KISII, Kenya, Oct 25- Ronald Ototo is traumatized.
He is not sure he will ever recover, no matter how much he has prayed for it, having witnessed his mother being brutally killed.
His mother, Agnes Moraa had been accused of being a witch, which he vehemently denies.
Ototo watched helplessly as his mother was being dragged from a maize plantation where she had sought refuge after being killed, for her body to be lynched.
“I can still hear the voices of the people who killed her saying she is now dead,” he said during an interview with Shahidi News.
Moraa, was among the four people killed on October 17, for the flimsy claims of being witches in Kisii County. Of those killed, three were elderly women, among them an 80-year-old grandma.
“We were at home being a Sunday when we heard people making some noise. Others were yelling,” he narrated.
“It is my mum who first went to check what was happening.”
But things changed really first…she was identified as one of the people who had allegedly bewitched Ototo’s cousin, a form four student.
When Ototo went, it was too late and he could do nothing to rescue his mother from the agitated crowd.
“I watched her, as she breathed her last,” a teary Ototo said. “She was pleading for forgiveness, for a mistake she had not committed. The more she cried, the more she was beaten.”
According to Ototo, his mother was mentally unwell.
Just like Ototo, Vane Moraa is still in shock having witnessed her grandmother being killed.
“She was crying when I arrived but no one listened to her,” Moraa said. “I remember her saying, ‘I don’t know anything please don’t kill me.”
The crowd was threatening that they would also kill “any person who will try to rescue her.”
“I watched her die in agony,” she said. “May God forgive you all, were her last words as she was burnt to death.”
Police have since arrested five suspects linked with the killings and arraigned them.
They are being held at Rioma police station until October 29, when they will take a plea to murder-related charges.
The four suspects. Photo/ShahidiNews
According to Seeds of Hope Foundation Chief executive officer Ruth Manoti, the killing of the elderly in the name of being witches is an excuse used by some people who are seeking to inherit their property.
“We condemn this act of killing the elderly in the name of witchcraft with a hidden agenda of taking their land. We have noted with concern that such incidents happen to the elderly who are widowed and Very poor,” she said.
The foundation is leading a sensitization programme in Kisii County for locals to embrace and love the elderly in society.
The Law Society of Kenya Kisii branch chairperson Wilkins Ochoki is also set to visit the affected area and educate the public on legal procedures so that they can stop taking the law into their hands.
According to police statistics, 150 elderly people have been killed on allegations of witchcraft in the last two years in Kenya.
Other than in Kisii County, such cases were prevalent in Kilifi County.
To arrest the situation, state and non-state actors have come up with a myriad of initiatives to sensitize community members against the vice and also enhance the police-public relationship.
One such effort is through the REINVENT programme, which rolled out an innovative approach to community policing and accountability forums called SEMA Clinic(s). The programme is funded by the United Kingdom.
The Sema clinics are open forums that bring together the police and the community members to engage in dialogue on security issues that affect the area.
The messages are relayed in various ways including role-plays where the Police are actual cast in the plays.
This is seen as a perfect way of curtailing retrogressive beliefs that kept the elderly at risk of killings due to allegations of witchcraft.
Through joint role-plays with the community art groups, they have been able to create awareness against a number of societal ills increasing the confidence in the Police.
“They no longer run away whenever they see police vehicles and as a result, this has increased the number of people who report cases to the police station,” authorities in Kilifi told Shahidi News.
Through the programme, the killings in the County according to police statistics have drastically reduced by an average of 60 percent.
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