16 August 2023

• The activist was speaking in a wide-ranging interview with comedian Oga Obinna.

Human rights activist Boniface Mwangi has revealed that he was born as an activist and a fighter for equal rights.

Speaking to Oga Obinna, Mwangi who celebrated his 40th birthday the other day said that in his pursuit of trouble, he found himself imprisoned for the first time at the age of 11.

He said that what caused him to be jailed was disturbing his parents after he ran away from home to seek his freedom on the streets away from his parents.

"I was born as a fighter, I was imprisoned when I was 11 years old. I was bothering my parents. I ran away from home to live on the streets as a street child. I was arrested and taken to court and sentenced to 7 years in prison for reformation and then I was completely expelled from the reformation school," Mwangi narrated.

Mwangi said that what caused him to be expelled from the correctional school was after he exposed the evil that were going on in the school.

"I saw what was going on there. There are children who were being sexually abused, they were using us prisoners to cultivate the teachers' fields, to be made to do cross labor... it was just like slavery, I exposed them and expelled them," he said.

Mwangi admitted that that's where his photography journey started because he took pictures and exposed the evils of the school.

"I took pictures, I was about 14 years old and I sent them to the minister of domestic affairs and they used them to investigate what was going on," he said.

Mwangi also revealed that he saw his fellow students being bullied but that action never happened to him because he said that he was a hard-headed person who did not want nonsense to happen around him.

After being kicked out of a correctional school, Mwangi returned to the streets and started a small business selling goods, surprising many.

"I never went to high school but later when I was in my 20s I went to college for photojournalism. Because when I got kicked out of reform school at the age of 14 that was the end of my education. I went to sell books on the street," Mwangi said.