A controversial operation that will culminate in men showing each other their private parts inside shrines is underway in the Mt Kenya region, aimed at ensuring that all registered elders have been circumcised.
Championed by the Kiama Kia Ma Council, the 100-day “crackdown” that started on Wednesday is causing a stir.
The council’s national patron Kung’u Muigai, who announced the start of the crackdown, said it targets all the 3,674 elders currently registered and empowered to conduct cultural rituals.
“I urge cooperation from all registered elders. We must see and touch evidence of circumcision. We must ensure that, going forward, we have 100 per cent conformity to the knife,” said Mr Muigai. “We cannot continue assuming that when we are together, all of us are circumcised.”
Mr Muigai said the matter was deliberated during an extraordinary meeting held in Kiambu County on September 28.
“The meeting that brought together 63 elders representing the Gema [Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association] communities had been convened after we could no longer hide that we had become a council of abominations, with greed and divisions and among us and elders sinking our society into a major cultural crisis,” he said.
He said the council had, for the past two decades, been hiding from the “crisis” of uncircumcised male elders, adding that it has been approaching those discovered and silently and privately facilitating their circumcision.
“You might want to know how they were busted. The major avenue is when these elders quarrel with their wives or concubines and the secret comes out. Some of our elders take alcohol and in times of [going for a short call], they forget themselves and the evidence is brandished,” he said.
He added that sometimes uncircumcised elders fall sick and are admitted to hospitals and they encounter healthcare workers from their community who let the secret out.
“Two years ago, we sensitised a 72-year-old elder from Meru County to face the knife. Currently, we have three elders aged 65, 68 and 74 in Kiambu who are recuperating at home after they faced the cut this month. An elder aged 59 years in Murang’a is on the run after his wife reported him to us,” he said.
He added that since 2010, there had been about 340 reported cases of uncircumcised elders, 146 of whom were discovered after death.
“Circumcision to us is not only cultural; it is biblical. Our community members working in mortuaries cannot allow you to be buried until you posthumously face the knife. No one even goes demanding it. Our morticians cannot let one of our adult male community members leave the mortuary uncircumcised,” he said.
Mr Muigai said the crackdown would be humane, voluntary and discreet as he warned those tasked with conducting the vetting against corrupting the exercise.
“In every sub-county where we have a presence, we have shrines. It is there that confirmed circumcised elders chosen to ‘file returns’ will be receiving their colleagues who hold cultural responsibilities. Both teams will be showing their manhoods to each other to confirm,” he said.
Former President Uhuru Kenyatta's cousin and Kiama Kia Ma national patron Kung'u Muigai.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Mr Muigai added that those who fail to show up will be struck off the register of those with cultural responsibilities and henceforth be treated as suspects.
He said that, in future, all elders seeking admission to the established councils would undergo circumcision vetting.
He further noted that the “shame” surrounding Gema elders yet to face the knife had also threatened to curse area political leaders.
“We have uncircumcised men who have participated in the coronation of kingpins. We currently have others who are grooming leaders for political transitions. We risk having cursed generations and a cursed Mt Kenya region. We might suffer annihilation,” he said.
“Without circumcision in our community, we have no men,” he said. “We are now resorting to more humane but firm crackdowns – dialogue, family pressure, and seclusion – rather than outright violence, but the principle remains,” he said.
According to Mr Joseph Kaguthi, the convener of the council that brings together Gema elders and clergy, the crisis was bigger than imagined.
“In the cultural structure of the Gema, the position of a man is defined by initiation. An adult male who has not undergone circumcision is defined as a community misfit,” he said, adding that an uninitiated male was not permitted to sit in the council of elders (Kiama), take part in decision-making, slaughter livestock for ritual purposes or pay dowry.
Moreover, Mr Kaguthi said, an uncircumcised Gema adult male could not own a homestead or marry.
“He is counted among women and children. His word cannot be taken in a men’s conference. This means that all those men who have married, sired children and executed cultural tasks have indeed cursed their lineage,” he said.
He added that all descendants of uncircumcised patriarchs were a societal abomination and that their surviving descendants must be cleansed.
“It is up to individual families to conduct internal audits and, if they find that they might have come from an uncircumcised patriarch, urgently conduct elaborate cleansing rites to save future generations,” he said.
However, cultural historian Mzee John Njue, 82, of Embu, said the issue of circumcision among Gema had, over time, been losing its cultural bearing and significance.
“Gone are the days that it was taken seriously. When it became a business and even the churches started presiding over male circumcision, we lost it. Today, we have boys who are taken by their own mothers and sisters to get circumcised in hospitals,” he said.
