THE RE-BIRTH OF GANGSTERISM AND CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES IN KENYA
When president (Rtd) Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta praised Gaucho Ghetto President at Jubilee NDC, a national event being broadcasted live nationally and through various online media, for “protecting private property and rights of other citizens” against intruders, it should have signaled a new low in our national psyche.
That the immediate former President and Commander-In-Chief of Kenya Defense Forces, barely eight months into retirement, can only feel safe and secure in the hands of largely uncouth, gang-like private citizens, is perhaps the clearest indication that the State has itself gone rogue.
And with that crown of honour from a retired president, Ghetto President Gaucho was projected to national hero status. Immediately, the delegates demanded that he speaks ‘to the nation’, sharing the same podium with national leaders including President Kenyatta himself, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, former Vice President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka and former Justice and Constitution Affairs Minister Martha Wangari Karua.
Expectedly, Gaucho did not disappoint. He vomited obscenities, irreverence and maledictions. And with that the crowd cheered, not only inside the auditorium, but also across the country. Online gang joined in the frenzy. Several Gauchos were born.
To confirm just how important that affirmation was, when former Defense Cabinet Secretary Eugune Wamalwa took to the podium, he cheekily asked the former president “to please remember that Gaucho has a brother called Nuru Okanga”.
Happening on the backdrop of blatant attempts on the life of former Kenya’s Prime Minister and Africa Union (AU) High Representative for Infrastructure Development, in State’s bid to silence any form of dissent, it is very easy for such individuals and groupings to be recruited as private guards, who would thence transmute into private armies.
The country still remembers vividly the activities of gorilla-like outfits and/or tribe-based militia such as Mungiki, Chinkororo, 42 Brothers, Sungu Sungu, Al-Shabab, Angola Msumbiji, and Mombasa Republican Council, among others. By 2010, there were 33 recognized organized gangs in Kenya, according to a 2012 National Crime Research Center report, A STUDY OF ORGANIZED CRIMINAL GANGS IN KENYA.
In the report, a total of 46 criminal gangs were mentioned by the local communities, despite the “proscription of 33 organized criminal groups in the country vide a gazette notice dated 18th October, 2010 issued by the Minister of State for Provincial Administration and Internal Security”.
The proscribed gangs included Amachuma, Angola Msumbiji, Banyamulenge, Baghdad Boys, Charo Shutu, Chinkororo, Coast Housing Land Network, Congo By Force, Dallas Muslim Youth, Forty Brothers, Forty Two Brothers, Jeshi La Embakasi, Jeshi La Mzee, Jeshi La King’ole, Japo Group, Kamjesh, Kamukunji Youth Group, Kaya Bombo Youth , Kenya Youth Alliance, Kosovo Boys, Kuzacha, Makande Army, Mombasa Republican Council, Mungiki Movement, Mungiki Organization, Mungiki Sect, Republican Revolutionary Council , Sabout Land Defence Force (SLDF), Sakina Youth, Siafu, Sungu Sungu
and Taliban.
“Many of such groups surface in response to social, political, and economic inequalities and dissatisfactions”, writes Catheline Bosibori Nyabwengi in her 2017 Master Thesis, Transformation in Chinkororo Movement among the Abagusii of Kisii County, Kenya, 1961-2010, Department of History, Archeology and Political Studies, Kenyatta University.
“The findings revealed that Chinkororo emerged in the early 1970s due to state security failure, especially along the Gusii-Maasai borders, coupled with negative ethnicity and the rise of Kalenjin warriors and Maasai Morans among the Kipsigis and Maasai respectively”. Writes Cathline Bosibori Nyamwengi.
There can be no greater endorsement of existence of such social, political and economic inequalities and dissatisfaction that would warrant establishment of private social protection gangs than that of the immediate former president.
According to UN Habitat (2007), causes of crime include “poverty, unemployment, growing gap between the rich and the poor, the transition towards political democratization (which happens to have been president Uhuru Kenyatta’s frustration), the speed of urbanization and poor urban planning, design and management”.
With a history of such gangs infiltrating government security systems, religious societies and business communities, one can only hope that those in administration – both at national and county governments – would be well aware of the threat they put the State and its citizens into when their actions or inactions appear to perpetuate what UN Habitat considers to be the causes of crime.