The script reads like one written by the devil. A politician, who has fallen out with the government, is attending a funeral. Hired goons, armed with machetes and rungus, descend on the congregants, forcing the politician and his supporters to flee.
As they do so, the men from hell hurl chairs and other projectiles at the cars. In the melee, innocent mourners are injured. The most harrowing injury, however, is suffered by relatives of the dead man.
For them, it is a triple tragedy – the loss of their loved, the desecration of the solemn occasion, and the physical and emotional injury caused by the attack.
But this was no fiction dreamed up by an evil script writer. It was the scene in Limuru a few days ago. The target of the attack was Rigathi Gachagua, former deputy president, and his supporters.
The attack had all the hallmarks of a government hand. First, the police were nowhere in insight. Secondly, the attackers, much less the planners, were not arrested.
Third, two politicians, deemed to be close to Gachagua, were abducted by hooded police and terrorized throughout the night. One of them is reported to have suffered serious injuries.
It is bad enough, not to say illegal, for the government to harass and physically attack an opponent. But to do so at a funereal of a poor Kenyan showed the heartlessness of those who planned the attack.
The government and its allies could have restrained Gachagua at his home or at other points on the way to the funeral.
That they chose to do so at the funereal was yet another indicator of the contempt with which those in authority hold poor Kenyans.
It is tempting to say that Gachagua tasted his own medicine. As a ruthless District Officer in the 1990s, he enforced similar pogroms against opponents of the dictatorship he overzealously served.
Victims had nowhere to go for help as the police were the ones conducting the persecution. Then when he became Deputy President, he presided over the violent crackdown on people protesting the high cost of living.
He said nothing about the abduction of opposition leaders and the execution of over 75 protesters. He is also widely believed to have been behind the raid on Uhuru Kenyatta’s farm in which livestock was stolen and the farm set on fire. He now seems to have miraculously recovered his democratic sensibilities.
But mocking Gachagua would be juvenile because the incident in Limuru, as with the attack on the Kenyatta farm and other such incidents of violent intolerance, poses a threat to our democratic experiment.
These incidents indicate that we are never far from the abyss. These incidents tell us that until we have individuals of the highest integrity in charge of our affairs, we will always remain vulnerable to political strife and state failure.
If we want to have a peaceful 2027 election, curbing these acts of intolerance must be top priority.
Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.
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