(Angela Wahu is the CEO and founder of ChokoraCulture, an outfit helping street families)
With the highly contested August 8, 2017 polls, the country was not only thrust into an electioneering mood but, was also treated to instances of shock, pain and grief.
There are innocent Kenyans who lost their lives over the elections, leaving their families wallowing in grief seeking the ever-elusive justice in Kenya.
Sadly, these events, despite drawing criticism and public outcry, Kenyans in their ‘forgetful spirit’ seem to have just moved on.
Here are two cases which are related to the contentious 2017 general elections which shook the country to the core:
1. Chris Msando’s brutal death
It is almost two years since the murder of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) ICT manager Chris Msando.
Hitherto, his death has just been added onto the growing list of people who have been killed, and whose murders have remained unresolved.
Msando was in charge of Kenya’s highly computerised voting system. His appearances on national television explaining how the system works, including safeguards against vote rigging, had helped inspire a measure of public confidence in the IEBC.
However, a week to the general elections, Msando was found murdered and his body dumped in a thicket in Kikuyu, Kiambu County.
His body had visible injuries in the back and left side of his head and on his belly. Both wrists had been slit and the right forearm was broken.
His face had no injury but fresh blood was oozing from the nose. Evidently, his torturers were trying to squeeze some information out of him.
At about 12:37 pm on August 8, 2017, it was to later emerge, hackers gained entry into the election database through Msando’s Identity who had already been executed.
Nairobi Woman Representative, Esther Passaris, is on record saying that: “I think nobody in Kenya now doubts why Chris Msando died. We understand why. It was because of that manipulation.”
To date, no much progress has been achieved in regard to apprehending his killers yet his wife, Eva Msando and three boys who survived him live with the memories of their father.
2. Baby Pendo’s death
Six-month-old Baby Samantha Pendo was the ultimate sacrificial lamb in the chaos that rocked some parts of the country after the August 2017 polls.
Her name is an embodiment of police brutality. Her mother Lencer Achieng, broke down into tears as she narrated how eight heavily-armed police officers lobbed a teargas canister into her one-bedroom house in Nyalenda Estate, Kisumu before forcing their way in and assaulting her husband.
“I tried to get out of the house because it was full of tear gas and we were choking. I was carrying my baby girl in my arms but just when I got to the door, the officers started hitting me too," she painfully narrated.
One officer hit her on the left side, another struck her backside, forcing her to look back at her assailant. Then the truncheon struck her left side again.
She pleaded with the police, to have mercy on her as she was carrying her baby but they wouldn’t hear, hitting her repeatedly with blows and kicks. She looked over her left shoulder at her baby, only to see that she was foaming at the mouth, unresponsive and her head was swelling.
According to Joseph Abanja, Baby Pendo’s father, once the officer realised that he had hurt the infant, he callously ordered Jose to perform first aid.
“Fanyia mtoto first aid, hujui kufanya first aid? Vutia mtoto makamasi” (“Give the baby first aid, don’t you know how to do first aid? Suck the mucus out.”)
Abanja did what the policeman told him and handed Pendo over to his brother Morris Abanja. He went in search of his other daughter, Moesha Akinyi who had run away from the police, escaping into the night.
Thomas Abanja (her older brother-in-law) and a neighbour quickly took Baby Pendo and raced to the nearest medical facility which they found closed.
They went to another one and they found it locked too. Eventually, they had to seek medical attention at Agha Khan Hospital, a few kilometres away from their home.
Once admitted here, it emerged that Baby Pendo had a severe head injury. The officers had struck the infant with a baton resulting in the cracking of her skull.
She immediately slipped into a coma and was taken into the Intensive Care Unit. She remained in a coma for three days before she finally succumbed to her injuries and died.
The news of Baby Pendo’s death broke Kenyans’ hearts provoking national outrage. Since the 2017 incident, the court has only managed to indict five police commanders for overseeing brutality and, specifically, for the bludgeoning to death the infant.
It is not certain that the officers will be formally found guilty of the charges.
The police commanders have not yet served any jail time for the crime of killing of Baby Pendo. Other minors killed in the aftermath of the August election include 10-year-old Stephanie Moraa.
Amid all this, hardly will you hear these issues being mentioned. They have all gone down the drain the typical Kenyan style of “forgetfulness”