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{
    "id": 382455,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/382455/?format=api",
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    "content": "food and water they had and told them “gentlemen, good luck” because that was the most sensible thing to do. But if you give the people who live there authority to manage their own security, they will do it. So, when we talk about the Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs), we talk about them as if they are members of another country. I have heard the Commissioner of Police and all these other officers of police say “if you give them guns, you do not know what those people will do with the guns.” They talk about them as if they are people who cannot take care of their own protection and their own livelihoods. Sen. Munyes has just spoken. He told them that they are the only people who are courageous enough and who know the roads that they need to follow and they can follow the cattle rustlers. That young man told me “Please, talk to the bosses there so that I may be taken somewhere safe”. According to them, it was as if they were taken there to be punished. Now, as a young man who is in that place and who feels punished, he does not have enough equipment to fight and they are too few in that environment, do we expect them to chase after 100 cattle rustlers who are armed with automatic guns and who know the terrain? They cannot. The Toposa who are the Turkana on the other side of Sudan, will not attack the Turkana on this side if they know that the Turkana villagers are well-armed. So, we will solve this problem by democratizing, devolving and decentralizing security. The only little thing we need to do is to supervise them because if you have to give somebody a gun, then you must know where he is. What he is doing with the gun and the ammunition. These five officers you have put there, who are hopeless, can do the job of monitoring them. We can then have good security, because it is democratized, because it is our security and we have taken it into our hands. I will give you an example which is illegal, but a good one. In those days, there was a lot of cattle rustling between the Luos on this side and the Kuria and Maasai on the other side. The villagers resolved that they were going to solve this problem. So, they knew the young men who were doing that. Because those guys cannot just come into another territory and steal; they must have agents inside this other community. So, they called them one by one; the youth organized themselves and told them; “We now know that you are the one who is doing all this, so can you confess quickly because we want to kill you?” The guy would deny and then, later on, admit. After admitting, he was told “Now go and talk to the elders; whatever they decide, we will execute.” So, the elders may decide that you are killed, beaten or whatever it is. Sometimes they would decide that you should actually be executed. A few people were executed. In those five years, there was no insecurity. There was no case of cattle theft or cattle rustling. This is because the community decided that they were going to protect themselves. What about all these arrangements that you see in estates in Nairobi, of neighborhood committees? It has helped a great deal. The only thing it has not helped is that we have not armed the people whom the communities in our estates have given the power to protect them. If we armed them and it was disciplined, and everybody knew that we are participating in this thing as a joint effort for our own security, there would be security everywhere. There was insecurity in Eastleigh in a big way sometimes back. Eastleigh is a dangerous place if you do not know the terrain very well. Do not try to go there. So, the elders from Eastleigh complained that they were being raided by the policemen every night and they were asked for their identification cards. They were The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}