Mob ‘justice’ a blot on our conscience

What was he thinking, I have often wondered, during those last moments of his life? What went through his mind as his breath became laboured, as he tasted his own blood? As his rib cage was crushed under the weight of motorcycles, did he feel betrayed, let down?

On a humid evening in February 2012, in an obscure village in Malindi, the life of this man, let us call him Juma, came to a cruel and brutal end. Walking home at around 8 o’clock, somebody yelled “Thief!” and pointed in his general direction. Seemingly out of nowhere, a crowd materialised and before long he was dead, kicked, stoned, hacked, run over and over by motorcycles, his body disfigured, almost unrecognisable.

Slain, for the alleged crime of stealing something no one could say for certain; a bike or a stove, it mattered not. Killed, on a dusty road like a stray dog, absent emotion or reflection. Executed by a mob of his peers, by a society that equates mob savagery to mob justice.

Juma is, unfortunately, not alone. While specific data on the so-called “mob justice” cases is scarce, unofficial statistics compiled from media reports found that between 1996 and 2013, more than 1,500 persons were executed by a mob. In the 2011 Crime Report, the National Police Service captured — for the first and only time — “mob justice” as an independent category of crime, with 543 people killed that year.

Consider the number — 543 completely avoidable deaths — for a moment. That is an average of 1.5 people a day. If anything else had such a death rate, it would be declared a national disaster.

If a prescription drug killed one person a day, the manufacturer would long be in jail. Put another way, we lost about half the number of people killed in the 2007/2008 post-election violence in 2011 alone. And in the first seven months of 2013, 335 people were reportedly killed by a mob. You need no weatherman to tell you which way this particular wind is blowing.

Yet when one is killed in an almost ritualistic fashion by a mob hypnotised by its own savagery, this is dismissed as “mob justice”; tragic, yes, but no more avoidable than a lightning strike. It becomes acceptable that a mob made up of frustrated roadside individuals can dispense “justice”. It becomes commonplace to see individuals accuse, detain, judge, and execute others — and in the most cruel way.

And once these “patriots” have done their civic duty, the police assume their role as professional body collectors, perhaps relieved that they will not be accused of killing this one. The media relegates the savagery to a painfully brief “News Roundup from the Counties” segment, if they report it at all. Meanwhile, the civil society — our self-proclaimed human rights advocates — is either ignorant of the violence or indifferent. Better to wait for a high-profile extrajudicial killing by the police; that will certainly attract the donors.

Mob justice problem is, of course, not unique to Kenya. It happens throughout most of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Here in Kenya, if you get caught stealing — or are even suspected or mistaken for someone who has — you will be killed.

If you accidentally hit and kill someone on the road, you and your vehicle will go up in flames. And if your hair turns gray in some rural parts of Kenya, dye your hair black or they will come for you for “witchcraft”.

So, why does this problem continue undeterred? Research into Uganda’s mob justice problem identified as its root cause the tension resulting from frustrations about poverty, unemployment, and a failing justice system.

Here in Kenya however, a weak and unreliable justice system as a cause for mob justice seems inconsistent with the judicial and police reforms that have characterised the post-2010 constitutional dispensation. Yet there could be no greater testament to the inadequacies of our justice system than the prevalence of mob justice.

Notwithstanding the reasons and justifications for mob justice, one thing remains clear: there is something profoundly wrong with a society that considers as unremarkable the systematic and ceremonious execution of suspected criminals, “witchdoctors”, or innocent bystanders.

Why we continue to refer to these killings — different from Islamic State executions only in justification — as “mob justice” defies logic. Why it does not shock our national conscience or activate our individual disgust stretches the imagination.

Mr Wainaina is a student of international relations at Maseno University. [email protected]