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Tide turns against Mungiki as welling public anger is let out
More articles on this topic: MungikiVillagers and matatu operators have in the past three weeks protested against harassment by members of the outlawed sect who have for some time been a government unto themselves.
Although they know that some of them would be killed for participating in the protests, mobs of matatu crews, armed with all manner of weapons, stormed suspected Mungiki adherents’ homes and set them ablaze.
Persistent calls by police to villagers to help them to identify the members had fallen on deaf ears. Although the matatu men know the sect members who extort money from them, they too have hitherto been unwilling to point them out to police.
Mr Ndung’u Maina, one of the matatu men who participated in the protests, said they were tired of being harassed by the sect members. “They demand money from every matatu, and those who do not pay up are either kidnapped and killed or their vehicles are carjacked,” he added. “What irked us most is that they increased the levy from Sh100 to Sh200 per vehicle.”
Paramilitary General Service Unit officers have been deployed to the area to help police to restore calm.
During the police crackdown several matatu men have also been arrested and arraigned in court on a charge of having weapons without permits. And sect members went into hiding as the protests turned violent.
It all began at Githunguri in Kiambu district on March 27 when matatu operators burnt down three houses belonging to suspected Mungiki members in a protest against the levy.
On April 17, angry Banana Hill villagers and matatu operators protesting the levy increase razed seven houses in a four-hour orgy in which several people were injured.
The protest was sparked by the disappearance of two matatu men whose vehicles were allegedly hijacked by suspected Mungiki members in Nairobi.
The next day, operators in Thika followed suit in a protest that crippled transport in the district. This was the second time in three weeks that the hunted had turned into hunters.
The sect members have for some time been demanding payment and receiving it without any challenge.
Armed with machetes, swords and rungus, the mob raided villages in Banana Hill looking for suspected Mungiki members and burning their homes. And outnumbered, the local police just watched.
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The mob even blocked fire fighters. The next day, a 27-year-old matatu man, Mr Samuel Mbugua Ngige, was hacked to death in a revenge attack by 10 men suspected to be Mungiki followers as he walked to Banana Hill from his Kiharo village home.
His assailants cornered him at a homestead he had sought refuge in and butchered him as other people watched in horror. The killers escaped.
Two matatu conductors believed to have been attacked by the same gang, were admitted to the Kiambu district hospital.
Despite a police hunt for the gang, nobody was arrested.
Mr Ngige had received death threats from people who identified themselves as Mungiki followers, and who accused him of using his vehicle to ferry under-cover police to arrest sect members.
The next day, suspected Mungiki members slashed matatu conductor George Mwangi at Gathiri village. More than 100 GSU officers have since been deployed to the area to maintain law and order, although sporadic attacks continue.
In January 2006, Kagumoini villagers in Maragwa district lynched five suspected Mungiki followers whom they accused of extorting money from matatu operators plying the Kabati, Kagundu-ini and Thika town route.
Earlier, Mungiki and rival gangs engaged in skirmishes over the control of matatu stations at Dandora and Kayole, Nairobi, resulting in several deaths.
The Kariobangi massacre of March 2002 in which more than 22 people were hacked to death is an example of how vicious the sect can be in meting out punishment to people they perceive to have disobeyed their “authority.”
And the tragedy is that police seem helpless as the matatu crews and the Mungiki confront each other.
In 2005, suspected sect members are said to have beheaded colleagues they accused of defecting, and dumped a head at a city bus station.
Nairobi area police operations chief Julius Ndegwa says the Mungiki leaders are feared and respected among the adherents, and that arresting them will cripple its operations, but this does not seem to worked in the case of Mr Maina Njenga.
Despite the leader’s arrest and confinement at the Kamiti maximum-security prison on various charges, including having an illegal firearm and drugs, the sect continues undeterred.
The Mungiki have always instilled fear by ruthlessly “punishing” people opposed to their ways. So could the protests by matt operators be the beginning of a rebellion by oppressed masses against a gang that has proved a hard nut to crack for police? Are victims of their extortion finally defying them and attempting to root them out of their lives?
The protests have all been at the Mungiki strongholds of Thika, Nairobi and Kiambu. Several people died in bloody skirmishes in Mathare early this year when the residents protested against a protection fee demanded by suspected followers.
No group apart from the Taliban, also outlawed, has publicly challenged the Mungiki without dire consequences. Mungiki gangs have taken control of matatu routes in Nairobi and parts of Central province where they daily collect the illegal fee with impunity.
They are also said to have taken over services such as water and electricity supply, levying taxes and extorting protection fees. People who resist are killed, while those who comply resign themselves to a life of servitude and exploitation.
The police headquarters in Nairobi recently established the Rhino Squad to combat the Mungiki menace in the city, but the officers seem to have failed. Instead, they are accused of arbitrarily arresting people in the pretext that they are Mungiki members and extorting money from them.
Police commissioner Hussein Ali last month set up another squad to clamp down on the sect after the first matatu protest erupted in Githunguri in March.
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