from ouko joachim omolo
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News

BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
OCAMPO SIX TAKE-3

Although Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura wants the confirmation of charges hearing against him adjourned for eight weeks, International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has opposed the move on grounds that Muthaura’s defence team led by Mr Karim Khan and other three experienced lawyers “cannot reasonably argue that they require at least eight additional weeks for the team to diligently review 102 pages” comprising four witness statements.

If what Ocampo is alleging is true that a meeting between Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, Mr Muthaura and Mungiki, held on December 30, 2007, was at State House, then President Mwai Kibiki may find himself in a big problem to have allowed a criminal meeting to take place at his residence.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo according to media reports also gives Nairobi Members’ Club as the location of a meeting held on January 3, 2008. He says that during the meeting Mr Kenyatta and Mr Muthaura enlisted the services of Mungiki leaders and concluded plans for revenge attacks in the Rift Valley.

Mr Muthaura, Uhuru Kenyatta and Mohamed Ali are required to report at The Hague from September 21 for their confirmation of charges hearings. The hearing is to determine whether Uhuru Kenyatta, Muthaura indeed planned and financed post election violence and whether they facilitated an outlawed gang, Mungiki, to carry out revenge attacks against perceived ODM supporters in Naivasha and Nakuru.

According to Ocampo however, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Muthaura met Mungiki and other pro-PNU youth to carry out “retaliatory attacks against perceived ODM supporters in the Rift Valley”.

And if what BBC report is true that Kibaki funded violence using Mungiki, then he might also be asked to go to Hague to defend himself against the allegations. BBC had published a story which says that Kibaki and members of the PNU government orchestrated and planned attacks against other tribes in the Rift Valley using the outlawed Mungiki sect.

The article says leaders of the outlawed group met with president Kibaki in state-house to receive funds for the operations in rift valley. The rampaging Mungiki killed close to 100 people in Nakuru and Naivasha during the post-election violence. A policeman and a mungiki member have been mentioned in the article confessing to the states involvement. For more detail Read The article here.

In 2006 then internal security minister John Michuki challenged members of the illegal Mungiki sect to come up with a programme beneficial to them, saying the Government, through the newly-created ministry for Youth Affairs, would be keen to rehabilitate them by supporting any programme that they might come up with.

“They should give up what they are trying to do and join the minister (for Youth Affairs) and his staff in working out programmes that would be beneficial to them in future,” Michuki was quoted to have said. He was speaking in his Kangema constituency after officially opening Gatung’ara maternity ward built using cash from the constituency development fund (CDF).

If this is true then it confirms the allegations that part of the contents of secret meetings in State House was to hire up to 20,000 Mungiki members in the Kenyan military and police forces, and give Mungiki control of bus terminuses from 2008 if he returns to power in exchange of the sect’s support during this year’s election.

This brings us to the big question as to who are these Mungiki sects. According to Free Wikipedia encyclopaedia, Mungiki is a politico-religious criminal organization group in Kenya. The name means “A united people” or “multitude” in the Kikuyu language.

According to one of Mungiki’s founders, the group began in the late 1980s as a local militia in the highlands to protect Kikuyu farmers in disputes over land with Maasai and with forces loyal to the government, which was dominated by the Kalenjin tribe at the time.

Mungiki according to encyclopaedia arguably has its roots in discontent arising from severe unemployment and landlessness arising from Kenya’s rapid population growth, with many disaffected unemployed youth attracted to an organisation giving them a sense of purpose and cultural and political identity, as well as income. It is against the background that they use the matatus (mini buses) as a springboard.

It was also alleged that in 2002, Mungiki backed losing candidates in elections and felt the wrath of the government. There have been unconfirmed allegations that Mungiki has links to both the old Kanu government and some MPs in the current government even though due to the cult’s extreme secrecy, little is known about its membership or hierarchy.

In an exclusive interview (HeadlinesAfrica) October 24, 2009, the leader of the outlawed Mungiki sect, Maina Njenga was quoted to have asked politicians and wealthy businessmen who have been funding and supporting the sect to stop it. Njenga now says his main agenda will be to destroy the sect which has been credited with wreaking havoc in parts of the country and sending shivers of fear down many Kenyans spines.

Njenga says he will transform the youths into Christians insisting that the best method is by stopping the funding. Njenga claims that politicians, some of whom are in government have been using the sect for their political mileage only to disown them later. Chris Thairu visited Njenga at his Kitengela home and filed the story.

Born in 1969, Maina Njenga who would not complete secondary school commenced his preaching to the multitudes (the Mungiki) in Nyandaura and West Likiapia on January 4, 1988. Since then Mungiki would over the years swell in numbers as Maina Njenga crisscrossed the Rift Valley and parts of Central province.

The Mungiki formed close alliances with other societies such as the Kenya Ex War Council. In line with their traditional practices they would perform purification rites. Major purification rites were carried prior to the land clashes of 1992 and 1997. Mungiki adherents have insisted that anyone who underwent this rite was not harmed during the electoral violence of those years.

Maina Njenga wass arrested in February 2006 in a dawn raid at his Ngong home.
In June 2007 he was sentenced to five years in prison, after having been found guilty for being in possession of an illegal firearm and marijuana.

In June 2008 while in jail and appealing the prison sentence, his wife Virginia Nyakio was shot and her body badly mutilated.

On April 2009 on the day of his acquittal he was rearrested and charged with the murder of thirty people that occurred while he was incarcerated. Six months later in October 2009 the State terminated the charges against him.

Former President Moi joined him at a peace rally in Eldoret last year. It is to be noted that ironically, it was under Moi’s watch that the sect was proscribed.

People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
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