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The young thugs we give cover today will devour us tomorrow
Author: Angella Nampewo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- When it strikes midnight, they wrap up their clubs and knives and retire to plan for another day.
I listened to a teenager tell a story of several 14-year-olds who hacked into a major movie studio and made off with the script before launch. They later sold it on the black market. As this story was being told, I had very many questions, chief of which was ‘how’. How did the minors manage to pull off such a feat? How long had they been planning this? The questions just kept tumbling out. Anyway that is the sort of juvenile criminal enterprise that happens on the high streets of Hollywood.
Closer to home, let’s explore how the other young thugs live. On the same day I heard of the movie script heist, someone else told me a chilling story of a group of some young ‘Kifeesi’ gangs in the suburbs who take over certain routes after dark and waylay the innocents who happen to walk through them. The highlight of the story was the day these rogue teens undertook to ‘discipline’ a man who had been ‘caught’ walking on the village path at Criminal O’clock. Why, they asked him—in the middle of breaking his limbs and ransacking his pockets—had he chosen to move around with all that money on foot? Was he that miserly that he could not even subtract the cost of a boda boda motorcycle ride home?
The distance was short—about 500 metres—so poor fellow had probably thought it safe to walk home. However, the young robbers had other designs. Not only do they commit audacious crimes, the young boys are cocky to boot. They also seem to enjoy protection, I am told. From the accounts of this traveller, the group have opening and closing hours for their crime shop. When the clock strikes midnight, they wrap up their clubs, knives and whatnot and retire to plan for another day. The stories are quite impressive, in a sick kind of way.
This, unfortunately is the sad and literally growing reality which if we refuse to face now, will be compelled to acknowledge in the future when the full-sized versions of these cheeky goons are all grown up and probably robbing with guns and similarly deadly weapons.
Recently, these bands of young robbers have been a subject of discussion on social media platforms. Affected people share testimonies of falling prey to the well-coordinated privately-owned kiboko squads, who will not only rob you but also be your salvation when you are trying to recover stolen property. Not everyone is keen to mess with the squads though. Conventional advice on the street is that if your phone gets stolen, don’t give chase. You will probably end up in an alley somewhere surrounded by the people you tried to pursue. Then, you will really be in trouble.
The spine-chilling episodes involving teenagers are a clear indication that in our towns and villages, innocence is on its way out of town. I cannot imagine being waylaid by a teenage boy. But this is the new crop of criminals. Don’t even get me started on what happens when those little hard core thugs come of age. Like some colleagues who refuse to think ahead to the inevitable, I prefer not to visualise my son’s peers as they return to the den of thieves after a night of robbing and beating travellers. I prefer not to think of their adult-sized uneducated versions looking around for bigger targets. At the moment, the traffic on the village path and the few thousand shillings the teens shake out of travellers’ pockets is sufficient. It will not always be.
Angella Nampewo is a writer, editor and communications consultant
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