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
I believe you all believe in creation. And if you do not I believe the fact will always remain that we are all born with no ideology. We learn and adopt ideologies as we grow up. Ideologies that were developed by those who live or lived before us. Man is to error and so are his ideologies. I could be wrong, so be careful when you engage with any doctrine.
Personally am inspired by the Rastafarian but am cautious about their belief in Selassie as Jah.
Mau Mau will never be replaced by the Mungiki. Mau Mau still live. My grandad was a Mau Mau and he taught me to fight, not with a machete but with intellect.
This is the “wrongest” information ever!
Mungiki’s were and are Militias..they killed anyone who did not join them, including their own tribes men by beheading. these characters are and were just thugs.
We have the real keepers of traditions in Kikuyu tribe and they are seers, who sacrifice at the mountain and other places they are old people chosen to do the particular tribesmen work. Mungiki only carried machetes and extorted money in the streets!
True Sister. These guys need to research and consult. This article is full of erroneous details. How someone can refer to the Mungiki as Freedom fighters by virtue of them wearing dreadlocks beats logic. Journalism ya siku hizi ni Kuokota unconfirmed info hapa na pale na kutengeneza article.
Am a Kenyan and i can assure you, you need more information about Mungiki. We promote the ideas of total freedom of the Black man to decide his destiny and prosper in this world, but, Mungiki..No thank you. Ask any Kenyan with up to date news from the country and you’ll know why. That’s a group that has been responsible for the deaths of many innocent hardworking black people who did not submit to their extortion rackets