New Muhoroni attacks remind us about folly of abetting rustling

The incident in Muhoroni last week whereby the chairman of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), Francis ole Kaparo, was heckled and forced to cut short his visit to the ethnic clash-torn area was unfortunate.

For starters, Kaparo is the only notable leader from outside the Luo community, whose members have been killed and displaced from their homes, to speak out against the attacks by raiders from among their Nandi neighbours.

While Mr Kaparo’s visit wouldn’t stop the attacks, it at least helped highlight the plight of the victims on national television and in the regional editions of some national newspapers.

And, didn’t it amount to asking too much of the NCIC boss to solve, by the force of his peace preaching charms alone, what was clearly a law enforcement problem?

A friend of mine who is familiar with the Songhor area told me that much of it is policed by an Administration Police post, which would ordinarily have three to four officers. An Anti-Stock Theft Unit that offered the residents a period of enhanced security was shut some years back.

With the villagers very much on their own, the area has more recently become a cattle rustlers’ playground.

From the TV footage and newspaper reports of the latest attacks, one can tell there has been inadequate police deployment to contain the raids.

Last Friday, nearly five days after news of the attacks broke, Kenya Red Cross officials were still reporting incidents of houses and sugarcane plantations being torched.

CRIMINALISE CATTLE RUSTLING

Yet even law enforcement would still only be a stop-gap measure against the cattle rustling menace in Muhoroni and other parts of the country where the practice continues to wreak havoc on human lives and private property and fuel conflicts between communities.

The long-term solution lies in practically criminalising cattle rustling, having the offenders punished under the formal criminal justice system and educating communities to discard uncivilised cultural practices.

Owing to its roots in the traditional circumcision-warrior cultures whereby new initiates were normal expected to raid neighbouring communities for livestock to prove their manhood, Kenyans tend to treat cattle rustling as a petty cultural crime adjudicated by elders.

So a man from one community who attacks the homestead of his neighbour from the other community, burns his family alive and drives away his livestock will get away with the murder, the arson and the robbery as long as he can convince the elders that he did it in his tribe’s name.

This collective abetting of serious crime is made even more absurd by the emerging reality that cattle rustling has long morphed into a thriving enterprise in which butchers in Nairobi and other major towns invest millions of shillings in.

Oh, and the land grab vultures are never far away, circling above for the spoils of war!

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