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Kenya: Using Force On Mungiki is to Miss the Picture
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Collins Wanderi
Hardly a day passes without the mention of Mungiki in the media. Journalists and commentators have attempted to analyse the causes and possible anecdote to the problems posed by Mungiki, but these have come out superficial and the solutions they propose simplistic.
The historical origins of Mungiki are intricate and complex just as the sect itself. Its problem can be traced to the land tenure reforms initiated by the British colonists in the 1950s. In 1955, the colonial government published the "Plan to Intensify African Agriculture in Kenya".
The overt aim of this plan was the creation of landed African gentry that would participate in large-scale agriculture. According to Yash Pal Ghai, the covert aim was to produce a stable and conservative middle class to provide a bulwark against African nationalism and the radical policies accompanying it.
Individualisation of land tenure was used to blunt African demands for land redistribution.
The political pay-off of this plan became evident during the Mau Mau revolt of 1952 to 1956 when the translation of peasant agriculture through cash crop production and land tenure reform were used to create a landed African gentry (middle class) in Central Kenya.
Before they left Kenya in 1963, the British had managed to create a landed conservative and conformist gentry in Central Kenya mainly composed of collaborators and home guards to whom the departing Britons bequeathed the super structure of the State bureaucracy such as the provincial administration, local councils, police, mainstream churches and subordinate courts.
Their progeny are bound in a vicious cycle of poverty, which is inherited and passed on from one generation to another and constitute the bulk of the youthful members of Mungiki.
The continued hold on political power by the former collaborators in Central Kenya has only helped to perpetuate and entrench social inequities unknown to many people outside the region. This is the reality of the social-economic inequalities that prevail in most parts of Central Kenya.
It is this social order that Mungiki has been seeking to upset, first through religion and culture, and now violently. The security agencies must adopt new approaches - as opposed to force - to detect, apprehend and prevent the crimes perpetrated by the sect while the political class must demonstrate a genuine desire to address the land question.
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Captain (rtd) Wanderi, is a an advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
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