Politics
The Sins of the Father: Why Lifestyle Audits Cannot Resolve Land-Related Historical Injustices
11 min read.It is, therefore, evident that wealth declarations and lifestyle audits will not in of themselves resolve historical land injustices that continue to disenfranchise and impoverish a large proportion of the country’s population.
In an apparent move to stem the corruption scourge that has infested virtually every government department, President Uhuru Kenyatta recently directed all public servants and politicians, including members of his own cabinet, to undergo lifestyle audits. The intention, presumably, is to determine whether state officials have used their positions to acquire ill-gotten wealth.
The question on many Kenyans’ minds, however, is whether the president will subject himself to such an audit. But then maybe he doesn’t need to: he and his family were fabulously wealthy when he became president in 2013 and will remain so when he leaves office at the end of his second and last term in 2022.
In 2011, Uhuru Kenyatta (estimated to be worth $500 million) was listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in Africa. Although he was dropped from subsequent lists “because of new information regarding the complex distribution of business assets among the Kenyatta family members”, there is no doubt that his family is among the wealthiest in the country. The Kenyatta family has majority shareholding in a vast array of commercial businesses in Kenya, including Heritage Hotels, MediaMax, Commercial Bank of Africa and Brookside Dairy Ltd, which controls 45 per cent of the processed milk market in Kenya. The family also owns vast tracts of land across the country, most of which was acquired during Jomo Kenyatta’s presidency following independence in 1963.
The question one might ask is how this wealth was acquired. And if the wealth that the Kenyatta family currently owns is the result of its past access to political power, then should Uhuru Kenyatta hand it back to its rightful owners in an act of restitution, reconciliation and redemption?
CIA revelations
These were the questions that also consumed the CIA and the United States government in August 1978 when Jomo Kenyatta, Uhuru’s father and the founding father and first president of independent Kenya, died. Then the US government was worried that a change in government might lead to demands for wealth redistribution among those who had been adversely affected by the Kenyatta family’s various land grabs. The US government believed that if this were to happen, a revolution or civil strife might ensue, which would impact American geopolitical and economic interests in the country.
A CIA report prepared shortly after Kenyatta’s death said that while Jomo Kenyatta owned only about half a dozen properties covering roughly 4,000 hectares (mainly farms in Kiambu and the Rift Valley), his wife, First Lady Mama Ngina Kenyatta, owned at least 115,000 hectares of land and also had a big stake in ruby mining and in beach resorts around Mombasa. The report, which was declassified in 2017 and whose contents were published in Kenya’s Standard newspaper on 29 January 2017, implicated the Kenyatta family in various illegal activities, including secretive exports of ivory, which was banned.
One CIA memo stated: “Mama Ngina and Margaret Kenyatta [Jomo’s daughter from his first wife Wahu] are probably the country’s two largest charcoal and ivory traders – particularly lucrative businesses. Although the export of these items is banned because depletion of Kenya’s forests and wildlife threaten the underpinning of the Kenyan economy, both women have been able to obtain special licenses.”
The question one might ask is how this wealth was acquired. And if the wealth that the Kenyatta family currently owns is the result of its past access to political power, then should Uhuru Kenyatta hand it back to its rightful owners in an act of restitution, reconciliation and redemption?
The CIA believed that the Kenyatta family was “resented” because of a public perception that it had acquired wealth illegally or through fraud. There were even rumours that Mama Ngina planned to flee the country after her husband died to escape being penalised for the various economic crimes she had been implicated in. In October 1973, five years before Kenyatta died, Martin Shikuku, the then MP for Butere, had even warned that if the Kikuyu did not share the fruits of independence with others, they would be “eaten up by the other 41 tribes like a satisfied hyena was eaten up by hungry hyenas”.
The fear at that time was that Kenyatta’s successor, President Daniel arap Moi, would reverse the Kenyatta-era land-related and other injustices by targeting Kikuyu elites who had benefitted from Kenyatta’s patronage. This fear, however, was unfounded – not only did Moi follow in Kenyatta’s footsteps by grabbing land for himself, he also entrenched a patronage network that mostly benefitted members of his own ethnic group, the Kalenjin.
In a diplomatic cable sent in 1979, the then US ambassador to Kenya, Anthony Marshall, stated: “Contrary to the expectations of many, the Kenyatta family and the close associates of the former president have not been attacked by the new government on the issue of the corrupt means through which they obtained much of their wealth. On the other hand, we hear that Moi has let it be known that, while he will not stop anyone from enjoying his ill-gotten gains, the game is over for the Kenyatta clique and no more corruption will be tolerated from them.” (Note: Moi did not condemn corruption per se, just corruption among the Kikuyu elite and the power wielded by powerful Kikuyu politicians, who he quickly sidelined to assert his authority.)
The fear at that time was that Kenyatta’s successor, President Daniel arap Moi, would reverse the Kenyatta-era land-related and other injustices by targeting Kikuyu elites who had benefitted from Kenyatta’s patronage. This fear, however, was unfounded – not only did Moi follow in Kenyatta’s footsteps by grabbing land for himself, he also entrenched a patronage network that mostly benefitted members of his own ethnic group, the Kalenjin.
Million Acre Scheme: The first betrayal
The first large-scale land grab in independent Kenya began during the first few years of Jomo Kenyatta’s presidency when a resettlement scheme was implemented to “buy back” one million acres of land from white settlers in order to resettle displaced (mostly Kikuyu) Kenyans. Kenyatta had argued then that since the British colonialists and white settlers had taken land away from indigenous African communities, they were obliged to fund a large-scale settlement programme – using long-term loans with easy repayment conditions – to provide land to the landless.
However, a group led by Oginga Odinga, Bildad Kaggia and Paul Ngei opposed the buying of land for resettlement; they argued that Africans could not buy back land that was originally theirs, a contention that did not go down well with Kenyatta because “there were no free things and that land was not free, but must be purchased”. Kenyatta’s position mirrored that of the outgoing British colonial administration that made it clear that “African settlers could not get free land but were expected to either purchase it directly with their money or borrow the loan that was to be repaid to the British government”. It is believed that one of the main reasons Kenyatta was selected to lead the country’s transition to independence was because he had made a secret pact with the British colonial government not to hurt British and white settler interests in the country.
According to the 2013 report of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), “His [Kenyatta’s] position shocked many of the KANU supporters who felt that he and his allies betrayed them because the political leaders had made a decision to the effect that Africans would recover their stolen land after independence”.
This first betrayal would be followed by many others. Bruce Mackenzie, the then Minister of Agriculture – the only white man in Kenyatta’s cabinet who it is believed was also a spy for British and Israeli intelligence – spearheaded the design of two types of resettlement schemes: the so-called “yeoman” scheme in which large farms would be sold to experienced farmers for £500 and a second type of scheme that targeted small-scale farmers who could purchase farms for £100. Approximately 35,000 families were eventually settled through what was known as the One Million Acre Scheme.
To enable Africans to purchase these farms, the British government, with a contribution from the World Bank, advanced a loan of £7.5 million to the Kenyan government. Unfortunately, as the TJRC report notes, the Mackenzie proposals were focused largely on the so-called White Highlands in Central Kenya and the Rift Valley and did not give serious consideration to the need to resettle the Mijikenda at the coast who, due to historical reasons that predated British colonialism, had been rendered largely landless. Moreover, as the scheme operated on a “willing-seller-willing-buyer” basis, hundreds of thousands of people, particularly in the coast and Rift Valley regions, remained landless.
The scheme also offered loans to Africans who had not been displaced. In this group fell a select group of people who had been loyal to the colonial administration – the so-called homeguards – who gobbled up prime land in Central Kenya and the Rift Valley. Among this group were provincial commissioners, ministers, permanent secretaries and others within Kenyatta’s inner circle who would go on to become Kenya’s new ruling elite.
According to the TJRC report, “rich businessmen and businesswomen, rich and powerful politicians who were loyal to the colonial administration, managed to acquire thousands of acres at the expense of the poor and the landless.” Hence, “instead of redressing land-related injustices perpetrated by the colonialists on Africans, the resettlement process created a privileged class of African elites, leaving those who had suffered land alienation either on tiny unproductive pieces of land or landless.”
Even some well-known freedom fighters, such Bildad Kaggia, were relegated to the wayside, thus giving birth to a new Kikuyu underclass that was both landless and poor. In fact, Kaggia, who had been jailed in Kapenguria by the colonial authorities in 1952 alongside Kenyatta, was often berated by the latter for not using his name and influence to enrich himself. Kaggia was not moved by the president’s admonitions; till his death in 2005, Kaggia remained a relatively poor man, as did many of the families of Mau Mau fighters, who were quickly forgotten as soon as Jomo was released from jail. (In fact, Kenyatta never lifted the ban imposed on the Mau Mau by the British; it remained a proscribed organisation till 2003.)
According to the TJRC report, “rich businessmen and businesswomen, rich and powerful politicians who were loyal to the colonial administration, managed to acquire thousands of acres at the expense of the poor and the landless.”
Subsequent movements to reclaim land that was stolen or deceptively acquired, such as the Mungiki (which later morphed into a criminal gang, and which has also been linked to the post-2007 election violence) and the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), which has been crushed into obscurity by the authorities, failed to bring about the land reforms needed to address such historical injustices.
The Mungiki were the outcome of the exclusionary settlement schemes of the Kenyatta era that blocked large numbers of Kikuyu peasants from owning their own land. Some of their members are believed to be the victims of the ethnic clashes that took place in parts of the Rift Valley prior to the 1992 and 1997 elections when Kikuyus began mobilising to repulse attacks by the Kalenjin.
Although the Mungiki (which means “the multitude” in Gikuyu) had a strong constituency among the rural landless and squatters in areas such as Londiani, Molo and Laikipia, it ended up being an urban-based movement whose members could be found in Githurai, Dandora, Mathare, Korogocho and other Nairobi slums. Here they initially operated as vigilante groups, providing security in the absence of state protection. Eventually its members began behaving like criminal gangs, controlling matatu routes and operating extortion rackets. In 2007, the then Minister of Internal Security in the Mwai Kibaki administration, John Michuki (who had been a colonial district officer, which earned him the nickname kimendeero or the crusher, and who had acquired enormous wealth during the Kenyatta years), ordered the elimination of Mungiki from the slums – an order that was widely condemned by human rights groups. It is estimated that as many as 500 Mungiki members were killed by the police during this time.
In 2008, Mungiki rebranded itself as the Kenya National Youth Alliance, a political organisation with a membership of some 1.5 million. In November 2009, the organisation’s spokesperson, Njuguna Gitau Njuguna, was gunned down by unknown assassins. Since then the group has largely gone underground.
TJRC and the sins of the father
Uhuru Kenyatta had an opportunity to pay for the sins of his father, so to speak, when he assumed the presidency in 2013, but as the shenanigans around the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission illustrate, he has no time or inclination to address historical land injustices, particularly those perpetrated by his own family. At first Uhuru refused to receive the TJRC’s report, and when he finally reluctantly received it on 21st May 2013, he failed to endorse its recommendations or even to discuss its contents. (The TJRC’s website has since been disabled.)
A statement of dissent (available at the Seattle University School of Law Digital Commons website) by three of the TJRC’s commissioners – Professor Ronald C. Slye, Ambassador Berhanu Dinka and Judge Gertrude Chawatma – reveals the cloak-and-dagger environment that prevailed at the Commission, and how some commissioners were coopted into downplaying, changing or deleting certain sections of the TJRC’s final report that mentioned the Kenyatta family adversely. According to the dissenting commissioners, a copy of the land chapter of the report appeared to have been leaked to “individuals with ties to State House”. At around this time, some of the commissioners began receiving phone calls from a senior official in the Office of the President who suggested various changes to the land chapter.
Said the dissent statement: “With much regret, and after many tireless days of trying to reach a reasonable compromise, we are obligated by our conscience and the oath that we took when we joined this Commission, to dissent completely from the amendments made after 3 May 2013 to this chapter in this Volume devoted to Land – Chapter 2 of this Volume 28.”
According to the dissenting commissioners, a copy of the land chapter of the report appeared to have been leaked to “individuals with ties to State House”. At around this time, some of the commissioners began receiving phone calls from a senior official in the Office of the President who suggested various changes to the land chapter.
All the five paragraphs that had apparently been changed or deleted by some of the commissioners without the unanimous approval of all the commissioners had to do with land grabs by the Kenyatta family. Although the dissenting commissioners acknowledged that they could “not in any way assert that the content of these paragraphs reflects the truth”, they insisted that they did “reflect the testimony and other information provided to the Commission”.
The following excerpt of the original unchanged paragraph 257, which the three commissioners made available to the public, reflects the nature of land grabbing along Kenya’s coastal region and shows how Jomo Kenyatta betrayed the trust of those who believed that independence would deliver land and social justice to them.
“…in 1972, President Kenyatta unlawfully alienated to himself 250 acres of the land, especially portions on the beach. He also allocated part of the land to his friends, relatives and other associates. He directed residents that whatever was left of the trust lands would be established as settlement schemes for their benefit. However, without following the due procedure of law, he again took part of whatever remained for himself and his relatives. He also demanded that the local communities that should have benefitted from the trust lands accept payment of KSh600 per acre. When the locals declined to accept the money, he told them that whether or not they accepted it, the remainder of the trust lands would go to the government. That is how irregularly President Kenyatta took all of Tiwi and Diani trust lands at the expense of the local people who immediately became ‘squatters’ on the land and were subsequently evicted, rendering them landless and poor. By 2012, land in the former trust lands fetched KSh15 million per acre.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Mombasa Republican Council, a ragtag group of peasants demanding secession of the coast region and restitution for landless people, started in Kwale County, one of the coast region’s most impoverished areas. The group’s rallying cry “Pwani si Kenya” (Coast is not Kenya) reflects the adversarial relationship between landless coastal communities and the Kenyan state. MRC’s grievances stem from a variety of conditions, including marginalisation and landlessness.
Government data shows that four of the six coastal counties (namely, Tana River, Malindi, Kwale and Kilifi) rank among the poorest in Kenya. These counties also generally have high illiteracy rates and low rates of school enrolment. Land tenure is ambiguous or is not officially recognised. More than 60 per cent of indigenous coastal people do not possess title deeds to their land. Others have entered into a kind of quasi squatter-tenant agreement with land owners.
The MRC was criminalised by the Mwai Kibaki government (which often referred to it as an Islamic terrorist organisation even though many of its members are Christian). The government refused MRC’s application to be registered as a civil society organisation and banned it in 2008. Police routinely disrupted the group’s meetings and many of its members were jailed. The group has since remained subdued but the coastal people’s demands for secession did re-emerge as a campaign issue during the last general election in 2017.
The criminalisation of groups demanding land justice has created resentment among disenfranchised communities. This does not augur well for the stability of the country. As the TJRC concluded, there is a very close link between land injustices and ethnic violence in Kenya. This was evident during the 2007/2008 post-election violence when (mostly poor) Kikuyus were killed or forcefully removed from land in the Rift Valley (which the Kalenjin claim belongs to them). The TJRC also found that land-related injustices at the coast constitute one of the key reasons for underdevelopment in the area.
The Commission emphasised that the 2010 constitution provides a sound basis to address land-related injustices – “but only if there is political will to use these laws and institutions.” However, Uhuru Kenyatta is unlikely to implement the TJRC’s recommendations or to acknowledge the role his own family played in land-related historical injustices.
Furthermore, the newly created National Land Commission that is mandated to look into these issues and to bring about some form of adjudication or restitution for the landless has not yet yielded significant results. On the contrary, the Commission has recently been embroiled in various corruption scandals related to land, which has further eroded Kenyans’ hopes of finally settling the land question.
The Commission emphasised that the 2010 constitution provides a sound basis to address land-related injustices – “but only if there is political will to use these laws and institutions.” However, Uhuru Kenyatta is unlikely to implement the TJRC’s recommendations or to acknowledge the role his own family played in land-related historical injustices.
It is, therefore, evident that wealth declarations and lifestyle audits will not in of themselves resolve historical land injustices that continue to disenfranchise and impoverish a large proportion of the country’s population. Unless there is demonstrated political will to address these injustices, attempts to fight corruption through lifestyle audits will appear like hollow gestures that try to treat a deep wound with salt.
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Politics
The Dictatorship of the Church
From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.
In Zimbabwe, the most powerful dictatorship is not the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Despite the party’s 40 year history of ruthlessly cracking down on opposition parties, sowing fear into the minds of the country’s political aspirants, despite the party’s overseeing of catastrophic policies such as the failed land reform, and despite the precarious position of the social landscape of the country today, neither former president Robert Mugabe, nor the current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, nor any of their associates pose as significant an existential threat to Zimbabweans as the most influential dictatorship at play in the country: the church.The church has frightening, near despotic authority which it uses to wield the balance of human rights within its palms. It wields authority from enormously influential megachurches like those of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa, to the smaller startup churches that operate from the depths of the highest-density suburbs of the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare. Modern day totalitarian regimes brandish the power of the military over their subjects. In the same way, the church wields the threat of eternal damnation against those who fail to follow its commands. With the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, for example, Emmanuel Makandiwa vocally declared that the vaccine was the biblical “mark of the beast.” In line with the promises of the book of Revelations, he declared that receiving it would damn one to eternal punishment.
Additionally, in just the same way that dictators stifle discourse through the control of the media, the church suppresses change by controlling the political landscape and making themselves indispensable stakeholders in electoral periods. The impact of this is enormous: since independence, there has been no meaningful political discourse on human rights questions. These questions include same-sex marriage and the right to access abortions as well as other reproductive health services. The church’s role in this situation has been to lead an onslaught of attacks on any institution, political or not, that dares to bring such questions for public consideration. But importantly, only through such consideration can policy substantively change. When people enter into conversation, they gain the opportunity to find middle grounds for their seemingly irreconcilable positions. Such middle-grounds may be the difference between life and death for many disadvantaged groups in Zimbabwe and across the world at large. The influence of the church impedes any attempt at locating this middle ground.
Additionally, because the church influences so many Zimbabweans, political actors do not dare oppose the church’s declarations. They fear being condemned and losing the support of their electorate. The church rarely faces criticism for its positions. It is not held accountable for the sentiments its leaders express by virtue of the veil of righteousness protecting it.
Furthermore, and uniquely so, the church serves the function of propping up the ZANU-PF party. The ZANU-PF mainly holds conservative ideals. These ideals align with those of the traditionalist Zimbabwean church. In short, the church in Zimbabwe stands as a hurdle to the crucial regime change necessary to bring the country to success. With a crucial election slated for the coming months, this hurdle looms more threatening than at any other time in the country’s history.
The impact of the church’s dictatorship on humans is immeasurable. Queer people, for example, are enormously vulnerable to violence and othering from their communities. They are also particularly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and infections due to the absence of healthcare for them. The church meets the attempts of organizations such as the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe to push for protection with cries that often devolve into scapegoating. These cries from the church reference moral decadence, a supposed decline in family values, and in the worst of cases, mental illness.
Similarly, the church meets civil society’s attempts at codifying and protecting sexual and reproductive rights with vehement disapproval. In 2021, for example, 22 civil society organizations petitioned Parliament to lower the consent age for accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Critics of the petition described it as “deeply antithetical to the public morality of Zimbabwe” that is grounded in “good old cultural and Christian values.”
Reporting on its consultations with religious leaders, a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee tasked with considering this petition described Christianity as “the solution” to the problem posed by the petition. This Committee viewed the petition as a gateway to issues such as “child exploitation … rights without responsibility … and spiritual bondages.” The petition disappeared into the annals of parliamentary bureaucracy. A year later, the Constitutional Court unanimously voted to increase the age of consent to 18.
A more horrifying instance of this unholy alliance between the church and the state in Zimbabwe is a recently unearthed money laundering scheme that has occurred under the watchful eye of the government. Under the stewardship of self-proclaimed Prophet Uebert Angel, the Ambassador-at-Large for the Government of Zimbabwe, millions of dollars were laundered by the Zimbabwean government. Here, as revealed by Al Jazeera in a four-part docuseries, Ambassador Angel served as a middleman for the government, facilitating the laundering of millions of dollars and the smuggling of scores of refined gold bars to the United Arab Emirates. He did this using his plenipotentiary ambassadorial status to vault through loopholes in the government’s security systems.
Importantly, Prophet Angel was appointed in 2021 as part of a frenetic series of ambassadorial appointments. President Mnangagwa handed out these appointments to specifically high-profile church leaders known for their glamorous lifestyle and their preaching of the prosperity gospel. Through these appointments, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government earned itself a permanent stamp of approval from the church and access to a multi-million member base of voting Christians in the country. Mnangagwa’s gained access to freedom from accountability arising from the power of the endorsements by “men-of-God,” one of whom’s prophetic realm includes predicting English Premier League (EPL) football scores and guessing the color of congregants’ undergarments.
In exchange, Prophet Angel has earned himself a decently large sum of money. He has also earned the same freedom from critique and accountability as Zimbabwe’s government. To date, there is no evidence of Angel ever having faced any consequences for his action. The most popular response is simple: the majority of the Christian community chooses either to defend him or to turn a blind eye to his sins. The Christian community’s response to Prophet Angel’s actions, and to the role of the church in abortion and LGBTQ discourse is predictable. The community also responds simply to similar instances when the church acts as a dialogical actor and absolves itself of accountability and critique
Amidst all this, it is easy to denounce the church as a failed actor. However, the church’s political presence has not been exclusively negative. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, for example, was the first organization to formally acknowledge Gukurahundi, a genocide that happened between 1982 and 1987 and killed thousands of Ndebele people. The Commission did this through a detailed report documenting what it termed as disturbances in the western regions of the country. Doing so sparked essential conversations about accountability and culpability over this forgotten genocide in Zimbabwe.
Similarly, the Zimbabwe Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission has been involved in data collection that is sparking discourse about violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. In doing so, the Commission is challenging Zimbabweans to think more critically about what constructive politics can look like in the country. Such work is hugely instrumental in driving social justice work forward in the country. What uniquely identifies the church’s involvement in both of these issues, however, is that neither touches on matters of Christian dogma. Instead, the Commission responds to general questions about the future of both God and Zimbabwe’s people in ways that make it easy for the church to enter into conversation with a critical and informed lens.
The conclusion from this is simple: if Zimbabwe is to shift into more progressive, dialogical politics, the church’s role must change with it. It is unlikely that the church will ever be a wholly apolitical actor in any country. However, the political integration of the church into the politics of Zimbabwe must be a full one. It must be led by the enhanced accountability of Zimbabwean religious leaders. In the same way that other political actors are taken to task over their opinions, the church must be held accountable for its rhetoric in the political space.
A growing population has, thus far, been involved in driving this shift. Social media has taken on a central role in this. For example, social media platforms such as Twitter thoroughly criticized megachurch pastor Emmanuel Makandiwa for his sentiments regarding vaccinations. This and other factors led him to backtrack on his expressed views on inoculation. However, social media is not as available in rural areas. There, the influence of the religion is stronger than elsewhere in the country. Therefore investments must be made in educating people about the roles of the church and the confines of its authority. This will be instrumental in giving people the courage to cut against the very rough grain of religious dogma. Presently, few such educational opportunities exist. To spark this much-needed change, it will be useful to have incentivizing opportunities for dialogue in religious sects.
More than anything else, the people for whom and through whom the church exists must drive any shift in the church’s role. The people of Tunisia stripped President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of his authority during the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011. The women of Iran continue to tear at the walls that surround the extremist Islamic Republic. In just the same way, the people of Zimbabwe have the power to disrobe the church of the veil of righteousness that protects it from criticism and accountability.
In anticipation of the upcoming election, the critical issues emerging necessitate this excoriation even more. This will open up political spaces for Zimbabweans to consider a wider pool of contentious issues when they take to the polls in a few months. Above all, the people of Zimbabwe must start viewing the church for what it is: an institution, just like any other, with vested interests in the country’s affairs. As with any other institution, we must begin to challenge, question, and criticize the church for its own good and for the good of the people of Zimbabwe.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Politics
Pattern of Life and Death: Camp Simba and the US War on Terror
The US has become addicted to private military contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability” in the so-called war on terror.
Though it claimed the lives of three Americans, not 2,403, some liken the January 2020 al-Shabaab attack at Manda Bay, Kenya, to Pearl Harbour. The US would go on to unleash massive airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia.
“We Americans hate being caught out,” a spy-plane pilot and contractor recently told me. “We should have killed them before they even planned it.”
Both the Manda Bay and Pearl Harbour attacks revealed the vulnerability of US personnel and forces. One brought the US into the Second World War. The other has brought Kenya into the global–and seemingly endless–War on Terror.
Months before launching the assault, members of the Al Qaeda-linked faction bivouacked in mangrove swamp and scrubland along this stretch of the northeast Kenyan coast. Unseen, they observed the base and Magagoni airfield. The airfield was poorly secured to begin with. They managed not to trip the sensors and made their way past the guard towers and the “kill zone” without being noticed.
At 5.20 a.m. on 5 January, pilots and contractors for L3Harris Technologies, which conducts airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for the Pentagon, were about to take off from the airfield in a Beechcraft King Air b350. The twin engine plane was laden with sensors, cameras, and other high tech video equipment. Seeing thermal images of what they thought were hyenas scurrying across the runway, the pilots eased back on the engines. By the time they realized that a force of committed, disciplined and well-armed al-Shabaab fighters had breached Magagoni’s perimeter, past the guard towers, it was too late.
Simultaneously, a mile away, other al-Shabaab fighters attacked Camp Simba, an annex to Manda Bay where US forces and contractors are housed. Al-Shabaab fired into the camp to distract personnel and delay the US response to the targeted attack at the airfield.
Back at the Magagoni airfield, al-Shabaab fighters launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the King Air. “They took it right in the schnauzer,” an aircraft mechanic at Camp Simba who survived the attack recently recalled to me. Hit in the nose, the plane burst into flames. Pilots Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, both contractors employed by L3Harris, died instantly. The L3Harris contractor working the surveillance and reconnaissance equipment aft managed to crawl out, badly burned. US Army Specialist Henry J Mayfield, 23, who was in a truck clearing the tarmac, was also killed.
The attack on Camp Simba was not the first al-Shabaab action carried out in Kenya. But it was the first in the country to target US personnel. And it was wildly successful.
AFRICOM initially reported that six contractor-operated civilian aircraft had been damaged. However, drone footage released by al-Shabaab’s media wing showed that within a few minutes, the fighters had destroyed six surveillance aircraft, medical evacuation helicopters on the ground, several vehicles, and a fuel storage area. US and Kenyan forces engaged al-Shabaab for “several hours”.
Included in the destroyed aircraft was a secretive US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) military de Havilland Dash-8 twin-engine turboprop configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. A report released by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in March 2022 acknowledges that the attackers “achieved a degree of success in their plan.”
Teams working for another air-surveillance company survived the attack because their aircraft were in the air, preparing to land at Magagoni. Seeing what was happening on the ground, the crew diverted to Mombasa and subsequently to Entebbe, Uganda, where they stayed for months while Manda Bay underwent measures for force protection.
I had the chance to meet some of the contractors from that ISR flight. Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu, the coastal town where I live. On one recent afternoon, they commandeered a bar’s sound system, replacing Kenyan easy listening with boisterous Southern rock from the States.
Sweet home Alabama!
An ISR operator and I struck up an acquaintance. Black-eyed, thickly built, he’s also a self-confessed borderline sociopath. My own guess would be more an on-the-spectrum disorder. Formerly an operator with Delta Force, he was a “door kicker” and would often—in counter-terror parlance—“fix and finish” terror suspects. Abundant ink on his solid arms immortalizes scenes of battle from Iraq and Afghanistan. In his fifties, with a puffy white beard, he’s now an ISR contractor, an “eye in the sky”. His workday is spent “finding and fixing” targets for the Pentagon.
Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu.
He tells me about his missions—ten hours in a King Air, most of that time above Somalia, draped over cameras and video equipment. He gathers sensitive data for “pattern of life” analysis. He tells me that on the morning of the attack he was in the King Air about to land at the Magagoni airstrip.
We talked about a lot of things but when I probed him about “pattern of life” intel, the ISR operator told me not a lot except that al-Shabaab had been observing Camp Simba and the airstrip for a pattern of life study.
What I could learn online is that a pattern of life study is the documentation of the habits of an individual subject or of the population of an area. Generally done without the consent of the subject, it is carried out for purposes including security, profit, scientific research, regular censuses, and traffic analysis. So, pattern-of-life analysis is a fancy term for spying on people en masse. Seemingly boring.
Less so as applied to the forever war on terror. The operator pointed out the irony of how the mile or so of scrubland between the base and the Indian Ocean coastline had been crawling with militant spies in the months preceding the attack at Camp Simba. Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
ISR and Pattern of Life are inextricably linked
King Airs perform specialized missions; the planes are equipped with cameras and communications equipment suitable for military surveillance. Radar systems gaze through foliage, rain, darkness, dust storms or atmospheric haze to provide real time, high quality tactical ground imagery anytime it is needed, day or night. What my operator acquaintance collects goes to the Pentagon where it is analysed to determine whether anything observed is “actionable”. In many instances, action that proceeds includes airstrikes. But as a private military contractor ISR operator cannot “pull the trigger”.
In the six weeks following the attack at Magagoni and Camp Simba, AFRICOM launched 13 airstrikes against al-Shabaab’s network. That was a high share of the total of 42 carried out in 2020.
Airstrikes spiked under the Trump administration, totalling more than 275 reported, compared with 60 over the eight years of the Barack Obama administration. It is no great mystery that the Manda Bay-Magagoni attack occurred during Trump’s time in office.
Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”
Several al-Shabaab leaders behind the attack are believed to have been killed in such airstrikes. The US first launched airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia in 2007 and increased them in 2016, according to data collected and analysed by UK-based non-profit Airwars.
Controversy arises from the fact that, as precise as these strikes are thought to be, there are always civilian casualties.
“The US uses pattern of life, in part, to identify ways to reduce the risk of innocent civilian casualties (CIVCAS) (when/where are targets by themselves or with family) whereas obviously Shabaab does not distinguish as such and uses it for different purposes,” a Department of Defense official familiar with the matter of drone operations told me.
The Biden administration resumed airstrikes in Somalia in August 2021. AFRICOM claimed it killed 13 al-Shabaab militants and that no civilians were killed.
According to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Mustaf ‘Ato is a senior Amniyat official responsible for coordinating and conducting al-Shabaab attacks in Somalia and Kenya and has helped plan attacks on Kenyan targets and US military compounds in Kenya. It is not clear, however, if this target has been fixed and killed.
A few days after the second anniversary of the Manda Bay attack, the US offered a US$10 million bounty.
The American public know very little about private military contractors. Yet the US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”. “Americans don’t care about contractors coming home in body bags,” says Sean McFate, a defense and national security analyst.
These airstrikes, targeted with the help of the operators and pilots in the King Airs flying out of Magagoni, would furnish a strong motive for al-Shabaab’s move on 5 January 2020.
The Pentagon carried out 15 air strikes in 2022 on the al-Qaeda-linked group, according to the Long War Journal tracker. Africom said the strikes killed at least 107 al-Shabaab fighters. There are no armed drones as such based at Camp Simba but armed gray-coloured single-engine Pilatus aircraft called Draco (Latin for “Dragon”) are sometimes used to kill targets in Somalia, a well-placed source told me.
The US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”.
The contractor I got to know somewhat brushes off the why of the attack. It is all too contextual for public consumption, and probably part of army indoctrination not to encourage meaningful discussion. He had, however, made the dry observation about the al-Shabaab affiliates out in the bush near the airfield, doing “pattern of life” reconnaissance.
The strike on Magagoni was closely timed and fully coordinated. And it appears that the primary aim was to take out ISR planes and their crews. It was private contractors, not US soldiers, in those planes. I pointed out to the operator that those targets would serve al-Shabaab’s aims both of vengeance and deterrence or prevention. His response: “Who cares why they attacked us? Al-Shabaab are booger-eaters.”
With that he cranks up the sound, singing along off-key:
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord help me, I can’t change….
Won’t you fly high, free bird, yeah.
Politics
Breaking the Chains of Indifference
The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated, and represents more than just an end to violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people.
They say that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
As someone from the diaspora, every time I visited Sudan, I noticed that many of the houses had small problems like broken door knobs, cracked mirrors or crooked toilet seats that never seemed to get fixed over the years. Around Khartoum, you saw bumps and manholes on sand-covered, uneven roads. You saw buildings standing for years like unfinished skeletons. They had tons of building material in front of them: homeless families asleep in their shade, lying there, motionless, like collateral damage. This has always been the norm. Still, it is a microcosm of a much broader reality. Inadequate healthcare, a crumbling educational system, and a lack of essential services also became the norm for the Sudanese people.
This would be different, of course, if the ruling party owned the facility you were in, with the paved roads leading up to their meticulously maintained mansions. This stark contrast fuelled resentment among the people, leading them to label the government and its associates as “them.” These houses were symbols of the vast divide between the ruling elite and the everyday citizens longing for change. As the stark divide between “them” and “us” deepened, people yearned to change everything at once, to rid themselves of the oppressive grip of “them.”
Over the years, I understood why a pervasive sense of indifference had taken hold. The people of Sudan grew indifferent towards a government that remained unchanged. It showed no willingness to address the needs of its citizens unless it directly benefited those in power. For three decades, drastic change eluded the Sudanese people. They woke up each day to a different price for the dollar and a different cost for survival. The weight of this enduring status quo bore down upon them, rendering them mere spectators of their own lives. However, as it always does, a moment of reckoning finally arrived—the revolution.
Returning home after the 2019 revolution in Sudan, what stood out in contrast to the indifference was the hashtag #hanabnihu, which from Arabic translates to “we will build it.” #Hanabnihu echoed throughout Sudanese conversations taking place on and off the internet, symbolizing our determination to build our nation. To build our nation, we needed to commit to change beyond any single group’s fall, or any particular faction’s victory. Our spirits were high as everyone felt we had enough muscle memory to remember what happened in the region. We remembered how many of “them” came back to power. With the military still in power, the revolution was incomplete. Yet it still served as a rallying cry for the Sudanese people. It was a collective expression of their determination to no longer accept the unfinished state of their nation.
Many Sudanese people from the diaspora returned to Sudan. They helped the people of Suean create spaces of hope and resilience, everyone working tirelessly to build a new Sudan. They initiated remarkable projects and breathed life into the half-built houses they now prioritized to turn into homes. We had yearned for a time when broken door knobs and crooked toilet seats would be fixed, and for a time when the government would smooth out the bumps on the road. For four years following the revolution, people marched, protested, and fought for a Sudan they envisioned. They fought in opposition to the military, whose two factions thought that a massacre or even a coup might bring the people back to the state of indifference that they once lived in.
Remarkably, the protests became ingrained in the weekly schedule of the Sudanese people. It became part of their routine, a testament to their unwavering dedication and the persistence of their aspirations. But soon, the people found themselves normalized to these protests. This was partly due to the fact that it was organized by the only body fighting against the return of this indifference: the neighborhood’s resistance committees. These horizontally structured, self-organized member groups regularly convened to organize everything from planning the weekly protests and discussing economic policy to trash pickup, and the way corruption lowered the quality of the bread from the local bakery.
The international media celebrated the resistance committees for their innovation in resistance and commitment to nonviolence. But as we, the Sudanese, watched the news on our resistance fade, it was clear that the normalization of indifference extended beyond Sudan’s borders. The international community turned a blind eye to justice, equality, and progress in the celebrated principles of the peaceful 2019 revolution. In a desperate attempt to establish fake stability in Sudan, the international community continued their conversations with the military. Their international sponsors mentioned no retribution against the military for their actions.
During my recent visit to Sudan, the sense of anticipation was palpable. It was just two months before the outbreak of war between the army and the paramilitary group. The protests had intensified and the economy was faltering. The nation stood at the precipice as the activism continued and the tensions between “us” and “them” had begun to grow once again.
Now, as war engulfs the nation, many Sudanese find themselves torn. At the same time, they hope for the victory of the Sudanese Army. Despite the army’s flaws, Sudanese people hope the army will win against “them” while recognizing that this war remains primarily between different factions of “them.” We wake up every day with a little less hope. We watch them bomb Khartoum and the little infrastructure that existed turn to dust. We watch as the resistance committees continue to do the army’s job for them. They work fiercely to deliver medicine, evacuate people and collect the nameless bodies on the sides of the streets next to the burnt buildings that were almost starting to be completed.
Another battle takes place online. On Sudanese social media, people challenge the negative mood of the war. Sudanese architects and designers work from their rented flats in Cairo or Addis, posting juxtaposed images that place the grainy, rashly captured photos of the latest burnt-down building in Khartoum next to different rendered perspectives. These perspectives reimagine the same building in a rebuilt Sudan. They thus instantly force a glimpse of hope in what now looks like a far-fetched reality to most people.
Just as these young visionaries attempt to defy the odds, international intervention and support are pivotal to help Sudan escape the clutches of this devastating conflict. Let Sudan serve as a catalyst for the change that was meant to be. Diplomatic engagement, humanitarian aid, and assistance in facilitating peaceful negotiations can all contribute.
The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated. It represents more than just a cessation of violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people. The international community should dismantle the prevailing state of indifference worldwide. The fight against indifference extends far beyond the borders of Sudan. It is a fight that demands our attention and commitment on a global scale of solidarity. We must challenge the systems that perpetuate indifference and inequality in our own societies. We must stand up against injustice and apathy wherever we find it.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
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