At around 10:30pm on February 20 this year, Mr Mwangi Kibaara’s life turned black.
It all started two hours earlier when his mud kitchen in Murang’a County was invaded by a swarm of a youthful gang out to murder his 75-year-old wife, Mary Njoki.
“We were in our mud kitchen which is outside our main house…my wife had just finished preparing some tea for us. We lived only the two of us in the compound. I had arthritis pains in the knees and I had placed my legs on two cooking stones for warmth as I sipped my tea,” Mr Kibaara recalls.
Having been married since 1973, he says they had grown to love each other more.
Before his world turned black on that fateful night, the two had grown so fond of each other to a point of engaging in girl-boy talk. The latest of such banter was on February 16, 2023, “as we lay in our bed joking on how we needed to get a baby to charm our ageing lives”.
Mzee Kibaara describes his wife as “my greatest friend and mother of my five grown children (and) a woman whose Catholic faith provided our poverty with some optimism of a better future as we did casual labour to put a meal, fees and other bills on the table”.
On the fateful night, the intruders found them seated beside each other in the tin lamp-lit kitchen, making them look like silhouettes.
“The kitchen was filled with blinding dozens of torch lights that on instincts, I thought were police officers. As I closed my eyes to avoid the painful biting effects of the lights, I heard a female voice shout in Kikuyu: Here she is, the witch,” he told Nation.Africa in his Kiamikoe village in Kiharu constituency.
100 intruders
Mr Kibaara says he only opened his eyes when he heard his wife scream after she was slapped by one of the about 100 intruders.
“Come out you witch! Your days of causing death in this village by bewitching our people are over. In the next few minutes you will be in the company of Satan in hell,” he says he heard a youthful male voice warn before the slap that made Ms Njoki scream landed on her face.
Mr Kibaara said nature demands that he is the chief protector of his family from all threats.
“I ignored the pain in my knees and stood up…I armed myself with a piece of firewood and gazed straight into the offending torchlights. I demanded that all leave my kitchen and com-pound with immediate effect,” he said.
As he attempted to strike the nearest intruder with the piece of wood, a dozen hands restrained his frail hand.
“They had managed to drag my wife to the outside of the kitchen. She was screaming since they were beating her up. I asked aloud why my grandsons’ and daughters’ age mates were beating their grandmother…I tried uttering curses on their lives and they laughed at me,” he said.
The beatings had become serious and the mob had dragged her about 100 metres from her house to a public road where they had forced her to sit down.
Mr Kibaara says he struggled to get to the frontline to get a clear view of his wife and hear firsthand what she was being asked and accused of.
“Give us the list of all your fellow witches in this village. Even the chief and his assistant are aware of this swoop against witches and you are the commander of witchcraft in this village,” he reports hearing.
Mr Kibaara says his instincts had by then appreciated the fact that this was a serious issue and the mob that openly smoked bhang and snuffed tobacco was getting bolder in their talk and actions, declaring that his wife must die.
“I tried sweet-talking some of the youths and even offered to leave the village and legally transfer all of my two acres of land to them…I offered to leave immediately with my wife and never to come back again to the village…the beatings had become so severe to a point she was bleeding from her mouth and nose,” he recalls.
He says the beatings and interrogation lasted two hours, a process that had seen her get undressed.
“I removed my coat and threw it to her to cover her nakedness but a youthful assailant returned it to me declaring that I needed it more than her since they were about to permanently warm her life,” he recalls, fighting back tears.
Last moment
Mr Kibaara says it was exactly at 10.30pm when two tyres were brought to the scene.
“One tyre was put around her waist and the other around her neck….all along she had remained seated…I screamed when I saw a youth douse the tyres with petrol…My wife’s eyes looked very terrified and the beatings had left her very weak…I loathed society. I hated life. I strongly felt that God had forsaken me. My wife getting murdered as I just witnessed with zero chance of rescuing her made me hate myself….Ageing is not exactly a blessing,” he says.
In the floodlights of the torches, his wife feebly beckoned at him.
“The five youths who appeared to coordinate the mob agreed that I get my last moment with my wife. The youths who had all along maintained a restraining grip on me shoved me forward and I fell over my wife. I was crying freely and not ashamed of it. If my strength could not make me express my distaste for what I was witnessing, I let my tears do the talking. Tears of an old person are a curse,” he adds.
In the cacophony of the mob, the excitement of the witnesses and the terror in Mzee Kibaara’s heart, as he held his wife by the shoulders, she feebly spoke up: “Tigwo uhoro mwendwa wakwa. Mekunjuraga buri itari undu njui no ndukamake, nindikuroraga ndi matu-ini (Goodbye my love, they will kill me for nothing but be of strong heart…I will be watching over you from the heavens).”
Those were the last words from his wife that he says made him feel very weak as the petrol fumes choked his breath until he puked.
Tortured for hours
“I was pulled back and in my subconscious heard the sound of a stricken match and moments later my wife became a fireball whose flames illuminated the neighbourhood. She twisted and rolled as the fire ate into her skin, driving the life out her, she stilled and peacefully burnt off,” Mr Kibaara narrates.
He says he woke up near the body when police came to take it to the mortuary since he had passed out as the mob dispersed.
“I do not even know what I want now. Now I don’t have anyone to live for. The government can do what it wants with the case because I don’t care. It is three weeks now and the police have never arrested anyone. I simply don’t care whether they arrest or don’t. What I know is that the government is as guilty as the mob that my wife was tortured for two hours before she was lynched,” he says.
He adds: “If it was the chief’s house that had been raided, the government would have arrived within 10 minutes and if the mob had killed a rich person, the entire village would by now be in jail but since it was my poor wife, a woman who had no big person to defend her, her life was so casually claimed and it has been made to look very normal.” BY DAILY NATION