In 1941, British author W Somerset Maugham coined the phrase ‘A sunny place for shady people’ while writing an essay on the French Riviera. 

The phrase has aged well and could easily have been written about Malindi, Cape Town and, for that matter, Nairobi in 2026.

Just recently, the long arm of the law caught up with a Nairobi matatu driver in Malindi after he had spent two months on the run. The driver is alleged to have been performing dangerous ‘Manyoka’ stunts on Nairobi’s Enterprise Road on June 3 this year, which resulted in a catastrophic crash that killed five passengers. He successfully evaded tracking until detectives caught up with him in my town.

After all, if you are trying not to be found, what better place than somewhere people routinely visit precisely because they do not want to be found by the rest of the world?

In June this year, the police reportedly tracked down and arrested a violent robbery suspect in Malindi. The individual was suspected of committing an armed robbery in Mombasa and then fleeing back to Malindi, where he attempted and clearly failed to obscure his trail by altering the registration plates of his hired getaway vehicle.

Historically, Malindi is known for being a prominent hideout for international fugitives, particularly Italian nationals fleeing law enforcement. 

Several factors made Malindi an appealing hiding place for both foreign and local fugitives. These include the so-called ‘Little Italy’ connection, where, in theory, it was possible to arrive in Malindi with a suspicious past, acquire a suntan, learn the local restaurant circuit, and eventually become indistinguishable from everyone else. 

Therefore, both foreign and local criminals have used Malindi as a hiding spot to evade justice from other regions.

If Malindi was a specialised, localised haven for Italian fugitives looking for a quiet, tropical retirement away from European authorities, the Western Cape is a sprawling, multi-billion-dollar playground for the global underworld. 

In Malindi, fugitives hide by blending into a distinct ethnic enclave; in the Western Cape, they hide by blending into a massive, luxury cosmopolitan society.

A few years ago, while working as a journalist for a Cape Town newspaper, I reported on Namibian fugitive lawyer Marén de Klerk, the self-confessed paymaster in a high-level Namibian corruption case. South African police and Interpol arrested him under an Interpol red notice following a joint operation.

The arrest came ahead of an appearance in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court of Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema. He was charged with two counts of fraud and three offences related to the Immigration Act.

In the same week as Kayishema’s arrest, four Bulgarian nationals were shot dead at a mansion in Cape Town’s exclusive suburb of Constantia, and one of these was named as a wanted fugitive by Interpol.

Earlier, Israel’s most-wanted mobster Yaniv Ben Simon was found hiding in Johannesburg after seven years on the run.

Taken together, such cases helped put Cape Town and South Africa on the international map as places where fugitives from various parts of the world could, at least temporarily, go to ground.

Which brings me rather neatly back to Nairobi, a major regional transport and economic hub, and, therefore, another attractive place for international fugitives. 

In January 2024, Kelvin Kangethe was arrested in a nightclub after fleeing the US, where he was wanted for the murder of healthcare worker Margaret Mbitu.

There was also the case of Kennedy Monteiro and Siyad Abdihakim Mohamud, two British murder suspects linked to a 2019 stabbing of a 16-year-old in London.

Most famously, there was Felicien Kabuga, the fugitive Rwandan businessman accused of financing the 1994 Rwandan genocide, who evaded international capture for years, with reported periods of hiding in Kenya, before his arrest outside Paris in 2020.  

I have lived in all these cities, and on the surface, this presents an awkward question about my own residential choices. The last place I lived for any length of time was Cape Town, and before that Nairobi. Of course, there is a perfectly innocent explanation for all this. I like interesting places. Unfortunately, so do fugitives. 

Perhaps this is simply what happens when one has a weakness for sunshine, good food, interesting characters and places where nobody seems particularly surprised when somebody arrives, rents a house and declines to discuss their previous address.