When William Ruto unleashed his new rallying cry, campaigning to mobilise support for his vision of a “hustler nation”, public attention focussed on the “hustler” part of that phrase.   Since then, both social and traditional media has been awash with talk of hustlers and their supposed opposites – privileged dynasties. Much less attention has been paid to the second part of that famous phrase: the hustler nation. Yet in Ruto’s attempt to be seen as an inclusive leader willing to govern in the interest of all Kenyan hustlers, that word does just as much work.

“Nation” is a weighty word. Sixty years ago it helped bring an end to colonial rule across Africa. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century history had weaponized “nation”, turning the word into an irrefutable claim to sovereignty – nations should govern themselves. A generation of African politicians turned that power against European rule with dramatic results: they were nationalists,  their goal was national freedom – and they triumphed.

After political independence, Africa’s new rulers found themselves in a global system that made nationhood an obligation as well as a claim: national flags, national anthems, national holidays – every government had to have these. The very word “international” is significant: it insists that the world is made of nations. So powerful was this idea in Africa that it crushed ideas of alternative political futures, both within and beyond the borders of new states. Regional federations and unions were eclipsed by the nation; opposition political parties were suppressed in the name of national unity.  

In Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, the nation was omnipresent for decades after independence. Nationalism became a demand for obedience as well as a statement about unity. Kenya was the nation and it was the task of everyone to build it. Both the title and the slogan of a newspaper created just before independence reminded readers of this fundamental truth, with the ubiquitous legend: “Daily Nation – the newspaper that builds the nation”.

From presidential speeches to chief’s barazas, no public event was complete without a reminder of the importance of nation-building. The name of almost every public institution restated the point, from the National Theatre to the National Cereals and Produce Board. There was only room for one nation in Kenya.

That singularity has slowly slipped away. The 2010 constitution says in its preamble that Kenya is “one indivisible sovereign nation”; President Uhuru Kenyatta still talks of nation building, just as his father did. Yet somehow, without anyone remarking on it, it has become entirely normal to talk of multiple nations across Kenya. Sometimes these nations are avowedly cultural in form: evoked to preserve custom. But more often they are explicitly political, and social media spaces devoted to them tend to fill up with partisan discussion. As the election campaign hots up, nations multiply in cyberspace and calculations of ethnic support and claims-making by politicians and activists are routinely expressed in the language of nationhood.

So now the voting intentions of people who live in western Kenya are discussed in terms of the Mulembe nation; politicians demand that the Mijikenda nation be recognized; commentators chide the Kikuyu nation; and, Maasai leaders assert claims on behalf of the Maasai nation.  In this popular whirl of nation-making, the relationship between nations is unfixed: the website of the “Sebei nation” describes it as part of the “Kalenjin nation”.

“National” politics used to mean a relentless insistence on Kenyan unity as a counter to ethnic politics. Now Kenya has a politics of nations that revolves around particular claims by communities. The style of politics is not new, of course: behind the rhetoric of nation-building, ethnicity has always been a way to mobilise and make claims. But how these claims are made has changed, perhaps because since the destabilising violence of 2007/8 major leaders have been wary of making explicit appeals to ethnic sentiment, conscious that this might leave them open to criticism and even, in extreme cases, prosecution. In this new more cautious political age, the word “nation” is used to authorise ethnic politicking.

Kenya’s multiplying nations are mostly ethnic – but not all of them. As we have already discussed, the deputy president’s campaign revolves around another new collective – the “Hustler Nation”. That tag gives nation a new meaning – now it is a term that evokes how people make a living, not ethnicity or culture.  The Hustler Nation – which also, of course, has its Facebook page – aims to mobilize a sense of economic marginalization as a collective claim.

Behind the rhetoric of nation-building, ethnicity has always been a way to mobilise and make claims.

Ruto’s messaging readily identifies some members of the Hustler Nation: the mama mboga and the boda boda riders, for example. It is less clear about who is not in his Hustler Nation, however – does it embrace everyone? Is it only “dynasties” that are excluded? Or also those who do not seek to work hard – a message that would return Kenya to the political mindset of harambee that characterised the Jomo Kenyatta years? Harambee is, after all, back in vogue as a term, both for Ruto and for Raila Odinga. Sometimes the deputy president still talks about Kenya as a single nation that his “movement” seeks to build on new terms:

“We must be a nation that is equal. . . . This is the Hustler Way; this is the way to change Kenya”.

Raila can also wax lyrical on the singularity of the nation: “We must unite our entire Nation”, as the text of his Jamhuri Day speech put it.

Why have Kenya’s nations proliferated? Kenya is not alone in these competing evocations of nation – the United Kingdom, after all, is chronically uncertain over whether it is one nation or four (or possibly more – Cornish nation, anyone?). Across the world, the word nation has been turned against the nation-states that claimed it – it has become part of the rhetorical toolbox of movements for indigenous rights as well as secessionists. That is part of the word’s pedigree, after all – it has often been a way to challenge the legitimacy of established political orders, which is why Kenya’s nationalists once found it so useful. It’s not surprising that such a powerful word is being turned to new uses.

Does this matter? This change might be welcomed as a sign of political maturity – if the word “nation” no longer requires such jealous guarding, might that be a sign of confidence and stability? And as we have noted, “nation” now stands in for a form of ethnic politicking that was more explicit and hence potentially divisive. But there is also a hazard to the proliferation of nations.

For decades Kenyans have been urged to build the nation and encouraged to think of themselves as having a duty of obedience to national leaders. If Kenya’s nations multiply – and get smaller – that might shrink the space for ordinary people to make political choices and further flatter the egos of politicians who imagine themselves as speaking for their nations. After all, national unity was once valued precisely because it papered over ethnic cracks and fostered unity.

Could creating too many parts undermine the whole? How many nations are possible, after all?

We could look elsewhere in Africa for a lesson here. Ghana, for example, regularly sees close elections and, if one looks at just the data, significant patterns of ethnic/regional voting. Yet the fact that the main presidential candidates largely avoid speaking and campaigning in strictly ethnic terms – and avoid referring to “the Asante nation” or the “Ewe nation” – has helped to sustain the collective (and valuable) myth that what motivates voting behaviour is solely adherence to one of two ideological positions, and the performance of the sitting government.

Kenya’s politicians might have reason to follow suit, because popular attitudes to the proliferation of nations may be more ambivalent than first appears. Although Kenyan politics is often described in terms of an ethnic census, things have never been quite that simple. Communities such as the Kikuyu and the Luhya have regularly divided their vote, and the most dangerous accusation that can derail a politician’s career is that they are a “tribalist”.

As the recent book, The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa demonstrated for Kenya, Ghana and Uganda, politicians can excite their ethnic base by using exclusive and hostile language, but this comes with a cost: they are unlikely to be viewed as “presidential material, undermining any attempt to run for national office – even by some members of their own community. This can be fatal – especially when it comes to the presidential election in countries like Kenya, where successful candidates must now receive 50 per cent +1 of the ballot.

Afrobarometer survey results: National vs. Ethnic identity in Kenya

Indeed, many readers may be surprised to learn that the proportion of citizens who say they feel more “ethnic” than “national” has actually fallen over the last decade, despite the fact that Kenya has repeatedly held close and contested elections. According to the nationally representative survey conducted by the Afrobarometer, the share of people saying they only feel an attachment to the “Kenyan nation” has increased from 24 per cent to 43 per cent since 2005 (The question asked is: Let us suppose that you had to choose between being a Kenyan and being a [respondent’s ethnic group]. Which of these two groups do you feel most strongly attached to?)

While it seems unlikely that those participating in the survey don’t feel any sense of ethnic identity at all, the fact that an increasing proportion of people wish to present themselves in this way tells us something important: however many nations exist in cyberspace, many Kenyans wish for a world in which the nation is a singular, unifying concept.

Nation is a powerful word. That motivates leaders’ desire to put the term to political use. But they do so at their peril – stripping the term of its unifying force can help to rally hardliners within a given community, but is likely to be unpopular with the wider electorate once they head to the ballot box.

As the village of Wadda awakens to the sound of pigeons, chickens and donkeys, an old man rides his camel over the sand that has been smoothed by the chilly morning wind. He straightens his turban and looks disapprovingly at the revolutionary slogans on a wall. The youths of this small village in North Darfur renamed it the ‘martyrs’ square’, in memory of a sit-in in 2019 against the then autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in which one of them was killed.

The camel kneels, the man dismounts and introduces himself as one of Wadda’s elders. “Young people are agitators these days,” he grumbles. “We elders have always kept the peace here. Now young people don’t fear to us anymore. That is why blood was spilled in this square.”

There exists a power vacuum in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, on an even bigger scale than in the capital Khartoum, where the conflict revolves around civilian resistance committees against the military coup in October. The conflict in Darfur is more complicated and already started at the beginning of this century. After a peace treaty in 2020, four rebel groups moved into the regional capital of Al Fashir, their leaders were given political positions and their fighters joined the government army of President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the allied Rapid Support Forces of Hamdan Dagalo Hemedti. The latter group, popularly known as Janjaweed, which relies on support of Arabized Sudanese and is notorious for its crimes against African Darfuri, seems to be the strongest of all.

Marginalized

In the marginalized regions of the country, far from the traditional centre of power in the Nile Valley, armed movements, which often represent narrow ethnic interest groups, are claiming their share. Nowhere is the disorder as widespread as in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. As in Khartoum, resistance committees have sprung up in Darfur and people are killed in demonstrations against the old guard. “Darfur was handed over to the rebel groups and militias, and that has led to complete impunity,” says a security specialist in Khartoum. “In addition, with the departure last year of the UN peacekeepers Unamid and the African Union, there is no longer a single force to keep the violence in check.”

In Wadda, a village of 15,000 inhabitants, the elderly who supported Bashir at the time are trying to regain their lost position. “They are trying to reverse everything that young people have achieved since the deposition of Bashir in 2019,” said Huda Adoma of the local resistance committee. He points to the village square. “The family of that man on the camel was involved in the death of our martyr. Like the resistance committees in Khartoum, we demonstrated here for weeks. Then the man’s son and three brothers came. They killed the martyr and stabbed another with a knife.”

To the displeasure of the younger people, the elderly of Wadda want to settle this murder in the village square in the traditional way, by paying ‘blood money’ to the family of the victim.  ”The elderly collaborated with the old regime. Now our time has come. We want justice.” 70 percent of the 45 million Sudanese are under the age of thirty.

Wadda is far from the world of tap water, paved roads, electricity and internet. That’s why it is even more remarkable how politically and culturally aware the young people are after thirty years of strict Islamic dictatorship under Bashir. But the youth are no match for the weapons of the warlords in Darfur. “We have fallen into a bottomless pit after the military coup,” sighs Ibrahim Abdullah, also a member of the resistance committee.

His colleague Rahma Yosif gives him a prod with her elbow to keep him from losing heart. “Certainly, the politics of Sudan are depressing and certainly here,” she says, “but we in the resistance committees are fighting for much more. There must also be a cultural revolution.” Her male supporters nod in agreement. “Sudan’s social problems are far greater than their political ones. In daily life we women have nothing to say and when we do speak out, the elders call us ‘sluts’.”

The overriding problem facing Wadda, and all of Darfur, however, is climate change. This leads to drought, lack of drinking water, impoverishment of the soil, competition for land between the black agricultural population and the Arabized nomads. At the time, instead of dealing with the problems, Bashir sent his army to the black farmers and armed the Janjaweed of the nomadic Arab population to burn their villages. At the height of this conflict, around 2002, an estimated 300,000 people were killed. The International Criminal Court indicted Bashir for genocide. Half of the population of Darfur, more than six million people, has been in need of food aid ever since that war, according to the UN. About two million Darfuri still reside in camps. Last year half a million were added as a result of new conflicts.

Fodder

On the plains outside Wadda in the blazing midday sun, trees sink into a mirage. A woman on a donkey cart passes a mass grave from the war in 2003, when a rebel movement occupied the village. Since then, farmers keep more livestock so that with the extra proceeds they can buy weapons for their defence. They burned the dry reeds on their fields to keep the nomads out: traditionally, farmers and nomads made mutual agreements about access to the land, but the poisoned political climate has now led to distrust. “Those damn nomads wash their livestock behind our drainage ditches so we can’t drink the water anymore,” says a man who is digging up the sediment behind an artificial sand wall for when the rains return.

The Sahel, of which Sudan is a part, is one of the fastest warming places in the world – 2 degrees warmer than a century ago, research shows. Shepherds and farmers fight over dwindling resources. “Darfur can no longer handle the population pressure,” says an employee of UNEP, the environmental organization of the UN. In the past enough water remained behind in the creeks, now even the basins do not retain enough water.

Digging a water catchment

Until recently, aid organization Save the Children paid citizens with food to dig these types of drainage reservoirs. Now she pays in cash, as all food aid supplies were recently stolen. Development becomes difficult in times of conflict. In the clinic of the same aid organization in the village of Abudialage, nurse Islam Brema weighs a thirteen-month-old child in a washbasin. “Much too light,” he sighs. “And I have nothing to feed her.” Her mother ties the baby on her back and walks back home, 45 kilometers away. Hunger is on the rise: 12 percent of all families in Northern Darfur have at least one severely malnourished child.

A Save the Children employee draws three circles in the sand: two circles opposite facing each other, that of the elderly and that of the young, and a third one called development. “How can we reunite the elderly and the young by working together on development”, he wonders, “because although against the tide we must continue to help the citizens”.

Fatnia Hamad, 11, is sitting on a mat with her mother in Abudialage. The sun is setting, she is exhausted. “I get up at four o’clock, walk to school for two hours and back at the end of the morning. In the afternoon I cover that distance again with the donkey cart for water.” In the morning her mother cannot make tea due to lack of water. Sometimes Fatnia faints at school from fatigue. The mother looks with  a scornful eye at the men sitting separate on another mat, but they say they don’t have time to fetch water.

Den of robbers

On the way back to Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, the driver zigzags in the clouds of dust over tracks skidding left and right. Under the last rays of the sun, the mountain range in the distance takes on erratic shapes, with in the foreground remains of houses of a village destroyed by a land dispute sticking out of the sand like rotten teeth. Whoever wants to avoid kidnapping for ransom here, always takes a different route on the way back. Al Fashir is a den of robbers, full of rampaging militias, government troops, rebels and armed criminals. Trucks with merchandise are robbed every day. At nine o’clock everyone rushes home to get in before the curfew.

The street into the city center is marked by the looted warehouse of the World Food Program warehouses. Seventeen hundred tons of food were lost at the end of December. All food aid in North Darfur came to a standstill. Further down in the city lies the looted former yard of the peacekeeping force Unamid. Generators and cars worth a total of millions of euros were stolen here.

Former Enemies

In Al Fashir, each armed group controls its own district. Despite the peace deal, warlords continue to recruit fighters. Sometimes they send them as mercenaries to Libya for extra income.

Darfur’s rebel groups say they are fighting for the black farmers, but most have not controlled areas for long since their formation early this century. The Janjaweed militia is probably the most violent against the population, as it were during the war at the beginning of this century. The former enemies must now ensure an integrated army and return of stolen land, two terms of the peace agreement not yet implemented.

Janjaweed fighters also show up in the heavily guarded office of Governor Nimir Abdel Rahim, leader of a rebel group. “I am a freedom fighter,” the governor emphasizes in a conversation. “As a freedom fighter, I captured general Burhan a long time ago, now the president of Sudan. I often remind him of that,” says Governor Nimir. “If you have defeated someone in a battle, you should no longer see him as an enemy.”

As with Burhan, he is lenient on Janjaweed leader Hamdan Dagalo Hemedti, the second most powerful man in the country. “We have to be careful with those two, they feel unsafe. If they give up their position, they risk losing everything.” Janjaweed leader Hemedti was given a gold mine in Darfur by Bashir.

Nimir is the first one to mention the issue of the major looting in Al Fashir at the end of December. “All soldiers misbehave, including those of my rebel group,” he readily admits. “The bases of former peacekeepers Unamid were looted in several towns elsewhere in Dafur. So my soldiers thought: we can do that too. But the government army and the Janjaweed started it. Tomorrow Burhan and Hemedti are coming to visit me in Al Fashir. We need to discuss how to encamp the armed groups outside the city.”

All the rebel leaders of the peace agreement sided with the military after the coup in October, and not with the protesting civilians. They feel part of the military world of thought, the army is the strongest power factor in the country and offers opportunities for money and looting. They call the civilian protesters “rioters.” “But I remain a freedom fighter”, says Nimir, “I allow the young people in Al Fashir to demonstrate”. They try to do so the next day during Burhan and Hemedti’s visit, but they are arrested and robbed of their mobile phones and shoes.

Two days later, fighting breaks out between a faction of the Janjaweed and a rebel group at Unamid’s apparently not-yet-dismantled base. There are several casualties.

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This article was first published in NRC Handelsblad.

On 11 January 1985, the Principal State Counsel, Moijo Ole Keiwua, wrote on behalf of the Attorney General to Ibrahim Khamis Adan and Alinoor Yussuf Mohamed Hussein through their lawyers, Munikah and Company Advocates, asking them, by the rules of civil procedures, to supply specific information about the deaths of their fathers. The information requested included the dates and times when the deceased persons were killed; whether they were killed by the Kenya Army personnel, the Kenya Police or 1982 Air Force personnel; and the names of the specific officers responsible for the deaths of the deceased.

Khamis Adan Mumin, Ibrahim’s father, worked for Wajir County Council until his death. Yussuf Mohamed Hussein was a civil servant in the Ministry of Health. The two were among 55 or so employees of various government agencies who disappeared from work in early February 1984, never to be seen again. Their employers reported them as having deserted their duties, and their families could not access their terminal benefits.

The question of who killed these two men and others was raised in parliament by the former Member of Parliament for Wajir West, the late Ahmed Khalif Mohamed, on 21 March 1984. During a debate on then President Moi’s speech at the opening of that parliamentary session, Khalif accused the security forces of killing hundreds in Wajir District. The government forces, he said, had placed more than 4,000 people in a concentration camp, over 300 had been immediately executed, and over 600 were confirmed missing.

Khalif directly accused the Provincial Commissioner for Northeastern Province, Benson Kaaria, and the Somalia government of collusion in the murders. Kaaria had claimed, as reported by the Standard on 9 November 1980, that he would eliminate all Somali-speaking people in the country unless they exposed the Shifta who had killed a District Officer. Khalif’s accusations were met with utmost hostility by the entire parliament. Mwai Kibaki, Kenneth Matiba, A.Y. Boru and Samuel Ng’eny demanded substantiation. Charles Muthura accused Khalif of irrelevance in his contribution to the presidential speech, while Parmenas Munyasia jestingly demanded to know the names of those who had threatened to wipe out the Somalis. Khalif was cornered into dropping the Somalia claim but stood his ground on the mass killings of Somalis in Wajir. In a bid to substantiate his claim, the late MP tabled the list of victims of the massacre and their photographs in parliament on 28 March 1984. Many were civil servants, including Noor Haji, the former Senator from Wajir, who had been killed in the military operation.

During a debate on then President Moi’s speech at the opening of that parliamentary session, Khalif accused the security forces of killing hundreds in Wajir District.

The question of just what happened at the Wagalla Airstrip between 10 and 14 February 1984 was partially answered by the late Justus Ole Tipis in a ministerial statement about the military operation, read on the floor of parliament on the night of 12 April 1984, and reported in the Nation of 13 April 1984. Ole Tipis revealed that the security situation in Wajir was politically motivated and that leaders were involved in divisive strategies that were planned based on ethnic considerations. He claimed that the government decided to carry out its operations against the Degodia community to provide security to a neighbouring clan. Ole Tipis gave an accurate account of the processes but avoided mentioning the resulting genocide.

The Wajir District Security Committee and the Provincial Securities Committee were convened by an order from the National Security Council. The meeting took place on 8 February 1984 at the Wajir District Commissioner’s office. The District Commissioner himself was conveniently replaced by a District Officer, M.M. Tiema. According to the signatures in the visitor’s book at the DC’s office, and eyewitness reports, this meeting was attended by J.S. Mathenge, Permanent Secretary Office of the President; B.A. Kiplagat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; David Mwiraria, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs; John Gituma, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; Brigadier J.R. Kibwana, Department of Defence; B.N. Macharia of the Treasury; Z.J.M. Kamencu, Deputy Secretary in the Office of the President; J.P. Gitui, D.C.O. Police Headquarters; J.K. Kaguthi and J.P. Mwagovya of the Office of the President; C.M. Aswani, Provincial Police Officer, North Eastern Province; Lt. Col. H.F.K. Muhindi of 7 Kenya Rifles; J.K. Kinyanjui, Director of Land Adjudication Nairobi; and finally Benson N. Kaaria, Provincial Commissioner, Northeastern Province. The meeting resolved to carry out an operation to disarm the Degodia and force them to provide the names of the bandits who were committing crimes in the district.

According to the statement by Ole Tipis, once the operation was authorized, it began in earnest on 10 February at 0400 hours and involved the Police, the Administration Police, and the Army. The operation covered Elben, Dambas, Butelehu, Eldas, Griftu and Bulla Jogoo. According to the government statement, most of these areas had been swept by 11 February. When the army surrounded Bulla Jogoo, they ordered the residents to vacate their homes. According to Ole Tipis, the residents refused to comply with the order. The military then forcibly removed 381 male members of the Degodia clan from their homes and took them to the Wagalla Airstrip, nine miles West of Wajir Town. Ole Tipis admitted that those held were interrogated for three days, and a scuffle erupted when the District Commissioner, accompanied by the OCPD (Officer Commanding Police Division), entered the airstrip. Some of the crowds started to escape while others shouted at government officers. In the confusion, 29 people died of gunshot wounds or were trampled to death, while 28 others were killed when the army met with resistance during the operations, according to the ministerial statement.

The official story narrated in the government statement closely mirrors what happened, save that the government minimized callousness of the operation. The operation covered the entire Wajir District, including Tarbaj, Leheley, Wajir-Bor and Khorof Harar. The target community was the Degodia but it is believed several Somalis of other extraction were caught up in cases of mistaken identity. The operation targeted male members of the clan above 12 years of age. Still, women were raped, houses were burnt, and property was looted in every locality where the operation took place.

The military then forcibly removed male members of the Degodia clan from their homes and took them to the Wagalla Airstrip, nine miles West of Wajir Town.

The men rounded up were subjected to torture to force them to confess to owning a rifle. Some died of their wounds before they reached the Wagalla Airstrip. Those who got to the airstrip were sorted by sub-clan, and up to 30 members of the Jebrail sub-clan were burnt alive in an orgy of unprecedented violence. Their clothes were piled up on top of them, petrol or some other highly flammable chemical was poured on the clothes, and a bonfire whose fuel was human flesh was lit. The other detainees watched as their colleagues were roasted alive. The rest of the men were forced to strip naked and told to squat in the hot sun – those who resisted were shot. The late Ahmed Khalif reported that the detainees were held at the airstrip for five days, that they were denied food and water, and that during this period, those who tried to pray were shot. In those five days, more than 1,000 people either starved to death, were shot for questioning the orders of the armed forces, or died at the hands of gangs that were allowed into the airstrip at night to carry out revenge attacks against those against whom they held a grudge.

On the fifth day, the remaining men bolted, breaking through the barbed wire fence and running for their lives. The military opened fire, and hundreds were shot — many in the back — and killed. The stampede helped most escape into the bush, where they received help from nomads. It was an escape that should have happened in the first couple of days before so many were murdered, but the Degodia people would have been wiped off the map without it. The military found itself amid thousands of dead and injured men. The plan had gone awry: men had escaped and told others what happened. The army attempted a massive cover-up that involved piling the dead and injured into lorries and dumping them in the bushes. Many bodies were also disposed of by fire and acid. Mohamed Ibrahim Elmi, Catholic nun Analena Toneli, businessman Noor Abdille and others saved many people who had been ferried into various parts of Wajir district and abandoned by the armed forces. That is how the Wagalla Massacre took place. The survivors’ stories are almost unbelievable.

One survivor says that he had never stepped into Wajir town before 9 February 1984. He had decided to visit his father there and they were both picked up by the military the night he arrived. He found himself at Wagalla naked, hungry, and thirsty, watching as life ebbed out of his father. Another survivor woke up in a pile of bodies in a depression in a bush; next to him was a 16-year-old cousin’s corpse — just an innocent boy shot in the back of the head. One survivor escaped in the stampede naked and found a young girl herding goats who helped him cover his shame with her scarf.

The army attempted a massive cover-up that involved piling the dead and injured into lorries and dumping them in the bushes.

It has been exactly 38 years since the Wagalla massacre. In all these years the victims have refused to stay quiet, the dead are bursting out of their graves and giving clues to those who wish to resolve the massacre. The available evidence is sufficient to recreate what happened at Wagalla. It is possible to give State Council Moijo Ole Keiwua the specific information he requested, to allow Ibrahim and Alinoor to bring to justice those who killed their fathers, Yussuf Mohamed Hussein and Khamis Adan Mumin, along with 3,000 others —the figure given in the UN report — on 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 February 1984 by a combined contingent of security officers from the Kenya Army, the ‘82 Air Force, the Kenya Police and the Administration Police. (The larger casualty figures were also mentioned to the author by Ahmed Khalif while he was still alive). The officers who took part in this massacre received an order from their superiors who met at the Wajir District Commissioner’s Office on 8 February 1984. The sons of the deceased could not give information of this kind in 1984. However, the same information can now be adduced in a court of law in the light of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) report and recommendations.

One of the most intriguing stories about the Wagalla Massacre was how it was planned and implemented. The target community was collected from three districts and detained at the Wagalla Airstrip.

My uncle, Abdullahi Jehow, who left Wajir District in 1965 when the Kenya Army killed his family’s herd of 200 camels, had established himself in Madogashe in Garissa District. On the morning of 9 February 1984, he was at Jalaqo, about 30 miles from Modogashe on the road to Garissa, in a shallow well with other men, busy filling troughs with water for his livestock, when a column of army vehicles arrived.

The soldiers asked them to which Somali clan they belonged, and they innocently replied that they were Degodia. They were arrested, taken to the Habaswein police post overnight and driven to the Wagalla Airstrip the following day where they witnessed the atrocities first-hand. Today in his late 80s, Uncle Abdullahi has had a very long life, but he avoids Wajir like the plague. He has lived in Isiolo, Garissa, and Tana River, but nobody has been able to convince him to go back to Wajir.

The stories told of the Wagalla Massacre demonstrate a broader conspiracy to commit genocide. Wagalla was never about the immediate security concerns in Wajir District. It had nothing to do with the low-level conflict between Somali clans; such conflicts have been simmering since time immemorial and have never resulted in genocide.

Wagalla was a classic extermination of a people; the implementation of a policy that began at independence that was aimed at clearing the inhabitants out of their land and pushing them off the map of Kenya. It was a policy set by Jomo Kenyatta and inherited by Daniel Moi. It is a policy practiced by low-level government officials and the Provincial Administration as can be gleaned from official documents and public pronouncements.

One survivor escaped in the stampede naked and found a young girl herding goats who helped him cover his shame with her scarf.

The Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission Report recommends reparations for the victims of the Wagalla massacre and other mass killings in the country. The report also recommends actions against the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, which includes banning them from public office. The report however was ignored by the government and parliament failed to adopt it. The Government Printer gazetted only parts of the report leaving out the sections relating to the massacres and killings, Volume 2A and 2B. In a bid to sidestep the broad redress mechanism proposed by the TJRC, on 26 March 2015 the president issued a bold apology and announced the establishment of a KSh10 billion Restorative Justice Fund of which only KSh3.6 billion was budgeted for in the subsequent year, 2016/2017. The Attorney General failed to initiate guidelines for victims to make claims against this fund until 2018. The beneficiaries of this fund are not aware of these guidelines as no public participation and awareness was conducted. The lethargy in implementing the TJRC report seems to emanate from the system’s determination to protect its own. Many of the perpetrators named in the TJRC Report are still serving in the boards of public institutions. Until the government takes concrete steps to provide redress for the victims of the Wagalla massacre and other crimes against humanity reported in the TJRC Report, it will be hard for the victims and their families to move on.

Moijo Ole Keiwua rose to become President of the East African Court of Justice and Judge of the Court of Appeal. He succumbed to cancer in 2011. Ibrahim Khamis Adan recently retired from the government after a long career in the diplomatic service including a stint as deputy ambassador. The writer is not aware of the whereabouts of Alinoor Yussuf Mohamed Hussein. Abdullahi Jehow is at an advanced age and lives in Tana River County; he will probably never again set foot in Wajir. The TJRC interviewed most of the persons named in connection with the Wagalla massacre, including its own Chairman, Benjamin Kiplagat. None of them accepted liability and their standard defence was, “I do not remember.”

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Abdi Sheikh is the author of “Blood on the Runway: The Wagalla Massacre” of 1984. A version of this article first appeared at www.kenyaimagine.com