The question many asked themselves after a Facebook post on Wednesday, February 25, by Moi-era political detainee Wafula Buke was: “Why should a father celebrate the jailing of his son?”
Mr Buke not only welcomed a four-year jail term that a Kibera court handed his son, Declan Neville, but also wished it could have been seven years.
“Considering how I have known him, he badly needed to go to jail,” wrote the former director of political affairs and strategy at the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
What his post didn’t reveal is that the 21-year-old son in question had been recruited into a gang of criminals allegedly coordinated by rogue police officers with networks in Nairobi and beyond.
The recruiters, Mr Buke told the Nation in an interview on Friday, subject prospective entrants to vetting that even includes running, as if they are joining an elite defence unit.
“My son was chosen because he’s an excellent runner,” said Mr Buke, adding that Declan was around 16 years old at the time.
Once in the unit, the gang members are supplied with weapons and protection when they commit robberies, and the spoils are shared within the chain.
One day, Mr Buke narrated, Declan was being beaten up by a mob after a robbery-gone-wrong in Ngong when police officers showed up. One officer reportedly said, “The one who stole was wearing a blue sweater, not a red one. You want to kill someone’s child.”
“They protected my son,” said Mr Buke. “They saved him from being killed by the mob because he was a partner to them.”
Wafula Buke at ODM's headquarters in Nairobi on November 5, 2014 where he declared himself the party's acting executive director.
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation
A former student leader at the University of Nairobi who was jailed for five years under President Daniel arap Moi, Mr Buke said he is not the type to shield anyone from facing the law.
“I don’t protect my children from the truth,” he said, citing the example of Zambia’s founding President Kenneth Kaunda, who refused to interfere with the courts when his son, Kambarange Mpundu Kaunda, was arrested for shooting dead a 20-year-old.
“We don’t respect KK (Kenneth Kaunda) enough. You never see that elsewhere in Africa,” said Mr Buke.
He recounted how he once was willing to have another of his sons jailed for assaulting his wife, and how he refused to pay a fine for his brothers on different occasions so they could spend time in jail for involvement in drugs.
The incarceration of his son, he said, is a welcome break that may free him from the criminal network that had taken him hostage.
“He is a very lucky man to go to prison because I think he had about a month or two to be shot and to be killed,” said Mr Buke.
Below, Mr Buke unpacks the story of his jailed son in his own words. This excerpt has been edited for space and clarity.
“This boy was born in Kibera 21 years ago when his mother and I were very poor. We even wanted to abort the pregnancy. I had just come from exile with nowhere to go.
Because I could not fend for the family’s needs, the mother decided to go to another man. If you check the boy’s national ID and birth certificate, my name doesn’t feature. It is because the mother decided to give the child to somebody else and say, ‘It was not him (Mr Buke); it was you. ’
The man stepped in and helped. I think it reached a point where he left and went away to Uganda or something like that. That’s when the lady came back to me and said, ‘To be honest, it’s your son.’
I said, ‘Let’s go and do a DNA test.’
I did a DNA test. It cost me Sh31,500. That time I was doing better. The results said it was a 99.999 per cent match. That’s how I established that the fellow was mine. He must have been four or five years old then.
From there, I provided support completely through his mother, who was living on her own. However, the mother had her limitations. I’d tell her to take him to an academy; but she would take him to a public school. She had challenges because she had other children. That environment meant life was not straightforward for the boy.
I was talking to the mother two days ago, and she didn’t have a good feeling about this. She thinks that (her not settling down) may have messed him (Declan) up, making him a rebel and a participant in many crazy things.
At some point, the boy used to come to my place for holidays. There was a time he was arrested because he was wearing clothes that looked like those of the disciplined forces. The police asked me for a bribe so that he could be released, but I refused. The court case went on for about six months. I won the case, assisted by a lawyer.
Mr Wafula Buke, the head of survivors network. He said that a lot more needs to be done to serve justice to the victims.
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation
When he went to Form One, my boy caused more trouble.
One day, he was accused of providing leadership in burning a dormitory in Sikusi Secondary School in Bungoma County. I told the headmaster to take the fellow to the police because he was endangering the lives of the rest. But he did not agree with me. The headmaster got a nyahunyo (rubber whip) and I think he gave the boy about 70 strokes. And the boy promised me he would change. Come second term, he burnt another dormitory. Finally, he was kicked out.
The mother tried to get a boarding school and I said, ‘I cannot take that child to a boarding school. He’s a danger to the rest.’
It is at this point that I should speak about the rogue police recruiting thugs. You know, they conduct recruitment in the slums. So, they recruited my son. We heard allegations that he was involved in drug peddling. After completing the first job, he was given only Sh2,000. He was very annoyed and left the job.
After he quit, a senior security official got him and beat him up. This forced my son to return to crime.
I’ll say my son is suspected to have been involved in criminal activities that make him deserve a worse sentence than what he was given. Once, he was allegedly sent to rob an M-Pesa shop, under protection, of course. He was with a partner-in-crime who had clashed with an officer regarding a woman. The partner-in-crime was shot in front of my son, reportedly by the officer.
My son shrunk. He tried to withdraw but they came back for him again. This was a small boy of 18 years or thereabouts. He was in a trap.
What got my son jailed for four years? The sentence he got was for preparing to commit a felony, but I was told the real offence was more serious.
When my son was arrested, his friends, the young comrades-in-crime, said they couldn’t let him take the cross alone. They said they would come and give evidence as witnesses on how they were used by the rogue officers. You know what happened? Three were killed and one ran away.
My son was getting desperate. He wanted to disengage. But he couldn’t because now he was a partner-in-crime with these fellows.
In fact, what I kept waiting for is a bullet from these same people. That is why I am glad he is now in prison. He has gone to the safest place for him at the moment. His death has been postponed by four years. And I wanted that postponement to go to seven years.
I wished for seven years – and his mother agrees with me – because that is long enough to have the rogue officers in the ring sacked or transferred, then my son can come back and start living normally. But if he comes back and finds the same gang in his geographical space, we have a problem.
What I intend to do for him, once he is released, is to get him out of this country and find him some place where he can start a new life.
Despite his eventful secondary school story, he managed to sit the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams two years ago and scored a mean grade of D- from a school in Kibera. We celebrated because at least we had proof that he had gone to school. We didn’t expect him to get anything, but when he got a D-, so we were very happy.
Now that he is in prison, it is good that the prison wardens give him the protection he needs.
When he was in remand, I was sending him pocket money. Times have changed because when I was in prison, we wouldn’t get pocket money.
In all that, I’m seeing the chance to help him. When he’s out here, I compete (for his attention) with the rogue security agents. He either talks to me or them. As a prisoner, now we can sit together and talk.
The uncanny similarity between my story and his is that we have both been jailed as young men below the age of 25 years. I was jailed for five years, which translated into three years and four months behind bars. With the four-year sentence he got on Tuesday, my son is going to stay in prison for two years and eight months. My jailing was political; his is a criminal.
From my assessment, my son needed a break long enough for him to think and also be protected from the hostile environment.
The responses I have received after my Wednesday Facebook post have been overwhelming. I have got many messages and calls. There are people who are facing the same problem, some even wishing that their children were killed by the police. I’ve got many confessions from people. So, this is a problem that exists, but some people don’t talk about it. Two of them told me that they wished the children – and most of them are born out of wedlock – died and are buried in public cemeteries, not even in their own compounds. It’s not restricted to me; it’s a societal thing.”
