Don’t overlook the law and turn Kenya into a gangster state

By Makau Mutua

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was larger than life. Many of us remember the Burning Spear – the colloquialism for the man with the piercing eyes – as a figure of destiny. The man from Gatundu is inextricably linked to Kenya’s identity.

There’s one pithy moment early in Mzee Kenyatta’s rulership. To appease jittery whites – and to forestall their mass exodus after black rule – Mr Kenyatta declared with flare that Kenya would not be a “gangster government”. He meant the state would not repossess white-owned land the way Europeans had stolen it from blacks – illegally, by force, and without regard to the market and the rule of law. I am afraid Mzee Kenyatta’s promise hasn’t been kept – Kenya today is hurtling towards a gangster state.

I would be naïve to think that any state today – including the most democratic – is innocent. That’s because states are creatures of violence – they are violently born, and kept together by the threat of violence. That’s why they insist on the monopoly of the instruments of violence.

But that’s not always true of the cultures on which states sit. Cultures predate the state, and as such often “civilise” the state. The key to avoiding a gangster state is to make sure that the cultures on which the state pivots don’t themselves go rogue. By “culture” I mean more than tradition – I include religion, ethics, civic citizenship, and the arts. I am talking about values, morals, and social sinews.

My point is that a society becomes sick – loses its innocence – when its cultures are out of social balance. Then everything goes, and criminality becomes a way of life. In 2000, I was on a human rights mission to war-ravaged Liberia. I saw children zombied out on drugs with fingers on triggers of AK 47s that were taller than they.

These children had raped, killed, and maimed others. In some cases, they cut out the hearts of their victims and ate them. It was a chilling reminder than the Lord of the Flies – the 1954 dystopian novel about human descent into bone-chilling savagery – isn’t a myth. Next to Kenya, Somalia has become a byword for dystopia.

I don’t mean to scare anyone, or imply that Kenyans will soon be practising cannibalism, or be engrossed in an orgy of criminal mayhem. But I am saying this – a society’s descend into hell doesn’t happen in an instant – in the flash of a light. No – societies die slowly, one tiny bit after another.

Suddenly, they reach an inflection point when the devil descends on everyone. That’s what happened in Rwanda in 1994. In a demonic spasm of violence rarely seen even in a brutal century, neighbour took machete to neighbour. The result was untold carnage, and trauma that will last centuries. Not even Syokimau, the famed Kamba prophetess who foresaw colonialism could have predicted such barbarism. But it was authored.

Let’s take stock of the things that might drive us into oblivion. First, I wrote a few weeks ago about the phenomenon of “mungikinisation” – the general criminalisation of society. My view is that the embodiment of the Mungiki – the ethno-spiritual cult – into the body politic has spawned lawlessness. Gangs control the land, and exact whatever price they want. The state can’t seem to get a handle on them.

Often, the police and other armed state forces seem to work in cahoots with criminals. No one is safe – not even the wealthy and mighty. This is the genesis of the loss of faith by citizens in the state. You can bank this – it’s the first ginger step to dystopia.

Second, the soul of a nation can be corrupted by how it responds to outsiders bent on destroying it. I am referring here to Kenya’s response to Al Shabaab, the terror group. There’s no doubt the terror attackers must be stopped before they succeed. But that requires smart and actionable intelligence, not the creation of gulags for Somalis and Muslims. Such gulags only succeed in creating more terrorists.

Let me tell you what my crystal ball has revealed – concentration camps for Somalis and Muslims akin to the Mau Mau gulags will drive an irreparable wedge between religions and peoples. This is how nations in embryo like Kenya can be “denationalised”. Denationalisation is a straight path to state damnation.

Finally, the loose relationships between shady figures and the state must be terminated – ended pronto. With unexplained assassinations of critics and dissenters on the rise, the state can’t be seen to condone self-styled thugs and operatives.

A chilling audio discussing the possible killing of blogger Robert Alai has gone viral. In the video two men with close ties to the decks of state brag about their connections. They give the impression that Kenya is a “gangster government”. If left unchecked, these are the things that would lead us to dystopia on the fast lane.

The writer is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.