Where goon is defined by state, Ruto's warning rings hollow

The notion of a goon in Kenya is largely a vague matter of political convenience. There is no definition of a goon in Kenyan law, even as President William Ruto vows, as he did this week, to rid the country of goons.  

Within Kenya’s statutory law, it is impossible to find the headword “goon”. The statutes know of such offences as public violence, extortion, hired violence, and possession of weapons,” among other forms of affray. But nowhere does Kenyan law seem to understand who a goon is, or help us to understand. Accordingly, when President Ruto promises “to deal with goons,” it is difficult to tell who, as a matter of law, he has in mind. 

Within the competitive political space in Kenya in recent times, however, the goon is a violent hired thug. He is usually a member of a dangerous gang, a marauder in a menacing mob. They disrupt functions and events. These brigands intimidate people in just about any kind of gathering. They have rowdily disrupted church services, weddings, funerals, and mostly political gatherings. 

It would seem that the most important thing is that there is a sponsoring enabler. The rest, these modern day mercenaries will discharge. Quite often, like the gangsters that were called Jeshi La Mzee in the 1980s and early ‘90s, the ownership of the bandits falls between two stools; the individual and the State. 

So what goon did the President have in mind, when he vowed to eliminate this vermin? What exactly did he mean by elimination? Was it one of the three choices that were stated early in this presidency; infusing into them the fear of God, so that they stop their activities, or causing them to migrate from Kenya or, better still, permanently consigning them to heaven? 

In Kenya, organised paid violent actors seem to be available for hire by just about anybody, including the State. During the Gen-Z protests in June this year, crude weapon bearing prowlers dramatically festooned Kenya police officers, wreaking mayhem in the streets of Nairobi. They mercilessly clobbered anybody, and everybody, that they came across. They claimed to be protecting business premises in the central Business District (CBD) from what they termed “destructive Gen-Zs.”

The police did not mind them at all. It would seem reasonable to conclude that they worked not just for the business community in the city centre, but also for the State.

If the State seemed to have hired the June 2025 goons in Nairobi’s CBD, would this be one of the kinds of goons President Ruto would wish to eradicate? Conversely, is the Kenyan State about to selectively define situations, actors and occasions when violent disruptors are goons, and when they are “a business community” protecting its business? 

This, in any event, is what seems to have happened during the June demonstrations, and in the recent by-elections. The State determined when lawless interlopers were goons, and when they were not. The marauders in Nairobi were, moreover, believed to have been hired by the City County Government, in league with sundry pro-establishment politicians.  If ever there was any doubt about pro-State goons, Tiaty MP, William Kassait Kamket, removed it all. Ahead of repeat demos, he vowed to ferry into Nairobi violent youth from Pokot County. They would teach demonstrators in the city a lesson they would never forget, said the MP. Kamket later beat a retreat, styling himself in Christly imagery of “prince of peace”.

That did not, however, negate his scoffing at Nairobi governor, Johnson Sakaja, whom he claimed to have “hired a pathetic laughable army.” Sakaja, nonetheless, denied sponsoring any goons, nor protecting them during the city protests. Reuters, however, aired footage that showed club-armed men, who claimed to belong to what they called “Team Sakaja.” It is not clear which Sakaja they purported to belong to, as “Sakaja” could be anybody, or even a code name.

Perhaps the Sakaja who owned these people will be known, someday. Their intersection with the police, however, speaks to State complicity in the activities of these goons. There was clear cooperation, coordination, and toleration between the gangsters and the police in Nairobi. The question may be asked, are these some of the people whose activities President Ruto intends to stop?

If the Kenya Kwanza government is serious about its intent to end goon activities in the country, it will need to define the goon in law and its own operations in that landscape. Together with this, it will define solid activities that amount to “goon crimes.” Vague references that are left to individual determination and official whims bear the risk of selective application against supporters of the political Opposition. 

Moreover, the timing of the President’s declaration against “goons” is itself disturbing. Why during the “graduation” of chiefs, who had just undergone some sort of “training”, on “strengthening grassroots administration and security capability”? Why the pronounced emphasis on the role of chiefs? 

Kenya’s historical experience with chiefs evokes terrifying memories. Right from colonial times into the first four decades of independence, chiefs were dreaded merchants of terror; law unto themselves. When Ruto trains chiefs in like quasi-security functions, he rankles a very old national wound. He, especially, cuts very deep into the country’s historical political disorder, when he frames the role of his trainees in frontline activities in “dealing with goons.”  

President Ruto brings back the harsh memory of the chief as an instrument of State coercion and oppression. Is the objective genuinely to bring about order, or is it control and coercion for partisan political goals? Is Kenya under Ruto decidedly on the pathway to negations and reversals of civic gains that have been painfully achieved over the decades? 

Chiefs first happened upon the great-great grandparents of present youthful generations of Kenyans as cruel collectors of colonial hut tax and poll tax. They were ruthless enforcers of diverse unpopular colonial policies around forced labour, evictions, fines, as well as degrading and dehumanising punishments against Africans. They were socially disruptive and oppressive instruments of colonial authority. Africans reviled them. 

If independence should have brought relief, it did not. Intentionally, the Chiefs’ Authority Act (Cap 128, of 1937), was steadily reinvigorated between 1963 and 1997, to give chiefs unlimited powers. They arrested without warrant. They restricted movement. They imposed fines. They regulated gatherings. They forced Kenyans to do communal work. They demolished people’s homes. All these, and many more, within the ambit of the law! 

Could Kenya under President William Ruto be retracing her footsteps to an inglorious past? In the Kanu decades, chiefs were not just tools of oppression. They were decidedly political instruments. Is a return to this what seems to be heralded in this week’s pronouncements? Chiefs scuttled Opposition meetings, bribed voters, and intimidated dissenters. They are, especially, infamously remembered for enforcing the disgraceful mlolongo voting in 1988. MPs and councillors were elected through queues. The person with the shortest queue was often declared the winner. 

Coming as it does just under twenty months to the next general elections, the new development around the institution of chiefs should worry Kenyans. At face value, it looks quite harmless. Yet it is not. Citizens should worry when chiefs are “taught intelligence gathering”,  “identifying threats”, “paralegal processing”, “supporting police operations”, and a cocktail of other suspicious courses. That was how the colonial State operated. It is ironic that on the eve of the 62nd celebration of independence, the Kenyan State is winding the clock back to the future.

Is Kenya Kwanza making chiefs paramilitaries in a civilian environment? It is going to be of significance to see what independent oversight authority and mechanisms the government will put in place, to regulate Kenya’s new chief. Oversight was a revolutionary measure that the Constitution of Kenya (2010) introduced. It was the answer to 47 years of abuse of human rights by an overbearing Executive, and its arms. 

A fundamental constitutional question, therefore, lies ahead even as the government attempts to reintroduce, through the backdoor, the chief’s defunct draconian powers. Where has the Executive got the authority to introduce chiefly paramilitary powers that have no independent constitutional oversight and accountability? The Kenya Police Service, for example, is oversighted by the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA). IPOA is a constitutional organ. Who will oversee chiefs? Where will they derive the mandate to oversight? 

Whatever the intent, Ruto’s chiefs are set to run into collusion with non-state armed groups, some of which successive regimes have nurtured. Gangs like Chinkororo, Mungiki, and Jeshi La Embakasi, have been around for quite some time; some for decades. They hibernate every so often, only to resurface in full force when the State itself seems to need them. It, of course, does so in informal ways that are at once opportunistic and deniable. 

The official State will not admit it, but individuals like Kamket will let the cat out of the bag. Other tough talking politicians will angrily tell their political adversaries things like, “We will never accept William Ruto to serve for only one term!” Their bellicose and definitive style suggests that they have some power, other than that of persuasion and the ballot, to secure their declamatory stance and remarks. Historical parallels point towards the tragic events of 2007/2008. Then, sundry militias actuated pre-election declarations of the same kind. 

The question that begs today is if indeed any such militias and gangs exist, once more. And if they do, does the solution rest with intelligence and security agencies, or does it reside with chiefs? Beyond that, wherever the solution may be domiciled, will the relevant authorities deal with goons and militias the same way, and in equal measure, regardless that they are Opposition driven, or that they are pro-State? 

Does a State that outsources deniable violence from militias still retain the right to be called a responsible State? The answer can hardly be in the affirmative. The State retains such entities basically because it intends to engage in extra-legal activities;  and sometimes in outright crime. If the police barter demonstrators, or kill them, it will be judged as a case of violation of human rights. But if the assignment is outsourced to goons, who pretend to protect business under threat by demonstrators and looters, the government will deny responsibility. 

Back to the question of 2027 General Election, Kenyans need to be wary of the glaring contradictions in addressing the goon question as a possible player in managing the elections, and even choreographing the declared outcome. Hired youth may disrupt elections in some polling stations. Some may ferry, or escort voters, while also intimidating voters. The goons deliver the expected results. 

The State benefits, but it meanwhile blames goons for the disturbances, without taking any legal action against them. Because of mutual complicity, matters are not pursued to their logical conclusion.

If the State does not benefit, the goons are hunted down and presented before the courts as criminals. That they are not handled that way suggests that they were hired State agents. Such a State only appears clean because hirelings did its dirty work. How are President Ruto’s newly trained and graduated chiefs going to manage these contradictions? Governments that seek to benefit from hired goons will do well, however, to know that such ploys have sometimes boomeranged, often very catastrophically.

The Tonton Macoute of Haiti is a textbook case. But there are others. In the 1980s, in Pakistan, for example, the State worked with militias, like the Taliban. In the fullness of time, the Taliban grew horns.

They splintered into groups that turned against one another, and eventually against the government! Their harmful impact is still felt today. 

Colombia in South America is a total disaster. From 1964, all the way to the 1980s, and the ‘90s, the State worked with a cocktail of wealthy landowners, and drug traffickers to fight the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC). FARC were themselves funded by competing drug traffickers and kidnappers. Some of those working with the government turned against it, even after a 2016 peace accord. They are still in the trenches, smuggling drugs and fighting the government. 

Closer home, the Janjaweed of Sudan were a State sponsored Arab militia group. They emerged at the beginning of the 2000s. Their brief was to crush unhappy Africans in the Darfur region. After years of mass killings, the Janjaweed morphed into the Rapid Support Force (RSF). Today, RSF is engaged in a wasteful war against the government in Sudan. 

The Sudanese situation is, of course, a lot more complex than a militia suddenly just turning its guns against the State. However, the lesson stands. A State planted militia/goon group eventually germinates into a terrible crop of terror activities beyond the management of the owners. That is what RSF, under the dreaded Muhammad Hemedti, is doing in Sudan. 

There are lessons aplenty. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Kalangala Action Plan in Uganda; and from Mexican criminal cartels, to militias that fought Moammar Gaddafi in Libya, the lesson is simple. At some point the militias become gremlins. They rebel against governments that owned them. Like the Kalangala of Uganda, they even embarrass the government, both at home and away. Over to Ruto. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke