Thread by @historykenya101

A night of Horror or what Kenyans came to refer as the black Sunday. The events of night of 13th-14th July 1991 at St Kizito secondary school in Meru county.

The death chamber that was a dormitory and the crazy deputy principal's remark to president Moi.

***Thread***

St. Kizito was a coeducational boarding secondary school in Akithii Location, Meru County. It was named after Saint Kizito. The school was established in 1968. Initially, it began as an all-boys school and began admitting girls in 1975.

By 1991 the school had 577 students, between the ages of 14 and 18 – 306 boys and 271 girls. A combination of gender, that proved to be tragic and one that would cause stress and trauma for the longest time possible.

On the night of 13th July 1991, students, particularly boys, went on rampage, as they complained that they had been humiliated when the school administration failed to pay the fees necessary for their participation in an interschool athletic competition.

In previous weeks, the students from various schools in Meru district, had riots that ranged from bad food to no running water. The Weekly Review newspaper done by the late Hillary Ng'weno reported that Kirogo Secondary School students,rioted burning buildings,....

invaded a girls' dormitory and "raped several of the girls, an incident that would be repeated at St Kizito, few weeks later. At another school, the boys were so upset at the food that they dumped the cook in a vat of porridge.

In July 1991, at St Kizito, the boys decided to stage a strike against the school administration led by the then principal Mr. James Laiboni. The girls refused to join the planned strike, an action which infuriated the boys, who began to threaten them with physical violence.

The angry male students planned to teach the girls a lesson. To carry out their plan, they cut the electricity supply to the girls' dormitory causing a temporary blackout, then they went ahead to disconnect the phone line, so that no distress calls would be made.

A school worker said,some of the boys who were covered in sheets & armed with flashlights,headed to the girls dormitory,apparently to pick the girls whom they suspected of having sexual relations with sch officials, as well as teach them a lesson for rejecting the planned strike.

Just after 9pm,the first clue that madness had broken out at the boarding sch appeared when Massimo Ballottino's house,the administrator of the Tigania hosp,went dark.The boys began screaming & throwing rocks at the girls' dorms.The dorms were made of cinder block & had tin roofs

The girls retreated to one dormitory, which had metal bars on the windows. The boys broke the windows with rocks and continued to terrorize the girls by tossing a barrage of rocks onto the tin roof.

Just before 2 a.m., the Rev. Alexander Kiranja, who ran a mission next door to St. Kizito, was awakened by "a most serious knocking" on his door, he said. It was the terrified watchmen,who told Kiranja that the boys were on a rampage and had threatened them with death by stoning.

Kiranja had no phone, so he took the watchmen next door to the hospital to call police. The priest said he did not go to the school with the watchmen and try to restore order. They feared to enter the school when the boys are unruly.

Back at school, The 271 girls of St. Kizito stuffed themselves into one dormitory. As the boys battered the door in an attempt to get to them, the girls rushed to the far corner of the room. The door finally, gave way and the boys rushed in.

"We were attacked as if by a pack of hungry hyenas," one girl later told reporters. The girls packed themselves into one corner. It was at this corner, where majority of the dead bodies, were found.

Around 3am, two girls managed to escape & run to the hospital. "They were in shock when they arrived," said John Mutembei,a clinical nurse on duty that night. "They said there was a riot at the school & boys were beating them.They complained of pains & said they had been raped."

By 3:30, the hospital was overflowing with injured girls. Finally the police arrived and went to the now-deserted school. Ballottino drove an ambulance to the school with the police.

They discovered the 19 bodies piled atop. "I have never seen anything like it," Ballottino said. "It was like civil war. There were bodies everywhere.They were already stiff. The doc said they had been dead about 3 hours."
Autopsies showed that none of the dead had been raped.

On that day, 14th July 1991, president Moi decided to go to Meru district himself, and see the shocking horror that had left the whole nation in grief. Demanding the closure of the school, as 39 boys were apprehended in connection to the strike, rapes and death of the girls.

Three things shocked the nation, following the investigation into the St Kizito horrors. The Principal's revelation, the deputy principal's remark to President Moi and the saddest part, the police contribution in the whole event.

The principal, James Laiboni, told the reporter for The Kenya Times, "In the past, the boys would scare the girls out of their dormitories and in the process they would get hold of them and drag them to the bush where they would 'do their thing' & the matter would end there, ....

... with the students going back to their respective dormitories."

Basically, the principal was trying to tell the nation, that rape was just a norm around the school and it was a known secret.

The deputy principal, Joyce Kithira, was quoted by the same Kenya Times, as having told President Daniel arap Moi that "THE BOYS NEVER MEANT ANY HARM AGAINST THE GIRLS, THEY JUST WANTED TO RAPE." Yes, you read that right.

The saddest part of the St. Kizito story is that it could have been prevented if police had reacted more quickly to reports of a disturbance at the school. Several teachers who board at the school could have stopped it but were too terrified of the 306 male students.

Two night watchmen, armed with bows and arrows, did not attempt to stop the assault on the girls' dormitory because the boys stoned them and chased them off.

And what of the police? About midnight,two teachers managed to escape the school grounds & run to a police station,15 minutes from the sch.
Two hours later the police still had not arrived, and the watchmen called the station from a nearby hospital where they had run for safety.

"The police said they were aware of the situation, but they said they had no petrol & couldn't come," said Massimo Ballottino, who later said the police finally arrived about 3:30 a.m. By then it was too late since a total of 19 girls were already dead

The obvious police claim.