Global Gangs: Street Violence across the World

10. “We Are the True Blood of the Mau Mau”: The Mungiki Movement in Kenya

213 10 “We Are the True Blood of the Mau Mau”: The Mungiki Movement in Kenya Jacob Rasmussen During the past decade, the Mungiki movement in Kenya has gained a reputation as one of East Africa’s most dangerous criminal organizations . For example, following a visit to Nairobi as part of his global tour investigating the world’s “worst gangs,” the British actor turned popular journalist Ross Kemp (2008, 167) described Mungiki as having a reputation for “cutting off people’s heads, arms and other parts of the anatomy” and for being involved in “protection rackets, extortion and extremely violent murder—­ the stock-­ in-­ trade of gangs around the world.” Similarly , the report produced by the Official Commission of Inquiry into Post-­ election Violence about the riots and brutality surrounding the 2008 elections discussed Mungiki in the section on “Organized Gangs” (Waki Report 2008, 258). Members of the Mungiki movement whom I interviewed during the course of anthropological research in Nairobi between 2008 and 2010, however, unambiguously reject the “gang” label and categorize themselves simply by stating, “We are Mungiki!” In Kikuyu language, the word mungiki means “masses” or “people” (see Wamue 2001, 454; Gecaga 2007, 68), and the name is thus arguably an index of Mungiki’s ambition to be a popular movement rather than a ganglike organization. Indeed, the notion of representing “the people” and their needs and wishes is in fact central to the Mungiki’s narrative about itself and to its relation to wider Kenyan society. To its members, “Mungiki” is more than a name; it symbolizes the movement’s internal unity and represents a collective ambition for the future. 214    jacob rasmussen In this chapter, I consider the profound disjuncture between official and Mungiki discourse concerning the movement, focusing in particular on Mungiki narratives to highlight how the members perceive, place, and legitimize the movement in relation to the rest of Kenyan society. Writing on the relation between narrative and reality, the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner (1991, 13) argues that narratives construe rather than refer to reality. This basic understanding of the character of narratives informs the analysis offered here of Mungiki’s narrative.1 While the narrative is central to the construction and presentation of a collective identity for the narrators, it is also a reflection of the surrounding society’s reaction to them (Jensen 2006). Analyzing both Mungiki’s narrative and wider Kenyan society’s reaction to it, I trace both the construction of Mungiki’s collective identity and the movement ’s institutionalization. I begin with a brief overview of Mungiki’s origins and its remarkable transformative capacities before proceeding with a deeper consideration of Mungiki’s historical relationship with the Kenyan Mau Mau liberation movement. This is followed by an analysis of the institutionalization of the movement in Kenyan society. A final section concludes by elaborating on the relational aspects of Mungiki’s narrative and the societal position from which they claim to speak, approached through Michel Foucault’s (2001) concept of the “truth-­teller.” The Chameleon and the Mugumo Tree: Mungiki Origins and Transformations In his work comparing gangs through space and time, the social scientist John Hagedorn (2008, 30) argues that while many gangs have transformed from juvenile delinquents to organized criminals, others have developed interests in local politics or else have displayed the potential to change into more overtly political social forms such as militias or social movements. Rejecting restrictive gang typologies, he therefore argues that the “only constant in today’s world of gangs is that they are changing” (31) and contends that we must adopt broad and dynamic conceptions of gangs to truly understand them, so as not to reduce them to mere criminals, and to highlight the complex set of intertwined and changing interests and activities that underpin them. Seen from this perspective, Mungiki is clearly conceivable, if not as a “we are the true blood of the mau mau”    215 gang, certainly as a ganglike organization.2 At the same time, however, it is less the question of whether Mungiki is a gang that provides us with an understanding of the movement than the focus on the transformations and the internal and external factors motivating these transformations. It is arguably these that in the final analysis make Mungiki ganglike, and to this extent, this chapter will seek to understand Mungiki and their activities, whether criminal, violent, political, or religious, in a broad-­brush...