A screengrab of a video shows hooded men brandishing guns and hurling tear gas canisters at residents and journalists during the Ol Kalou by-elections on July 16, 2026.
Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF trained the Green Bombers from 2001 to terrorise MDC supporters, and the militia bought Mugabe time but not survival, since his own military removed him in 2017.
Sudan’s al-Bashir armed the Janjaweed in Darfur, later formalising them as the Rapid Support Forces, and by 2023 the RSF had turned its guns on the national army and ignited a civil war.
You can arm a political militia, but you cannot disarm one. Governments that outsource violence usually make the same discovery too late — a militia is not a tool you own but a debt you owe. Zimbabwe and Sudan each learned it after the fact.
On the day of the Ol Kalou by-election in Nyandarua County last Thursday, hooded men arrived in high-end vehicles, fired bullets in the air and lobbed tear gas at voters. Uniformed police officers stood in the crowds they attacked and watched helplessly. Journalists filmed the whole thing, and still nobody was arrested. Two men died — James Muigai Mwathi, beaten at a polling centre, and Zachariah Gakinya Mukora, a truck driver who had travelled home to vote. The police named no suspects; an NTV investigation did the work instead, putting names to some of the faces and tracing one vehicle to a sitting Member of Parliament.
