By Jide Uwechia
Mungikis…the Dread lions of Kenya
Mungiki Elder sent to prison by the Kenyan State
The former leader of Kenya’s outlawed Mungiki movement has been jailed for having an illegal gun and cannabis possession.
John Kamunya, alias Maina Njenga, was sentenced to five years in jail by a Nairobi court for possessing a gun and nearly 5kg of marijuana.
After the sentencing, his two wives became hysterical, weeping profusely and protesting the injustice of the Kenyan government.
Kamunya, now a “Christian convert”, was last month freed on another charge of recruiting Mungiki members.
The Mungiki are thought to be militants from Kenya’s biggest ethnic group, the Kikuyu. Most of the members of the movement are poverty stricken slum dwellers, who often become psychologically empowered by the doctrine of this movement.
The movement promotes a return to pristine African traditional values and a dissociation from the corrosive influence of western ways and culture.
Members of this movement view Africa as the promised land flowing with milk and honey and are prepared to cut out the hindrances and obstacle established by the former colonial state structure to the reconstruction of a true African personality.
From Maumau to the Mungikis and the Rastafari
The Mungiki movement reminds one of the Rastafari movement on its doctrinal insistence respecting Africa and African values. They both believe that African values and expression are the universal model against which other cultures are to be analyzed. Mungikis pray towards Mountain Kenya the home of the Great God. Rastafari hail Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as the living manifestation of that African God that lives on Mountain Zion somewhere in East Africa. Ancient Mountain Zion could after all turn out to be Mountain Kenya of the modern times.
They both stress social reform, positive thoughts, words and actions, egalitarianism, personal liberation, and a respect for the African divinity whom they acknowledge as the Almighty over other gods and divinities. Both movements have drawn inspiration from the Mau Mau movement of the late 1950s in Kenya.
The Mungikis often wear dreadlocks as a sign of their separation from the western world, as a sign of their totem the lion, and as the outer manifestation of their inner spiritual potency. Rastafari wears its dreadlocks for those same reasons.
Mungikis use the African cannabis as a spiritual sacrament just like Rastas. They get into communication with their inspirational vibration through the sacramental ingestion of African grown herb whereas the most elites of Kenya who profess European based christianity utilize alcohol as their sacrament, as sanctioned by the catholic and the anglican churches.
Due to their emboldened consciousness, the Mungikis just like the Rastas carry themselves with a certain confidence which the ruling elites tend to find haughty and threatening.
Mungikis are accused of witchcraft, demonic oath-taking, and murders just like in the early days of Rastafari in Jamaica.
Just like Rastafari was at first demonized persecuted and pressurized by the Jamaican government who feared their new found independence, confidence and spiritual fulfilment, the Kenyan government fears the Mungiki movement for its liberating philosophy and its Afrocentricism. Kenya government afraid of the rising influence of Mungiki finally outlawed it in 2002.
A brutal crackdown by the police in slums on the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi and central Kenya has netted about 1,000 alleged followers of the Mungiki movement,as well as leaving hundreds dead and many tens of thousands homeless in the past month.
The jailing of John Kamunya can be seen as part and parcel of the drive by the present government of Kenya to suppress the Mungiki movement.
Yet, it appears that the horse has bolted from the stable although the Kenyan government would want to shut the door. Mungiki has gone global. Just as the persecution of Rastafari resulted in its global spread, Mungikis are already in the Americas, in Europe and Asia, carrying on the holy struggle for the emancipation of the African physically and psychologically.
Thus the future of the Mungiki movement appears assured despite brutal persecution. The spiritual fire of these lion warriors of Kenya is now inextinguishable. Mungiki like Rastas will go through this period of humiliation only to re-emerge like the Khemitic Phoenix bird which rises from the ashes of its attempted destruction to take on the crest of the heavens.
Mungiki adherents number in millions in Kenya, and together with the millions of their Rastafari brethrens, this new expression of African independence and solidarity is worth watching carefully in the coming years.
Jide Uwechia
The powers that be(worldwide) acknowledge all of the above,hence the alteration of African(black)history and suppression of African truths by modern day crusaders masquerading as researchers,missionaries,historians to name but just afew.
You really are a plank…you should stop pontificating on things you know nothing about. Why don’t you go and ask all the people murdered by the mungiki whether they are good people or the slum dwellers who are living in terror. Mungiki is a mafia which has a thin veneer of African traditionalism to legitimise themselves but those of us who have to live with the threat they pose know them for who they are!
you would rather give your faith to a group of people that raped murdered and stole from your people then follow African Freedom physically and mentally? WHY
do you remember maumau, or were too young to even know their style of operation yet, are “pontificated” as Kenyan freedom fighters?
Hey proud Kenyan, do you remember maumau, or were you too young to even know their modus operandi yet, are “pontificated†as Kenya’s freedom fighters?
ilexxo
That bwoy is neither Kenyan nor proud. Ah some weak-heart, colonial mentality squeaking pitifully in cyber-space.
One Love ilexxo
Jahdey
Jahdey…right you know everything and anyone who disagrees with you is silly, why don’t you try positing a coherent argument to prove your case instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks…it just makes you seem petty, spiteful and ignorant.
ilexxo, i do know about the mau mau, I have a degree in Kenyan history from the University of Nairobi(and in fact, one of my lecturers had been in the mau mau) and that war was not as black and white(pun not intended)as most people would like to think! I don’t have space or time to go into it now but it was as much a civil war as it was a a fight for independence, and oh, something else most people overlook, the mau mau actually lost the war…that’s why we have people like Michuki, Kiraitu Murungi et al in government now.
What concerns me most is that the Mungiki hurt the people they claim to be fighting for the most(the poor and the dispossesed) look at the protection rackets they are running in the githach and koch, how is that helping the slum dwellers…and if you think that the Mungiki are fighting against the elites, you are mistaken my friend, it is these elites who are behind mungiki and are using them in their struggles for power…that’s why they came out in support of Uhuru Kenyatta in the last election, son of the man who betrayed the mau mau…how’s that for a continuation of the mau mau struggle?
And by the way, i’m not some posh guy pontificating from some mansion in Runda eager to maintain the status quo, I was born and brought up in eastlands, Nairobi and if you know anything about Kenya, you should know what that means, I realise that our society is facing massive social pressures and something needs to be done to alleviate them, but Mungiki…that,s not the way!
Mau mau’s vision was removal of oppressor(& collabo’s) from Cape to Cairo(not jus Kenya).I was born n brought up in eastlands , that dont mean a thing, Quite a number of places & people around there that have Babylonish(collaborator)tendencies,as can be found in any ghetto,or hard core in any Mansion.True some misfits do crime in the name of mungiki,jus like any bombings are in the name of Al Qaeda, how true, only the authorities know.You certainly have no idea about what mungiki is, as opposed to ‘mungich’,& your rants ‘n’ raves,choice of words make you out a Babie(colonial mentality),and that is what da real mungiki is out to remove… yes ,even in the ghetto