Politics
Striking a Balance Between Judicial Immunity, Independence and Accountability: The Kenyan Situation
15 min read.There is a need to re-engineer these parameters of the Judiciary to strike a functional balance between immunity, independence, impartiality and accountability of members of the bench for Kenya to enjoy a trued independent Judiciary.
Kenya’s Supreme Court is in the eye of a storm. Four members of the apex court face allegations of bribery and impropriety. The Chief Justice himself faces a petition. The Deputy Chief Justice faces the prospect of criminal charges if an ongoing constitutional case is determined against her. One of the Supreme Court judges has declined to appear before the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), citing constitutional immunity.
Lower down the rung, a judge of the High Court who was found unfit has challenged the decision. His appeal has, however, been dismissed by the Supreme Court. Several other High Court judges could face tribunals depending on the findings of the committees set up to investigate the complaints against them. Some of the complaints may turn out to be not worthy of the formation of a tribunal. However, the fact that there are so many complaints against members of the Supreme Court erodes the confidence that should be attached to the apex court, and by extension, to the whole Judiciary.
It is said that when Julius Caeser’s wife, Pompeia, allowed a man dressed as a woman into a Roman religious festival strictly reserved for women, Caeser divorced her. The whole thing had been a prank and Pompeia had no intentions of impropriety. Aware of this, the citizens of Rome enquired why Caeser had divorced his wife. “The wife of Caeser must be above suspicion,” was the Great Emperor’s response. Hence the comparison with the level of integrity expected of a judge.
Perception plays an important role in the discharge of justice. Some 118 years ago, Lord Charles Bowen, while setting aside the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice who had determined an appeal in a case involving his own brother’s architectural firm, said, “Like Caeser’s wife, a judge must be beyond suspicion.”
Now one may ask where Caeser’s wife fits in all this? What does Caeser’s wife have to do with the integrity of a judge?
It is said that when Julius Caeser’s wife, Pompeia, allowed a man dressed as a woman into a Roman religious festival strictly reserved for women, Caeser divorced her. The whole thing had been a prank and Pompeia had no intentions of impropriety. Aware of this, the citizens of Rome enquired why Caeser had divorced his wife. “The wife of Caeser must be above suspicion,” was the Great Emperor’s response. Hence the comparison with the level of integrity expected of a judge.
A transparent, reliable and accountable Judiciary is vital in the furtherance of the rule of law, which is fundamental to constitutionalism and democracy. It cannot be gainsaid that right from the recruitment, functioning, supervision, to the removal of judicial officers, the process must be rigorous, transparent, accountable and free from influence. To properly carry out their mandate, judicial officers must be insulated from victimisation arising from the discharge of their judicial functions. Conversely, they must conduct themselves with the propriety expected from those entrusted with great power.
Justice before 2010
Prior to the enactment of the 2010 constitution, the appointment of the Chief Justice was the sole prerogative of the president. He was also the appointing authority in the appointment of judges, the only rider being that with such appointments, he was to act in accordance with the advice of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).
An examination of the composition the JSC, however, clearly showed that the president held sway in such appointments. Composed of the Chief Justice, the Attorney General, two judges appointed by the president and the chair of the Public Service Commission, all members of the JSC were direct or indirect appointees of the president and, therefore, beholden to him.
Another contract judge, Patrick O’Connor, was sacked by the Chief Justice when he resisted a transfer to Meru. When O’Connor questioned whether the Chief Justice had the powers to sack him, he was criticised by the political class. Not long after, in 1988, Parliament amended the constitution to remove the security of tenure of judges.
Then there were the “contract judges”, who were mostly British citizens. Their contracts were renewable at the government’s discretion. Some of these judges were so beholden to the Executive that, in one instance, the by then Chief Justice, Alan Robin Hancox, in 1991 went as far as advising members of the bar and bench that their loyalty was to the head of state.
Another contract judge, Norbury Dugdale, found himself in conflict with lawyers and members of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) due to the consistency of his decisions in favour of the Executive. Supporting an earlier call by nine members of the LSK in 1991 to have a tribunal established for the removal of Chief Justice Hancox and Justice Dugdale in September of that year, 107 lawyers signed a memorandum calling for the resignation of the two. (The Weekly Review Sep 6, 1991, page 4.)
Not all of the contract judges acted as gatekeepers for the Executive. Not all of them were malleable to the whims of the head of state. The fierce independence of Justice Derek Schofield, a contract judge, comes to mind. In 1978, a family filed a writ of habeas corpus seeking the production of their family member, Mbaraka Karanja. When Justice Schofield ordered the production of Karanja, the police said that he had been shot while escaping and had been buried. The judge then insisted the body be exhumed. Even after the opening of 19 graves, there was still no body of Karanja. Justice Schofield then threatened the Director of Criminal Investigation with contempt, prompting Chief Justice Cecil Miller to remove the case from the judge and to transfer him to Meru. Justice Schofield chose to resign than put up with this blatant interference. He would later say that the Chief Justice had informed him that his actions had been at the behest of President Moi. (Nairobi Law Monthly 49. Feb/Mar, 1992, and also Nation newspaper, 11 October 2008, interview with Okwemba.)
Another contract judge, Patrick O’Connor, was sacked by the Chief Justice when he resisted a transfer to Meru. When O’Connor questioned whether the Chief Justice had the powers to sack him, he was criticised by the political class. Not long after, in 1988, Parliament amended the constitution to remove the security of tenure of judges. ( Weekly Review, 5 August 1988, page 3.)
At the lower tier of the judiciary were the magistrates. Greater in number than the judges, and considered the true face of the Judiciary, they worked in far-flung stations. The JSC exercised complete control over their appointment. The law afforded them nothing in terms of security of tenure and they could be sacked at any time through mechanisms that were not transparent.
They worked alongside police prosecutors. Often considered enforcers for the Executive, their courts acted arbitrarily with little regard for the law or procedure. The extent of their emasculation by the Executive was at its most obvious during the Mwakenya trials. Scores of intellectuals, students, politicians and ordinary wananchi were arrested, tortured and charged with belonging to proscribed groups. The accused persons were “tried” and convicted in the magistrate’s courts, outside court hours, usually in the evenings without the benefit of counsel. (See KNHRC 2009 publication “Surviving after Torture”, pages 41-42.) One of the accusations against the twelfth Chief Justice, Benard Chunga, in 2003 when a tribunal for his removal was constituted, was that during his tenure as the Deputy Public Prosecutor, he had condoned and executed programmes of torture and illegal trials in the magistrate’s courts.
Executive interference was not the only factor that influenced the decisions of judicial officers. Far from it. In many cases, it was corruption that subverted the course of justice. So rooted was this vice that the popular saying, “Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?” was an accurate depiction of the state of corruption in the Judiciary. The corridors of “justice” had become a marketplace where the highest bidder carried the day.
Magistrates who displayed independence were punished. A case in point was in 1994 when Senior Principal Magistrate, Onesmus Githinji; while acquitting six accused persons (famously known as the Ndeiya Six) charged with breaking into a chief’s camp, censured the police and ordered an investigation over allegations of torture. Soon after, he was transferred to a remote court in Kitui, which prompted him to resign.
Executive interference was not the only factor that influenced the decisions of judicial officers. Far from it. In many cases, it was corruption that subverted the course of justice. So rooted was this vice that the popular saying, “Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?” was an accurate depiction of the state of corruption in the Judiciary. The corridors of “justice” had become a marketplace where the highest bidder carried the day.
The impunity with which some judicial officers conducted their affairs was in some instances almost hilarious. In Kisumu, an advocate obtained a photograph of a judge being transported in a vehicle that the same judge had irregularly allowed an auctioneer to attach and sell. When the advocate confronted the judge with this evidence and asked that he disqualify himself from the still ongoing proceedings, he declined. (The same judge would resign rather than face a tribunal during the 2003 “radical surgery” of the Judiciary initiated during the Mwai Kibaki administration.) In Nairobi, a magistrate was found with two sets of written judgments for the same case, one acquitting the accused, the other convicting him. His reason for this embarrassing situation was anyone’s guess.
In remote stations, magistrates were a law unto themselves. Feared by a populace that had long accepted corruption as a way of the courts, they went about their sordid business without a care in the world.
The Radical Surgery
By the time the country was going to the 2002 polls, it was plain to see that it was just a matter of time before some serious intervention was made to try and salvage a Judiciary gone rogue. And come it did in the form of what came to be known as the Radical Surgery.
With the defeat of KANU in the 2002 presidential elections and the ascendance of Mwai Kibaki to power, the stage was set for a radical intervention. An Anti-Corruption Committee chaired by Justice Aron Ringera was promptly constituted to investigate corruption in the Judiciary. Upon completing its work, it tabled a report that chronicled instances ranging from judicial officers receiving money to influence decisions to the seeking of sexual favours to make favourable decisions. It implicated 5 of the 9 Court of Appeal judges, 18 of the 36 High Court judges and 82 of the 254 magistrates country-wide.
This radical crackdown had unmasked powerful men and women, who hitherto, like Caeser’s wife, had been considered above suspicion. Pictures of Court of Appeal judges outside what is now the Supreme Court being helped by family members to load personal belongings into the boots of cars was a reflection of the magnitude of what had transpired.
In a brazen, and most would say unfair, move, the names of the implicated judicial officers were published in the national press even before they were informed of the accusations against them. This was followed by a withdrawal of their benefits and privileges. (These were to be reinstated many months later.) A two-week ultimatum to resign or be dismissed was issued to them. Many opted for the former. Some of the judges decided to face the tribunals. Justices Waki, Anganyanya, Nambuye, and Mbogoli were some of the judges who were later cleared and resumed their duties as judges.
This radical crackdown had unmasked powerful men and women, who hitherto, like Caeser’s wife, had been considered above suspicion. Pictures of Court of Appeal judges outside what is now the Supreme Court being helped by family members to load personal belongings into the boots of cars was a reflection of the magnitude of what had transpired. Men, once the face of justice, were struggling to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the corridors of justice.
Years of corruption and impunity within the Judiciary had eroded public confidence. This now ensured that there was little sympathy for these victims of the purge. It was the reason why there was little protest, despite the process of their removal being unfair and unjust. Even when the President, in an unorthodox move, used his authority to appoint 28 acting judges of the High Court to replace the fired ones, there was hardly any opposition.
The President’s move was irregular. The new acting judges had not been subjected to scrutiny. Many believed their appointment was influenced by political, tribal and other considerations, rather than merit. The process was flawed. Consequently, an opportunity to effectively clean up the Aegean stables that our Judiciary had become was lost.
In 2003, Evan Gicheru replaced Benard Chunga as the thirteenth Chief Justice of independent Kenya. An embattled Chunga had opted to resign rather than face a tribunal made up of men he had on many occasions crossed swords with, and whose opinion of him could only be negative.
Business as usual
The Radical Surgery having gobbled up a sizeable chunk of the old faces in the judiciary. Many naively expected a reduction in instances of executive interference and corruption and consequently a marked improvement in the delivery of justice. This was not to be and for obvious reasons.
Firstly, the manner in which the Radical Surgery had been carried out, with little regard for the internationally accepted standards for the removal of judges, greatly eroded morale in the Judiciary. The appointment of 28 acting judges to replace those removed was also far from transparent. The appointees were beholden to the appointing authority, which was still the President. The constitution still allowed him the sole prerogative in the appointment of the Chief Justice. Little wonder then that in 2007, Chief Justice Evan Gicheru, who owed his appointment solely to President Kibaki, was agreeable to irregularly swearing him in as president at dusk in a private function at State House after a highly contested election. The culmination of this was an eruption of violence that left over a thousand dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
The other reason why the Judiciary would still be hobbled with the problems of old was that the institutional deficiencies remained in place. While the faces of the judicial officers had to a great extent changed, the structures and working conditions for a long time remained the same. Soon enough it was business as usual.
The greatest opportunity to truly revamp the Kenyan Judiciary came with the promulgation of the new constitution in 2010. For the first time, the appointment of the Chief Justice would not be the sole prerogative of the president. The new constitution provided for an independent Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Save for the Attorney General and a couple of other members, the JSC was to be composed of a representative elected by magistrates, judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and two members elected by the Law Society of Kenya, amongst others; all independent of the Executive. The members of the JSC were to forward their choice for Chief Justice to the President. Their single nominee – subject to the vetting of Parliament – would be appointed to head the Judiciary.
The new constitution also mandated Parliament to provide legislation for the vetting of all judges and magistrates who were in office on the 27th of August 2010. This culminated in the enactment of the Vetting of Judges and Magistrates Act No. 2 of 2011 and consequently the appointment of a vetting board by the President in consultation with the Prime Minister. A seasoned advocate, Sharad Rao, was appointed to chair the board. The decision of the board was not to be the subject of question or review in any court.
The Mutunga Era
In June 2011, Willy Mutunga, a well-known human rights activist, one-time chair of the LSK and a former detainee, was appointed the fourteenth Chief Justice. Everyone agreed that with his appointment, the third arm of government was on the way to great heights. The state of the Judiciary at the time of his appointment was summed up in his speech delivered in October 2011.
The new Chief Justice was considered an outsider – he had not been a member of the Judiciary nor had he practised much as an advocate. So he was bound to meet opposition to his leadership and any proposed reforms. The advantage was that he would not be bound by the cartels that had for a long time taken root in the Judiciary.
“We found an institution so frail in its structures; so thin on resources; so low in confidence; so deficient in integrity; so weak in its public support that to have expected it to deliver justice was to be wildly optimistic. We found a judiciary that was designed to fail.”
The new Chief Justice was alive to the dire state of the Judiciary he had been tasked to head. With only 16 High Court stations and 111 magistrate’s courts around the country, a total of 53 judges and 330 magistrates were expected to cater for a population of over 41 million. Morale amongst the magistrates was low. Considered the backbone of the Judiciary, they handled most of the cases in far-flung courts under appalling conditions, yet their salaries, in comparison with what the judges were paid, was measly. There was a huge case backlog, which was not helped by the constant disappearance of files instigated by litigants and even advocates. Financing was low, with a paltry 0.05 per cent of the national budget set aside for the Judiciary in 2010-2011, compared with the international benchmark of 2.5 per cent. This was the Judiciary that Mutunga inherited from Evan Gicheru.
Upon assuming office, Willy Mutunga realised that there were many reports by civil society and task forces formed by past Chief Justices, the latest being the 2009-2010 report by Justice Ouko that recommended improvements in the functioning of the Judiciary. Using most of this material, his team developed what he called The Judiciary Transformation Framework.
The new Chief Justice was considered an outsider – he had not been a member of the Judiciary nor had he practised much as an advocate. So he was bound to meet opposition to his leadership and any proposed reforms. The advantage was that he would not be bound by the cartels that had for a long time taken root in the Judiciary. The confidence in the new Chief Justice was soon reflected in the substantial increase in funding of the Judiciary. Parliament more than doubled the Judiciary’s budget allocation in 2011-2012. The World Bank, GTZ and UNDP committed funds towards the intended transformation.
Mutunga also sought to give the Judiciary a more human face by doing away with some anachronistic traditions. He allowed for less formal attire and did away with symbols such as wigs. Encouraging interaction between judicial officers and court users, he sought to bridge the distance that had been created under the guise of independence and impartiality. He introduced new innovations, like the Daily Court Returns Template tracking the progress of cases.
Then Petition Number 5 of 2013 happened. It challenged the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the fourth President of the Republic. On 30th March 2013, in a brief statement delivered in an almost cavalier manner, Chief Justice Mutunga dismissed the presidential election petition. A full judgment followed on 16th April of the same year. Criticised for its lack of depth and failure to confront the evidence, it left a blot in the image of a Judiciary that was still struggling to erase an inglorious past.
The presidential petition aside, more than any other Chief Justice, it was Mutunga who squarely faced the institutional bottlenecks that had long dogged the Judiciary. He undertook structured efforts to solve them. His earlier standing in civil society also helped marshal the finances required to transform the Judiciary. The current robust engagement between court users and the Judiciary, hitherto lacking, can be attributed to Mutunga’s efforts at giving the Judiciary a human face.
Current state of the Judiciary
On the 1st September 2017, the Supreme Court, chaired by Chief Justice David Maraga, nullified the disputed 2017 presidential elections and called for fresh elections within sixty days. While the world wowed, an enraged President called the judges of the Supreme Court “wakora” (crooks). The political class swore to “revisit” the issue. Confidence in the Judiciary soared.
The nullification of a presidential election by the apex court was a clear indicator of how far the Judiciary had moved in terms of independence from the Executive. Such a move would never have been thought of in the times of Hancox or Miller.
Upon realising that the intimidation of judges no longer worked, the Executive now sought to control the appointment process. One clear instance was the Amendments to the Judicial Service Act that sought to have the JSC forward three nominees to the President, instead of one, for position of Chief Justice. The LSK successfully petitioned a constitutional court to declare the amendments to be in breach of the doctrine of separation of powers.
Further pointers of independence from the other arms of government were evident in the fearless abandon with which the High Court continued to strike down legislation sponsored by the Executive as unconstitutional. In 2015, a five-judge bench agreed with the views of Justice Odunga and struck out eight offensive clauses in the controversial Security Law (Amendment) Act No 19 of 2014 as being in violation of fundamental human rights. This prompted much criticism from politicians, with threats against sitting judges.
Upon realising that the intimidation of judges no longer worked, the Executive now sought to control the appointment process. One clear instance was the Amendments to the Judicial Service Act that sought to have the JSC forward three nominees to the President, instead of one, for position of Chief Justice. The LSK successfully petitioned a constitutional court to declare the amendments to be in breach of the doctrine of separation of powers.
The Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), George Kegoro, in an opinion piece in the Standard newspaper, pointed out other instances of such interference: In one such move the President revoked the membership of two commissioners of the JSC, namely, Rev Samuel Kobia and Kipngetich Bett, while their term had not expired and in disregard of their security of tenure. Another attempt was the insistence on Parliament vetting Justice Warsame, who had been re-elected by the Court of Appeal to the JSC. It took a judgment of the Court of Appeal to scuttle the intended mischief.
The 2016-2017 State of The Judiciary & Administration of Justice Report shows that the number of judges in 2017 had almost tripled to 158 from just 53 in 2011. The number of magistrates had also risen from 330 in 2011 to 421 in 2017. Judiciary funding had almost doubled to 0.99 per cent in 2017. The maximum salary of a judge of the High Court was now slightly over Sh1 million, while that of a Chief Magistarate was over Sh700,000.
With these marked improvements in the numbers and remuneration of judicial officers, why was it that the Transparency International Bribery Index 2017 still considered the Kenyan Judiciary as the second most corrupt institution in the country after the police? Why was there still a perception amongst Kenyans that corruption was still rife in the Judiciary?
The immunity of members of the judiciary from any action or suit for anything done or omitted in good faith, in the lawful performance of a judicial function, is guaranteed in Article 160(5) of the 2010 constitution. Case law also suggests that no action can lie against a judicial officer for anything done within his or her jurisdiction even if done maliciously and in bad faith. (See Anderson -vs-Gorrie [1895] 1QB, 668. A similar position was held by our courts in Bellevue Dev Co Ltd –vs- Justice Francis Gikonyo & 7 others, [2018] eKLR.) What is suggested is that you can never sue a judicial officer for personal liability over anything he does within his jurisdiction even though it is done with malice. It matters not that his decision is so tainted with malice and militates against the evidence to the extent that it can only be attributable to extraneous factors.
Remedy lies in lodging a complaint with the JSC against such a judicial officer, and that’s just about where it ends. Immunity of judicial officers from personal liability for acts while in office, as provided in Article 160(5), suggests that it survives the officer’s tenure. Not even the President of the Republic is offered such immunity. The immunity accorded to a President under Article 143 of the constitution over acts carried out while in office does not extend past his tenure. It also allows for the period of limitation of time for any anticipated action against the President to stop running during his term in office.
It is common knowledge that the complaint process against judicial officers is slow and can remain undetermined for years. One of the reasons is that commissioners of the JSC hold other demanding jobs and enterprises. These men and women only meet occasionally. Judicial officers facing complaints have been known to brag that such complaints will not see the light of day due to the slow process. Others who have been suspended from office as their cases await determination also complain of the slow pace with which their cases are handled. Perhaps the time is right for the implementation of the Sharad Rao-led Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board recommendations of having a permanent Complaints Tribunal to handle such complaints.
The safeguard of immunity, together with the principles of independence and impartiality, are tailored to assist judicial officers to carry out their onerous task of dispensing justice. This has at times been abused. It is not uncommon for an errant judicial officer to shelter behind the iron veil of independence to escape accountability. There is a need to re-engineer these parameters and strike a functional balance between immunity, independence, impartiality and accountability of members of the bench.
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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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