Villagers in Kenya fight global firms G4S and LafargeHolcim for land

By Edwin Okoth, Ruth Hopkins

The Denyenye villagers in Kenya’s coastal region say that LafargeHolcim, and the local Bamburi Cement company that it has operated, have had no legal rights over the 1,500 acres of land that they guard so fiercely and plan to mine.

Dozens of young men and women have been injured in the area. They say that some of their attackers are security guards with the American-owned company G4S, working alongside Kenya’s much-feared paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU).

Some of the complainants say they were raped by officers of the GSU.

Now the villagers are opening a new front in their battle for justice and taking their case on human rights abuses and illegal land seizures against LafargeHolcim, which has been renamed Holcim, and G4S to the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which operates a strict code for corporate governance.

Companies listed as violating the OECD code may be subject to sanctions, as happened to companies linked to illegal exploitation of minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sundry financial restrictions.

The Africa Report has spoken to several villagers caught in the conflict, who still bear the scars and wounds from physical assaults and dog bites.

Vicious assaults
For 39-year-old Shee Mbimbi, of Denyenye, his visit to the hospital in October is a painful reminder of what happened when he was fetching firewood along a public road adjacent to the so-called Bamburi Farm.

In a video taken after the incident, artisan miner Mbimbi cradles his bloody leg as he reclines on a bed in a dimly lit room. A neighbour is filming him on a mobile phone.

“​​The dog attacked me while I was breaking firewood. I didn’t see them at first, but then I heard people yelling, ‘Arrest! Arrest!’ I ran away and I fell down. The dog bit me and then it bit me again, even harder. They told me to warn others not to collect firewood from that land, or else they would release their three dogs to kill them.”

READ MORE Kenya’s stock market rallies as companies eye fundraising
A few days after the assault, the Kwale Mining Alliance (KMA), a local non-profit, accompanied Mbimbi to the police station where he reported the attack.

KMA staffers secured funding to cover medical assistance for villagers like Mbimbi with life-threatening injuries in Denyenye. Mbimbi went to the hospital in October 2023, a month after his attack. More recently, the local hospital told Mbimbi that the sepsis had spread to the bone and his leg might need to be amputated.

Police turn a blind eye
G4S denied all knowledge of the attack on Mbimbi. “We have no record of the incident.” They added: “Serious incidents like a dog bite would be reported at Ngombeni police station.”

Yet Mbimbi’s assault was reported to this police station as were five other reports from villagers saying they were attacked by G4S dogs last year. The Africa Report has copies of these police reports.

Villagers in Denyenye say they have been suffering attacks for decades but complain that the police station in Ngombeni had never registered their complaints. Mbimbi’s neighbours filmed him immediately after he was attacked by the dog because they knew that they would need evidence. Once KMA got involved, the police attitude changed.

“People would go to police with open bleeding wounds, but they were chased away,” KMA director Jermaine Kashi tells The Africa Report. He contacted the county commissioner of police and showed them the photographs.

“The deputy county commissioner promised she would investigate. The KMA contacted the Ngombeni police station, and the station director agreed to take the statements. We helped 12 locals file complaints,” he adds.

The police didn’t investigate the violence but the reports filed with them will help the court case that lawyer Emmanuel Mwangi is preparing against G4S in Kenya.

Near Mbimbi’s home, three fishermen, helped by KMA, also reported their assaults to the police. They were clearing land close to the beach – which most people consider to be public land – when they were brutally attacked by armed security officers. The beatings left them with permanent scars.

Hamad Juma Dari, a father of three, and his two fellow fishermen say they were attacked on the evening of 18 March 2019 after the GSU, which has a camp inside the contested land, spotted them clearing land around the beach for farming.

“We were attacked by three GSU officers who had a lorry parked nearby. They ordered us to drop our tools and lie down,” he said.

Choking with emotion Dari said they were crying as the security men rained blows on them. “When we asked why we were attacked, they said we had invaded Bamburi cement land.”

His co-workers Ali Saidi Mwambimbi and Abdala Suleiman Mwandondo also bear scars as evidence of that fateful evening. Before they started clearing the beach, they had got permission from the village chairman to farm, as had been the tradition.

After the beating, Mwambimbi said he could hardly walk, and his colleagues had to support him.

“I still struggle to sleep on the right side and my fingers were almost broken,” he says, adding: “They threatened to kill us and left us there after the ordeal.”

Raped and abandoned
Perhaps no one has a more painful reminder of the brutality meted out by the GSU guards on the contested land than Mwanakombo (not her real name).

Outside her house, her 13-year-old daughter washes clothes in a yellow bucket. She was conceived when some GSU officers raped Mwanakombo after finding her fetching firewood.

“When the GSU confronted us, I was raped. It is a secret I had vowed to take to my grave. I got pregnant and gave birth to the girl,” said Mwanakombo.

Her husband left her after he found out what had happened. Her daughter is out of school because she lacks the money to pay school fees. Four years after she was raped, Mwanakombo went back to fetch firewood and she met the same fate.

“This time, I had to abort the foetus because I was not going to have a second child whose father was unknown to me.”

She had been fetching firewood in this forest since she was a child. “I did not report it to the police because we had been told that you can never report the GSU or take them to court. It is shameful.”

Killing locals over firewood
The horror of her son’s encounter with GSU has haunted 69-year-old Mishi Juma for the last 20 years. A band of GSU officers came upon Chuma Juma, jobless and in his twenties, when he was collecting firewood.

“I was told that GSU officers descended on him and beat him up. His brothers carried him home,” Mishi Juma told us.

“We took him to the hospital in Kwale, where on the third day he died. Doctors found the GSU officers had broken his ribs through kicks. I could not do much (to complain), especially after his father died,” she explained tearfully.

“We have always been told that you cannot accuse a police officer and win a case in court.”

Our reporters have been told about multiple attacks on young people gathering firewood around the Bamburi land. Many of those who survived the brutality turned to drugs to cope. Then they went looking again for firewood to pay for their habit and risked being attacked again by GSU officers.

Locals accuse the GSU – who have been stationed in the area since 1997 – of selling the firewood they seize from the young villagers. And GSU officers are accused of running their own firewood rackets.

Juma Sudi Mwamkungoma died on 20 September last year after what locals said was a beating from the GSU.

Sudi had entered the Bamburi farm on 30 August 2023 to fetch firewood, when three GSU officers caught him, ordering him to bring the wood to the GSU camp.

There, three drunken officers and their superior started beating him. On 9 September 2023, the Kwale Mining Alliance interviewed him on camera. Days later, Sudi was dead.

‘Above the law’
These serial reports of abuses on and around Bamburi Farm have prompted calls for redress by the KMA, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, Berlin-based Transparency International, and the international Coalition for Human Rights in Development.

These groups are preparing a formal complaint about the multinationals Holcim (Bamburi) and G4S (Allied Universal) and their collusion in these brutal attacks to the OECD in Paris.

“Multinational companies such as Holcim believe they are above the law and they can commit violations without facing any repercussion,” says Faith Kivuti, Africa regional facilitator of the Community Resource Exchange. “But it’s time to hold them accountable. The OECD complaint against Holcim and G4S is an important step in this direction.”

Repeated denials
G4S officials continue to deny any liability: “We believe that the allegations you have raised against G4S are unsubstantiated.”

Security officers and the dogs they work with operate under strict rules, said the G4S officials.

“Our security officers working at Bamburi Cement are trained to a high standard, including in the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. We have one security dog on-site, which is only deployed at night by a trained dog handler and is kept on a double leash.”

Similarly, Bamburi claimed to hold its security to the highest international standards. It said it had found no evidence of wrongdoing after its reviews and enquiries. “Bamburi is deeply committed to respecting global standards on human rights, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

But Swiss-based Holcim went even further: “A member of the human rights team flew to Kenya to investigate. The investigation found that these were past allegations against the authorities (GSU) and a Bamburi service provider (G4S), and the company has found no evidence of wrongdoing after conducting reviews and enquiries.”

Yet none of the Denyenye villagers we spoke to had seen the investigators that Bamburi and Holcim claimed to have sent. Most critically, none of these investigators had contacted – let alone interviewed – the villagers who had reported attacks by G4S officers and GSU officers to the police.

This raises the question of what evidence Holcim human rights investigators had used to reach their conclusion that the company’s security officers and Kenya’s paramilitary GSU were blameless in all the cases of murder and grievous bodily harm against villagers in Denyenye.

This publication was made possible with the support of the Fund for Special Journalistic Projects in the Netherlands.

Ruth Hopkins works for onderzoekscollectief Spit