Silence is Betrayal

 

By Kevin Kogo

Silence Is Betrayal.  

To know, to see, to comprehend the grotesque injustice the state and its machinery inflict upon its own citizens and still choose the cowardice of fence-sitting is to admit that your education, however expensive, has rotted into nothing. You are a collaborator in your own oppression.  

A young man—a father, a husband, the only son of an aging parent—was torn from his humble home 400 kilometers away. Dragged onto a bodaboda, hurled into unmarked Subaru, beaten, tortured for hours, and finally strangled to death. But the monsters weren’t done. They paraded his grieving father—exhausted from a night-long journey—onto a cold bench at Central Police Station, left him to wither for hours, then spat in his face with a lie: "Your son banged his head on a wall killing himself ." 

Albert Ojwang’s death didn’t just break the camel’s back—it shattered our faith in this system. We were the obedient ones. The ones who marched with flags and water bottles, who choked on tear gas and dodged bullets, whispering, "Change will come." We lied to ourselves.  

We lied when police executed the Mavoko Three and dumped their bodies like trash. We lied when a Kianjokoma mother buried two sons murdered by the same hands sworn to protect them. We lied when Denzel Omondi was bludgeoned unconscious and left to drown in a quarry. We lied when an officer knelt and fired live rounds into unarmed protesters. We lied when the Mlolongo Four were vanished before Christmas—their mutilated corpses surfacing weeks later (two still missing).  

Enough. 

I no longer believe in "better days." There will be no justice. Only theater—fake apologies, hollow Senate summons, and Christian processions as the mortuaries overflow. Our parents will keep collapsing over our brutalized corpses in City Mortuary because we dared to write an article,a fucking artice. Because we dared to speak.  

Who the hell are we? 

Are we truly so broken that we let a handful of butchers steer this nation into a bloodbath? That we read of murders and whisper, "At least it’s not me"? When will it be your turn? When will your father crumple, clutching an autopsy report that reads "strangulation, blunt force trauma, broken ribs"? Is this still our country—or are we just tax-paying cattle, trotted out every five years to legitimize our own slaughter?  

This madness must end. By any means necessary. 

KWS executed a Nakuru fisherman months ago—his body still withheld like spoils of war. A month back, police gunned down five in Narok for daring to question land grabs. In Kilgoris, an officer rammed a man with a truck, then reversed over his writhing body—Hollywood cruelty to ensure the kill. What kind of animals wield our guns? 

Albert’s father asked through tears: "You killed my only son… then went home with milk and bread for your children?"

I felt that.

We cannot wake daily, kneel to a merciful God, and ignore the devil’s work unfolding in broad daylight. This is not the time for "Woiyee"and Nairobi’s rat race. Before we are Kenyans, we are human beings. No one—no state, no uniform, no law—has the right to strangle, disappear, or execute us for our words or defiance.  

Buy a flag. Hold it. Stare at its colors until your blood boils.

It’s time.