If security agencies, businessmen and residents of Maragua for once became ‘serious’, they would clean up their town's reputation as the home of crime where a common joke is that it is the devil’s headquarters.
But as matters stand, they have collectively neglected the town, with those determined to play good and change it firmly in the minority.
When the name Maragua, known as a source of the best ripe bananas that reach all corners of the country, is mentioned the next thing one expects to hear is probably that someone has been arrested for selling chang’aa or bhang in town or attacked with machetes and arrows… those kind of things.
So bad is the situation that area chiefs are reported to sabotage development projects that could change the town's fortunes so that it can continue to be home to bribing criminals.
To many, Maragua is the last town they would wish to raise their children, a place to venture into in search of alcohol, sex, drugs and violence – and the police, allegedly, will happily take their daily bribe and let it be.
Yet the town, characterised by old-fashioned buildings that beg for condemnation – with random modern highrises sluggishly taking shape – has great potential that remains unexploited.
Prominent personalities from the town include scholar Peter Kagwanja, National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) member Wambui Nyútú, Norwegian-Kenyan singer Stella Mwangi, who was born here, and Ugandan-born British scientist Ellinor Catherine Cunningham Van Someren, who lived on her family's farm on the outskirts of the town before she died in 1998 aged 82.
The town has Mau Mau caves, falls, dams, rivers, bamboo plantations and natural rocks that could be exploited as tourist attractions, but who cares? Not political leaders, not administrators, not area business people.
Garbage heap in Maragwa Town street on July 28, 2022.
Photo credit: Mwangi Muiruri I Nation Media Group
The town, whose garbage collection is poor and raw sewerage meanders in an uncovered trench that runs across it, leaving residents hosting a mosquito breeding haven, has a rich historical profile in the founding of the Kenyan state.
James Beauttah (1889-1985) who led the first all-African political formation, the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), with Mr Joseph Kang’ethe, lived here. By the time Jomo Kenyatta joined the two in 1924, they had laid the groundwork for an African Kenyan to lead the country after the ouster of the colonialists.
Mr Beauttah was arrested in 1952 and detained, but after independence he became a critical cog in the Kenyatta administration and his legacy still lives on and one of his scions, Mr Henry Beauttah, is the chairman of the town's businessmen and residents.
Had Beauttah's land not have been subdivided and sold off, the town would have been named after him as he owned more than 50 percent of it.
“With such a big name and history, Maragua, whose market day is on Sunday, can be made a great tourist attraction. It has amazing landscape in its outer surroundings, exotic entertainment spots coming up by the day and area people are simply marvelous,” Mr Beauttah Junior said.
“We only need committed leaders who will not play politics with the town's development issues … leadership that can tackle the issues from a point of humanity, sensitivity and progressively having in mind the economy of the town and wealth creation of its people.”
He said the town – which does not have a township public primary school, forcing the very young to trek more than five kilometres to and fro in search of education – has a roadmap for attaining “the Maragua we want status where it will be transformed into an industrial hub that can absorb its jobless youths, attract critical investments like financial market actors as well as supermarkets”.
The most dominant enterprises are bars, lodgings, general merchandise shops, pharmacies, low-cost eateries and farm produce stalls. Encountering totally drunk people, of both genders, as early as 5am and as late as 5am informs the town’s 24-hour economy. The sin industry is given its mojo by men who have sold family land, civil servants, brokers and criminals.
In the town, the highest-priced lodging facility per night costs Sh1,000, while the lowest is at Sh300, rental houses go for between Sh500 and Sh2,500 for a single room, and a bedsitter for between Sh5,000 and Sh8,000. Land prices are not competitive and they depend on your bargaining power. A sum of between Sh5 million and Sh10 million can fetch you an acre, depending on location. The town is near the abandoned annual Gakoigo agricultural showground.
It is a violent town where the Public Health department has neglected the annual requirement that buildings be repainted to look appealing.
Its breaking news is mostly about gangs betting on who will deflower an underage girl first, wives complaining about hacked ears, men complaining of sodomy and police unleashing dogs at residents. Once in a while, those criminals who go overboard are gunned down by police, others lynched by residents.
The tomb of freedom fighter and founder of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1924 James Beauttah in Maragua town.
Photo credit: Mwangi Muiruri I Nation Media Group
The most shocking new criminal act in the town was the petrol-bombing to death of Mercy Njoya in her residential house in Mathare estate by a criminal gang that is yet to be apprehended six months later – a blemish on the local office of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), with many residents say has a poor record of cracking serious crimes.
As a result, the agriculture-based economy of the town continues to hit the headlines, with negative stories of crime, alcoholism, prostitution, school dropouts, cattle rustling and gun-toting gangsters.
The town, which has a railway line terminus that receives scores of traders daily from various parts of Murang’a South sub-county, still remains unlocked owing to capital flight induced by criminality.
It is also home to Maragua Level Four Hospital, where two members of staff were arrested for stealing medicine meant for the sick.
A unique village that makes the town a living hell is Maica Ma Thi, known for hosting the illegal chang’aa trade as its trademark since 1958.
The village has recently managed to draw Interior CS Fred Matiang’i and Deputy Inspector-General of Police Edward Mbugua from Nairobi to attend public barazas to brainstorm on how to cleanse Maragua from the negative effects of what happens in this village that has an active gang called Jeshi ya Gaica.
Last month, high-profile security bosses from the county, led by Police Commander Ali Nuno, Murang'a South Sub-County Police Commander Alexander Shikondi, Deputy County Commissioner Gitonga Muriungi and Maragua Assistant County Commissioner Joshua Okello, warned about a renewed campaign against criminal gangs and their sympathisers, corrupt police officers included.
This Jeshi is so revered that sometimes residents are confused about which between the police service and its members is the government, some dwellers suggesting that the government should find an excuse to take the land in this village so that the youths can be displaced. The youths have throughout the existence of this town been trying to take over its Border, Rurii, Soweto and Mathare estates, sometimes succeeding and other times being dislodged security officers.
After a sustained onslaught, the youths have been trying to set base near the police station in Milimani and Kanyumbani estates but area residents started lynching them.
For spiritual nourishment, the town is served by more than 10 churches – mainstream and individually founded ones.
The town is a real nightmare for police officers as the dynamics of crime are taxing and residents are very active in protesting poor services, and hence many of the cited lazy and corrupt finding themselves transferred. For the past two years, the station has been overhauled four times, with six station commanders getting transferred. Those who persevere face the task of rounding up scores of petty offenders and charging them with similar offences of brewing and consuming chang’aa and trading in bhang – even when the reported crime was different.
The mosquito breeding haven that is the open sewerage disposal trench cutting across Maragua town on July 28, 2022.
Photo credit: Mwangi Muiruri I Nation Media Group
Police say that such charges are the only ones they can use to lock up misfits because area residents, despite being active protesters, are very poor in cooperating with the police as witnesses against the criminals so that actual charges can be successfully argued in court.
“The end result has been the rounding up of scores of youths from the village and elsewhere within Ichagaki ward and having them sentenced to jail terms to a point that the Murang’a and Maranjau jails are like villages from this ward … It is a common phenomenon to get at least 20 youths from Maragua in one jail,” said Ichagaki ward MCA Charles Mwangi.
Mr Mwangi says there is nothing out of the ordinary with this town “but it all boils down to sustained neglect over a long period to a point many youths fail to get income opportunities in it and in the agitation to make a living, they resort to crime”.
He said that a town that cannot offer income opportunities to its nearby villages becomes a haven for idling and in the search for attention and income, the youths become deviates.
The Maragua Police Station is mostly accused by area residents of being part of the problem rather than the solution. Sometimes good officers are posted and try to help but they too get wooed by the hidden treasure of the bribery network that thrives in it.
Maragua Residents and Business Community Association (MRBCA) coordinator Mohammed Maluki defends the town as one with “an untapped potential owing to bad governance”.
He says the town can become a haven of peace and prosperity if only all stakeholders would behave and sit down, identify what should be done and implement it with the eye on creating earning opportunities and attracting investors.
“We have over 150 acres of public land that can be utilised to host industrial hubs, hence creating employment. We have thriving banana, roots and tubers and traditional vegetables farming enterprises in many parts of Maragua constituency and if we get value addition plants for them, we can create hundreds of jobs for our youths and keep them from crime,” he said.
He said former Equity Bank chairman Peter Munga is among the best friends of Maragua town as he has invested in a macadamia processing plant, schools and agricultural ventures where he has offered livelihoods to hundreds of locals.
"We want leadership that can bring us investors. We want a government that realises it is a fallacy to use bullets and jail in fighting crime ... that crime can best be fought by offering income opportunities to both the skilled and the non-skilled. Jailing young fathers and mothers only makes the situation more dire," Mr Mohammed said.
He said leadership gaps in the area have seen the town – which has only an Equity ATM lobby and Amica Sacco as the only major financial institutions – denied its right to development.
“We are supposed to host a Kenya Medical Training College at the Maragua Level Four Hospital grounds, a fully equipped mortuary, a courthouse and a motor vehicle inspection unit. We are supposed to host the governor’s official residence and a thriving jua kali yard …,” he said.
The town is governed by Ichagaki (13,524 voters) and Nginda (16,416 voters) wards in the Murang'a County assembly. Maragua constituency has 102,383 voters. Those to be elected to these seats and that of governor on August 9 General Election will inherit the pressure to make the town great by implementing the proposed projects.
The Sh300 Murang’a County Creameries dairy products plant in the town provided high hopes of employment but it has since faded, area farmers boycotting it in favour of privately owned processors who pay better rates.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has started investigating Governor Mwangi wa Iria, citing financial impropriety in its implementation.
