AFRICA : Mob ‘Justice’ Adds to Chaos of Life in Kenya

A drunk staggers through a vegetable market and squashes some tomatoes. Shoppers drop their packages and kick him to death.

In the same week, a man is accused of trying to steal a goat. Neighbors pounce and kill him with clubs. Elsewhere, a pastor argues with his sister, uproots plants in her garden and knocks her over with a hoe. Local residents track the cleric down, tie him with ropes and stone him to death.

Then there is this photograph in a Nairobi newspaper: A scruffy pickpocket, curled on the sidewalk, being kicked in the face by a businessman in a suit and tie while a crowd of men gathers to watch with their hands in their pockets.

Few things render a society so frightening as when justice is claimed by street mobs because the authorities are regarded as outlaws. Such is the worsening state of affairs in the East African nation of Kenya. Creeping anarchy puts at risk this country’s already deteriorating stability and clouds its hope of economic progress.

“What I’m afraid of, what we’re all afraid of, is that the government is losing control,” one senior civil servant said.

There is no Swahili word for mob justice. The phenomenon has become widespread in only the last few years. Now, almost every day, otherwise peaceable Kenyans are excited into a frenzy of violence. A hat is stolen off someone’s head. Kill the thief. A bus is involved in an accident. Beat the driver to death. A boy dies in a hospital. Stab the grandmother; she is a witch.

Mobs now take it upon themselves to enforce social norms. Sometimes it is with extreme cruelty: A schoolteacher is dragged from her home, pinned on the ground and circumcised. Other times it is with a sense of humor: A smelly bus driver is stripped by passengers and thrown into a tub of wash water.

Two recent occurrences have Kenyans rethinking the chaos.

In Eldoret, a powerful local politician used his pull to summon after-hours service from the electric company. Two power company employees arrived outside the estate and began work on a power cable. Two police officers, moonlighting as household guards, opened fire with at least 22 shots, killing both workers. They had asked no questions and gave no warning.

“Licensed to Kill: Police Shootings in Kenya,” was the title of a follow-up report issued by the independent Kenya Human Rights Commission.

The report reconfirmed many of the fears Kenyans have about their police. Although they do not answer emergency calls and although they are, even by the government’s admission, profoundly corrupt, the police are “trigger happy” and kill two Kenyans a week, often under cloudy circumstances. The commission report called the police murderers.

Who, then, can blame Kenyans for striking out on their own for justice? Or so the thinking has come to be.

But mob mentality is not easily, or long, contained.

On Aug. 10, a mob moved in on Kenya’s newest--and most formidable--opposition leadership and a group of journalists, beating them savagely with bullwhips and clubs.

The best-known victim was Richard Leakey, an internationally known paleontologist and a Kenyan resident. He also happens to be disabled, having lost both legs in an airplane crash.

Later, he showed his back, crisscrossed with lashings and bruises. Several journalists ended up in the hospital.

All indications are that “youth wing” supporters of 17-year strongman and President Daniel Arap Moi incited the attack to intimidate critics. Before the assault was over, ordinary citizens and even the police joined in.

It was an ominous twist in the cycle: a desperate government resorting to the contagion of mob rule.