King’ara and Oulu: Who’s next in the dirty war?

The killing of Oscar Foundation Director Oscar Kamau King'ara and his deputy, Paul Oulu, brings nearer the surface a war on Mungiki that has gone on underground for many months and now opens a new, dangerous front with the targeting of civil society leadership.

King'ara and Oulu were gunned down by unknown people near the University of Nairobi hostels in broad daylight on 6 March 2009. On that day, King'ara had led a demonstration against extrajudicial executions. It was also only a day after he had delivered a scathing attack in a TV interview on top government officials he named and blamed for the killings of hundreds of youth linked to the outlawed Mungiki sect.

Kamau King’ara and Paul Oulu were people I knew as colleagues fighting for the rights of the underprivileged in society. Their killing raises disturbing questions of where we are heading as a nation with respect to the protection of the basic rights of all citizens. The Oscar Foundation director and his deputy were only doing what they knew best, advocating for the rule of law and protection of the rights of the most vulnerable citizens under the law.

I watched King’ara’s interview on a local TV station. The outstanding feature that came out in the interview was his great boldness and readiness to speak out his mind. He named senior government officials he blamed for extrajudicial executions. His killing is a major blow to achievements we have been making as a nation in the last decade or so on the right to life and guarantees around freedom of expression.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua came out soon after King’ara’s TV interview to claim that the Oscar Foundation was receiving funds from abroad for Mungiki. He gave no evidence to back up these claims, even after being pressed to do so by journalists. When he was asked which countries were channelling funds to Mungiki through the Oscar Foundation, Dr Mutua snapped out that the journalist should go and ask King’ara that question. What did Mutua know?

Since Dr Mutua had threatened unspecified government action against King’ara and his organisation moments before King’ara and Oulu were killed, he should be treated as a key suspect and suspended from duty until cleared. He probably has an idea who killed Kamau and Oulu, why, and with the intention of sending what message to the Kenyan public and the world at large. He should be lined up to give evidence in a judicial inquiry into the killing that must be promptly ordered by Attorney General Amos Wako.

The Oscar Foundation is a fairly small organisation undertaking human rights work with a relatively great impact, mainly through consultants and King’ara’s own personal efforts. It had brought together victims of extrajudicial executions and collected a large amount of data on extrajudicial executions that it was doing its best to disseminate. It must be said however that King’ara micromanaged his foundation without strong structures for a smooth succession and sustainability beyond his tenure in office. For me, whoever killed King’ara and Oulu knew well about this weakness in the Oscar Foundation and had calculated that these men’s deaths would mortally cripple the organisation and stop it hoisting extrajudicial killings in Kenya high on the national and international agendas.

The shooting is also a warning to human rights defenders in the country that to let extrajudicial executions continue unhindered is to risk you yourself becoming an additional statistic on the long list of victims. The question on the minds of many in the fraternity is: who is next? King’ara's death is the ultimate statement (in case one had any doubts) that there is a death squad on the loose out there, ready to unleash terror on unsuspecting victims on their long, secret death-list.

If the terror gang was composed of people on a police most-wanted list whom the government had a grand plan to stop dead in their tracks, there would be room for comfort and optimism. Now the opposite is probably the case. There are strong suspicions that the death squad is actually a police terror squad acting at the behest of people in high office. Our only hope is that there will be sufficiently persistent public protest to have the squad disbanded, or prove it does not exist, if Kenya is to remain a nation governed by the rule of law.

With recent past events in mind, the murders of Kamau King’ara and his deputy mark a crucial landmark in the secret war police have publicly declared on Mungiki. To me, unless proved otherwise, the killing is a loud declaration of contempt for public opinion, a notice that the government has thrown all caution to the wind and an indication that in this operation, the law of the land or rules of common decency do not apply.

The secret war against Mungiki is taking place in a confused milieu of support by some members of the public for the war and indignation by others at the violations being committed. The dangerous lift in the coalition government over what is happening and inadequate public information on the issues in contention in the conflict do not make matters any better. Do we even clearly know who Mungiki are, what they stand for, why they act the way they do, who in government is ordering their killing and what the killings portend for the coalition government and the nation’s future?

The Mungiki of today is a far cry from the Mungiki of the 1990s. The struggle for a share of the economic cake seems to be the main preoccupation today among sect members.

The problem is that there is no office where you can walk in and ask for a booklet on Mungiki demands to the government or a Mungiki message to the people of Kenya on fairer sharing of the national cake. I have seen no Mungiki publications being openly or secretly passed around to state their case in the great tradition of underground organisations with an agenda for social change. Neither am I aware of a website where one can visit to learn more about them, ask questions and probably contribute if one so desires. Why is Mungiki so strong among the youth on the ground in Central Kenya and in the slums, and yet so weak at its interface with the rest of the Kenyan public and the world?

Members of the public deserve more objective information on Mungiki in order to hold informed opinions on the sect and its ongoing dirty war with the state. The greatest responsibility for this lies with the Mungiki leadership. The media, civil society and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) should also deliberately seek out this information and disseminate it to the public.

To me, it does not help to ask the question whether the government should or should not destroy Mungiki. We should instead be asking whether it is in the best interests of society to even attempt to destroy Mungiki, beyond dealing with criminals in their midst in accordance with the law, after answering the critical question of why Mungiki arose in the first place. This is necessary for us to avoid making the same costly mistakes George W. Bush made in his Iraq war against terrorism in not first finding out its key underlying causes.

Mungiki has substantial appeal among poor, peasant and urban youth in areas where it is active. We have seen them in intrepid singing and dancing at burials of sect members where they attend in large numbers at great peril. We should analyse the nature and source of this appeal. If Mungiki has won them by promising a better future, what do we achieve if we destroy the sect without giving the youth an alternative source of hope? Another gang with another name but with the same policies will as soon emerge to fill the gap.

A fine argument, one might say, but what about the dastardly murders and other crimes associated with Mungiki, including stripping women, extortion and illegal oathing? How do we end these? I agree that some Mungiki members have been involved in serious crime, especially widespread extortion. There are two issues in contention here. One is that so-called Mungiki extortion is tax to provide services in the slums where government has failed. The other one is claims that some of the most gruesome killings were stage-managed by the police to evoke public revulsion and elicit public support for the war against the sect. The claims are contained in a DVD recently released by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. The policeman who made the claims was himself shot dead by unknown gunmen soon after.

While I totally support the police’s lawful crackdown on all criminals – whether they are members of Mungiki, Taliban, Siafu or whatever group – we should carefully examine the other proffered perspectives of looking at Mungiki and other organised youth groups in order to understand and deal with them in a sustainable way in the longer-term public interest.

A lasting solution to dealing with Mungiki and similar organisations will only come from encouraging constructive dialogue with their legitimate leadership, as Prime Minister Raila Odinga had promised in his election campaign. Dialogue will provide a forum for public scrutiny for them to better understand public concerns, as well as where to discuss how they can possibly tone down their propensity to lawlessness, overcome their reluctance to operate within society’s mainstream and abandon their clinging to archaic beliefs. They would also be encouraged to give ideas on what alternatives the youth can be offered as incentives to voluntarily abandon crime.

Opening constructive dialogue with such youth groups will honour the memories of the courageous human rights defenders Oscar King’ara, Paul Oulu and all other innocent victims of the dirty war. It will also spare society the pains of an unnecessary war that no side can possibly ever win so long as a majority of our youth remains marginalised from the society’s economic mainstream.

* Kang’ethe Mungai the former coordinator People Against Torture in Nairobi.
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