Life in Kenya has never been as cheap as it is now.

On Friday September 12th 2008, James Muiruri Nganga,  PhD student in Sheffield England just a month shy of his 29th birthday wrote the following words in his blog:

With my thesis already submitted and in the hands of my examiners, I can feel that I deserve more from life.  Therefore, destined for great heights and bigger things, I am now knocking on the doors of success and satisfaction. The world is now mine.

Barely four months later, on Saturday morning, a car carrying police officers followed newly titled Dr. James Muiruri Nganga headed home from a long night out in Crooked Q, a club in Westlands.  I wonder what he and his brother might have been talking about as they headed home and as the sunlight hit their faces.  Maybe they were wondering about the argument that had had them all thrown out of the club was all about.  Some guy had picked a fight with James over a woman and the bouncers sensing trouble had thrown out the other man, while James, his brother and friends stayed on. Or maybe, as the sun rose over the city, warming them, he felt just as described in his blog on November 4th 2008:

Since being awarded the doctorate, every moment has felt like a quiet afternoon with the fresh air forming some summer saxophone note, rising and falling on a warm breeze. With jewels in my heart, it is heaven here and the light that glows inside my heart feels like the salvation that will hopefully free my soul and brighten many others.

These happy moments were soon to end. That “guy” who James had argued with in the club was a drunken off-duty police officer with an on-duty gun, who at that very moment sat in the Mercedes Benz stealthily following James car out onto Mpaka Road Westlands.  He might have been the furthest thing from James mind as he and his police colleagues  quickly blocked the road and vehicle James rode in.  A few heated words were exchanged before the policeman whipped out his gun, firing bullets into James head, shoulder and heart – a further two through his mouth for good measure after he collapsed onto the tarmac.  Their vicious , drunken mission accomplished, the police officers sped off to report the killing of a “a Mungiki bank robber” at Buru Buru police station. According to the Daily Nation, his father, Former Gatundu North MP, one of the first to arrive at MP Shah Hospital to receive the news was “ devastated by the death of his second-born son and said: “He was my life and my everything.””

Dr. James Muiruri Nganga isn’t the first to die this way.  He isn’t the first hope of the family to be cut down in a hail of police bullets.  It has been argued that the policeman was off-duty and that this was just a row between two drunk people, but the confidence and coldhearted instinctiveness with which the officer fired and the silence and complicity of the colleagues who watched tells us that this is not the first time these officers had murdered a young man and reported him to be a gangster.

Thus, his father, harsh as this may sound, is not alone.  He is one of maybe even hundreds right now lamenting that their child, their life, their everything was slain by the police.

If the stories I have heard in recent times are anything to go by, the extrajudicial killing of young men is a national crisis. James may well be one of hundreds of young men who have been killed by police – off and on-duty - all over the country in recent times. In every slum and every lower income neighborhood in this city, many youth claim that their peers have being slain by police every day in unprecedented numbers,.  It’s not uncommon for a young man from the slums to tell you that all his friends are dead. If you don’t believe me, you go ask yourself. Pick a youth, any youth in Kibera, Mathare, Huruma… and ask him what he believes the biggest cause of death for young men in the slums today is, and you’ll hear it for yourselves, with your own ears. And, like James, these kids are being classified in death as criminals or  mungiki’s– or both.  We have to be honest with ourselves and ask: if James’ father wasn't an ex MP, or if he himself wasn’t a brilliant young man with a PhD before 30 and with his whole life ahead of him, would be forgotten just as the hundreds of other bullet riddled corpses that precede him have been?

In December 2008, just a month or two after James took his PhD Viva across the ocean in Sheffield, unaware that all his dreams were soon to end, I was speaking to a Nderitu, a 32 year old youth leader in MYSA, Mathare Youth Soccer Association, whose membership extends to 18,000 youth across all of Nairobis slums. Of all his concerns about all the terrible things going on in Mathare - the drugs, the disease, the unemployment – Nderitus greatest worry was what he called the loss of a generation, and he expressed this fear with clarity and anger:

saa hi hukienda  Mathare mi huona watu wanafanya campaign za Aids mingi sana but  watu wa young wana die karibu kila day juu ya kushootiwa saa nashindwa tunafaa tuonge juu ya Aids ama tuongee juu ya watu kushootiwa ? maybe saa hii haituaffect lakini niko sure another ten years  ndio watu wata realize weeh,kuna generation iljkikuwa wiped out.” (“if you go to Mathare right now, you’ll see people doing AIDS campaigns, but young people are dying almost everyday, being shot by the police, and I wonder,  should we be talking about HIV while people are being shot? Maybe at this moment we aren’t affected, but I’m sure that in another 10 years, people will realize a whole generation was wiped out.

It’s true:  There’s a killing spree going on. And we can only hope that James’ death will do something to stem the tide. In his blog on Saturday July 26th 2008, he contemplates his life, and affirms that he is right on track.  Each line, each word breathes volumes about his lifes journey to make the world – and Africa in particular – a better place.  He writes:

With the submission now eminent, I find myself right on track literally by the years (…)  But now I can safely say, I have come of age. All my beliefs principles and all that I stand for in this life are coming together. So everyday, I pray that tomorrow comes. And I dream as a child that one day I shall be one of those that brighten African cities and villages, to inspire hope and preach the rejection of fatality.

The header of this eloquent, passionate , honest, highly intelligent and expressive blog chronicalling his journey to his doctorate and the subsequent dreams is this:

NG'ETHU STAR: From that Destined Child beneath the Stars that light the African Village along the valleys of River Chania, to the Road to Doctorate and Beyond the eagle's heights…

Today, I feel compelled to complete that header for him as the three dots he placed after the sentence seem to beg the completion of the premature obituary he unwittingly penned. I hope he would approve of it:

NG'ETHU STAR:  From that Destined Child beneath the Stars that light the African Village along the valleys of River Chania, to the Road to Doctorate and Beyond the eagle's heights…  came the brutal slaying of a dream, bringing Ngethu Star spiraling back down to earth to die in a pool of his own blood, slain by those who swore to protect him in the country he loved so much.  But through his death, he has allowed others to rise and soar to eagles heights, to be saved.  To live.  Indeed this brilliant young man shed his blood so that others like him may live on.

You can send emails of condolescence to the Muiruri family to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The links that follow are articles by the late Dr. Muiruri published by kenyaImagine.

1. What Obama can do for Kenya
2. The Rise and Fall of Kenya’s Liberation Struggle-From 1963-2008