Nobody I know has ever seen cats fuck. Once, as a child, I thought I saw our pet cat at it with a stray but it ‘all happened so fast’ I am unsure whether it wasn’t a product of my at times hyperactive imagination. It seems a phenomenon only known to nature and the participating felines.
You will hear them moan at night though. They congregate outside your window in the deep of the night. And they moan. So loud sometimes that you think it’s a band of crying infants. But you almost never ever see them do it. By the time the flashlight beam hits their romp, probably a groupie, the female is nowhere to be seen. The male glares at you, embarrassed. Planning your death. You cockblocker! For half a minute you two stare each other down until he decides you are not worth it and runs off to restart the courtship you just ruined. If indeed my informal analysis result that no one has ever seen cats at it is credible, is there something we don’t know? They come together to come. You feed them yes, but you are not invited. not to this party anyway. Walk away and pretend you didn’t just see the snail trails being left on your couch. Just turn and go. You are not invited to these orgies, all you are expected to be is silent and permissive. Ask no questions, make no testimonies, and all shall bewell with your soul. Life, I mean. But at the back of mind you know what’s going on, the noises are graphic, as is the evidence of claws where erotic scratches were made yesternight. You know it, your neighbor who gave you the kitten knows it. The dog knows it too, and he is traumatized. All of you are witnesses to a horrendous crime of nature and victims of not-so-subtle threats by a guy with whiskers.
I engaged an invisible friend into a conversation about recently.
YOLO!
Unless you are a cat, of course.
Hehe, are you?
Maybe, Maybe not. The theory of parallel universes gives space for such a possibility as me having fur, whiskers, and a soft threatening purr.
Depends on where those whiskers are!
Why? Does that change my species or just what specific feline I am?
Makes you an interbreed.
Sounds like a bore, an interbreed. Have you ever seen cats fuck?
I have not, why?
Because, they are mammals. They must shag sometimes. But almost no one has ever seen it happen.
True, nobody knows.
I think cats kill off all the witnesses.
Or turn them into other cats?
Or clean out their memories.
The threats are delivered by those intriguing cat eyes. They scare the hell out of you and incase your light is ever faster than a female feline fleeing from a fuck feast, your fate is no longer yours. Those cats will most definitely murder you. Or wipe out your memory. Or eat your children. Or make you clean after the kittens that result after the romp. You are a slave. Your master is much smaller than you, much weaker than you, owns less than you do, has nothing on you except eight lives more. You are a pawn in the cat’s procreation activities and it owns you. As your master it makes you pay for everything, including the STIs it might contract during the mating seasons. Feed me, it meows. Feed me and don’t you forget who your pimp be! Also, I pooped earlier and threw up behind the couch, your favorite couch, would you be a darling as to clean those excreta up? No? How about if I promise to kill you, and the dog? Yes? Good boy, good. Meow. You see things. You hear things. You elect things. You vomit things. You complain things. You Witness things. You should never talk about them, if history is any lead. Your cat is planning to kill you. That has never been in question.
Talking about things one does not see until the next morning, thieves broke into the supermarket on the ground floor of my apartment building the other day. Three thieves, scrawny young men, or at least as I imagine it.
Our robber antagonists were after the money of course, the millions stored in a safe within the premises. They chose Sunday, the day in the week when all the cash collected over the weekend is stored in the safe. So our thieves were sharp, and lucky. A thief thieves, right? But these guys were not done just yet…
After cleaning the safe, they went downstairs and raided the cake and pastries aisles. They ransacked all the food aisles, leaving behind a telling tale of a man in a nipple factory. They helped themselves to delicacies galore, carrying very little and eating most of it there and then. Of course they drank soda and juice, almost half a bottle of each. Only one soda was missing from the fridge. It seems that ice cold drinks are not a thief’s drink of choice.
I can see why. Imagine trying to combine a heightened adrenaline rush with the feeling of an ice cold drink. Brain Freeze! Unless of course they drank the cold sodas and then replaced them with the others on the aisles. So the supermarket would have enough cold stock in the morning. When gentlemen were thieves.
Anyway, they ate. Stole and ate. Pooped too.
There was a mound of shit in the office the next morning. Several hours old, already past rigor mortis. And stinking. Stinking as the distinctive smell of a well-preserved colon of pooh can be. It was right there in the open. Just one mound, apparently only one guy had the urge to take a dump in the middle of a heist.
I know it smelt because when I heard the story two days later and (still) went to shop there, I could still smell it. I think it was in my head, but I smelt it all right.
I looked at the manager with a pitiful face. His, not mine. I wondered what he must have gone through the morning after. Even after you have wiped away the physical evidence, and sprayed several cans of air freshner (because it is a supermarket, I imagine you spare no expense), you still know that it was there. So, you have to work inside there long before your brain has enough distractions to forget that there was excreta atop your table or floor some hours prior. Yet you must, like a general who strolls into a war zone the day after the armistice. Or a president visiting ground zero. If they bomb the president’s house while he is away, he has to visit as soon as that shit is in control-pun wholly intended-to convince the populace that he is hurt but not conquered. That work must continue.
Well, there are objective thieves, and then others poop in your office. Poop as a weapon of psychological intimidation. Like when we replaced the loaves of bread in our school dining hall with poop. We, because when it came to paying for the damages caused during the strike, we all had to pay for it. Poopers and non-poopers. The distinction was never made.
What damage can a comprehensive mound of excreta do to a stainless steel sufuria? Or rather, what damage that a good disinfect, a prayer, more disinfectant, and handing said sufuria to a neighbor, not do?
They never bought new sufurias. The phantom poopers were never caught. They left a ‘series of smelly situations’ and got away with it; we paid the price.
Neither were our three thieves of whom only one felt the dire need to take a dump right there in the supermarket manager’s office. Imagine the giggle. How genius the idea instigator felt.
“Man, we should raise the stakes and poop somewhere in this supermarket.”
“(Giggling) IKR? Waaaah! We so should. Thief #3, do you feel like taking a dump?”
“Guys, how do I always end up being the kinetic energy for your insanities”
“Don’t be a party pooper #3, you lost at truth or dare last night, remember?
“Consider this a dare.”
“But what if I don’t feel like dumping right now?”
“Its okay, we can wait a few hours, eat a few more cakes, maybe make alien messages with the rice.”
“Until the urge comes of course, there’s tissue here too by the way”
“Please guys, let’s not poop in the supermarket, what if they do those CSI things and my pooping ass is hauled in jail where big burly guys with lice colonies make me a pipe shitter?”
“CSI shit don’t work in here. Plus we’ll pour salt on it to burn off your DNA…”
“Okay, just let me choose the spot, okay?”
There was the other time we filed to one of the bathrooms to study a mound that had been left on the edge of the toilet bowl. It wasn’t a normal mound.
Picture a log of wood. A very wide and large log, like one you would use for a support column. Placed from the edge of the toilet bowl towards the door, as I reconstructed the grime scene then. It doesn’t make sense for the log to be placed from the door towards the bowl, there is no logical explanation for that. For the former, however, Newton must’ve been on point! A propulsion! The very very very large and wide log being dumped propelled its owner in such a way that he took off like a witch on a broomstick. Or Quidditch players.
The mere circumference attracted an audience. It was a concerned audience; so much so that had the logistics of forcibly helping the victim, we would have subjected each other to a stinky strip search. The phantom pooper who might have needed reconstructive surgery was never found.
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For thousands of years, mammalian males have been accused of their obsession with the nipples. Or rather breasts. Thousands of years ago men spent time carving such shapes into the cave walls, and thousands of years later a man hunting for writing inspiration etches a similar, albeit more wordy, thingy on the same. Oh how evolution changes us not.
There are those blessed with a third nipple, a supernumerary nipple about which some drunk deity laughs his ass off whenever he thinks of how men must suffer. A rookie deity who experimented too much when the master was not looking. His evil laugh, emanating from the bowels as he sits on a bar stool in Olympus looking for happy thoughts. He thinks of that supernumerary nipple, that third nipple whose presence can change a steamy quickie into a scientific discussion about the merits and demerits, and likely causes of.
Yours truly has never encountered the supernumerary nipple on a member of the opposite sex…at least not yet. Being a heterosexual male then, and having only seen said nipple on a fellow male, compounds everything. It was a long time ago, in high school, when a fellow student walking around sans shirt or shame happened to have one nipple too many. One was curious; it is not always that people openly confess to being in possession of excess blessings. Often, as is the norm, one is advised early in life to, quote unquote, hide that shit!
The awkward discussion after was informed by a sense of innocence about the sexuality constitution and the implied Bro Code. One never touched it, but one did wonder whether it did work like a run-of-the-mill nipple. One did ask whether he could feel it though, but the owner was selfish, or figured that an awkward silence would follow one’s ‘scientific experiment.’ But then one wonders, how many people does one encounter everyday who are hiding a third Pointy of God underneath their blouses, bras, funny clothes with no name yet, and personalities? How many of one’s friends secretly spot a third nipple that they can never talk about? Because others might be jealous…
Still though, to be human is to be curious. The observer must wonder, does it work? Is it responsive to changes in say, temperature? Or touch? If another touches it, does it, uuuuuurrrrmmm, follow the touching surface? If one owns one, can it be included in an encounter of whips and nipple rings? Is it safe to eat? The answers to such questions are complex and oft, baffling.
Why would a Google search of supernumerary nipples yield so much vitriol about the oddity? An innocent gift from a generous, nipple-rich deity? With medical journals referring to it as a ‘congenital malformation.’ Such negativity. A good scientist did take the time to tell us that not all third nipples are third nipples. They form along something called the embryonic milk line that oddly sounds like a milk plant run by embryos-get them early and helpless huh, capitalism? Some third nipples are the real deal, nipple with glandular breast tissue, areola and the everything! Imagine that, two is already a handful, or mouthful, depending on the tool of choice, but three? Three can make one a believer in a higher power who gifts to those who use what they have been given well.
But on the structural integrity of nature’s gorgeous architecture, perhaps the deities should have decided on a single structure for all nipples. Something like how it is the norm to have the eyes above the nose. So whenever you look at someone, you know what to expect.
To feel around another’s nipples without first seeing them is to play Russian Roulette with one’s sanity. Believe it. Try it. It is akin to opening a gift on one’s birthday, that moment of uncertainty where one thinks of the many possibilities of what could fit in such a small, or big bra…box, in context.
Could it be a sunken valley? A plateau maybe? A small hill on a mountain complete with a hillcrest? A mountain? A mushroom? How does it stand relative to gravity? What oddity has nature blessed this person with? If we open this box, will we find two nipples, first, and if yes, of what structure? Oh wait, three? Forget about the structure; forget about the wine, we now have a conversation starter.
It is no longer politically correct to ask why men have nipples because they are not really nipples, and yes, you may play with them honey. They are ticklish; perhaps a sign of that chromosomal X, but one does not know why one still has them. No, they are not proof that evolution as a process has gone to the dogs, and no, you may not ask me whether all men are actually women with pointy genitals.
But please let one play with yours, because what the good deities saw it fit to make vestigial in one, they made very alluring in you. The very essence upon which life is sucked, literally, the pinnacle that makes a mere mound of fat become the ruin of many a man, and woman. That one place where direction can be obtained, the pointed end of a plump and perky hill on a mountain. If you have another, allow one. At least, for all religions do teach altruism, and within that volcano lies the lavas of the very essence of life. Delectable.
Based on mentioned medical description, when third nipples are cool again, as one imagines they once were, please remember that a patch of hair is not an extra nipple. It might look like one and probably excite your bedroom shenanigans but it is not something you should be proud of. Shave it.
If you have an actual third nipple though, come sit with one. Let’s engage in banter about it even, about whether it can be described as one of ‘little hard dagger-points’ or throbbing, does it throb and become taut? Forgive one when one introduces you to others as ‘this is one’s friend Sue and Sue (So and So is colorless) and she has a third nipple.’ Because unless it is a sign of some other disease for which the symptoms are halitosis and very stinky flatulence, friends a third nipple shall get thee.
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Prison is a shitty place. In fact, let us rephrase that, next to hell for theists, prison is the worst place you can ever be. There is always something trying to kill you, suck your life and blood or sodomize you, if not all three. If you do survive all that, the government is waiting just outside to execute you or drag you back to the cholera cells. So one can understand why Kenya’s 101 prisons have seen more than a few escapes and attempts. In fact, any prisoner who is not thinking of escaping ought to be released! Or have a mountain named after him, like one of these guys…
#7 Naivasha Maximum Prison
As one of the country’s maximum-security prisons, Naivasha GK Lice Prison has seen more than its fair share of successful prison escapes. Its most notorious record prisoner hemorrhage to date was the escape of 28 prisoners on April 21, 2004. Two dozen plus prisoners simply vanished from the prison-some reappear on a later entry on this list. It is like the prison guards weren’t even trying.
The government, ever eager to pass the blame, thought so too and quickly blamed ‘inadequate staff and laxity of prison warders.’ We don’t know that much about how the labor system works but of course 300 worker bees will appear lax if they are doing the work of a hive of 900. But who are we to judge the government, the government knows. We will move on now.
After the December 2007 escape of seven death row inmates, the opposition party at the time, ODM, claimed that the government had deliberately assisted the prisoners to escape to assassinate top ODM leaders. The news of the escape quickly faded from the public limelight as we started cutting and torching each other while digging into our tribal cocoons. If ever there was a group of prisoners to benefit from a Force Majeure then it must be the Naivasha 6. What was that? The PEV was not an Act of God? I thought the deity was to be blamed for everything, being omniscient and all…
#6 Kamiti Prison (mostly attempts)
It is perhaps not surprising that there are very few, if any, successful escapes from Kenya’s most secure and most notorious prison. If Jonah Anguka and John Kiriamiti are to be believed, Kamiti is actually worse than you think it is. Go on take a minute; imagine how horrendous life must be in Kamiti prison. Now, multiply that by the largest figure you can come up with and then divide that by the number of lice colonies you think you can sustain during a life sentence. If your worst nightmare does not include some big burly prisoner making you his ‘mtoto’ then you are not thinking of living within the walls of Kamiti.
Almost there…
One of the first reported attempts to escape from the place where lice has more freedom than men was in February 2000. Eleven years later, on September 21st 2011, six inmates also tried to escape by cutting the metal grills in their cells. They had already exited the cells when a warder spotted them. The cockbocking warder-a crude analogy given the prison context-was most likely rewarded by a pat on the back. The Kamiti 6 are still the laziest group of prisoners on any list of prison escapes in Kenya-they had figured out how to get out of their cells but had no idea about how to exit the compound. You can imagine the walk of shame back to the sodomy cells.
There is the small issue of whether prison escapes from Kamiti have been hidden from the public eye. One example is the case of three Langata Road execution victims. Remember the front-page images of a Flying Squad cop executing three men who had surrendered and were lying on the road in broad daylight? The one that was a national outrage for all of two minutes before we quickly reverted back to our usual apathy and showing justice the [[midfing]]? Well, there was a deeper story, one of the men was supposed to be in remand at Kamiti and the other two had been released only halfway into their sentences. Hussein Gichuki Mwangi (Ochuka), the ringleader, had been sentenced to death while the other two Hezron Mwangi and Paul Njomo, had been sent to the slammer for seven years each for robbing ‘Kenyan tycoon and politician’ Cyrus Jirongo of jewelry worth KES 750, 000 in 2004. Gichuki’s appeal had yielded a retrial but he was not released on bond-he was expected to be in prison but had presumably levitated out of a maximum prison and back into the crime world.
The Tana River escape was the center of one of the latest prison escapes. In it, three serial killers charged with over 38 murders escaped from their prison cells at the standard hour for prison escapes-3.00 am.
Shimo la Tewa has a less glamorous history. In the most recent escape, two murder suspects constructed a ladder in the prison workshop and hid it within the compound. They then used it to climb over the wall. It turns out that the seats in the refurbished Parliament are not the only tools to be made in a prison workshop and then used for criminal activities. You are in good company, MPigs!
A ladder is not exactly Scofield’s ducks.
But perhaps the most famous prison escape was the 1998 escape of the future MP for Makadara and Senator for Nairobi. You know him as the man with a lizard on his head, more metal than a steel mill…he often looks like so much is happening around his fashion sense that nothing sensible is actually happening, as if he attempts to put his audience into a trance so they don’t hear the stupid he spews out. His most recent? During a recent parliamentary debate, the also-why-wont-you-shut-up Anyang’ Nyong’o made a reference to Hugo Chavez, the now dead socialist leader of Venezuela and the prison escapee thought he was referring to ‘Rachel Shebesh.’ I will wait for you to stop laughing.
Are you even trying, Puss?
Technically, Sonko did not escape from Shimo la Tewa prison itself but from the Coast General Hospital where he was chained to a bed. He bribed his way throughout the whole process in 1998, and then again a decade later into parliament. He had paid some guy to make his faked illness look even more legit, and then paid off almost everyone—El Chapo Guzman style-before making the successful escape. His later defense was that he had gone to bury his mother. How noble.
Did I mention that he was disguised as a lady? The Standard issue of May 18, 1998 was not clear on whether he added boobs to his charade but given his antics over the last five years, we would be safer assuming he even had mascara.
Oh, and he and Pastor James Ng’ang’a were cellmates at Shimo la Tewa, whoever says that we do not rehabilitate needs to see these guys. Chuckles. Who says our correctional facilities are just cholera and sodomy centers? Oh wait, that was me.
…and remember that book, John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime, where he escapes from prison? Sonko claims that inspired his escape…before he goes onto to quote from the bible.
#4 King’ong’o Prison ‘Break attempt’
This one doesn’t even qualify as a jailbreak. It is here because the government propaganda machinery first branded a case of brutality as necessary force to foil an attempted jailbreak.
On 3rd Sept 2000, 6 deathrow inmates died in King’ong’o Prison. The prison department attempted to cover up the killings and recorded them as being the result of fatal falls from the 40ft wall during the attempt. They hurriedly buried the mangled bodies and then went back to taking bribes and not fighting cholera.
The official story was that two escapees had managed to escape but one had been caught later randomly strolling in a nearby village wondering what to do with his newfound freedom. But the story refused to go away. First, there was the issue of the hurried burial and the horrendous state of the bodies.
After the intervention of several human rights groups, a lethargic Moi government began an inquest that ordered the exhumation of the six bodies. The official story was fraught with loopholes. The postmortems noted consistent extensive injuries inflicted with a blunt object. . This differed from the incident report recorded by the police of the cause of death as gunshot wounds . None of the prisoners had any bullet wounds and all of them had signs of extensive injuries including broken skulls, jawbones, ribcages and gouged out eyes. Way to foil an attempted escape Prison Department! Way to go!
Nine prisoner warders were charged with murder, and all were found guilty and handed the mandatory death sentence on 18 December 2008. Five filed successful appeals but the appeals of the other four were denied in April 2013.
It must be sad-and dangerous- being an imprisoned former prison warder. Think about how the ‘mendes’ (the sodomizers in Kenyan prisons) will pass you around while making you ‘wield the knob’ and ‘open the cell door.’ I think something like that happens much later in the Prisonbreak series plot, the warder going to jail part, but luckily after Tbag was out.
In 2010, two inmates tried to scale the wall but were captured after they fell and broke their limbs. At least someone had thought up something slightly legit about the high wall in the 2000 escape.
#3 Mageta Prison Escape
At the height of the state of Emergency, the British government established several camps away from the conflict zones to house political prisoners and suspected Mau Mau insurgents. One of those places was Mageta Island, a small Island on Lake Victoria. One of the two entries on this list from the colonial era, Mageta is a story of darkness, human sacrifice, and forgotten escapees.
On February 5, 1956, 11 prisoners (or 9, depending on the source) escaped from the treacherous island. First, they hacked a fisherman, Onimbo Haulu, after he refused them use of his canoe. They hid his mutilated body in a nearby bush and it became the source of propaganda. The official story spread by the local authorities was that the escaping prisoners had used Onimbo’s blood and body parts to perform an oathing ritual. Most historical accounts are unclear about whether this actually happened, but that does not matter, what followed the news does.
They vanished as soon as they arrived in Usenge. The obviously overzealous security forces killed three during the subsequent hunt. An angry mob killed Jotham Njoroge in Alego and another killed two of his colleagues in Sakwa. The rest managed to escape.
Mageta contributed somewhat to the post-independence animosity between the Kikuyu and the Luo since most, if not all, of the escapees hailed from Central Kenya. The rumor that they sacrificed Onimbo portrayed them as brutal savages, an effective tool perfected by the colonial government. One wonders what happened to the other five (or three).
#2 The Embu GK Prison Escape
The most badass prison escape in postcolonial Kenya, the Embu GK prison escape of 2006 makes the other entries on this list look like skipping school. It was as much an escape as an attack; a group of gangsters stormed the prison, in stuff that you only expect in cliché movies, armed several inmates, and then shot their way out of the cholera and sodomy. You probably know this plotline from several terrible movies where the villain is imprisoned and his minions stage a badass attack to free him. They shoot everyone who is anyone, and then drive out with guns sticking out through the windows. Embu was no different.
Other than having pairs of titanium balls and tonnes of nongiveafuckery, the gangsters had had previous target practice. Embu GK seems to have been part of a systematic plan to free a specific gang of criminals. First, Silas Mugendi Njeru, one of the masterminds of the prison attack, had himself escaped from Shimo La Tewa prison a few months before. The other target practice was Entry #7 when two dozen plus prisoners levitated from Naivasha GK and the other was an escape of 29 suspects from Meru courts.
While the bro code is unclear about what one should do when a bro is in prison, we are sure it does not include getting guns and shooting your way in. Maybe something less murderous, like giving money to their wives (criminals always have several) and lecturing their children. Among the prisoners who escaped were Simon Gitau Saitoti and Godfrey Mulwa Kitheka, two of the most badass criminals in modern Kenyan crime history. The two, known in the crime world as Saitoti and Ngilu, were later shot and killed in typical extrajudicial execution style.
The whole shenanigans led to four deaths: a trader, a gangster, a remand prisoner, and a prison warder. Wait, what was a businessman doing in Cholera country? We might never know.
#1 A picnic on Mount Kenya, or the Oxo Tin Escape
So, how can a 1943 prison escape win dibs on a list that includes the classic storming into a prison with guns blazing, jumping over the wall, and masquerading as a woman? What can outdo the public execution of prisoners who had teleported from maximum-security prison walls? I’ll tell you what-an escape so badass that the prisoners walked back to the prison after they were done doing even more badass things. Hell, the escape even spawned a book!
In January 1943, a group of Italian Prisoners of War (POWs) escaped from the POW Camp 354 in Nanyuki. The three prisoners, Felice Benuzzi, Dr. Giovanni Balletto and Vincenzo Arsotti escaped from prison, went on a three-week adventure, and then walked back into the prison. That last part seems to defeat the entire logic of a prison escape, doesn’t it? Why would you bother to, say, dig through a pit latrine to the other side, or sneak through barbed wire, only to stay three weeks free and then walk back? But you are not Benuzzi and Co., and history will soon forget you.
IN context, Felice Benuzzi was a man who didn’t like to get bored. He was that eccentric friend you still hung around despite your guts instincts repeatedly warning you that one day, one of his stunts will kill both of you. Benuzzi first pitched the idea of escaping the boring POW camp to a professional mountaineer. He didn’t intend to have them walk all the way to Italy, which would have been sure death, but wanted them to escape and climb Mount Kenya, which was even surer death. The expert mountaineer, in following with the script that all experts are douchebags unless you are paying them, trashed the idea. Benuzzi should have listened to the advice on food and ideal wear but he was not a man to get bogged down by such details.
So he went for the next best pair, a doctor and a sailor. Perhaps he figured the sailor knew a thing or two about being in places with funny weather and a million things that want to kill you, and the doctor would, well, do whatever witchcraft it is that doctors do. Suck on that expert mountaineer!
On the 24th January, the trio begun what would be an 18-day odyssey. They presumably drew a phallic image on the mountaineer’s forehead with prison marker pen-equivalents before sneaking out while giggling like the badass metrosexual prison escapees they were. The only map they had of the mountain was the label of an Oxo tin …of course, because they were guys, they would rather consult a food tin than ask for directions, puh! The sailor fell sick at the base of the mountain but the relentless Benuzzi and the doctor soldiered on for 17 more days, reaching a point at about 5000 meters on the North West ridge. They planted the Italian flag and left a message-bottle on Point Lenana, presumably a dedication to Mussolini and a prayer to the gods. You can see the logic in the act, it was high up in the mountain, the gods live up there, it was closer.
You can imagine the shock of the camp commandant when the three POWs leisurely strolled back into the camp on 10th February. He was so impressed that he reduced their month-long solitary confinement to a mere week, a nod to the daring act. A prison escape so badass that the guy who should be punishing you reduces the punishment? …and then proceeds to telegraph his superiors a story they will need likely not believe. It is a manual on how to win respect from your jailers, and your fellow prisoners from whom you stole food and supplies.
The British government then sent an expedition to remove the Italian flag and host the Union Jack, but nothing they did could remove the embarrassment.
The prison escape was so badass that it spawned a book and has been the subject of many documentaries and spinoff books…and a point on Mount Kenya is named after the man who led the escape because that is what we do, we celebrate achievement, not means.
Owaahh, 2013.
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The man laughs maniacally as he hits the keyboard and stares at the screen. He is killing them and he loves it, or rather, he can’t control himself. The urges. They will never catch him, he kills as he wills, and they can do nothing about it. They are born when he says they are born, and they die when his whims desire. Except for that wretched editor. He tricks them into situations where they are sure to die, dangling on a cliff begging for dear life. They are his small ant farm.
He makes the hooded thug stab the blonde woman, and then rape her dead body. He makes three serial killers hunt each other, and makes his hero have sex with a prison warden. His villains are his toys, social wrecks with too much money and in desperate need of a thrill. He has killed his own mother thrice and slaughtered an entire family in a single paragraph. He had a woman once throw her infant son against the wall in five words.
The other day at a party a child hang on the balcony railing and everyone panicked. He removed his notebook and his pen, and he pushed her right over. He even added the thud as her head hit the pedestrian holding his girlfriend’s hand below. Not only did he kill the child’s mother after he slept with her, but he gave both the child and the pedestrian a concussion. He can do this, and although they all know who did it, they can do nothing about it.
See that man who just parked in his driveway and got mobbed by his loving wife and their two lovely young daughters? Can you see him kissing all three of them and smiling as the joy of family overcomes the fatigue that almost made him run over an old woman? Well, I’ll tell you a secret…tomorrow this home will be a crime scene, and our man up there will be alone in the world except for the framed photos of his now murdered family. Too soon? Did I rush you? Well, we needed to give the man a purpose.
Or the wedding you have been waiting for through so many pages of text and hours of screen time? How about we make it into an orgy, only a murderous orgy where we kill everyone you love? We can do that mate, the law doesn’t apply to those who sit on the throne.
Every night he labors to find a new way to kill the very people he has kept happy all along. He makes them, and he takes them away when he is done with them. He gives birth to them in the beginning, but he does not think himself a god, at least not just yet. Wait, maybe he is one. Hhhmmm… or he can be one next time.
The only true perfect crime, they know he did it, but they cannot do anything about it. The only crime in the universe is the unfinished story. It is what is wrong with the world. Even an incomplete dream must be finished, even if by force.
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The 1950s are Kenya’s curse. No one cared to correct the myths because they fit into a certain context which romanticized the Mau Mau while keeping them subjugated to their new lords. While they died off in abject poverty and a society that blamed them for Operation Anvil, a different set of myths took root and became the mainstream stories…
Oh, and the tale of pseudo-gangs is not comprehensively explained on this list but you might want to ask your grandparents which Mau Mau exactly they really were on by the end of the rebellion.
Basic Kenyan history huh? You could answer this one while overlapping and texting on the phone and not endanger anyone on either lane, right? Well…what we have are ideas, guesses, too many to be sure…it seems like we forgot to ask Sir Evelyn Baring’s predecessor before he left. Dedan Kimathi’s assertion in the KFLA Charter notes that the ‘Mau Mau’ was a synonym forterrorists and that the movement was called the Kenya Freedom (and) Land Army (KFLA). If it was propaganda (and quite effective, given that it is now a brand and a term used to indicate brutality), where did it come from in the first place? It clearly has roots in some African language, more so Bantu, but which one and/or why?
The grouporiginally called itselfmuingi [masses];Other possible sources of the common name include the ‘Movement of Unity’, the Kikuyu Maranga African Union (KMAU); or, as BildadKaggiaclaimed, the secret code muhimu.Some accounts even claim that the name could have been taken from the Mau, the range of Mountains in the Rift Valley. In 1963, another claim emerged, this time arguing that young Kikuyu boys would say ‘Uma Uma’ [‘Get out! Get Out!’] during initiation.
The murder that started it all…
Another myth (well, I warned you there are many) 2claims that it came from the first ever prosecution of a member of the Mau Mau, that of Magroui Ole Kedogoya, for attempting to recruit his supervisor into a secret society. He allegedy said (as quoted in Kinyatti, 1992) “ndingikwira maundu mau mau nderirwo ni kiama.[ I cannot tell you those, those things that I was told not to tell you by the movement.] This version claims that the wide coverage of the case by the colonial press grasped the words ‘mau mau’ (those, those) and assumed they meant the secret movement.The group later made due with the brand as ‘Mzungu Aende Ulaya. Mwafrika Apate Uhuru’ (No, not that Uhuru, the feudal prince one, although come to think of it….)
There is one other plausible source…
It is likely that the name came from a mishearing of a Kikuyu or Swahili word, and ‘ muuma’ seems like the most likely candidate. Some factions of the freedom fighters refered to the movement as ‘Muuma wa Uiguano’ (Oath of Unity). Could it be that the loyalists, in attempting to explain what the Mau Mau oath was and why it was so strong, never noticed that the British colonial government heard something completely different and seemingly retarded?
The name itself was not exactly unique as it formed part of Sojourner Truth’s mother’s nickname ‘Mau-Mau Bett.’ Truth’s mother was an enslaved African from Guinea. She (Sojourner) died in 1883.
#5 Obama’s Grandfather
The guy in the background knows, he does…
InDreams from My Father, Barrack Obama claims that his grandfather was detained and tortured by the British. Sarah Obama, according to multiple accounts,says that when he came homehe was thin, dirty, and injured. Hussein Obama had (supposedly) been suppling weapons and information to the freedom fighters. Sarah has further been quoted as saying that Mzee Obama’s testicles were pressed and he had been whipped by his African oppressors twice a day…because, of course, the British and their cronies had an unhealthy obsession with pliers and testicles. Obama claims in his book that his grandfather was held for 6 months, and Sarah claims he was held for 2 years, it was the 1940s/50s anyway, time was a blur…
The only would-be corroboration for this story is that of Tim Symonds (3rd Last Paragraph) where he says
“During one mission in the bamboo forest he captured a 50 or 60-year-old insurgent named Obama who spoke perfect English. That is clearly not a Kikuyu name and Tim has written to the American Embassy trying to discover if this was the grandfather of U.S. President Obama.”
Why its BS…
An Obama biographer, David Maraniss critically assessed this claim and came out with nought; he got multiple accounts from Hussein Obama’s friends who worked with him and who noted would obviously have known. There is also the curious fact that at the time when Obama the Elder was supposedly in prison, his son, Obama Sr. (father to the current POTUS)was studying at Maseno National School(1950-1953).
At least he didn’t come home and say ‘I was swallowed by a whale’
It is likely that Obama was a friend of the founders of the group, then running the militant wing of the KCA, the Group of 40 but it is unlikely that Obama ever became an active member of the group. Tim Symonds’ story implies that Obama Sr. was an active fighter, a seeming discrepancy from the other myth that he was a secondary participant in the war…
One of Obama Sr’s daughters, Ayuma, gives a more logical explanation; that he had been kidnapped by thugs and the story had been weaved through generations to claim he was a freedom fighter.
#4 Lari Massacre, The Night of Long Knives
Kenya’s poster-child case of how a counter-massacre is the generally accepted response to a massacre.
On March 26th 1952, a group of Mau Mau fighters attacked and massacred entire families yanking children away from their mothers and hacking them to death. Anywhere between 70 and 100 people were brutally murdered in a single night including Chief Makimei and his predecessor, Luka Kihangara.
The counter-massacre began when thehomeguardsreturned and found Luka’s, Makimei’s and other homes ablaze. As they gave chase to the fleeing Mau Mau fighters, they began a counter-massacre that eventually outdid the initial crime. Lari DC at the time, John Cumber, made the situation even worse when he ordered that all male suspects be rounded up (which, if the chronology of state massacres is anything to go by, means virtually any male in the vicinity).
In Volume 2A, Page 165/6/7, the TJRC report vividly explores the counter-massacre that made the first massacre look like a joke. The Commission refers to the massacre of the early hours of 27 March 1953 as “Little-known, little-discussed, little-acknowledged and yet undeniable...” Although almost all historical accounts hold that the 70 people died in the initial massacre, over 200 bodies were strewn all over Lari on the morning of 27 March. In the East African Standard report sometime after the massacre and counter-massacre, the government acknowledged having killed 150 people. This is generally agreed as the lower limit of the fatalities of the counter-massacre, and does not even include the over 70 people who were later hanged for the initial massacre.
The Lari Massacre of the loyalists and their families was just the one that received the most attention and the one which the Colonial government milked for propaganda. Photos of the initial massacre appeared on numerous pamphlets and news reports, and was used to show the Mau Mau as savages. I guess when you call dibs you must take all the blame…
Officially, the actual war began to subside after Kimathi was captured in 1956. In truth, the Mau Mau war ended in 1963/4, and not without the characteristic massacre that the KE Government uses as a signature strategy to solve security issues.
The Meru faction of the insurgency survived the decade. Field Marshal Mwariama and General Baimungi (People’s General) had been in contact with Kenyatta as early as 1962 when he (Kenyatta)gave Mwariama a 15-acre plot of landwhich was, in truth, a loan he and other similar recipients had to pay back. Baimungi went back to the forest in Jan 1964 with ‘200 fighters’ (reffered to as ‘thugs’ in this Times article). Mwariama is the dreadlocked man in the famous photos with Kenyatta. He was good PR.
At Ruring’u Stadium in Nyeri, Mau Mau fighters including Field Marshal Muthoni, Kimathi’s ‘Weaver Bird’, surrendered their weapons to the government.FM Muthoni left the forest in 1963/4, according to her own account but was first cleaned up and dressed well. GeneralBaimungi, clearly not a known-giver-of-fucks,and his group were massacred on 26thJanuary 1964 and their bodies (Baimungi and Chui) paraded in Meru Town for three days.
The exact reasons of his refusal to surrender are unclear, G. G Kariuki here asserts the popular myth that he demanded that the Mau Mau be given control over the Kenya security forces. His wife,Evangeline Muthoni Baimungi, later said that he (Baimuingi) had been given a Land Rover by Kenyatta and a flag to fly on the car. He used the vehicle to transport about ‘seven 20 kg containers full of cash’ he was holding in trust from the oathing fees. Mau Mau veterans agree there was cash, but argue instead that Baimungi used it to buy the Land Rover.
Very little is known about what happened to Mwariama, although this account tells us that he died in 1989 due to ‘complications from snake venom he had sucked from the leg of a friend who was bitten during a visit to Ukambani’; the man who enlisted both he and Baimuingi died in April 2013.
#2 Who was Field Marshal Kaleba?
Sydney Morning Herald 1954 2
I KNOW, you have also never heard of him have you? Neither had I when I first set out to research entries for this list.
Sydney Morning Herald 1954
To understand who ‘Field Marshal Kaleba’ was, or was supposed to be, let’s first describe the Gray Leakey Murder, perhaps the most gruesome of all known assassinations during the course of the Emergency.
Arundel Gray Leakey, cousin to the more famous Louis Leakey, and known as ‘Morungaru’ was a white settler farmer in Central Province. He was the brother of Nigel Gray Leakey, a badass World War II soldier who jumped over an Italian tank and shot all its occupants except the driver. He (Nigel) was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award of gallantry that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, albeit posthumously (he was killed when he tried the same stunt again).
In October 1954, the less accomplished Leakey’s home was attacked by 60+ Mau Mau freedom fighters who killed his wife and force marched him to the Mount Kenya forest. Almost all available accounts of his murder indicate that he was buried alive after being tortured and disembowelled. The murder was reportedly sanctioned as a human sacrifice to appease the spirits, but embarrassed the colonial government and forced it to look for a scape goat.
“Go catch someone, anyone!” The Courier-Mail Brisbane
A ‘Field Marshal Kaleba’ was the man the colonial government hanged for the gruesome crime. True to character, they paraded him before the media as a ‘Half-Kikuyu Half-Somali’ savage who had led the murder and sacrifice of Gray Leakey. The link above claims that he was captured with two bodyguards, a girl, and most importantly, Gray Leakey’s revolver. Some just named him as a leader of the Mau Mau, although no corroborating evidence exists on who the man was. He appears in no literature post-1954…
So who was he? We know from multiple accounts that there were the only Field Marshals were Muthoni, Mwariama, and Kimathi. So, again, who was ‘Field Marshal Kaleba’? Was the sacrifice of a government that needed to show some success in its fight? Well, we might never know, given the fact that the colonial office must have disposed off of those records to cover up for the fact that they picked up a random guy and gave him a rank and a crime.
#1 Mathenge, the Tragic Hero
Not pictured: Mathenge
Shenanigans!
A tale weaved over the course of fifty plus years, and hardly ever questioned, that General Stanley Mathenge led a band of fighters to Ethiopia in 1956 and never came back. Kimathi and Mathenge were something akin to rivalling siblings. Kimathi usurped power from the uneducated Stanley Matheng’e and declared himself Field Marshal while Mathenge remained a mere general despite being older and more experienced.
The competition led to the creation of two main ideological factions within the group, one which was aligned to Kimathi and was called ‘Kenya Parliament’ and another called ‘Kenya Riigi’ which had a less defined hierarchy but was led by Mathenge and Kahiu-Itina (Gen.)…and no, the last one did not get his name from stabbing people in the ass, he used to sheath his sword around his waist such that it rested on his buttocks.
By 1956, the ideals of the Mau Mau had pretty much changed from those of a war for freedom to a civil war. Waruhiu Itote and others had turned and were giving valuable information to the colonial government. The colonial government, through the pseudo gangs, reached out to Mathenge and the broader ‘Kenya Riigi’ to change the rules of engagement.
A typical pseudo-gang… How long did it take you to notice that there is a white man in the photo? http://www.psywar.org
General Kassam Gichimu Njogu gives a more plausible version of what really happened.Kimathi was pissed and ordered they (Mathenge and Kenya Riigi leaders) be court-martialed for treason. “Mathenge was bound with six fighters loyal to him to nearby trees as the court proceeded. A Wambui wa Nderitu from Mirangini in Nyandarua supposedly cut the ropes and Matheng’e and his group ran into the forest.”
Or posed with the corpses.
Two likely scenarios? Kimathi or the British government caught up with, and killed, Mathenge. It is unlikely that the Britishgovernment did because, from what happened during Waruhiu Itote and Kimathi’s own capture and trials, they would have made it into a propaganda victory. This leaves only one ugly but more likely event, Kimathi’s side of the Mau Mau re-arrested and executed him and made sure his body was never found.
Kimathi had more to gain by portraying Matheng’e as an uneducated coward who had abandoned the cause than by admitting he had had him killed. It was akin to a sibling fight for survival, and everyone lost, except in popular culture where Kimathi is almost deified and Matheng’e tucked to an incomplete part of history. Somewhere in the Mount Kenya forests lie the remains of Stanley Matheng’e and other prominent members of the Kenya Riigi.
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Update, 6th June 2013.
A keen reader noticed that entry #6 is missing from this list. I apologize for the oversight and shall add the entry soon. As you were…
Owaahh
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In Kenya, the name for a group of youth organized to do so something outrageous shifts from ‘militia’ to ‘gang’ to ‘vigilante’, and back, depending on when you are assessing it and who is paying you at the time.
Gangs gain political angles, or political militia become gangs, vigilantes are used by politicians and businessmen, generally, everyone sleeps with everyone, and the fact that we have not been killed by one group or the other, or its splinter groups, or the ‘strayed bullets’ by now is a total surprise and a proof that if there is indeed a God, then He or She must be confusion.
#7 Sungu Sungu
In its truest sense, ‘sungusungu’ is a term rather than a single criminal gang.The escalation of insecurity is often how gangs and mob units form, and eventually morph into militia and mafia-type groups made of young boys who just need to get laid. The funny this is that thesungusungu do not have a single known chain of command or structures. This might be a farce though because the group had offices and of course, police support, in Kisii town because, what is running a gang without an office? Ask Al Capone…
The Sungu Sungu are actually one of a set of three ‘criminal gangs’ centered in Kisii that regularly feature on lists of proscribed groups-the other two being the chinkororo and the amachuma. Chinkororo translates to ‘We will rain on you’ and is either the most chilling threat ever packed in a criminal group or simply a case of misunderstood raindrops. They are traditional warriors of the Kisii community, like the famous Morans of the Maasai community. Traditionally, the Chinkororo would mobilize in times of ethnic conflict to protect the Abagusii families of Borabu and Gucha districts. They did-admittedly, engage in cattle rustling ‘to compensate those whose livestock is stolen’ because, what is a good tribal warrior without a few stolen cattle?
The amachuma were a curious addition to the government ban on criminal gangs because they are not a gang, and they do not even exist. ‘Amachuma’ might be from the slang ekegusii word for ‘metal’ -‘richuma’- that ‘loosely translates to village tough.’ Amachuma is the plural for richuma and is not really a gang, but a specific cadre of youth, like saying ‘’ unemployed youth.’ . So, the government has banned unemployment and juvenile delinquents? Such an effective government.
Perhaps the poster child of Kenyan criminal gangs, militia, and vigilante, the Mungiki were not known givers of fucks, although they were generous with the machete. They are the Kenyan Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, the Yakuza of Kenya. Mungiki emerged in the 1980s as something of a gang that combined criminal vigilante activities with cultural preservation. In the 1990s, the group moved most of its operations into Nairobi, gradually taking over the running of protectionist rings and racketeering in slums, middle-class suburbs and most importantly, running matatuterminus.
The Mungiki are highly structured: The national overall structure is broken down into a defined cell structure, each divided into five platoons of 10 people each. Even with this, the actual hierarchy remains largely unknown outside the group and of course, the complicit police. The political wing and mouthpiece of the group, the Kenya National Youth Alliance (KNYA), has since gone underground.
The name Mungiki probably comes from ‘muingi’ or ‘Kiama kia Muingi’ which means ‘a united people’ or ‘The party of the multitude/masses’ and which was what the Mau Mau was originally known as before all the propaganda. The Mungiki styled itself as the modern version of the Mau Mau, advocating for cultural rites such as circumcision for both male and females, and complete with a blood-oathing ceremony.
The Mungiki dabbled in politics and backed KANU in 2002,specifically Uhuru Kenyatta, now Fourth President of the Republic, as the presidential candidate.They were furnished with ten military land rovers ostensibly because they had important places to be. The NARC government discovered the link about a month into power, and Internal Security minister at the time, Chris Murungaru, asked the then Chief of General Staff Joseph Kibwana to investigate because you best investigate yourself, sir! After Uhuru Kenyatta lost, the gang’s power waned. Imagine what would have happened had he won…oh wait…
There have been stories of 500 bodies discovered in thickets, male genitalia being found hanging in town centers, and forced circumcision of members of the Luo community, and women.
Mungiki’s tentacles, like those of the Cosa Nostra and any mafia organization worth the name, are thought to have stretched beyond central province and even Kenya. One notable case is the gruesome murders of Jane Kuria and her two daughters in the US. Jane’s husband had died in 2001, after which she moved to the US and sought asylum saying that she and her children were in danger of being forcibly circumcised. The link might have been a fluke, but not completely implausible given the financial might of the group over the years.
As the divisive Mungiki permeated through Nairobi slums, members of the Luo tribe living in Nairobi slums formed their own defensive vigilante gangs. Known as The Taliban, the gang obviously morphed beyond its initial intent. Other than choosing a name that carries connotations of Islamists who do not like it when women go to school, the Taliban are often referred to as ‘a Christian group.’ To confuse the deities of course… They viewed the Mungiki as ‘moral savages’ more so for the act of forcibly circumcising people than for killing Kenyans for sport.
The Taliban followed the Mungiki business and the business-of-cutting-heads model, extortion, beat-downs, murders, illegal taxation, racketeering, and others. They also engaged in public executions, the most common being stoning a target until he or she was unable to walk, and then burning them alive. Remember the famous photo from the 2007/8 civil war where a group of men are holding a dreadlocked man as another drives a machete into his skull? Well…
The Taliban began as an offshoot of the Baghdad Boys, the original grouping that was ‘the Luo tribe’s answer to the Mungiki’. The Baghdad Boys of Kisumu emerged in the early 1990s around the same time as the Gulf War, which might explain the choice of name. They were used widely in the 1992 and 1997 elections. The group later disbanded into several factions, with Taliban being the biggest and most influential. Other splinter gangs include ChinaSquad and ‘American Marines.’
The are many other offshoots of the Baghdad Boys, the most notable being Nyalenda Base, the Chief Squad, Nyamasaria Massive, Kenda Kenda, Kondele Bagdad for Peace (Who do we sue for misleading the public?), Karamojong Boys, Saba Saba, Artur Margaryan (because…why not), Kebago
#4 Ngoroko Anti-Stock Theft Unit
In January 2013, a Joshua Waiganjo was arrested for (supposedly) posing as a senior officer. Everyone denied knowing the man but there is overwhelming evidence that everyone knew who he was. The case is tied to the Baragoi Slaughter of 40 police graduates who walked into a trap where cattle raiders used them to test their new guns and newfound wealth. The undertones, of course, pointed to Waiganjo being a member of the Ngoroko or for a more apt title, the ‘Stock Theft Unit.’
The Ngoroko was never/is not just a militia group, it was a parallel police force made up of, well, who else but police officers? Integrated into the Kenya Administration police as the Anti-Stock theft unit, the modern-day Ngoroko was formed as a private army and quasi-official police force. Sometime between 1976 and 1978, the Kiambu mafia was willing to do anything to prevent Moi (or any other non-Kikuyu) from ascending to power. Its original aim, according to the Kenyatta Succession (the book, not the joke), was to impoverish the vulnerable pastoralist people.
Its primary activities were poaching and cattle rustling but it moved to assassination hits, carjacking, bank robberies, money laundering, gunrunning, protectionist rings, import, and escort of pirate loot, drug trade, takeover of Mungiki areas, and electoral malpractices. If there is any police unit that knows where Felicien Kabuga really is, then it is these guys. They are like a conglomerate for all things illegal.
Ngoroko was first used in reference to the ‘armies of heavily armed bandits’ who emerged in Northern Kenya, especially the area from the Ilemi Triangle into the Pokot and Turkana districts. The Ngoroko used AK 47s procured from Sudan and Somalia to raid each other and re-raid each other after they were raided for first raiding the other communities. That was before the first militia was trained by Rift Valley police Chief James Mungai, the same guy who slapped Moi twice in front of Kenyatta and once carried out a strip search and home raid after Moi came back from an overseas trip. The first target? Moi of course because if you are going to kill someone, it might as well be the Vice President at the time. They were said to have been armed with silenced weapons, and only missed him because he was ‘sneaked past Nakuru.’ They were running roadblocks on the highway as they whistled and waited to give Moi several bullets because, they were generous.
#3 Sabaot Land Defense Force (SLDF)
sourced from nation.co.ke
Perhaps the most memorable guerrilla groups in recent years, this militia group focused its activities in the Mount Elgon Area. Formed in 2005, the SLDF’s activities and the ensuing security operations left at least 600 casualties and displaced over 66, 000 people over eighteen months of the most action. The original aim of the group was as a community reaction to the Chebyukk settlement scheme. The scheme, like all other land settlement scheme, was just one ‘big fap job’ [citation not needed] where only the government was left feeling nice and rich.
SLDF ran a parallel administration system and was funded in much the same way as six of the entries on this list, through racketeering, taxation and running protectionist rings. It was also the well armed, with most of the militia carrying AK47s and other types of guns, and with seemingly unlimited access to ammunition. The group used mobile phones, discarding the sim cards after every raid.Rumor has it that the first commander was a former Presidential Guard because the more famous commander, Wycliffe Matakwei Kirui, was just the deputy commander .
“Once they raid a place, they divide themselves in groups of 12-20 men. Then they surround the area and strike. They are so confident that they at times send warnings before they strike,” says the police officer.
Each of the members is supposed to carry special charms to protect him during an operation.
After surrounding their target, the militia group then blocks all the roads leading to the place as was exemplified during the Kapsokwony raid where the Kaptama/Kapswokony, Kapsokwony/Kimilili and Kapsokwony/Kopsiro roads were all closed.”
Successful military campaign huh? Matakwei was killed, the commandant remained and unknown and of the very few who were tried, eight commandants were freed after the government entered a nolle prosequi . The government’s counter-massacre ended the scourge, right? Actually no, in February 2012, the group was said to be regrouping. We are just waiting for the next Mt. Elgon Massacre, let us see who wins this round. My bet is the government remains undefeated in the third round, via technical knock-out…plus, what is a military operation without a few explosives left behind to kill any future militia, or as we prefer them, innocent kids.
#2 Northern Frontier District Liberation Movement (NFDLM)
Perhaps the most underplayed yet one of the most significant conflicts in Kenya’s history is the ‘Shifta War.’ Recorded in most books and etched in memory as the ‘Shifta menace’, this seeming success of the government propaganda machine overlooks an important militia called the NFDLM. The irredentist militia began in the pre-colonial era, and its exact history has not been well covered.
The Shifta are actually more of an idea than a group and existed as early as the British Military Administration of Eritrea (1941-1952). 4 days before granting the Somaliland areas independence in June 1960, the colonial government declared that all Somali areas should be unified into the Greater Somali. Kenya was granted administration of the Northern Frontier District despite the fact that it was inhabited by ethnic Somalis and an informal referendum had demonstrated their wish to join Somalia.
The Kenya government first considered the NFLDM a s serious threat in 1966 after they used a landmine which “killed two 2 officers and wrecked the vehicle (a police Land Rover).’ The NFLDM was supported by Somalia in training and finance.. The proxy war almost brought Kenya and Somalia to full-scale all-out war. Since almost zero information is known of the NFDLM organizational structure, the only possible info can be gleaned from the government reaction. For example, the government confiscated livestock to deny guerrillas access to food and logistical supplies. The state-sanctioned propaganda strategy makes for an interesting read.
The government reaction to the group’s activities was brutal, and was borrowed, almost in intricate detail, from Operation Anvil, the military strategy during the State of Emergency in the 1950s. In fact, declaring a State of Emergency was the first thing the government did. The North Eastern Province (NEP) was closed off to the rest of Kenya hence the lack of evidence of the atrocities committed by both sides. Most accounts suggest that the government engaged in genocide, as it always does, slaughtering entire villages and ‘vigilization’ pastrolist communities into 14 Manyattas, concentration camps. The villages included passes and fences and all, and of course all the rape and testicle-crunching.
This might be the longest running militia in Kenya’s history, as the first real secession of conflict ended in 2000. The war officially ended in 1967 after a peace agreement between Somalia and Kenya, but not before the lesser-known Garbatulla massacre where more than 2, 700 people were killed and buried in mass graves. The few disgraced fighters who managed to avoid being tortured and massacred went home and begun engaging in banditry within the manyattas. Remember the more famous Wagalla Massacre of 1984? That was also part of the conflict, and the government might have used chemical weapons.
With five decades of conflict, most of the new militia are content with engaging in the occasional bombing, or shooting, of ‘hostile forces’, ostensibly the Kenya security forces, often warranting extreme reprisals …
–notably, in March 1997, the Ethiopian Shangilla raided the Kenyan side of the border and shot dead over 100 people, including 19 security officers. The skirmishes lasted a whole week, and became a mini-war where they engaged the military and cut off road link. They attacked again in October 1998, and killed 200 members of the Degodia clan, Kenyan Somalis. In 1999, they again attacked, this time with land mines and many times after that…
With the emergence of extremist Islamist governments in Somalia , the violence quickly returned, and as of 2013, involves various largely unknown militia against security forces. The massacres happen almost daily, and the government swears it will not stop until all of NEP is cleared of its common wish to join the motherland. Okay, it does not swear that aloud, but it has used the NEP for human target practice before.
You know how there are movies where a group of raiders attack a strategic village and hold it as they fight off government resistance and kill people? Well, it has happened in Kenya…
The Kaya Bombo raiders are the arguably the most structured and best organized entry on this list.
On August 13, 1997, a group of about 200 raiders carrying traditional weapons and covered by foreigners wielding guns, attacked a police post, a police station, and basically anything else at the Likoni Ferry station that had a portrait of Moi in it… They killed 6 officers and stole more than 40 guns. They then went on a violent rampage killing almost indiscriminately, or so it seemed at first. They targeted ‘the mainland communities,’ the tribes that would vote ‘the other way’, in the December elections.
In materials and records that were intercepted during the course of the gang’s activities, a proper military structure, with 278 men in total, was clearly detailed and illustrated. The commanding officer of the group was one Juma Bempa. They had a military structure headed by ethnic Digo men who had served in the police or military. The group also included a retinue of mercenaries and some security forces might have crossed over during the yearlong conflict.
“An attendance register, records of personnel matters (promotions and demotions, disciplinary actions), and a firearms register that detailed the number of guns, their serial numbers, and a log of who used them”
“… the raiders were divided into different “companies” of fixed composition, and listed the dates of the training given to each group”
“…the second book detailed the raiders’ expenses on food and hospital treatment and included an unsent letter”
If you clicked on the previous link, somewhere in the middle, you will find a detailed analysis of the military structure including the uniform issued to different ranks, and accounts of raiders attacking the post office, shops, homes, and everyone else.
How could a small militia of more than 200 carry out such an effective (because murder) campaign?
The whole gang was the work of KANU politicians exploiting local politics to win the 1997 elections. Most accounts of former gang members, who went on to form the MRC, indicated that similar attacks, a trial run of sorts, had occurred in 1992 but at a smaller scale.
The jury is still out on whether the Mombasa Republican Council is an armed gang, a secessionist group, or a political party. While the courts decided otherwise, the executive still maintains the MRC as one of 33 criminal gangs. The MRC , or as It was first called, the Republican Council, is thought to have been partially inspired by the Kaya Bombo raiders. There is the curious fact that the group was formed as the RC in 1998, around the same time the Kaya Bombo raids subsided, and was also made up, at least originally, of ethnic Digo men.
+ Forty Brothers
This gang is not to be confused with the ‘Forty Two brothers’, another proscribed gang that clearly has two more ‘bros’ than this entry….or the ’40 Ndugus’ which gets zero marks for militia brand differentiation.
Formed in 1998 (again, curiously, around the same time the Kaya Bombo raiders dispersed), the gang would raid homes, rape young women, and steal from the homesteads. Like all other gangs on this list, its signature weapons were crude machetes and traditional weapons, police uniform and the occasional gun. It also operated boats because transportation…
The group used to meet in Changamwe to strategize on its targets. They would hide in caves in Mshomoroni area of Kisauni, which is also the same place they are thought to hide their loot. Residents in the affected areas publicly lynched its leaders and the group fizzled out. Pssst, treasure hunters…? Anyone?
Plus, when do we get the next counter-massacre? What is a good massacre among countrymen?
Owaahh, 2013.
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A few weeks ago in an online discussion about the forgotten, neglected, unnecessary history of the Mau Mau, a very good Kenyan was kind enough to correct my oversight by telling me thus “…twitpic a photo of your PhD in History so we can believe you.” With that, I closed my Twitter account and threw my Minion, gadget extraordinaire, at the wall for committing the crime of not staying in my educational lane….and it is to that well-meaning Kenyan, a charming and charitable fella who took the time to pack a life lesson in less than 140 characters that I dedicate this..
A Good Kenyan, trained in a certain trade, should keep within all set limits and lanes of only that trade. In fact, such a Kenyan should leave governing to the governors, and politicking to the misguided ones who do not care much for their lives. Such a well-meaning fella must never refer to anything beyond that which he has been trained for, and can provide proof of graduation from an institution, as an area of expertise. In fact, if you do not have a higher degree in say, political science, you should know better than to comment about the political process. Similarly, law should be left to lawyers with their ‘thereins and jurisprudences.’ All pure, and applied sciences graduates also need keep to their respective science, what is a chemist doing commenting about biochemistry anyway? Where is her ‘bio’ so we can take her seriously? In fact, on a topic of men, where are her relevant genitalia?…and, anyone trained in animal husbandry must never tire of fulfilling said spousal duties.
A Good Kenyan who seeks to be taken seriously must always either keep to the moral values that he preaches, because the messenger is the message, or produce proof of instruction from a credible, accredited, institution, even if only for a weeklong training. The ‘African’ logic on which these criteria are based is ‘you have a point, yes, but are you:
Instructed in the relevant discipline to offer such an arguably strong and clearly accurate point.
If the answer to (1) above is yes, are you educated up to, and including, such a level necessary to offer such an opinion?
If no to (1), please take a seat and eat your crayons, you are retarded and should only be seen, not heard, unless you are ugly, then please go be ugly elsewhere.
If no to (2) above, please keep within the confines of what the educational system told you to be true. Do not question your teacher, or Malkiat Singh, or KIE, or KNEC, or KNUT, or KUPPET, or the BOG, or the PTA, or the PCEA…oh wait, a denomination.
A Good Kenyan, after a 0-16 years in this educational system that would make the deities induction program managers jealous, is trained to think and become an expert in only that which he has written a peer-reviewed, peer-validated, scientific dissertation. Any in the liberal arts do not count, in fact, the liberal arts are nothing but smoke, another one of our misguided investments when we could have been investing in science and engineering and competing with the Asian tigers. We coulda been the African Lions, we coulda been cheetahs, we coulda been giants!
A Good Kenyan, in limiting his own opinion to that which he has firsthand knowledge in as printed in the media or textbooks, and by a black Kenyan no less, must make it his job to remind others should they stray from their designated lanes. Please, do not speak to me about religion if you are not a theologian, diviner, with a long title of what should be sequential offices meshed into one. Yes, papers, good friend, proof of education. That will take you places, the better if you have been to Harvard a week or so, or if you have MA, or MSc, or higher.
A Good Kenyan must only listen to experts and never anyone else even when a child of five, woken up early enough, can offer the same opinion for a much cheaper price (a lollipop should suffice). Even worse, such a child of five would offer the point in a language too simple to be as sophisticated as the language we need to believe an opinion to be true. However, any Kenyan who purports to wow us with their vast vocabulary, be they the scribe Philip Ochieng’ who surely cannot have a point amidst all that buffoonery, or the young budding Waga Odongo who also surely, must only be hiding behind a cloak of a good dictionary, must be notified of our busy schedule that does not allow us to look out for any deeper meaning of words, or prose, or poetry…and what is Gathara doing writing prose anyway, isn’t he a cartoonist? Shouldn’t cartoonists…cartoon or something?
A Good Kenyan must never join the civil society, and should he misguidedly choose do so, and seek to tell us that we are not being governed well, then we have a public duty to insult him as a ‘stooge of the West, funded by the colonialist.’ This duty must be embodied in the spirit of the Preamble to our constitution, next to our assertion of how much we have loved our not-romanticized freedom fighters. Our government is funded by the West too? Well, that is different, we are with China now. No, wait, we are only still with the West because we will be with China soon. China likes us, China loves us, China only wants us to be happy, China will not ask not to kill each other, China will not come with any more demands other than that we give their companies tenders and host their overpopulation…oh, and not recognize Tibet or Taiwan, or some other T-non-important country, and probably not allow the Dalai Lama to visit. The West is bad, even nature knows, isn’t that where the sun sets anyway? Such vile people! The East, where the morning sun comes from, is the future, you can feel its love if you orient the window of your fabricated suburban gated-community house just right, or if your landlord was kind enough to have done so with the loan money.
A Good Kenyan should only hazard to contribute to topics in which he or she has a moral, contextual, education, religious, personal, and political interest, and training. All such qualifications must be corroborated for the contribution to matter. For example, in assessing the quality of this piece, shouldn’t the question be, ‘is the scribe a Good Kenyan himself?’ because here, one who speaks badly about the Mau Mau is automatically a Homeguard which, it turns out, is a bad thing. Weren’t the homeguards and chiefs the only learned people to whom we trusted our independence and arable lands? Haven’t they treated us well for the last five decades, like good lords of the manor, and feudal princes, by giving us jobs and letting us stay with our meager, worthless lives?
A Good Kenyan must always demand that for a comment to be critically assessed, the commenter must have a personal bearing on the matter, interest in humanity does not count, and should never. In fact, anyone who says homosexuality should be decriminalized should be immediately disowned and branded a homosexual, because sexuality determines where you stand on the topic. Catholic priests, for example, should always be regarded as experts on contraception and safe sex, especially in their progressive ideas on condom-usage and moral uprightness….and of course, how to show young trusting males what happens behind the crucifix, the position in the tomb, the real Shroud of Turin.
An expert in swimming, but only in dirty rivers, and even then, only when nude. Get me someone who can swim in shorts, then we can discuss the Olympics.
A Good Kenyan must never be critical of his government, unless it is fashionable at the time to do so. Such a Good Kenyan must never join a protest for which he has no familial links to, and should he find himself in a worker’s strike, then he is obligated only to learn the first line of the Solidarity Song, and hold hands while the worker’s ruin frisks all the protestors to make sure they are actually poor and indeed of a collective bargain to buy their trade union leader a new car. There are lanes that should never be crossed if we are going to achieve our many visions, such as that of being where Sweden is now in 2068, never mind that Sweden will have had 51 years to be somewhere else by then. Who cares anyway, Sweden can change addresses for all we care…
A Good Kenyan, blessed with an education by a loving, caring, and honest government, must never ever deviate from said set path. A Good Kenyan must be a Good Kenyan, never bad, even when bad, should always be seen as a Good Kenyan. Any politician who hugs an adversary is to be immediately disowned for betraying the cause, and the community, and the socioeconomic grouping. In fact, were I the Lord of the Manor, Crown Prince of all Arable Lands, Landlord of the Nation, Mistaken Warlord, Prosecuted Prophesied Prophecy, Appointed Representative of the Omnipotent One, I would declare that my government, in light of its role in protecting free market interests, is rounding up and shooting all petty thieves and freelance assassins. ‘Only the government should steal from and kill the people’, is the number one rule in this free market economy, and if a private citizen must steal, then he must steal enough to pay his dues to the government, and then atone for his sins by joining government.
If he kills, he must either own enough acres that would go to waste were he to be jailed for life or hanged to leave a hole in the economy, or make sure that the death somehow benefits the common good, national security, or the dalliances of the King or his men/women.
The government does not hate competition, as those unqualified armchair analysts might want a Good Kenyan to believe, instead, we believe that private citizens should work hard, pay taxes, love their families, copulate with their spouses, and most importantly, register to vote. It is not necessary to vote, we will do that for you….because we love you.
A Good Kenyan must remember the cardinal rule, to be etched on the big Kshs 1 billion monument the British government is going to build for our freedom fighters, for pressing the testicles of our freedom fighters, and raping our grandmothers , that a Kenyan is defined by pedigree first, education second, unachievable dreams third, and the stupidity of ‘free thinking’ last.
Any Good Kenyan who attempts to write satire must warn us that it is indeed satire because we are but mere Muggles, untrained in how to think for ourselves after reading the piece. Surely you cannot expect us to go find Platform 9¾ for we have not been instructed in wizardry. We are trusting people, trusting our mothers to guide us in how we should relate to deities, our teachers to impart knowledge that now determines who we are, politicians to govern and steal, as they should, the media to be upright and accurate, and such. So, we will get offended if we read through thousands of words only to discover you meant the exact opposite.
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Social media only features on our daily plate of bad places to hate on each other because it is sexy. It is sexy for the government to be seen as working to inculcate (not restore, we have never been united) true national cohesion and the warm fuzzy feeling of hating each other beyond tribe and gender. Social media offers the older bureaucrats a chance to show the younger online generation whose boss. The sad thing is that in our peace lobotomy, we have validated it. We feel that the limits of the Bill of Rights apply to situations where we have a responsibility to be responsible. Incitement does not shift the locus of responsibility from the actor unless he or she is a young child or has a mental disability. The end decision of whether to hate your fellow man lies with you and your environment (and if you are religious, your respective deity).
African governments are scared of social media. Social media brought down Hosni Mubarak in less than three weeks despite his desperate attempts to block its use. So now African governments, beginning in Malawi, Zambia, and now Kenya, are now seeking to follow the China model, with less glamour and innovation (The Chinese have the decency to provide Baidu and other alternatives to control ‘subversion’).
You don’t say?
Hate speech assumes that the reader does not have a responsibility to decide whether to pick up a machete and slaughter his neighbor and burn a church full of people. It assumes that you, as the reader, do not have a choice to decide to stop reading this and close the tab. I owe you a responsibility to be politically correct and to be sensitive to what might read like revolutionary material. You owe me as much responsibility for understanding this, for example, as I owe you for choosing these words. They would be ineffective if you could not understand them, contextually.
In the ‘Mau Mau’ War, hate speech took the form of propaganda pamphlets that were distributed by both sides, and included many forms of expression, including the content of oaths and war songs, this evolved into the implied hate speeches that drove the intrigues of the first government under Kenyatta the Elder, and was perfected under Moi. We lost the script when society kept quiet as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Koigi wa Wamwere, Wahome Mutahi and others were detained for ‘sedition’ and other such ridiculous crimes. To the people, the state was not to be questioned, peace and sustainability (read self-preservation) were king, the same thing we are going through right now. Until the Second Liberation took place and we all temporarily realized that the ones who say ‘bad things’ need protection. Our view is largely libertarian and communitarian. Libertarians believe that the right to free speech may be limited only for compelling reasons such as fighting words. Communitarians believe in the community’s ‘well-being.’
We all know what happens when we let the government, or anyone in a position of power, infringe on the rights of a few people. At first, it is all bliss and calls of ‘JAIL THE TRAITORS OF OUR COSMETIC PEACE AND NATIONAL COHESION!’ ‘JAIL THOSE MYOPIC BACKWARD PEOPLE WHO ARE ONLY TELLING US WHAT WE THINK OF IN THE COMFORT OF OUR OWN HOMES AND MINDS.’ Before long, all is lost, and now a typographic error that accidentally connects someone’s name with the word ‘stupid or incompetent’ qualifies as a capital offence. Is this it? This cannot happen? It already is at an advanced stage. The press is now too tainted by corporate influence to matter, the civil societies are no longer civil or focused on society, the government is just being well, the government (the garb has changed, the body is still the same despite going on mandatory ‘cabinet lift and devolution’ cosmetics). We have so much coffee we should be waking up to but we are busy uprooting it to build gated communities. Voltaire said that if you want to know who controls you, just check whom you are not allowed to criticize.
Grumpy cat needs no caption.
Are we saying that it is okay to think this things at home and probably kill your neighbor while at it, but never ever post it online? It is the same misguided logic that has validated misogyny in rap culture; the idea that the representation owes more to the source than the source does the idea. We have a personal responsibility in how we relate to the rest of society. However, numerous studies in cognitive influence have shown that we all tend to move towards what the environment offers. We need to move from what is the influence of social media on Kenyan culture to what is the role of Kenyan culture in influencing and shaping social media. We are so afraid of ourselves that we are willing to risk making hardcore criminals of everyday Kenyans who need therapy in diversity and forgiveness.
When a blogger’ was hauled in the courts for allegedly mentioning ‘specific names with specific allegations’, we all kept quiet and validated it despite the subliminal warning. The King’s courtiers know how powerful a tool it can be and will now use it to gain mileage and traffic
In the letter alluded to in the link above, the NCIC supposedly wrote “You have been posting threatening messages on your face book account which are intended to cause hatred/violence among communities in Kenya.” A lethargic NCIC is now considering going after those using ‘sign language and symbols’ to “..spread offensive remarks that could lead to violence..” The operational word there is ‘could’, because that is what our peace lobotomy has come to. It also means that before long, someone will be standing on the dock answering to charges of showing another the middle finger. Who knows, maybe someday we will jail the dead victim too.
Being responsible is two-way. It does not only mean reporting those you do not agree with-however myopic, backward, stupid, and wrong it might be-it also means controlling what you read online. The mark of the free mind is whether yone can read without being influenced. You do know that no one is coercing you to ‘Read More’ or hit ‘Share’ or ‘RT’? Better still, no one is holding a gun to your head to prevent you from blocking anyone who posts things you do not agree with. Actually, that is precisely the reason those buttons exist. Ours is partly due to the fact that we are all Moi Orphans, education-wise, and we feel like we now have too much freedom. Social media offers us all an outlet, but it is just that, an outlet. The real hate speech is in our minds, in our homes, in how we secretly think of each other.
We need not look further than the people whose government structure and social habits we have so blatantly aped. The US Supreme Court in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992) ruled in favor of the youth who had burned the cross-sign of the KKK on a front lawn of a black family. It ruled that by prosecuting him on a law that limited free speech rights, the state of Minnesota had violated his rights. The implication? The court did not rule on the act, which was criminal and should have fallen on the class of ‘willful destruction of property’ but ruled that the law cannot focus on motivation, the thinking that results in criminal behavior.
The truth about ‘hate speech’ on social media
While we have hurled about 10 people in court for hate speech on social media, whatever that is, we have prosecuted one person for the (modest estimate) of 1, 100 deaths in 2007/8? …and I really want to point out our validation in the recent elections, but I know you are already thinking it. Had we already punished any of the people who committed the 2007/8 genocide, because that is what it was, perhaps we could have asked them if they were ‘driven to kill by hate speech’ or they are just downright brutal and senseless murderers who are still walking free. In no time, we will not breathe online on any social policies that are poorly implemented for fear of being on the wrong side of political correctness. Make no mistake, if this were the 1980s, we are on the government side, cheering on while it starts by plucking out, with our help, people whose only crime is perceived stupidity, as it rubs its hands and prepares to tell us how much we don’t need these freedoms we enjoy.
The joke is that most of the people spewing hate speech on social media are actually Kenyans in the Diaspora . What are we going to do, wait for them to disembark from JKIA and haul them before our lethargic justice system? Are we going to block them? We should, but are we helping anyone? Won’t they just adopt other pseudonyms and call us names? Most of these people live in countries where ‘hate speech’ is not what we think it is, expression is everything. The governments of most of those countries have followed a different model, choosing instead to be efficient in how they deliver services to the people, focusing less on cosmetic surgeries, and investing into efficient propaganda machinery.
Keep calm.
Free thought/speech is not love, it is not about feeling the warm fuzzy feeling inside for your neighbor or brother. Free thought is not about supporting the government or the opposition, or simply opening your mouth to avoid halitosis. It includes these, but it is not all about them. Hate is as much a part of free expression as love is. Hate cannot be washed away by shocking the ‘hater’ into silence by jailing a few ‘like-minded’ individuals. Hate is taught, it is acquired from our environment, our educational process, our social and political history and structures.
So, go ahead dear reader, think about killing someone, and hating them, and hating the politicians they support and the way they conduct their everyday lives, hate on their cultures and the way they breath but do not post it. That is the new Kenya for you, think it, but do not say it (you can do it though, we do not care much about that).
Owaahh
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Hunter Thompson quipped “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
Wanjiku, the taxpayer who watches soap operas every evening and takes the 9 O’clock news for truth, expects elected leaders and the media to do due diligence and not be stupid and gullible.
History shows that more often than not, they do exactly the opposite. Many of the cons were successful because we have a tendency to believe foreigners, and often approach interactions with them with ‘half-closed eyes).
#7 Lamine Diack’s ‘Son’
The (almost) Sucker: Maina Kamanda, then Minister for Sports
You are also forgiven for not knowing Lamine Diack, or why someone would masquerade as his son to swindle a cabinet minister. The would be sucker, then Sports Minister Maina Kamanda had a stroke of luck, and figured it out before he lost his money.
Do something, like call a Minister and say you are the Second Coming.
The Ruse
Imagine you are a cabinet minister and you receive a call from the head of an international sports organization claiming his son, Mohamed was carjacked and is now stranded Kenya. He needs more than Shs. 300k to find become ‘un-carjacked.’
Chances to have the head of IAAF owe you one? Those do not come easily, do they? You can already sense the excitement as you call your bank to see whether they can loan you the money (you are a cabinet minister, of course you are broke, your over 900k salary a month notwithstanding). Kamanda later said “I…alerted my bank to see if they can lend me the 4,000 Euros.”
The taxpayer should be taxed for this scenarios, right? As an allowance for ‘international assistance, networking and asskissing.’ To make sure that whenever a political leader needs to do a favor, he has the necessary funds to handle the bills and buy a favor.
Sir, did you get a reimbursement for the Liddos part?
As your bank sorts out the money issue, you ask your secretary to call back Lamine so you can see ‘what more you can do for him.’ Get the son into Liddos, perhaps, because he might need striptease therapy after the carjacking? Only that this time, you are talking to real Lamine Diack and he swears he knows nothing a son in Mombasa or Kenya, and probably calls your mother names and tells you to quit weed before hanging up on you.
You call the police, trick the guy and arrest him. Then you hold a press conference to express your dismay; underneath it all we know you are cursing the lost chance to be a sucker.
The confidence man who wanted the $5, 100? Nelson Banda, a Zambian national (and no, he is not, to the best of my knowledge, related to the former president).
#6 The Artur Brothers
The Sucker (s): The Kenyan media and public, and almost everyone in between
You have probably heard of this saga so much in the last nine years that you can recite it better than you can the second stanza of the national anthem. The two brothers with similar first names and weird last names, one with a full-time smug on his face that tells you he knows things you don’t.
This is a case of what Johnny Depp’s character in Dark Shadows describes as being ‘so overt it’s covert.’ It is the art of hiding by not hiding, being so much who everyone thinks you are that it can only be a lie. Its what Mike Sonko does by displaying such stupidity that we are just glad he wears clothes. The Ruse?
It all started with the seizure of a 1.1 metric tonnes of cocaine haul in 2004 at the port of Mombasa that upset the drug business and triggered background power fights, and put the corruption machine into full gear.The Artur brothers were brought in as ‘investors’ and in private circles ‘security consultants (in a way, this is true, just not precise).
The smug look on their faces! Who shaves them anyway? Is there like a mercenary barber?
In 2005, Raila Odinga claimed that they were assassins brought in to kill him.
….before the Arturs said that they had been hired by Raila and ODM to bankroll a regime change (wait, paid to pay for something? Okay…).
Actually, for the lazy reader who hates clicking on links, the main point there is that they ‘…met with Kalonzo and Raila who wanted US$41 million to support the ‘No’ referendum campaign in November 2005 to bring down the Kibaki government. They claimed they had loaned Raila $1.5 million in cash.”
In 2010 they claimed that Kibaki knew about the Standard raid. Didn’t anyone give this people a job description? An entire bureaucracy and no one thought to at least think up a JD?
Like a good number of the entries on this list, they were accommodated at a five-star hotel in Nairobi (Which the taxpayer almost obviously paid for) before moving to ‘their’ Runda home (where they invited the same media they later raided-well, supposedly). Maybe they were the fangs of the rattle snake to which Michuki later alluded.
They were ‘assistant commissioners of police’ with state ‘protection’ (that we still paid for…happily… and just to show them, well, that we can afford mercenaries).
Again, the smug look…what’s with these guys?
On the mercenary issue one of Arturs (I was too lazy to check which one) said: “if we were mercenaries, Kenya could not afford us.” I don’t get these people, insulting our ‘national pride’ by claiming we do not have enough taxpayers and lenders to pay two mercenaries, we pay over 1, 900 of those already-we brand them ‘politicians’ though, it’s easier to spell. (I am tempted to switch to full vernacular mode, what Sunny Bindra calls peculiar lingo and ask ‘ii nikii we!?’)
In the end, no one even knew whether they were Armenian as claimed or Czech as claimed by the immigration ministry. For such an incompetent government, at least they got the Eastern Europe part right.
…Or even why we deported them to Dubai and not Armenia where they claimed to have hailed from.
That claim of an assassination threat? A claim that matches their recent appearance in Maldives just a few days after Mohammed Nasheed, the ousted leader, expressed similar fears.
Now Maldives is scared of falling for the same con job with the president even saying he doesn’t know how to pronounce the first name (Neither do we sir, we just think of how some people would read ‘A tool’ and take it from there. Catch up, ignorance is no excuse). Then this press statement.
#5 Grace Aluma Ondonga, The Woman who ‘sold’ International Life House
The Sucker (s): An MP, diplomats, top companies The Ruse
Grace Aluma offered to sell International Life House and all of its 15 floors to a group of rich and powerful dudes who drive around Nairobi looking for buildings to buy. Her first pitch was that she was a uranium dealer with the American government, and that she had over $100 million to invest in Kenya.
Granted, this was the age before the internet so it’s not like you could just Google-search a person and go through their Wikipedia page (stop opening a new tab, she doesn’t have one).
Grace, illiterate as she was, was most likely inspired by this guy, the con artist extraordinare (if they write books about your crimes, that’s a good thing, right?) Lustig is known as the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower in 1925 (date is key; we don’t know how many other times it’s been sold, France loses many wars).
He became famous for this one act because of the sheer balls it took to ‘sell’ such an iconic piece of architecture and never be prosecuted it for it because the scrap metal dealers he swindled were too powerful to be embarrassed but not bright enough to not see the con. Granted, they were French so, doesn’t really count as a great con Lustig, resurrect, and try again!
Cool move Ondonga, now try sell the most notable piece of architecture in a country and you qualify as a pro…
Her most prominent suckers? Then Bahati MP Fred Omido, Dr. Victor Johnson (UN Consultant from Sierra Leone). She also collected money from Westland Motors (now Toyota Kenya), Swissair (defunct) and Kenya Commercial Bank. Of course, it makes sense for big companies to want to own buildings, the fact that the seller is illiterate being less important than the fact that its such a fair deal.
Omido was later accused by Charles Njonjo of helping Aluma escape.
Like Count Lustig’s ruse, the exact suckers are not named in the media reports, perhaps to save them from the embarrassment. For the simple fact that they are not French, this ruse took balls!
She and her accomplice, Dr Simon Ngoye Mulopwe were arrested in 1984.
#4 Debra Amelia Kasambura nee George, The Queen of Sheba of the Nubian Empire
The Suckers: Government officials (of course), businessmen, Kamlesh Pattni (Someone got even for us? Have we feted them yet?)
If you Google the Queen of Sheba, you are more likely to land on pages about the Queen of Sheba of the Nubian Empire, alias Debra Amelia Kasambura Nee George than the real saphosexual who travelled to get some from King Solomon.
First, just because someone has a pompous title doesn’t mean she’s legit, okay rich and powerful guys? Especially if the title of her Kingdom ‘Ra Nubia-Sheba Imperial Queendom of Sheba Throne’ sounds like someone was trying too hard and couldn’t find time to edit out some kingdoms.
Royalty? Where is the purple?
She claims to have “… studied law [sic!], psychology [of course] and international marketing [explains everything]… practiced law while running a clothing and design business and also ran a consultancy firm.” (Because….superhuman!)…to have married Adam Sheikh Thabit Kasambura, the self-declared King of the Nubian Dynasty which, according to her, stretched to Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt in 2001.’
How lucky were we, that one year later she decided to grace our capital city with her royal presence?
The Ruse
In March 2002 (everyone was confused between 2000 and 2003, it seems), she arrived in KE and commandeered the Presidential Suite at the Grand Regency Hotel (owned at the time by the one man who deserves a list of cons all to himself) all to herself for what she termed as a ‘working holiday’. Like good lapdogs, many senior government officials and businessmen advanced her goods and services … because, well, because royalty!
She demanded special treatment and made government officials run at her beck and call organizing a meeting with President Moi and doing all things pertaining to ass-kissing. She raked up a Shs. 3.4 million bill at the five-star hotel that included medical bills the hotel had paid for her when she fell ill.
This is not her?.
Like all other entries on this list, this one thrived on the pathological greed of the Kenyan politician, civil servant, businessman, hotelier (I am resisting the urge to say society in general). Her carrot was a purported Shs. 15 billion she wanted to invest, and she was open to ideas because who wouldn’t believe a pitch for so much money with no ideas? For someone with so money, it would make sense that she hadn’t paid a coin, and never did, for the suite or the medical bills, wouldn’t it? Why they should have seen it from the start?
First, as a country with a sizeable albeit marginalized Nubian community. (she wasn’t lying on that part at least, they are the guys that ‘own’ Kibera), Kenyans should have known, or at least even asked around, about the ‘Nubian Kingdom.’ Or even simply ask the Kenyan Nubian Council of Elders (it exists). Why, someone would a marginalized people have a queen with so much money?
This is the King of the Jungle of Sheba and Lubia, Mufasa.
Like most of the individuals here, she was never charged although she was ‘arrested’. The authorities were, as this article puts it “Mortified at the ease with which she had pulled her con” because you shouldn’t make a con look so easy that it would look silly on the charge sheet.
Plus you conned Pattni, Kenya’s own Lustig, that should get you a Head of State Commendation or a spear of some sort, at least.
#3 Michael Otieno, the Diamond Dealer
The Sucker (s): William Daniel Marrow, James Edward Harreland Jurgen Robert Ahlmann.
During a recent ‘Twitter war’ between Nigeria and Kenya, Team KE kept bringing up the issue of Scam 419, a legendary and infamous ‘internet scam’ where you get an email from a ‘distressed Nigerian prince or princess’ and it activates your Prince/Prince Charming buttons to rescue her by sending her your bank account details. It turns out we might have some shared history…
Disclaimer: This is only a hypothesis, the would-be sample population is not exactly forthcoming with data…
The Ruse
First, Michael Otieno was not really ‘Michael Otieno’, he was Augustine Azubuike Nwanga alias Ahmed Suleiman. He and accomplices Johnson Chukweuemeka Obasi (stop! Don’t be lazy, read that middle name before we can continue),
….alias Suleiman Ahmed, and Felix Ibioma Anosike, alias Prince Felix (could this be him, the infamous one) carried out one of the most elaborate and detailed Scam 419s ever, right here in Kenya.
It all started when Nwanga contacted Marrow in September and told him of about a $9.5 million diamond investment in Kenya. One can see why that would be funny right now but these were different times, people thought Africa was full of diamonds.
After corresponding with Nwanga by e-mail (of course), Marrow decided to visit Kenya. He arrived Jan. 27 and was met at the airport by Nwanga and a woman- who is thought to have been his wife. The others arrived in Kenya on April 14 and were held for 10 days for a ransom of $200 000.
Ahlmann and Harrel said they came to Kenya to meet Nwanga and discuss shipping fish (of course, ‘fish’, is that what they call precious gems now?) to Europe. He sent them plane tickets (always invest in a con, lesson number one in con school), and when they arrived April 14 they were taken to the house in Golden Gate (how apt) estate where Marrow was still being held. Marrow had been held for four months at the time, which leads one to suspect his family and friends didn’t like him much and might have already rented out his room.
The victims were chained hand and foot (Marrow claimed his private parts and legs were burned with cigarettes and candles) and fed bread, rice and tea, and sometimes Coca-Cola.
Coca Cola, feeding kidnapped people since…let me get back to you on this
The men phoned their wives and requested the ransom payment (requested is the word used in that article, it sounds so pitiful, right?)
The Nigerian had lived in KE for 12 years at the time (Probably called Oti by his bar mates when he wasn’t busy burning someone’s balls with a candle), had a Kenyan family and worked in cosmetics.
Nwanga was lured to a Western Union office to pick up part of the money, but instead he was arrested charged and convicted to a seven-year sentence. No mention of whether he was ever reimbursed for the plane tickets…
…and one of the victims, Harrel was later awarded for his stupidity- Okay, not really, he was given a letter of commendation ‘for surviving the ordeal.’
I don’t get why the ‘lawyer’ in this similar scam is writing in caps, does that make him look more legit? Someone should research on whether writing in caps makes you more believable. In that thread, when the swindler is ‘caught’ (the would be sucker’s financial advisor decided to Google, oh Google search, saving lives since 1996). The conman then goes like “You are just making false imagination against me” (How apt!)
#2 Dick Berg and the 4th All Africa Games
The Sucker (s): The Government, the media, and if you believe his side of the story, Henry Kosgey.
You are a third world country, you want funds for a continental tournament. You need money, hire first world consultants, right? Sounds logical, yes?
Okay, reverse back to 1987 and you are the Minister in charge of Culture and related shenanigans under President Moi, a scandal is in the offing, of course. The taxpayer doesn’t pay enough and as an elected leader, it is your duty to correct the situation you ensuring you oversee at least one scandal. The Ruse
Dick Berg convinced the government that he could procure a Shs 10 billion loan yet there was no record of his work, nor did he own or run a financial company…
H. Kosgey, seen here not being duped by a foreigner.
Berg, claimed he had marketed World Cup tournaments in South America and Europe, and even the Olympics. Granted, this was more than a few years before the internet and before Google became everyone’s best friend, but still, someone should have done due diligence.
To look legit, Dick Berg ‘rented’ an entire floor at one of the five star hotels in the city-don’t be fooled, the taxpayer paid for that too. He promised to bring in top American artists at the time and, to show everyone he was legit (when someone tries too hard, something is brewing) he brought in Jermaine Jackson.
Jermaine, for the lethargic reader, is one of the less famous Jackson brothers, and given that this was at the height of the Jackson years, no one really knew any other Jackson other than the one with an undecided skin tone and the voice of a fetus. We must give him one for effort though, his hook was quite legitimate.
Because the GOK runs on a system of trust, goodwill, faith, gambling and other such systems of probability, it paid him Shs. 22 million as a commitment fee then after he disappeared claimed that there was no money to renew the maintenance service for the presidential jet.
They could have sold the staff instead…or the man holding it…
The man disappeared after placing only one advertisement in an international magazine (One, a single one? You were cruel sir, you could have at least placed three, just to give us back some of the money).
Henry Kosgey ‘launched a search for the man’. To date, nothing has been seen or heard of Berg, not that anyone ever expected him to be found. Which would not have been a problem if the entire floor mentioned earlier, and the Jermaine Jackson trip, were not all funded by the Kenyan taxpayer (US $2.6 million). On the bright side, at least they got a Jackson to visit, any Jackson was good enough, right? The bigger crime here is believing a man with a name that describes the entire male organ, okay, only one of the two ‘Bergs.’
The Dick Berg hoax was such a successful (although not new, Lustig had done it too before) con job, and elaborate that it has copycats in Uganda.
#1 Ato Lemma Ayanu Hiyeyi
The Sucker (s): Everyone.
In 2002, the new government felt the way people feel when they finally lose their virginity, as if they can take over the world one screw at a time (a 40-year old virgin? There was no way we could botch this…)
One of the first acts of government in 2002/3 was to decriminalize the Mau Mau, (Yes, for 40 years since independence the group had still been proscribed, Kenyatta the Elder had first ignored it, then everyone seemed to simply forget the same guys who had fought for their freedom…)
The Ruse
Like our virgin at the beginning of this analogy, the over-excited government sort to unscrew every screw of being largely unscrewed for four decades. Anyone who goes on such a rampage is bound to kiss a few frogs, right? The frog in this case was Lemma Ayanu, you everyday grandfather…or, if you were the suckers we call political and media bigwigs, General Mathenge.
Lemma, seen here not pretending to be General Mathenge.
It all started with Joseph Karimi, a journalist for the East African Standard in 2000 who wrote that Mathenge had been found in Ethiopia.
The man who found him, a George Milimo said he had met ‘an old man who had more than usual interest in Kenya and the goings-on there.’ The only qualifications needed to be a long-lost freedom fighter? Milimo said Lemma Ayanu answered in the affirmative when he (Milimo) inquired if he was the general in question. In court we call that a leading question, a question that has the expected answer in it…
Milimo claimed that Ayanu had regaled him with tales of his exploits in the liberation war and that he (Ayanu) was keen on visiting Kenya again, albeit briefly…it seems he had other things to do rather than tell us how he fought for our independence and disappeared before we could neglect him too. The media fell for the story!
The Standard paid for Mathenge’s wife and son to go Ethiopia. Karimi reported that his wife had positively ID’d him saying ‘this is the man. The nose and set of teeth are his‘ (a wife would know her man’s teeth and nose at least, right? Even if she was senile and had not seen her husband for more than four decades). Even Mau Mau (spell check thinks the second Mau is unnecessary) war veterans who met him at the airport claimed he was the one, never mind that most of them were already in their 70s and 80s and senile.
So the NARC government did the only sensible thing and through ‘his MP, the President of Kenya’, sent him an invitation for the Madaraka day celebrations in 2003. Ayanu, who died in 2010, brought Kenya to a standstill, and was accorded state security, high-class accommodation and celebrity status. He had been found, he was old and he was frail, and he was good PR. There was no way this could have gone wrong, right?
Everyone believed the government had found, and returned, General Mathenge– a commander in the Mau Mau independence movement. He fled Kenya in 1956 after the nominal leader of the movement, Dedan Kimathi, who is thought to have usurped power from the uneducated but experienced Mathenge was captured and executed by the British colonial power. He had the rank of general bestowed on him after he returned from service in Burma in the Second World War. He and 28 other fighters fled to Ethiopia, with the hope of getting support there, but they never returned. “
They need not have waited four years for the DNA results to tell them Lemma was not Mathenge.
The man couldn’t speak any of the national languages, and even said he knew nothing of the Mau (he called it that, he probably thought we said the second ‘Mau’ because we were retarded, seems my spellcheck agrees).
.. Or the fact that the man who recruited Mathenge into Mau Mau (Harkman Muiruri) cast doubt the moment he saw the man.
There was also the age issue, when Mathenge escaped in the 1950s, he was 37 and would therefore have been 84; Ayanu was 72 at the time.
Other issues included the fact that he didn’t know ‘his’ code (Mau Mau used codes in the forest) nor was he tall (he was shorter by at least a foot) and had a gap, or a scar on his nape.
.. Or the fact that he admitted he knew nothing of the Mau Mau [“I have no idea what Mau is as I was not involved in the liberation struggle] which raises doubt that some of these stories of his ‘excitement and anticipation’ were either lies on mistranslations. Well, most are misunderstood, some are mistranslated.
Ayanu owned huge chunks of land in Ethiopia. “…Sellassie offered Mathenge Ethiopian citizenship along with a 1000-acre farm, an offer the Kenyan accepted after marrying an Ethiopian woman. ” This just sounds like a weak redoing of the Shashamane story (Jamaicans, Rastafarians etc etc).
The dreadlocks are awesome sir, but what did you say you code during the struggle was?
. Once it was clear it was a hoax, and possibly a con, it made international headlines. Appearing in The Economist, Newswire and the BBC. Some saw somewhat of a silver lining in it (optimists, such ready suckers!) and some saw lessons.
It was one of the few times that the government accepted it had been conned. A moment to be relished, although I suspect it’s because the taxpayer didn’t want to look bad for judging the government for paying bills for an old man anyway.
The trick, dear reader, is to never get caught, and if you must, make it so big that everyone will be embarrassed about it and they will just let you go, or elect you to Parliament.
Owaahh
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Whenever we elect a man to the House on the Hill, we give him the right to avoid all human contact except that which has passed through three metal detectors and dressed appropriately. We give him the best of our security forces, trained by foreign legions to throw themselves between their master and the bullet at any time. We give him the best cars, the best house (arguable) and the best women (okay, this last one is unconfirmed).
Our Kenyan Presidential Escort is especially overzealous, jumping out of moving vehicles and refusing to smile despite being paid peanuts for such a dangerous occupation.
Once in a while, however, even they slack off, and its during such times that a small cadre of people, with the biggest balls we have seen this side of the Sahara (except for some mammals we cannot name), pull off stunts that put shame to the security system. This here is a list of such men and (spoiler alert!) a child…
#5 An Eight Year-old Sneaks up on the President
When Bethuel Mbugua was eight years old, he chose the easy mode and just walked right up to the president. Remember that this was Moi, the man who ‘appoints and disappoints’, father of the nation and leader of ‘Chama cha mama na baba.’ To fully understand why this is the most ingenious breach of presidential security ever, some background is necessary.
Bethuel Mbugua was an exceptionally gifted boy who was enrolled in secondary school when he was seven years old and lectured over 300 universities and high schools in EA by the age of 10. By the time he was in Standard Six in 1986, he was rated too bright for his class and taken to Form Four at Ol Kalou Secondary School. But he was kicked out after a month because other students and even local residents started disrupting classes asking him to lecture them.
Kenya’s brainy kid of the 80s and 90s
Suddenly all your accomplishments in life do not look like they are something huh?
With no money to move his child to a school for the gifted, Mbugua’s father plotted what still stands as most famous sneak-in on the president ever. The eight-year old boy, already blessed with more brains than he would ever need, walked right up to the president during a fundraising at Kijabe Hospital.
“I had a ready speech and when nudged by my father I walked to the President,” he says.
By the time the security guard saw him he had already gotten the attention of the President and the then VP, now President Mwai Kibaki who said “Pengine ana mchango yake (Maybe he is bringing his contribution),”
Is it just me or is he holding his staff in a suspicious way?
In case you are wondering, the plan did not work because Mbugua later failed an IQ test and became the ‘laughing stock of the country’. His father, ever the optimist, sneaked him to Tanzania where he made a mark lecturing universities. On October 20th 1991, as luck and opportunity would have it, the small boy who had walked right up to the president made his way to the USA to pursue the American Dream.
#4 Man who sneaked into State House -23rd December, 2002
Mr. Onyango Mono holds the record as the man who sneaked into State House by bluffing his way through the front gates. He was carrying a cross and a sword and said in a later interview“I’m not mad as Kenyans thought. I was sent by God to President Moi to tell him to hand over power immediately.”
I will just snuggle and wait for the guy to hand over power huh?
Just sneaking in was half the job, Mono snuggled on a carpet near the president’s office and snored through the night…because bluffing your way to the most powerful office in the land is a very energy-draining process.
He was found the next morning, minutes before the President entered his office. This means the area was not covered by any CCTV cameras and even if it was, someone in the security office thought nothing strange of the man with a cloak curled up on the floor holding a cross and a sword.
“When he was woken up, he said he was waiting to meet President Moi to hand over power to him. He looks like a religious fanatic.”…
The source said: “The man told us that nobody stopped him from the gate to State House. He tried to open several doors, but he found them locked.”
“He finally found one of the doors open and walked in. He used the door regularly used by the president,” he said.
In case you are wondering which State House…
There you have it, a man just walked right through the State House gate and even had the time to try a few doors before finding an unlocked on and deciding that it was a good time to take a nap as any.
An aerial view, I bet you have never seen this one before.
The feat was replicated later by a tourist who ‘mistakenly strayed’ into State House grounds and had ventured some 100 metres in before anyone noticed him. He was in the neighbouring grounds, doing whatever it is a young tourist would be doing along in the jungle, and saw a big house and decided to walk towards it. It turned out to not be the best decision of his life because that big house was not just any house, it was the home of the president. I can bet someone was reprimanded for sleeping on the job, both literally and figuratively, while these two individuals made the security in State House look like child’s play.
Here is what you would need to visit State House, unless you are performing at the National Drama Festivals or you just won a marathon.
Man who sat between Moi and Kibaki- Karume’s wife’s funeral
At Maryanne Wariara Njenga’s funeral a man sat between two presidents. No one asks a question because both security teams think he is an aide to either of the presidents. In actual sense, this is just another Jones who saw an empty seat and simply sat down.
I think you left your sandals in the house, and the loo, kind sir, what were you eating?
In 2003, the security teams around the presidency were in obvious quagmire after having only guarded one man for 24 years and now having to cater for a current and a retired president both with their own security teams. So a ‘non-person’, your everyday Jones with his own unachieved political ambitions, with no fat bank account to boast of and with no ‘name’ whatsoever, decided to take advantage. He sat in the VIP tent, between Moi and Kibaki, for hours before anyone started asking questions. Now tell me that is not just looking at presidential protocol and pissing on it? Very little of the event was covered, as many of the stories here, most likely because the security teams did not want people to ‘get ideas.’
Frederick Odhiambo, The Man who Embarrassed the President, Jamhuri Day 2008
Every time we elect a politician, we know that there is a distance around him that is considered a ‘buffer zone’ that normal people like you and me are not allowed to breach. Apparently, one 28-year old Frederick Odhiambo never got that memo.
Just how a man not familiar with presidential security protocol could walk up to two rows behind the president unnoticed and sit for two hours is a tale of intrigue and suspense.
Not even the hawk-eyed presidential guard, always in their hundreds during functions of such magnitude, spotted him as he walked past several sniffer dogs.
The security detail chose to give him a good beating (if there is ever) to teach him and anyone who might be thinking along the same lines from ever trying such a stunt.
This is not dramatisation, I repeat, this is not dramatisation
Odhiambo said in a later interview “For three days, I planned my mission, and I swear I was all alone; not even my wife Sarah Nyokabi knew a thing about it,”
He also said that he woke up at 5 am and left for the city center, his chosen scene, on an empty stomach (Disclaimer: Attempting a security breach on an empty stomach is not a proven advantage)
When Members of Parliament and ministers started arriving and taking their seats, he mingled with some of them and walked towards the main dais and sat on a minister’s chair, three rows from that of the President. He chatted jovially with some of the country’s high and mighty.
Different angle, the offending weapon is seen here being neutralised by a guard’s hand…
“Some of them told me that the seat I was on was that of a minister, but none of them asked me to leave,” added Mr. Odhiambo.
He was all the time unaware that a presidential guard was sitting only two chairs beside him, and even greeted him: “Hi!”
Did you read that last paragraph? He greeted a presidential guard, talk about having balls of steel! I must, however, ask you to hold on the accolades because Odhiambo was a ‘premature heckler’, he shouted too soon, and chose his moment wrongly (Nyambane was being manhandled at the same time below the dais). He lived to tell the story though, on a hospital bed after an encounter with the guards he had just embarrassed. His message all along? “I wanted to tell him to ask MPs to pay tax and that the freedom of the media is paramount.”
Did I mention that after the 30-minute torture, Odhiambo was taken to Nairobi Women’s Hospital with soft tissue injuries. Why? Someone seems to have a pretty convincing answer.
Owaahh
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Too late for Worms 