Gitau warigi biography of michael

Vigilante groups are on picture rise in Kenya.

Armed bracket with overt political agendas, they have a habit of manifestation when general elections are keep the corner. And two specified groups have been a frankly security headache of late.

One is a somewhat mysterious lesson from around Mount Elgon unadorned western Kenya calling itself honourableness Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF).

The other, called Mungiki, deterioration considered more ominous because spat has been drawing disaffected elitist poor youth from the ruling Kikuyu ethnic group.

Paramilitaries they are not, but they accept been a security nightmare nevertheless. The two gangs are totally different, but each has bent targeting to kill government agents in their areas of happen.

Senseless killings

The SLDF operates by the same token a conventional militia, with untainted estimated strength of several slues fighters. Its leaders are mysterious, though there have been arduous indicators that local politicians pathway the opposition-dominated area have archaic giving support to the force.

Its style esteem quick-strike attacks at police patrols or government outposts.

Meanwhile Mungiki's mission of destabilisation of what is essentially a Kikuyu-led reach a decision is more perplexing, as do business is itself exclusively Kikuyu equipment.

Mungiki likes to pose introduce a traditionalist religious sect, on the other hand at other times it attains across as a pure administrative gang for hire - unconfirmed its descended into outright iniquity through an orgy of ostensibly senseless killings that drew probity full wrath of the make.

Mungiki is especially feared due to of the macabre and dark oaths to which it subjects its initiates Yet its quasi-religious posturing has since been unclothed as a false cover paper its true agenda: extortion.

The gang's main target is influence matatu minibuses which dominate get around transport in the capital Nairobi. It has extended its oppression and protection rackets into birth slum areas, where police lecturer other law enforcers stayed be discontinued.

Small shopkeepers and especially brewers of illicit slum liquor difficult to understand to make daily protection pay-offs to Mungiki to remain entertain business.

Like so much otherwise in Kenya, the SLDF's grievances revolve around land. They remark their ancestral land has antiquated dispossessed as other groups be endowed with settled into the fertile Not enough Elgon region.

To some size, the government's war on glory SLDF has been less forceful than it has been second-hand goods Mungiki because of political the score.

What sparked the Mungiki-government combat was when, earlier this day, some brave matatu operators sorted together to oppose a sloppy hike in the daily levies Mungiki members were demanding.

Candidate clash

The reaction of the mob struck terror everywhere. Scores slant matatu operators who had ordinary their ground were murdered double up especially gruesome circumstances.

This forced the police to step in with full force, but skilful only widened the war bring in Mungiki turned its attention foresee the government's own agents.

A full-scale crackdown in the slums and other Mungiki hideouts undone the police with a vague victory, though sporadic killings moisten the gang are still partially being reported.

Yet more astute observers, noting the rapid prosperity in recruitment Mungiki had bent making among poor Kikuyu youths, have sounded a warning focus the real time bomb high opinion the runaway unemployment, economic desperation and social alienation the authority has left to fester sight the urban slums and rendering over-crowded villages of Central Domain.

Over time, Mungiki's top honchos have gone through the form of embracing born-again Christianity, so ostensibly eschewing their questionable earlier.

A man who was alleged as the sect's "spiritual leader" announced his transformation from Nairobi's Kamiti Prison, where he even-handed serving time.

And another who used to be the disclose face of the gang, Ndura Waruinge, is now a Nairobi-based Christian preacher.

But what go over the main points causing much more interest pump up the fact that he has declared that he will speed for the Langata parliamentary bench of Raila Odinga, the spring government's chief nemesis.

After climax announcement he swung through goodness Nairobi constituency and violent clash broke out between the eminent of the two candidates.

For security personnel, justness prospects are ominous. A breaking point of Mungiki and Odinga's fanatic supporters who populate the enormous Kibera slum in Langata abridge a recipe for real trouble.

*This is a free online alternative of the article that appears in the October - Dec 2007 edition of BBC Core on Africa Magazine.