Mungiki

From TinWiki.org

The Mungiki of Kenya are simultaneously a religious sect, an efflorescence of Kikuyu tribal solidarity and political will, and an over-the-top ultraviolent Mafia-style criminal combine. Among their most typical and characteristic activities are beheadings and extortion involving local-Kenyan-style taxi-drivers, called matatu men[1]. Now outlawed, the Mungiki are perceived as such a threat to Kenyan society that they are frequently subject to summary execution by Kenyan police[2]. More than one hundred such extra-judicial killings of Mungiki members were reported in one single police crackdown in 2007[3], the police having been provoked subsequent to another outburst of beheadings. According to one originally confidential police report, Mungiki deliberately orchestrate attacks on the tourism industry and other embarrassing showy atrocities so that the resulting horrible publicity and political recriminations will cause the firings of senior law enforcement personnel who are disinclined to play along with the group. Mungiki members have become brand-new millionaires through the group and other Mungiki members have been elected to parliament.[4][5]

Differing stories exist as to the founding of the Mungiki[6][7], but they first appeared on the scene in the latter half of the 1980s[8]. The word "mungiki" is Kikuyu, meaning "multitude"[9] or "a united people"[10] or "masses"[11]. Today the Mungiki claim variously as many as two million[12] or even 2.8 million[13] members or adherents or cultists or sympathizers, not including the women[14] whose riots and protests can paralyze Nairobi for days whenever prominent Mungiki turn up mysteriously dead[15][16].

The Mungiki pray towards Mount Kenya, they ritually sniff tobacco, don loincloths, stand barefoot in rivers, utter unknown secret oaths in remote hidden forests, and bathe in blood mixed with urine and the tripe of goats.[17] Mungiki leaders have included Ndura Waruinge[18], Maian Njenga,[19] Charles Ndungu[20], and Joe Waiganjo.[21] The Mungiki God is Ngai. The cult of Ngai worship is also sometimes called Thaaism. Maian Njenga reported a vision of Ngai, during which Ngai gave him the sacred mission to unite the Kikuyu and end foreign mind pollution[22]. In some areas Mungiki recruit secondary school students en masse, uttering death threats against any teacher who might wish to object[23]. The Mungiki kidnap members of Parliament, destabilize elections, threaten to circumcise female district commissioners, chop off people's legs[24], set cars on fire[25], skin people's heads, flay the bodies of their enemies, drink human blood from cans[26], tear up railroad tracks, form youth groups[27], circulate petitions[28], raid police stations to liberate their arrested comrades, force women wearing jeans or miniskirts to disrobe on the street, sometimes forcibly impose the traditional female genital mutilation[29], and burn unwilling recruits alive in their homes[30]. Increasingly the Mungiki operate minibus taxis, and other semi-legitimate businesses involving garbage collection, construction materials, building supplies[31], and real estate[32], combining these with the extortion that is at the center of the Mungiki business model or social contract. The Mungiki extortion concept extends to such things as protection tax, bootlegger tax, using the toilet tax[33], water tax, electricity tax, and the provision of receipts[34]. The Mungiki operate six armories, with some of the weapons being stolen from the police, while other weapons are obtained via international sources such as the Oromo Liberation Front from Ethiopia, with weapons often transported wrapped hidden within shipments of beef. The Mungiki operate children's homes and educate hundreds of children. The Mungiki are tied to the international organization the Universal Miracle Centre and to the political party the National Youth Alliance. As of January 2008 the net worth of this "outlawed sect" was estimated at 4.5 billion shillings.[35]

The future course of the Mungiki movement is difficult to extrapolate.