Via Zack Kìnùthia fb
In the hot matter of Agìkùyù male youth being branded Mûngìkì by Hon. Rigathi Gachagua….
I was saddened and thunderstruck when I heard, and actually saw Mathìra MP branding a section of some Youths from a Nyeri County village Mûngìkì.
For the first timers, this is a dangerous term used to label the most active and unengaged age of male youths from Agìkùyù tribe. No other tribe is so branded.
This term of isolating actively beholden youths, killed an approximate number of 300,000 youths in 4 years, from 2005 to 2008.
In 2006,I would have been killed by a vicious gang within Police Force, owing to my age and tribe, had I not been in a boarding High School away from the Kwekwe operation force.
Many of my age mates were killed, and others disappeared completely. No trace to date.
Gachagua’s diatribe is not just detestable, but it evokes a deadly history that all of us want to forget. Parents and Children alike.
Any young male from Mt Kenya is a potential Mûngìkì in the Mountain in the eyes of the non Gîkûyû tribe.
Ask me, I will tell you.
The name is enough to isolate you as an adherent.
Once you are branded Mûngìkì, you are finished. You’re seen as a thug. You’re seen as a slasher of people’s heads. You are seen as a forceful circumciser. Of both gender. You have no defence in the court of the public.
These are fears that are deeply entrenched in many Kenyans minds.
By the way, Mûngìkì as a term is known a terror gang from across the globe, having received a big bad reputation during the Hague proceedings.
The civil society is not complete in their funds-soliciting sprees, without mentioning Mûngìkì, to evoke direct empathy.
Anywhere you go, Mûngìkì the term carries the bad omen.
It was therefore out of order, for a ranking leader in society, who was once a Provincial Administration officer to speak so loosely.
He should know better.
Let me say,
When thugs raided our villages in the first decade of the 21st Century, to the great loss of our economy and security in the Mountain and in The Nairobi, they assumed the face and name of Mûngìkì. They hid under the name Mûngìkì. Today, every evil and malicious politician, who want to conquer by fear, uses the word Mûngìkì.
Nobody has defined what Mûngìkì is, how it is constituted, who forms the membership or where it is based.
The only qualification is unqualified belonging to Agìkùyù tribe and the larger Embu and Meru sons of women therein.
We must refuse that kind of generalisation from people like, no less than Gachagua. He has set up Nyeri youths against the law and order keepers. They will be targeted with that kind of backdrop.
I support all Young Sons of Mt Kenya women with all my knowledge and goodwill. And I will stand against any oppressor, in whatever epoch in any way against any threat that may therefore be imposed. Real or imagined.
They are as good as the rest of the male youths across Kenya and world.
If I don’t speak for the Mt Kenya youths against any profiling, as they were when I could not speak, I will be betraying my generation and era.
They came for real Mûngìkì thugs, and I did not speak, as I was not one of them.
They then came for the identified Mûngìkì leaders, I did not speak as I was mot one of them.
They came for the hairly male youths from Mt Kenya, and I did not speak as I was not one of them.
They then came for all those who were called by their surname, and I did not speak, as I was out of the scene.
Finally, they came for any politically conscious youth from Mt Kenya identified by Gachaguas of my time, and then, there was no one else remaining to speak for me.
And they killed me.
#StopGachaguafromProfilingYouthsasMungiki
******
Son of the Soil.
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