THINGS FALL APART

President Mwai Kibaki’s Madaraka Day outburst against
the Mungiki sect was an act of escapism and hollow
bravado, geared at glossing over much deeper and wider
societal problems. Even in passing, his Madaraka Day
remarks cannot be treated with any shred of
seriousness, given the failure of his Government to
take any action on the perpetrators of the
multi-billion shilling Anglo-Leasing scam of 2004 and
equally, the failure of his Government to take action
on the criminals who caused damage to the offices and
press of the Standard Group in the high profile March
2006 raid, among just two still outstanding matters.
Two of the alleged masterminds of the Standard Group
raid, foreigners no less, continued to operate with
impunity in the country thereafter, before being
belatedly deported following another high profile
holdup at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport, yet the
president chose to insult the people of Kenya on
Madaraka Day by declaring that his Government would
not tolerate or harbour any kinds of criminal
activity. Were Anglo-Leasing and the Standard Group
raid the work of “Mungiki”?

Moreover, and tragically so, Mungiki is just part
reflection of the near absolute manner in which this
country is now overrun by marauding gangs and
murderous militia, whose actions are seldom known to
the wider public. Just before the crush of KQ 507 in
May of this year, a gang of thugs gunned down 11
people near Kitale town in inexplicable gangland
manner. This matter was quickly overshadowed by the KQ
507 plane crush, and has not been addressed since.
Incidences such as this have in any case been
happening in all parts of the country for several
years now.

Numerous militia now control and administer different
parts of the country, terrorising, maiming, stealing
and raping, and are no different from Congo based
militia such as “Intarahamwe” or “Banyamulenge” . The
security apparatus in all parts of the country have
been heavily compromised by these gangs and militia,
or are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude, in areas
where the security apparatus has resisted being
compromised. A case in point are the July 2005
killings in Marsabit district where there stands proof
of repeated memos to the central Government, both
describing a deteriorating situation and appealing for
assistance.

In areas such as Nairobi’s peri-urban Ngong division,
it is a known fact that inebriated gangs operate in
groups of up to one hundred at night and implore
residents to scream as much as they want during
break-ins. This only makes things worse, and
co-operation is often the best defence. Numerous
overwhelmed residents in areas such as Ngong have now
chosen to either sell their properties, shift, leave
their gates and main entrances open at night to lessen
the damage, or opted to pay protection money to the
gangs or militia. It is a state of futility that the
vast majority find themselves in, and it is in
extremely poor taste for President Kibaki to brush all
this aside and instead make bombastic remarks about
only part of much more serious and much wider
phenomenon.

In any case, groupings such as “Mungiki” are the
result of extreme societal chauvinism, inequality,
insensitivity and prejudice, going back several years.
They have grown from strength to strength, fueled by
society’s failure to adapt to changing times and
changing realities. The terms in generous use at the
moment, such as “crush Mungiki” and “deal with Mungiki
once and for all” are in themselves a grim and sordid
reflection of how detached we are from reality.
“Mungiki” and other similar groupings, are the Kenyan
equivalent of organised crime elsewhere in the world,
such as the Sicilian Mafia, the Italian Mafia, the
Mafia in America (“The Mob”), “Commora”, the Russian
Mafia and “Yakuza” in Japan. These are powerful and
lethal organisations with wide and far reaching
tentacles. If the American and Italian Governments
have been unable to “crush the Mafia” and/or “deal
with the Mafia once and for all”, it is futile for
President Kibaki to declare that he will squarely deal
with “Mungiki”.

The line between organised crime, big business and
Government is in any case extremely blurred. One of
the most celebrated cases of this involves the high
profile Kennedy dynasty in America. The Mob played a
key role in the fortune that family patriarch
Ambassador Joseph Kennedy made in the motion picture
industry in Hollywood. Ambassador Kennedy also got
heavy support from The Mob in the 1960 election
victory of his son, former President John F. Kennedy.
It doesn’t stop there. Despite the Warren Commission’s
dismissal of a conspiracy in the assassination of
President Kennedy and the ridiculous adoption by the
same commission of the zigzag trajectory of the bullet
that eventually killed Kennedy, a strong conspiracy
theory of the Mafia’s role in the assassination still
looms, the motive being that Kennedy had made up his
mind to bring down the Mafia. What’s more is that
Kennedy shared a mistress, Judith Exner, with then
Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, and Judith was said
to be one of the key moles that the Mafia had in the
White House. Besides, the Zapruder tape taken by an
amateur cameraman on the day of Kennedy’s
assassination, 22nd November 1963, clearly shows a
clear shot to Kennedy’s head, the work of a high
calibre rifle even by today’s standards, and certainly
the work of a professional hitman. There is no
comparison whatsoever between Ronald Reagan’s
attempted assassination in 1981, and John F. Kennedy’s
assassination of 1963. Many of us reacted with
scornful disbelief when the Kenya Government initially
suggested that former Foreign Affairs Minister Robert
Ouko had committed suicide following his February 1990
demise, and it is clearly not just the Kenya
Government that goofs. One would expect much better
from any American Government. What’s more is that John
F. Kennedy’s younger brother, Senator Robert F.
Kennedy, was known to have even less patience for The
Mob, and had to be stopped even before he became
president.

Another example of the large presence of organised
crime in society, is the intrigue surrounding the
sudden unexpected death of Pope John Paul I in 1978,
as captured in David Yallop’s bestseller “In God’s
Name”. In the said David Yallop classic, one detects a
determined effort by Albino Luciano (Pope John Paul
I), to rid the Vatican of any Mafia connections and
dealings, such as Paul Marcinkus (“God’s Banker”), and
collapsed Italian bank, “Banco Ambrosiano”. Pope John
Paul I paid for this with his life, and Churches in
Kenya have no idea what they are talking about when
they tell the Kenya Government to immediately crush
“Mungiki”.

Comparisons of “Mungiki” with the Sicilian Mafia or
the American Mafia do not however start and end there,
and this is probably where our greater concern should
lie. “Mungiki” clearly also has far-left political
leanings and can in this respect be also compared to
radical organisations such as “Hezbollah”, “Hamas”,
“Taliban”, “Tupac Amaru”, “Fatah al-Islam”, “Abu
Sayyaf” and “Black September”. “Mungiki” therefore has
the combined features of an organised crime outfit
such as the Sicilian Mafia, as well left wing rebels
with a political cause, such as “Black September”, and
it is very unfortunate that we have chosen to ignore
this.

President Kibaki, his Government and indeed all us,
should therefore desist from using terms like “crush”
because we are clearly dealing with phenomenon that we
are little aware. We shall rather engage the likes of
“Mungiki” in “talks” and “discussions”, in the same
way that the Israelis engaged the Palestinian
Liberation Organisation (PLO), and in the same way
that the Colombian Government engaged the Colombian
drug cartels, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellin
cartel. “Mungiki” is not a fairy tale, but grim
reality that can tear this country apart in ways that
we never imagined. Half of this country is under the
siege of “Mungiki” type militia and the other half has
put it’s money into collapsing pyramid schemes, and
the best that President Kibaki can offer are hollow
threats and a disputable 6.1 % growth rate. This
country is in a terrible crisis and we are not helping
matters by living in denial.

On Valentine’s Day 1929, another high profile, well
known and ruthless Chicago mobster, Al Capone, ordered
high profile executions on a rival gang, in what has
come to be known as “The St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre”, and what certainly ranks as one of the most
brutal warnings and statements of intent of all time.
“Mungiki” has done precisely this with it’s recent
beheadings and none of us should make things worse by
further provoking them.