Witchcraft in Kenya

When I first arrived in Nairobi, I saw the signs but didn’t know what they meant. Once I started understanding Swahili, I learned that the profusion of ads, nailed to fences, stuck on poles and printed on A3 paper, were for mgangas (witchdoctors) offering assistance mainly in matters of business, money, love and infertility. In just about every suburb of Nairobi, you’ll find at least one ad, hand-painted, on a little plate, nailed high up on a pole. For an average of around 6000 shillings (R600) you can get to see one of these mgangas but it is advisable to avoid those who advertise on paper. They are reputed to be con artists.

There’s a distinct undertow of witchcraft to the interpretation of many unusual events in Kenya.Even Christians, confronted by some unexplained phenomenon, might exclaim “juju!” (black magic) in the middle of the conversation, and usually everyone will agree.

There are two main ‘currents’ of witchcraft practised in the country. The first, often termed kamuti (kah-moo-teh), is attributed to the Kamba people. It is Bantu witchcraft, similar to that known in South Africa and involves the use of charms, ‘muti’ and spells to achieve the client’s ends. This type of witchcraft is heavily traded in Kitui and Tala, both not far from Nairobi.

The second stream of witchcraft derives from the Mohammedan influences in East Africa – from the Arabs who landed here centuries ago – and involves the deployment of ‘genies’ (as in Aladdin) to achieve one’s ends. It is grounded in texts from the Qur’an and here, you ‘rent’ the services of a genie to fulfil your wishes for you. You can even buy a genie to work for you permanently and exclusively if you have a few hundred thousand shillings at hand. This type of witchcraft is heavily traded in Mombasa, at the coast, and is reportedly common among the Swahili people. It’s even more strongly associated with Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast.

Recently, a friend of mine was involved in a minibus accident. She was the only one without a scratch. The makanga (conductor) with a bleeding face wanted know where she got her juju from because he needed some.

Another friend’s sister was victim of a grenade attack at a church in Mombasa. Shattered glass went everywhere but she, standing at the window, was not injured. She said that people were muttering things about the protection afforded by genies. Interestingly, she was at church but had recently converted to Islam, not that anyone knew. Not anyone visible, anyway.

From the Bantu-Kamba kind of witchcraft there’s a tale so oft-repeated it has reached the level of urban legend. It’s the story of an unfaithful wife and her temporary lover who become “stuck” after having sex, like what happens to dogs. Of course, medical science refutes the possibility of this occurring among humans. But it happens – a YouTube video says so.

The clip shows a rather large woman and a rather small guy lying on top of her, unable to do anything to release himself. The woman is covering her face from the peering crowd, and the guy looks terrified. They are eventually released from each other when the husband comes into the room and does something to free them. One can’t see what he does in the video but the stories I have heard mention the uncapping of a Bic-type pen or the flicking of a Bic-type lighter.

Stories of “Nairobi girls” using this kind of witchcraft to secure a man is also legend. This kamuti involves the insertion of herbs or crystals into the vagina to keep the man abnormally attracted and emotionally ‘stuck’. The man will also be unable to gain an erection with any other woman. These kinds of stories are discussed very matter-of-factly in Nairobi. It is known to be a part of the girls’ personal arsenal, and is reputed to be a common practice. Despite its widespread acceptance in Kenyan culture, witchcraft obviously has it detractors too. There have been horrific incidents of ‘witch’ lynchings – in 2009, five elderly men and women were burned alive by villagers in western Kenya who accused them of bewitching a young boy.  Last year, The Star newspaper reported that elders in the coastal Kilifi Country were fleeing their homes out of fear of being killed for practising witchcraft.  

    Speaking to other Kenyans, mainly from the coast, I have heard stories of genies and what they can get up to if their master is properly paid and clearly instructed on the client’s wishes. I met a guy called Gilbert who told me he was forced to have sex in his car with a work colleague who had a crush on him. His brand new car refused to start and wouldn’t move when he tried to push it. Once he had done the deed with her, it started on the first turn.

During the mayhem that followed Kenya’s disputed election results in 2007, shops were looted and burned. A Mombasa youth grabbed a TV from a shop and escaped with it on his head. When he got home, he was unable to get the TV off his head. He only managed to remove it when he went back to the shop to return it. The clip isn’t on YouTube but millions of Kenyans saw it on national TV.Skeptics will be wont to dismiss these juju stories as just that: stories. But before you do, let me add my own experience for light reflection: A few years ago, when I was researching witchcraft for a book I was writing, I was referred to an mganga based in Mombasa. He agreed to be interviewed on condition I undertook ‘rehma’ (spiritual cleansing) with him. I couldn’t resist.

  I met the mganga at the Nyali bridge, just outside Mombasa. He looked very ordinary, wearing a plain shirt, khaki pants and flip-flops. He took me to a small, corrugated shack in the village of Bamburi. A fire was lit, molasses tobacco smouldered near it and incense was stuck in a banana to attract the genies. Evidently, genies like sweet things.

The ritual involved handfuls of rice sprinkled over me amid chants of a Muslim prayer. A goat was forced to inhale my recollection of negative experiences over a small fire and I was washed down by a live and wetted chicken. Salve (mafuta) was spread on my breastbone and applied to my palate and I left with little packets of sticks and ointment that I was to apply every morning to ward off evil. It took about 20 minutes in all, and I paid the mganga 8 000 shillings (R800) for the privilege.    I didn’t feel any different afterwards, but the guy that had introduced me to the daktari (doctor) warned me that rehma would make me become “a magnet for women”. I laughed at the time and didn’t think any more of it.I don’t consider myself to have any special appeal to women but let’s just say that for the few weeks after my rehma, I had a torrid time of it all.

The Baragoi Massacre

On Sunday 11 November 2012, forty-two Kenyan police officers, including 12 members of the Samburu tribes’ “home guard”, were gunned down and killed by Turkana cattle rustlers –morans (warriors)- in Suguta Valley, situated in the Baragoi District of Samburu County.

The police contingent, numbering more than 100, was attempting to recover some 450 heads of cattle that had been stolen by the warriors 10 days prior. They were lured into a valley and died in a hail of automatic rifle fire from the ridge above.

One of the injured commented: “They were not so many, but the way they had organised themselves was like they had received information earlier. Most of my colleagues, including our commanders were shot. Some of them survived”. After the massacre, the Turkana morans recovered the dead policemen’s automatic arms, including “the big ones”.

Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere had the sense to admit that it was a strategic fail on the part of the police. “There was an ambush and even the best trained and armed officers anywhere in the world would find it difficult”. Among the Turkana, only four were injured but they went “in the bush to avoid arrest”.

It was described as the biggest ‘massacre’ in Kenya’s post-independence history.

http://www.africareview.com/News/Kenya-police-massacre-death-toll-rises/-/979180/1618480/-/fe5499z/-/index.html

John Munyes, a Turkana MP, denied it was a massacre. He gave the Turkana side of the story: they perceived the intrusion of the police as an act of aggression. And felt compelled to protect their women and children. It was simple self-defence in their opinion. Turkana leaders were later taken to court over their stance but it was later accepted and their cases were dropped. It’s a different world here.

In this part of Kenya, the pastoral lifestyle, in very arid regions, leads to constant conflict over grazing land. Hustling bits of cool moist grass is the way of life for herders on the Baragoi plain and elsewhere. It has been for centuries. But the way of life among morans is different. For centuries, their talk has turned to thievery. Cattle rustling is what morans often do; it’s one way that the tribe survives.

With this kind of age-old tradition, it’s likely that nothing will change anytime soon. These are people who have lived the same way for many centuries and for whom the regular laws of Kenya often don’t apply. They are wont to say they’re “going to Kenya” when they leave their tribal land.

With heavily armed morans, an encroaching force needs to know what it’s doing if it wants to get back what the warriors have taken such trouble to steal! In this case, the police were simply outwitted and outmanoeuvred. Maybe they’d have done better staying out of it all.  

http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-98557/baragoi-massacre-untold-story

I personally see no problem with the way of life, only with the choice of weaponry. The knives are still there but the spears and arrows are long gone, replaced by automatic weapons. In fact, the effect of this firepower in some pastoral communities has been such that few men are left. It’s the women who have become herders and they too have turned to the AK for their protection. 

The issue never once came up in news reports nor TV discussions about the massacre, but the important one for me is how the communities got so armed in the first place? Border security is a matter for the armed forces of Kenya, not for Kenya’s communities to enforce. For the rest, these are not war zones. These are Kenyans fighting Kenyans.

If only to protect the communities involved, disarmament  across the entire north and northeast of Kenya should be looked at. It is probably the most important way of reducing the much-hyped problem of ‘insecurity’ in Kenya. The devastation that comes with the AK47 is so much more than what the long range spears can do, or the damage from arrows off a bow. And the police should just stay out and get to controlling the borders of this country.     

Open Letter to Uhuru Kenyatta

(Written on the 11th, the day before his inauguration on 12 March 2013)

Dear Mr. President,

As an outsider, but a keen observer of your politics, I congratulate you on your win. I believe that you, along with the Hon. William Ruto, do indeed have what it takes to lead Kenya into much more prosperous and productive times. You are both young and educated, smart and articulate. You represent a new generation of Kenyan leadership.

That said, there are a few issue I would like to raise with you.

That you and William Ruto are facing charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is simply unfortunate. I don’t believe the charges are justified given that you were both lieutenants in a war commanded by generals. It was only international diplomacy, ‘protocol’ if you like, and undue influence in the halls of Kenyan justice, that kept the generals off the list of those who have gone to The Hague. Let the generals face the court too. And, when the time comes, if the ICC can’t take the generals to jail, they certainly can’t take you two, the lieutenants. So I wouldn’t worry too much.

And by way of an aside, I hope it was a lesson to Kenyans that the unfettered quest for power on the part of their political elite can easily make for civil war. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It mustn’t happen again. So, I’d implore you to leave your recently ‘reformed judiciary’ to do its work without fear, and unfettered by political influence. And if it so happens that the courts rule against you, Mr. President, as is likely to happen at some point, you’ll need to accept that and not go sneaking around so you can get your way.  

And while we’re talking of generals and lieutenants, courts and power, that you haven’t yet decried the actions of the outlawed Mungiki ‘sect’ worries me a bit. The recent threat made on the life of Chief Justice Willy Mutunga was particularly scary and showed, again, the extent to which Mungiki acts behind the scenes in promoting Kikuyu interests. In this case, it was your interests, particularly, that they served. It really doesn’t look good. And neither does what Bensouda calls “tireless attempts at contacting witnesses”.

Mungiki is perceived as a private Kikuyu army and you really need to distance yourself from this renegade gang of extortionists and thugs. You need to act firmly and decisively against them even if they are a Kikuyu ‘institution’ in Kenya. Again, let the justice system do its work.

Mr. President, this brings me to the point of your society being a deeply polarised one. There’s a split down the middle and it’s not about the diversity of Kenya and its 42 tribes or even about the Kikuyu people competing for power with the Luo. It’s really about the Kikuyu people versus the rest.

In the run-up to 4-3-13, I consistently heard “it’s 41 against 1”. Your victory has been universally seen in the country as a victory for the Kikuyu people but not a promising prospect for the people of Kenya as a whole. You can change this perception by your actions alone.

That the Kenyatta family has massive tracts of land in the country is universally known in Kenya. Much of this land was supposedly acquired by your dad, via means that would be termed ‘unconstitutional’ today. Given this, I’d suggest you submit the family’s acquisition of land (and, obviously, that of others too) to scrutiny by a credible land commission. This, so that adequate land restitution can be effected. But, even though the land might not really belong to your family, people say that you could never submit to a land commission. This, because a Kikuyu will never relinquish wealth. Is this true?

Of course, the few hundred thousand people who lost their land in the 2007/2008 post election violence –the so-called Internally Displaced People (IDP’s)- need to get land to live as well. It’s been over five years now and it’s time the IDP’s got somewhere to stay that isn’t a plastic tent.Few will argue with me when I say that these ‘historical injustices’ on the ‘land issue’ have to be addressed before your society can move on. It’s probably the biggest issue here in Kenya.

And, yes, offer your opposite number, Raila Odinga, a meaningful place in government; an ‘olive branch’, as it were. If you do, I personally think he should graciously decline because he’s too old. His voice is faltering and he’s been looking very tired for a while. Perhaps it’s time for him and all of his generation to retire from Kenyan politics.

Whatever his failings, the young Mike ‘Sonko’ is an inspiration to Kenya’s youth, jaunty hat, studs in his ears, and all. I live close to where he started and have seen some of what he’s done to help the people of his prior constituency. Let there be more like him, Senators and Governors, and less of the old guard that has only taken Kenya to ruin.   

And on the issue of Kenya’s ‘internal security’, I would be careful about acting too harshly against the Mombasa Republican Council and making them the primary target in the quest. Muslim culture and Christianity have co-existed peacefully in Kenya for a long time. In fact, I think that Kenya has been a wonderful example of religious tolerance so far. Don’t spoil that now and start a religious war in Kenya. There have been enough grenades thrown in churches and public places already. Instead, bring the MRC into the mainstream political arena. The Muslims at the coast also have some legitimate gripes, and they need to be heard without going to the lengths of seeking radical partition.

Lastly, and most importantly, while I don’t think that it’s essential that you prosecute the ‘big fish’ of ‘grand corruption’ in the past, you do need to make drastic changes to the culture of thievery and impunity that has so depressed your people. Again, let the justice system work freely, and unfettered by political influence. And reform your police force quickly. Equip it with vehicles, and a little petrol, at least.

That’s all I wanted to say, really. Thank you Mr. President. I wish you a term in which Kenya shall flourish. It’s within your power to make this happen. And Kenya is primed for it ...

May God bless Kenya.

Faithfully yours,

Brian Rath

ps please get a typist who doesn’t make multi-billion Shilling errors.