Politics by night: histories of extraversion and rumours of body part theft on the south coast of Kenya

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses an episode of public anxiety when, in late 2013, word spread throughout Kenya’s rural Lunga Lunga constituency that politically connected gangs calledmumianiwere abducting and killing children for their eyes, tongues and genitals. The rapid spread of these rumours coincided with a regional drought, parliamentary election campaigns, and the apparent discovery of ‘devil worship paraphernalia’ inside a shipping container at the nearby port of Mombasa. I analyse the 2013mumianiscare in relation to histories of famine survival strategies, predatory patronage and occult speculation to argue that the 2013mumianipanic condensed and expressed these histories in figural rather than temporal form. As ‘constellations’ of coastal Kenyan historical consciousness,mumianiare (and have long been) a key feature of, and at the same time iconic of, a broader critical discourse about the dark side of political largesse – ‘politics by night’.