Kung'u Muigai: Sex for newly circumcised boys with sex workers is criminal

When President William Ruto appointed him on January 20, 2024, to be board chair of the Kenya Cultural Centre Council, Mr Kung'u Muigai immediately declared war on archaic traditional practices in Mt Kenya region.

“I know that my job entails working for the nation's four(4) corners, but charity starts at home. Before we preach yonder we must first do it in Jerusalem which is home,” Mzee Muigai said.

Mr Muigai said the world has lived a lie for a long time that Mt Kenya is home to modernity and has no inhibiting cultural practices.

"Yet, every dawn we are faced with the great challenge of confronting practices packaged in culture that enable gender discrimination, violence, indecency, and indoctrination of minors to harmful practices," he said.

He said Mt Kenya is home to some groupings of cultural purists who advance criminal practices for self gain and making it appear as if the ‘community gods’ so ordered.

As a result, he said, "we continue to subject women to archaic limitations, subjecting our children to harmful practices, and making our men believe they own the world and are always right even when they are wrong".

He warned area purists who execute community capture through promotion of casual sex, substance abuse, and violence as cultural practices.

Mr Muigai now says his board is mandated to execute its mandate through performance of music, drama, and dancing.

He said the council's mandate should be exhibited through collaborative drives with the country's cultural diversities to confront the bad and promote the good.

He says he expects his team to marshal all it takes to project Kenya as a modern state that practices positive cultural jigs to drive local, regional and global economy.

Mr Muigai who also is the Kikuyu Council of Elders national patron said his first stop in Mt Kenya will be pushing for the proscription of all rituals that in the measure of education, religion, culture, and modernity are stupid.

"For instance, there is this piece of criminal culture that requires newly circumcised boys to have unprotected sex to cleanse the wounds...You need not even think about it...Starting now, that thinking is criminal," he said.

He insisted that "we have now consulted widely with security heads and we have gathered enough information to warrant a total ban against the ritual".

He said that "stand warned that this is no longer an item of our rituals and practicing it is to be measured on acceptability by law and we have sanctioned the police to treat it as criminally guided enterprise".

Mr Kung'u also cited the ritual where a woman who has deliberately broken the cooking pot in inferring a curse on her lineage is cleansed by having public unprotected sex with a male chosen among the hopeless, complete with witnesses.

"Such rituals need not even discussed. They are pieces of madness and we must be very specific that all partakers of such should immediately be apprehended by the law and charged with all attached provisions...we should not be associated with such cases of lunacy," he said.

The media recently revealed how newly circumcised boys were being taken to commercial sex workers' dens and required to pay for brief unprotected sexual intercourse so as to be certified as complete men.

It was revealed how the ritual was attracting concerns from security officers who had since vowed to stop it.

Mr Muigai said the ancient ritual was an adventurous creation of big boys then who practice on prowess to court and win women to their beds.

"Even after the woman would be won, the two would practice decency and respects for community elders. What it has panned out to be in these revelations is utter madness," he said.

Mr Muigai said "we are now aware that the piece of ritual that has all along been misinterpreted has reached a point if gross abuse and gained grave criminal dimensions".

He said security officers have informed the council of elders that "brokers working in cahoots with commercial sex workers have hijacked the ritual and transformed it into a criminal enterprise with kickbacks as the motive".

He said the plot involves the brokers taking the boys to the commercial sex dens, have them part with Sh1,000 to Sh2,000 (depending on family background) and the brokers receiving a kickback of Sh500 per service.

He accused some elders of manipulating historical facts regarding traditions so as to create an avenue to con children.

"To that end, we are now sanctioning the Central region security to go hard on all elders, brokers, and prostitutes exposing the minor-aged boys to unprotected sex for whatever reason. That is one area we will not compromise about," he said.

Long serving administrator Joseph Kaguthi who is also the community's elder, said "we want to specifically chuck out unnecessary traditions measured against law".

He said "traditional rituals that use alcohol as part of recipe or menu must now clearly say the brew to be used is the traditional one called Muratina".

He said age of consumers of alcohol in those rituals must be well defined to capture it to be "those with societal standing as elders".

Mr Kaguthi lamented that alcohol-based rituals like in payment of dowries has terribly been abused where even women, children and village idlers are seen taking third generation and illicit brews in the name of culture.

Puff

He added that tobacco snuffing and demand for cigarettes from newly circumcised boys should also be reviewed.

Demand for goats to be slaughtered by elders as way of welcoming age groups into levels of eldership was promoting stock thefts in the region.

Central region that is home to the ritual has Nyandarua, Kiambu, Murang'a, Kirinyaga, and Nyeri counties.

However, the rituals have been going on in Agikuyu speaking areas countrywide, most affected being among villages that were not evangelised by the mainstream churches.

The promoters of these traditions have always clashed with the church, now the traditionalists also splitting on what should be discarded and upheld.

The community has seen sprouting of extreme cultural purist groups like Mungiki and Gwatia Ndahi that promoted murders, extortion, and female genital mutilation (FGM) as aspects of culture.

The activities of these groups are so atrocious to a point they force newly wed women especially those from other tribes to undergo the cut so as to be accepted in Mt Kenya. They also silently monitor small girls and send emissaries to have them circumcised.

The groups also seek to control young boys' circumcision rituals so as to indoctrinate them into radical beliefs.

Some of the security heads we spoke to expressed their opposition to some rituals adding that they said were outright acts of crime.

"It is extremely distressing to get that intelligence that we have elders advocating for female circumcision, casual sex, and youth abusing drugs. Those are fake elders and we have consulted with the recognised ones to crackdown on the rot," said former Thika West Deputy County Commissioner Mr Mbogo Mathioya.

He added that all chiefs and their assistants have been ordered to remain vigilant "because there are rituals that are encouraging gross crimes like defilement in the villages as a form of a sport".

Murang'a Council of elders facilitator Mr Wallace Muraguri said “we have also dispatched out scouts on the ground to help us clean our list of traditions”.

“We have to review our practices... we must come out as a modern council of elders that does not practice crime as traditions,” Mr Muraguri said.