NAIROBI: TJRC WITNESSES LEFT US WITH MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

By Salah Abdi Shekh

I have spent my last few days sitting in the TJRC hearings listening to the hoarse voices of old men trying very hard to conceal what they know too well without appearing to be lying. A successful liar must have a very long memory. These men’s testimonies were riddled with gaps, inconsistencies and perplexing forgetfulness.  The testimonies of the members of the Kenya Intelligence Committee and Provincial Security Committee who sat at Wajir District Commissioner’s office on 8^th February1984 left me numb. This does not mean that they left me without impressions; although I spent 13 years researching the Wagalla Massacre, I never thought such extensive cover-up took place. My understanding has been that at least “a few good men” will keep records for posterity. So far I am watching in abated breath as I see the cover-up going into its 27^th year. Documents are surfacing that have been crafted to mislead any objective investigation into the truth. The minutes of Provincial Security Committee read like a panic scene in a horror novel. They seemed to have realized the gravity of what they have been ordered to do when thousand were already dead. They were torn between keeping a straight face and accounting for what was for all intent and purposes genocide.

The cover-up was extensive. Mr. M. M. Tiema acting Wajir District Commissioner at the time of Wagalla was dumped without ceremony but with full pay for a whole year. The Provincial Commissioner, Mr. Benson Kaaria was removed soon after and replaced by Amos Bore. D. K. Mativo replaced Joseph Matui as District Commissioner and was instructed by Amos Bore to forget the past and concentrate into the future. Mativo made no reference to the security situation in Wajir in 1984 in his annual report but his conclusion is telling. He ends his report with the following words; “…although the year started on a sour note the ending was quite opposite with a number of notable achievements noteworthy among them the dawning of peace among warring clans of the district and successful completion of the standard eight classrooms”. The cover-up continued with the Kenya Intelligence Committee sitting every week for one year. The Committee normally met once every month. Documents written before Wagalla Massacre, refer exclusively to security issues but anything originating thereafter seems to have been doctored to reflect economic and development issues. Everyone was gagged; anybody who mentioned Wagalla in the 1980s and 1990s went to jail for seven months. When Africa Watch snooped around to uncover the truth about Wagalla and other Human rights abuses in 1991, the government reacted with a 70-page rebuttal explaining its position.

The TJRC is faced by these perplexing challenges. The very environment of the hearings militates against earthshaking revelations of any truth. The witnesses are represented by one lawyer, their statements are almost identical and all of them seem to suffer from acute selective amnesia. Kimenchu could remember who killed Wabera in the 1960’s but could not remember what Bethuel Kiplagat told the ambassadors in 1986 about Wagalla Massacre. None of the witnesses has any recollection of the meeting at Wajir District Commissioner’s office in which they were all present. Three phrases dominated the hearings in the last few days; “I can’t remember”, “I can’t recall”, and “I has been 27 years ago”. This is a powerful defense for the witnesses but does not bring us any closer to the truth. There is a strategy that seems to have been adopted by the witnesses which is to blame the genocide at Wagalla on Acting District Commissioner Mr. M. M. Tiema and the Wajir District Security Committee. The witnesses represented by Kioko Kilukumi have been meeting in a group and have been harmonizing their evidence so that its credibility is increased. This is a bid to mock the TJRC process and reduce it into a cleansing ceremony.

The stark revelation that seemed to have escaped the media and the TJRC Commissioners is that there was a government within a government. This parallel government was the preserve of trusted aides of the president Daniel Arap Moi and it had three levels; District Intelligence Committee, Provincial Intelligence Committee and Kenya Intelligence Committee. This was a powerful arm of the dictatorship and surprisingly they did not keep minutes of their meetings. They made decisions and directed the other arms of government to undertake certain actions but none of those actions could be traced to them. Did these arms of government direct the security agencies to undertake the military operation that led to Wagalla Massacre?

The impression I got so far is that my own apprehensions about TJRC at this point of Kenya’s history is being played out. The process is being sandbagged by legal Pharisees appointed and paid by the Kenyan government. The Kenya government is paying for the legal expenses of the former and serving civil servants appearing before the commission. The witnesses are defending themselves as a group and do not seem to understand the spirit of the truth-seeking process. The TJRC Commissioners feel frustrated by the repeated official truths being regurgitated by every witness that has appeared before them. This frustration was played out when Commissioner Margaret Chava told Brigadier Chebet that she would not know how much credibility she would accord his testimony. Commissioner Tom Ojienda found it hard to believe that Mwiraria insistence on his memory failing him. Ojienda told Mwiraria that he had developed a severe case of selective amnesia. Lawyer Elijah Mwagi for the witnesses cried foul that his witnesses are being intimidated.

The commission’s credibility is being undermined by being denied access to vital government documents and there is a complete lack of political will to unearth the truth. The government is in fact actively fighting tooth and nail to undermine the TJRC. This is because, the powerful political and civil service class who condoned human rights violations in the 1980s are still holding the reigns of power. Any revelations of truth will lead to their embarrassment.

Salah Abdi Sheikh is the author of “Blood on the Runway: The Wagalla Massacre of 1984”