After President William Ruto recently appointed Kung’u Muigai chairperson of the Kenya Cultural Centre Council board, Mr Muigai declared war on archaic traditional practices in Mt Kenya region.
“I know that my job entails working countrywide. But charity begins at home. Before we preach yonder we must first do it in Jerusalem which is home,” Mr Muigai, who is retired President Uhuru Kenyatta’s first cousin said.
Mr Muigai said the Mount Kenya region has several retrogressive cultural practices.
“Every dawn we are faced with the great challenge of confronting practices packaged in culture that enable gender discrimination, violence, indecency and indoctrination of minors to harmful practices,” he said.
He said “Mt Kenya is home to some groupings of cultural purists who advance criminal practices for self-gain.
As a result, he said, “we continue to subject women to archaic limitations, subjecting our children to harmful practices and making our men believe they own the world and are always right even when they are wrong”.
He warned traditionalists who promote casual sex, substance abuse and violence in the name of culture.
“There is a cultural practice that requires newly circumcised boys to have unprotected sex to cleanse the wounds. You need not even think about it, starting now, that thinking is criminal,” he said.
Mr Muigai also cited the ritual where a woman who has deliberately broken the cooking pot in inferring a curse on her lineage is cleansed by having public unprotected sex complete with witnesses.
“We should not be associated with such cases of lunacy,” he said.
Two weeks ago, the Nation revealed how newly circumcised boys were being taken to commercial sex workers and required to pay for brief unprotected sexual intercourse so as to be certified as complete men.
Mr Muigai said “we are now aware that this ritual that has all along been misinterpreted has reached a point of gross abuse and gained grave criminal dimensions”.
He said security officers have informed the council of elders that “brokers working in cahoots with commercial sex workers have hijacked the ritual and transformed it into a criminal enterprise with kickbacks as the motive”.
He said the plot involves the brokers taking the boys to the commercial sex dens, have them part with Sh1,000 to Sh2,000 (depending on family background) and the brokers receiving a kickback of Sh500 per service.
He accused some elders of manipulating historical facts regarding traditions so as to create an avenue to con children.
Long serving administrator Joseph Kaguthi, who is also a community elder, said “we want to specifically deal with traditions that are against the law”.
He added that tobacco snuffing and demand for cigarettes from newly circumcised boys should also be reviewed.
Demand for goats to be slaughtered by elders as way of welcoming age groups into levels of eldership was promoting stock thefts in the region.
Overt the year, the region has seen the rise of extreme purist groups like Mungiki and Gwatia Ndahi who promoted murders, extortion and female genital mutilation as aspects of culture.
Some forced newlywed women, especially those from other tribes, to undergo circumcision so as to be accepted in Mount Kenya. They also monitored small girls and sent agents to have them circumcised.
The groups also sought to control the circumcision of young boys so as to indoctrinate them into radical beliefs. BY DAILY NATION