Dark secrets of the presidency Part 2

Bloodthirsty inner circle

Those who surrounded President Kenyatta were determined that the presidency of Kenya would forever remain only amongst them. Something like the royal family in the United Kingdom. There were confident enough that they were smart enough to pull this off. They saw that wisdom and experience to run the country could only be found amongst their midst and could hardly be found anywhere else in the country.

At one point they even went as far as administering oaths to the effect that the presidency would never cross the River Chania to other Kikuyus in neighbouring Nyeri or even Muranga. The presidency was firmly in the hands of Kiambu Kikuyus and that is why the president’s inner circle were often referred to as the Kiambu mafia.

Admittedly the Kiambu mafia deserved that tag much more than the Mount Kenya mafia that was to emerge much later during the Kibaki presidency. These characters were absolutely ruthless and many times acted in ways that suggested that apart from being power hungry, they were also very blood thirsty. It seemed that they were always itching for an opportunity to kill somebody. It was soon clear than anybody who dared to oppose Kenyatta would almost certainly end up dead. And it seemed that Kenyatta had ears everywhere so that people were terrified of even saying anything against him even in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Many times folks would have a private conversation in whispers in some corner of a seedy bar that was well out of the way and the next week they would be detained without trial or even worse go missing without trace. In those days families of persons who went missing had very zero options. It was unthinkable to go to court and prevail on the government to produce anybody. That was just plain suicide.

To further spread fear amongst the people, murders by the inner Kenyatta circle were executed in a manner that was straight out of some horror movie. It was not enough for the person to be killed but on many occasions their private parts would be cut off and stuffed into their mouths. This is exactly what happened with the JM assassination and a few others. If a person did not get shot, this was the “signature” that would confirm to the observant exactly who had carried out the execution.

In the early days there were plenty of people brave and stupid enough to satisfy the blood thirstiness of the Kiambu mafia but as the years wore on fewer people were willing to take the chance of even speaking evil against the Kenyatta administration in private or even daring to question anything that his government did.

A Kenyan well known to this writer took a trip to the UK in the mid 70s and while watching British TV discovered that the Observer newspaper had that morning published an article about one of the members of the first family. They quietly slipped out of their hotel carefully looking over their shoulders several times and purchased a copy of the newspaper from an outlet that was some distance from the hotel. They returned to their hotel room and carefully locked the door to read the article that described in great detail a business that first lady Mama Ngina was involved in of mining and then exporting precious stones mainly from the Taita Taveta area. The article revealed that the first lady was already one of the wealthiest people in the country. Hardly a seditious article on the first family, but on finishing reading the piece with his heart thumping violently against his chest, the man burnt the newspaper and flushed the ashes down the toilet. That was the fear that Kenyans felt in those days and it did not matter that one was thousands of miles away from home in London.

In this kind of scenario the attitude of Kenyatta’s inner circle was hardly surprising. They behaved as if they were gods. It seemed they could even hear what Kenyans were whispering in the privacy of their bedrooms. One interesting incident occurred in the early 70s that illustrates this point.

Jomo Kenyatta’s speeches were boringly predictable. He would always warn people from playing around with the valuable Uhuru which had been won by bloodshed. And he then he would often congratulate the ordinary Kenyans on their continued hard work and love for their country. He would often pepper his Kiswahili speeches by suddenly breaking into Kikuyu vernacular.

So Kenyans were shocked one day when in his speech the president said that it had come to his attention that some people were saying that he was incapable of fathering children. These people claimed that when the colonialists had detained him they had tortured him to such an extent that he had lost his manhood and ability to sire children. There was shocked silence at first with many conservative Kenyans embarrassed that the president would even talk about such things in public.

Kenyatta went on to castigate the people spreading such lies about him and said that any Kenyan who doubted his manhood should go ahead and ask Mama Ngina (the president’s fourth and last wife who was seated right there at the dais a few short paces from where Kenyatta was making his speech. She was visibly shaken and very embarrassed (wouldn’t you be?). Were the rumours true? Was Kenyatta bluffing? Or was it all untrue? It is difficult to tell and we will probably never know.

And so those close to the president started plotting on how they would inherit the presidency from a man who was still very much alive. Admittedly by this time it was clear to those close to him that the president would not last for much longer. He regularly slipped in and out of commas and it was clear that his health was rapidly failing. Of course nobody would dare discuss the president’s health in public. But those close to Kenyatta knew what was happening. And so a curious power struggle which would in the end hand over the presidency to Daniel arap Moi on a silver platter started. At the height of this power struggle a group of Kiambu politician including Njenga Karume, Kihika Kimani and others started a campaign to have the constitution changed so that in the event of the president dying or being incapacitated; power would not automatically go to the Vice President pending elections. The idea was to ensure that when Kenyatta died (and it was now obvious that it would happen very soon) it would be easier for one of them to take over power constitutionally.

The power struggle was intense and pitted mainly those very close and some of them related to the president against another group led by powerful Attorney general (who was literally running the country then) Charles Mugane Njonjo. Mwai Kibaki was one of the chief characters in Njonjo’s camp on this one. This in itself was curious because the two individuals hardly agreed on anything else and their personal squabbles have even been visible during the Kibaki presidency.

Interestingly a few days after Kenyatta died in August 1978, Time magazine listed one of the front runners to take over the presidency as being Njoroge Mungai (the president’s nephew and personal physician who was also a legislator for a long time until he lost his Dagoretti seat to one Dr Johnstone Muthiora. Muthiora was promptly assassinated by the Kiambu mafia, his main crime being deposing Mungai from the Dagoretti seat. It is widely believed that while he was in admitted at Nairobi hospital a lethal injection was administered on him). The other person mentioned in the Time article was Mbiyu Koinange.

In his last days Kenyatta would slip in and out of consciousness for days on end and many times would look like he had lost it and was not even aware of his surroundings. But on a few occasions he would make statements to those surrounding him that would display his sharp crisp mind was still very much alert and around. On one such occasion he dismissed those fighting for a change of the constitution to block Moi from ascending to power with one simple Kikuyu proverb. The proverb says that somebody who wants to rope a cow does NOT show the cow the rope. The Kikuyu proverb simply meant that the change-the-constitution group was going about their mission in a very unwise way because they were making their intentions rather obvious to their target Daniel arap Moi.

See earlier Kumekucha article on the character of Kenyatta

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

To be continued. In the next post: Dramatic behind the scenes events that brought Moi to power.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Dark secrets of the presidency Part 1

Kumekucha Weekend Special

I have been to State House Nairobi. Once.

It is such an anticlimax this revered house on the hill. The sacrifices, the murders, the killings and all the crazy things Kenyans have done in the name of getting to live at this address, you would have thought that it would be a much grander place than what you end up seeing. Alas the red carpet is clean and well maintained but it is rather old. In fact the whole place looks like it needs an interior designer badly.

In the 46 years of independence only three men have called this place their official residence and held the office of President of the republic of Kenya. Johnstone Kamau (aka Jomo Kenyatta) for 15 years, Daniel Torotich arap Moi for 24 years and the rest of the years Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki. Interestingly whatever happens Kibaki will be the man who has occupied that office for the shortest time and yet history will record that his presidency has caused the most damage. This weekend we shall try to understand these three men better because in understanding them we will understand our beloved country much better. Trust me on that and hold me to account for it when we finish our journey late Sunday evening. We shall dig into their true characters and reveal many secrets in their lives.

So lets start from the beginning shall we.

Violent struggle has happened in Kenya several times through its short history but it has never worked out too well or even proved to be effective. More recently the saba saba riots that hit the country in the 1990s were quickly crashed by security forces. In the end change came to Kenya mainly as a result of pressure from the International community.

Still many Kenyans cling to the mirage that our independence was won from a violent freedom struggle. Very romantic but NOT true. Yes the gallant Mau Mau warriors spread terror in everybody. Indeed they inspired others in far away lands most notably Nelson Mandela which led to the formation of the armed wing of the ANC in South Africa. You have all heard of the Umkonto We Sizwe (spear of the Nation). Indeed the influence of the Mau mau spread as far away as the streets of New York where at least one notoriously violent street gang called itself the Mau Mau. But back home it was ineffective in winning independence for Kenya. The Mau mau uprising reached its’ height in 1952 and was quickly crashed. Mainly because it was about one tribe’s fight for their land rights. Actually the Kikuyu were joined by other neighboring tribes like the Merus. The leader of the Mau mau, a man called Dedan Kimathi was executed at Kamiti prison on February 18th 1957. By that time the Kikuyu uprising had been well and truly crashed.

The statistics of the Mau mau struggle tell an even more interesting story. The Mau Mau rebels killed over two thousand African Kenyan civilians, but killed only 32 European settlers and fewer than 200 British soldiers during the 8 years of the uprising. The British in turn killed 20,000 Mau Mau rebels in combat, hanged over 1000 suspected Mau Mau supporters, and interned more than 70,000 Kikuyu civilians for years in brutal detention camps on suspicion of providing material support for the uprising. Actually some researchers say that the true number of Kikuyus who were held or detained during that period was closer to one million. Read more details on this HERE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedan_Kimathi.

The man who was to later become Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta always had a frosty relationship with the Mau mau. They threatened his life several times and then he ended up on trial trying to prove to a compromised court his innocence and the fact that he had no links with Mau mau. The chief witness in that sham of a trial Rawson Macharia admitted only in recent years that he had given false evidence against Kenyatta. In all likelihood Kenyatta was not a violent man at heart and did not believe in violent means and yet when he became president he worked hard to glorify the Mau mau as the chief freedom fighters of Kenya and always emphasized that independence was won with a violent resistance. We shall understand later what his motivation for this may have been.

But for now it is important to appreciate the circumstances under which Jomo Kenyatta ended up as the first president of Kenya. This is important because to date every single man who has ended up as president of Kenya has done so as a compromise candidate. We wait to see what will happen in 2012 but in all likelihood history will duplicate itself once again.

In the run up to independence Jomo Kenyatta was rotting away in detention without a hope of ever getting back to politics. The white settlers government officials swore in public that that would never happen. The two front runners for president were Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who firmly believed that he should be president by virtue of his age over the other front runner Tom Mboya who was barely in his twenties. Sensing defeat, Odinga decided to fix his main opponent politically by demanding the release of the forgotten Jomo Kenyatta. That decision set in motion a chain of events that handed over the presidency on a silver platter to Kenyatta. Indeed when he was receiving the instruments of power on June 1963, Kenyatta still looked dazed and unbelieving. Like he wanted to pinch himself to convince himself that all these wonderful things were suddenly happening to him after years of struggle and very hard times which had been set off by false accusations against him in 1952 that put him in jail. Kenyatta’s words on that day perfectly capture the mood and his personal feelings. He did not start by saying that it was a great day for Kenyans. Instead he said; “Today is the happiest day of my life.”

I have closely studied the first years of the Kenyatta administration and read many accounts and watched many clips. All of them paint only one picture. That there was a mood of constant celebration in the corridors of power in those early months. More like the ancient court of Kings where every day was a day of celebration and entertainment, unless of course there was a problem. Kenyatta loved traditional dances and alcoholic drinks flowed freely from the State House bar to the kitchen cabinet and their regular visitors. Kenyatta loved to trade stories with his brother-in-law Mbiyu Koinange (brother to his first wife Grace Wahu) about the good old days when they were younger.

Evidence suggests that Kenyatta entered office with high ideals and a genuine determination to make good. But the honey moon was quickly and rudely brought to an end as crisis after crisis hit the infant administration. There was the scary army mutiny at Lanet in 1964 just a few months into the Kenyatta administration. There were numerous coups in other African countries most notably Nigeria. Closer to home there was the extremely bloody coup and revolution in neighbouring Zanzibar.

It soon became very clear that there were plenty of threats to the presidency which had to be addressed immediately. Kenyatta started by appointing close relatives and village mates to sensitive positions in the security forces. Later after the assassination of Tom Mboya the Kenyatta administration launched secret oath-taking amongst those same senior officials in the security forces.

Then the threat that all three men have faced early in their presidency also quickly emerged for Kenyatta. The dominant economic force at independence was the small group of white settlers who had chosen to stay. The president’s close advisors correctly identified this small group as a potential threat to the presidency. In such a poor country as Kenya, money can do a lot of damage in any political cause. These settlers were the financiers of KADU which was the main political opposition to Jomo Kenyatta’s KANU. These settlers had never really trusted Jomo Kenyatta and it would only be natural for them to jump at the first chance at a change of guard.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Kenyatta’s early years in State house were chiefly occupied with neutralizing these threats. We shall now see exactly how that was done, sometimes pretty ruthlessly.

To be continued: In the next post; Was Kenyatta capable of siring children after detention?

Get a Free copy of almost the entire book Dark Secrets of the Kenyan Presidency

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4