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
Half the degrees are as credible as the paper theys printed on(no pun intended)
would you guys please try and engage with the content of my argument instead of the ad hominems…how is that constructive. You don’t have to like me particularly, I may have a worthless degree as intimated by some of you and other things but that doesn’t detract from the point i’m making and neither does calling me a babie or a collaborator. so far after all you’ve said, none of you have actually refuted the point I have been making!
what av you gus to say the killing and mutilating of the young? Mungiki should stop their think and do somthing good for the poor they claim to fight for while doing the contrary. i am sick and tired of them and i am thinking of acquiring a gun so that i can kill the few i know. i would like to urge kenyans to rise and fight mungiki like they fought for Uhuru. Lets kill them too, a sword for a sword and that is the language they understand well.
Kenya and it’s politics is something that amuses me very much. I believe the motto in this third world country is ‘peace, love and unity’: yet, Kenya is a violent and unstable place, there is no shred of love anywhere, and unity? gimme a break, with these ignorant politicians pushing forward tribal politics where’s the unity.
Kenya is on a one way course- downwards into poverty and death.
After Kenyatta, there has been no progress at all in this godforbidden country. This country has the biggest slum in the world, I repeat, in the world. The wise, educated Kenyan should realise that their talents are wasted in this cesspit of a country, and they should make every attemp to leave this hellhole, perhaps to Europe or America where they may stand a chance of encountering an intelligent person. Thank you.
Sam, don’t be melodramatic man…our country is going through a rough patch occasioned by the social pressures we are facing at the moment, I acknowledge that, but that doesn’t mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with it or us…It’s interesting that you think there was progress under Kenyatta when in fact, the foundation, if you will, of the social malaise we are experiencing was laid then by Kenyatta’s actions.
A point about the “west”, at one point, they too went through the same thing. Yes, Britain, Europe and America were once violent and unstable places but they sorted themselves out and that’s what we need to do as well…not run away!
I think this article talks on one side of the story that is the positive side of mingiki.mungiki and rastafarisim are very different as rastafarisim advocates for peace,love and unity while mungiki based on violence and tribalistic as it only considers kikuyus as the only tribe in kenya.next tyme get facts or ask people on the ground.
We, of the faith of Rastafari do not condone violence. We were painted as lazy, violent and wicked by the goverment in Jamaica when our great father Mosiah Garvey started the trod. But oit is the media. I am not familiar with what “mungiki” is; but I tell you one thing: Be wary of a man that doesn’t want to have the simplest life calling himself Rasta; simplicity is what I&I use to survive. Selassie I bless. Jah love. Selam.