Arrested 52 times. Shot 12. Poisoned nine - The dangerous life of Mungiki founder Ndura Waruinge

It is a journey that mirrors one of Kenya’s most controversial movements and raises enduring questions about radicalisation, justice, and redemption.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mungiki surfaced among marginalised youth in Central Kenya and Nairobi settlements.

Early narratives framed the group as a self-help group and later cultural revival movement seeking to restore traditional governance structures, reject Western influence, and address land grievances.

According to Waruinge, Mungiki was originally formed by him and his cousin as a movement meant to empower young people, not to engage in criminal activities.

His association with Mungiki made him a marked man. According to Waruinge in a past interview, he was arrested 52 times, shot 12 times, and poisoned nine times.

“It started as a self-help group where seven others came together and started a dart game, and at the end of the month, we had saved lots of money, and this attracted more youths towards our group. From the profits we started farming for profits,” he said.

Waruingi has previously described those early years as driven by a search for belonging and identity.

We thought we were fighting for our culture and dignity,” he said.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, authorities linked Mungiki to forced oathing, extortion rackets, transport-sector control, and killings. The name became synonymous with organised violence and urban criminal networks.

Waruingi was eventually arrested and prosecuted in connection with violent crimes attributed to the sect’s operations. The court handed him the ultimate penalty, death by hanging.

He claims that on one occasion, he was sentenced to death, but when the execution was supposed to be carried out, the hanging machine failed to work.

“You live knowing the government has already written your final chapter,” he recounted.

These experiences, he says, are some of the miracles that convinced him his life had a greater purpose.

After years of living on the edge, Waruinge found salvation through a prayer from Pastor James Ng’ang’a.

Freedom, he says, was not instant adjustment.

Waruingi has spoken openly about the toll his imprisonment took on his relatives, particularly children who grew up without their father present.

Today, he focuses heavily on youth mentorship, prison ministry, and warning young people against recruitment into criminal or extremist networks.

For many Kenyans, memories associated with Mungiki remain painful and unresolved. Survivors of violence and extortion continue to view the movement through the lens of intense trauma and insecurity.

Yet Waruingi’s personal transformation story feeds into a broader national conversation about rehabilitation and second chances.

Ndura Waruinge says he is a father to a large family, 25 children in total and insists he remains actively responsible for their upbringing.

“I take care of all my children,” he says. “I am not in a relationship with their mothers now — some remarried, others moved abroad — but I asked that the children stay with me because I have the means to support them,” he said.

He adds that the central lesson he tries to instil in them is one of dignity and accountability.

“I tell them that morally, some of the things I did were wrong, but they are not a mistake,” he says. “My focus now is to guide them onto the right path,” he said.