Dini ya Msambwa: Militant Protest or Millenarian Promise?

Abstract

In May 1947 Elijah Masinde, a Bukusu from Kimilili Location in the Western Province of Kenya, was released from Mathare Mental Hospital in Nairobi. He had been certified insane when he was serving a sentence of one year's imprisonment for assaulting chief's assistants who were recruiting men for compulsory employment in connection with the war effort in 1944. The hospital authorities believed that his relatives would be able to look after him satisfactorily, provided that they realized that Elijah was mentally disturbed. Within a few months, however, he had become a prophet and acquired a large following among the Bukusu. He told the Bukusu that the time had come for the Europeans to leave and that they must return to their traditional customs, particularly those which had been condemned by the missionaries. That is the reason why Elijah named his sect Dini ya Msambwa (we will use the abbreviation DyM.), or Religion of the Ancestral Customs.