of Kenya’s darkest chapter won’t wait for the Truth and Reconciliation for a hearing
• How a small band of Moi agents wrote Kenya’s darkest chapter in a basement

Waweru also went through a harrowing experience with the intriguing light skinned woman.

“A brown, pretty woman speaking English and Kiswahili with a Kikuyu accent, was brought to the cell in the basement. I was brought to the open space between the toilet and the control room.

She started interrogating me in a persuasive manner urging me to confess. She fondled me, taunting me. She told me that my wife and children had been brought there but I would not be allowed to see them.

“The interrogators then came and found us talking with the brown woman. They reprimanded me and tied my testicles using rubber bands. It was very painful. In the meantime, the brown woman was burning me on my thighs, organ and scrotum with a cigarette.”

Prof Edward Oyugi remembers that he was locked up without being entered in the occurrence book at Muthangari police station. He was removed from the cells at night, blindfolded and driven around the city.

“I was later taken to Nyayo house basement cells where for about two and a half weeks I was subjected to inhuman and degrading torture.

During that time I was put in a waterlogged cell. Early one morning Opiyo paid me a visit to confirm whether I was still in the water.

Opiyo was still in his pyjamas and slippers. I got so annoyed and asked him, ‘Have you come all the way from Langata to enjoy my suffering instead of being in bed enjoying the warmth of your wife?’

“Opiyo was so stung and infuriated by my apparent insolence that he picked one of his slippers and threw it at me.”

Oyugi also recalls two women torturers threatening to circumcise him. In an attempt to break down the victims’ resistance to physical methods of torture, the torturers would sometimes use the victims to incriminate each other.

Wachira Waheire, a sales executive with a private firm, was arrested at his place of work on December 2, 1986. After being tortured for days without accepting that he was a member of Mwakenya, he was informed that the special branch already knew who had given him an oath.

He says, “I was asked whether I knew other colleagues like Mwandawiro Mghanga, Njuguna Mutonya, Njuguna Mutahi and David Murathe, among others.

When I answered in the affirmative, I was told to accept that these colleagues had recruited me and had also given me copies of Pambana and Mpatanishi.

When I maintained that that was not true, I was subjected to further beatings and burning with smouldering cigarettes. I was again submerged in the waterlogged cell for a further three days without food or drinking water.

When I was removed from the cell I was taken upstairs to a room where Murathe was being held and asked to identify him as one of those who were administering the oath. I again refused to incriminate him and was taken back to a brightly lit cell in the basement.