The Politics of Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga in Central Kenya

The Rebels Within: The Politics of Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga in Central Kenya

By Dauti Kahura

The fracas that took place in Gitui Catholic Church in Murang’a County on September 8, 2019, is a harbinger of the political battles that are going to be fought in Central Kenya and the larger Mt Kenya region by the fractious Jubilee Party antagonists.

“The battle for the soul of the Kikuyu vote is on and what we witnessed in Murang’a was a proxy war being waged by two factional camps, split by succession politics that are intent on capturing the Kikuyu vote ahead of the 2022 general elections,” said a Central Kenya politician who requested for anonymity.

The camps are led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Samoei Ruto. Fronted by their respective protégés, the factions are known by their signature monikers – Kieleweke (it shall [soon] be evident) and Tanga Tanga (the roving group). Although President Uhuru has not come out openly to associate with the @Kieleweke group, which is being fronted by one Ngunjiri Wambugu, the flip-flopping Nyeri Town MP, his deputy, no doubt, has made it known that he is the de facto Tanga Tanga leader, a label he proudly carries.

The church lent itself as a perfect scene on a Sunday afternoon for the antagonists to outdo each other as they sought to prove to their respective masters that were ready and willing to wage a proxy battle on their behalf. As it will soon be evident, Murang’a County, sandwiched between Kiambu and Nyeri counties, is the very ground where the battle for the much-coveted Kikuyu electorate will be viciously fought.

If the Kieleweke group has smelt dissent and infiltration of enemies in what they consider to be their unrivalled turf, the Tanga Tanga group, in its roving mission, has stumbled upon a restless electorate, anxious and willing to be wooed by a ready suitor. The electorate has sniffed a one-time opportunity to prove (to its sister counties) that it too can also ascend to the highest echelons of political power and it should not be taken for granted.

The Kieleweke group, this time led by nominated MP Maina Kamanda – a man who now carries the label KYM (kanda ya moko, Kikuyu for a hatchet man) – “sneaked” into Kiharu constituency, an unacceptable political tourism into another MP’s territory without his prior notice. As Uhuru’s man on the ground, he had carried Sh1 million to be donated to the church on behalf of the president. Getting whiff of Kamanda’s meandering into his constituency, Ndindi Nyoro, the greenhorn Kiharu MP, who today is described as the “Murkomen” of Central Kenya, burst into the church to let Kamanda know that he was the sheriff in town and that others could not appear in his turf without his prior knowledge and permission.

“The ensuing kerfuffle between Nyoro and the elderly Kamanda inside the church was, as unfortunate, the proxy battles being fought elsewhere in the country by the Jubilee factional wings,” said a Mt Kenya politician who has known Kamanda for well over three decades. “We were with Kamanda in the opposition politics in the 1990s and one time I and another Central Kenya MP went to bail him out in Embu town after former President Daniel arap Moi ordered that he be locked in a police cell for his utterances.”

The politician told me he has been calling Kamanda’s mobile phone number to no avail. “He has refused to pick my call…just as well…because I wanted to tell him that the September 8 ugly scene was beneath him. As a senior politician, he should have known better than to engage in such like shenanigans.”

But the Mt Kenya politician reserved the harshest barbs for both the Catholic Church’s leadership and the parish priest, Fr John Kibuuru. “That priest is a vagabond. For him to have allowed the politicians to desecrate the offertory was a cardinal sin to, especially us Catholics. The offertory is where we go to offer our supplications, it is a sacrosanct place – how dare he let vagabonds like him defile the holy sanctuary?”

The politician, a staunch Catholic known for his morning mass and an unfailing Sunday service attendance wherever he is, reminded me: “I have never conducted my politics inside the precincts of the church for all the 30-something years I have been in politics. The Church can bare me out…you can bare me out. If and when I want to meet the electorate, who form part of the congregation, I ask it we meet outside the church, after the priest is done with the mass. I’ve always respected the sanctity of the church.”

It was useless for Bishop John (Maria) Wainaina, of Murang’a diocese who also oversees the Kirinyaga diocese to issue a belated decree the day after, ordering politicians to keep off the church’s sanctum, said the politician. “The pulpit should not, at all times, be a place for politicians to address the electorate – the politicians have their forums to do that – and the church’s rostrum is not one of them.” The politician accused Fr Kibuuru of being partisan on the current succession politics and for letting himself be dined and wined by politicians.

“For my church, I’m sorry to say it has lost its direction: the clergy is no longer the light of the laity. For that ugly scene to have taken place in a Catholic church shows you just how lowly the Catholic church leadership in Kenya has sunk. Priests nowadays do what they feel like doing. The bishops cannot reign in on the priests because they themselves are no better.”

He added that the Catholic Church has been infiltrated by ethnic baronial politics, which has chosen to serve the interests of political power brokers. The politician said the church in general, in Kenya has ceded ground to the politician because of greed for money and power.

Gitui Catholic Church is on your way to Kangema and some of the congregants told me that Kamanda’s coming to Kiharu without notifying Nyoro was disrespectful and uncalled for. “Kamanda should know we have an MP whom we elected ourselves, he shouldn’t stomp here like it’s his area, Nyoro is young, but he is ours.” The Kiharu residents let it be known to me that “after all, Kamanda is not from here, he is from Nyandarua, if he wants to be elected, there is Nyandarua for him if Nairobi has become too hot for him to handle.”

The 36-year-old excitable Ndindi Nyoro has been riding on the crest of a popular wave since that hullabaloo with Kamanda. His electorate right now think of him as a local hero for standing up to Kamanda and for expressing his political stand – which at the moment gels with the electorate: dissatisfaction with President Uhuru’s disastrous politics.

Ndindi’s Kiambugi Mixed Secondary schoolmates remember him as a feisty young man who dreamt of one day being an important (wealthy) man. A relative of Ngenye Kariuki, Ngenye refers to Nyoro as his grandson. He campaigned for Ngenye in 1997 when he run for the same Kiharu seat, as a student. “He was very active, organising for Ngenye’s supporters to be ferried in trucks to his rallies and exclusive meetings,” said one of his schoolmates. Ngenye won the seat on a Safina ticket and Ndindi four years later transitioned to Kenyatta University. Kiambugi Mixed Secondary School later on was transformed into a boys’ only high school.

Between 2013 and 2017, Ndindi Nyoro, served as the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) manager for Kiharu under Irungu Kangata. When Kangata decided to go for the senator seat, there was understandably a mutual agreement between them that Nyoro should “take over” from Kangata. Today, Nyoro has publicly identified his politics with those of Deputy President William Ruto, claiming that he is the best suited to “take over” from President Uhuru who is serving his last second term. His Kiharu constituents seem to largely agree with him…for now.

The Matiba factor

Kiharu constituency is famous for being at one time represented by the irrepressible Kenneth Stanley Njindo Matiba, the rambunctious politician who was detained by President Moi in 1990 and never recovered from his stroke till his death in April 2018. Matiba still evokes nostalgic emotions from Murang’a residents, who still view him as the president they never had. It is a “grudge” they carry against their cousins from both Kiambu and Nyeri counties, albeit surreptitiously.

The general election of November, 1979 called by a new President Moi, who had taken over from Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, who had died on August 22, 1978, saw an energetic, bold and young Matiba enter the race for Kiharu, then known as Mbiri, armed to the teeth with the latest statistical data on the constituency. Fresh from being the managing director of East African Breweries Limited (EABL), Matiba waged a political battle pitted against the “mighty” Gikonyo Kiano, which Kiano, until his death in April 2003, was never to recover from.

In an era when statistics as an effective campaign tool was unheard off, Matiba came to Mbiri with data that laid bare the geographical, socio-political and economic facts of the constituency: gender composition, household incomes, number of graduates, population density, the area’s topography, voting patterns, I mean…name it. With these facts, Matiba, with military precision, combed the length and breadth of Mbiri, and floored Gikonyo, the first post-independence Minister of Trade and Commerce, in a battle royal that is the stuff of political legends.

When the son of Njindo entered the presidential race in 1992, it was not the same Matiba who, more than a decade before, had entered constituency elective politics as a corporatist, dare-devil, intelligent and sharp man. Although the presidential race was won by the incumbent Moi, Murang’a people to date believe that Matiba won that election, in which he ran alongside Ford Kenya’s Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and the Democratic Party’s Mwai Kibaki.

However, it was Kibaki’s entering the presidential race in 1992 that still rankles the Murang’a folks: Had he not run, the Kikuyu vote would not have been split and, therefore, Matiba would easily have romped home, many of them believe. It is something they will not say loudly, but it is still a chip on their shoulder after all these years.

“The people of Murang’a County break no bones when they insist they have supported both Kiambu and Nyeri people to ascend to the presidency. But those same people have yet to reciprocate the gesture,” said a former Nairobi city councillor from Dagoretti. “This feeling of ‘abandonment and betrayal’ by their cousins, was aggravated in 2017, when the Murang’a moguls ceded control of Nairobi to a ‘lay about and nonentity’ through Uhuru’s carelessness and cowardly politics.”

The former councillor, who keeps tabs with the Rwathia Group, the influential and richest group of Kikuyu men who since independence have controlled the business and politics of Nairobi city, said the moguls seethe with anger against President Uhuru for the loss of the Nairobi County governor’s seat to Mike Mbuvi Sonko in 2017. “That is all we had asked from Uhuru, to allow us to have Nairobi, but even that he could not deliver,” confided the moguls to my councillor friend.

“The Murang’a people have smelt an opportunity and they are ready to seize it,” said the former councillor. “Uhuru is not going to be a factor insofar as 2022 succession politics are concerned: no Kikuyu voter, much less the political elite, is going to listen to him – he has done his call of duty and as it is, they are not amused with his performance,” the former councillor said.

The Raila factor

The anger against President Uhuru among the Kikuyu electorate makes Ruto seem like the only viable alternative. “It is going to take a near miracle for President Uhuru to persuade the Kikuyus to listen to him. The Kikuyu rebellion against the Kenyatta Family this time is real.”

The Kikuyus are plotting to vote for William Ruto as a protest vote and teach President Uhuru a lesson, said one of the richest magnates in Murang’a. “Raila will never rule this country. If Uhuru thinks we will be swayed by his belated shaking of hands with that ‘mad man’, he has another thing coming. Uhuru has overseen the systematic destruction of the Kikuyu economy – he was supposed to protect it, instead, what has he done? He has presided over its deliberate collapse. Is that not why he is sending Kamanda to us? Because he cannot dare venture into Central Kenya or anywhere near Mt Kenya region?”

The Murangá magnate said, “The Kikuyu people will frustrate Raila’s presidential efforts until he grows so old that he will not have the stamina to run. We are waiting for that Uhuru to come and tell us about the handshake. We will tell him our minds.” If by supporting Ruto, the Murangá people can attempt a stab at the presidency so be it, said the tycoon. He said that President Uhuru spent half of his presidential campaigns demonising Raila, so much so that, to now point the Kikuyu people to his direction is to really mock them. “Has Uhuru come back to the Kikuyu people to undo the damage?” he asked.

The many forays by Deputy President Ruto’s team into the heartland of the Kikuyu domain is because he has established that the people are divided and are not speaking in one voice, said a one- time senior civil servant from the Mt Kenya region. “He knows the President’s core constituency is bitter with him and because he [Uhuru] is unsure of their retribution against him, he has dilly-dallied going home. So the DP has taken advantage of this lacuna to make inroads into the region and is consistently preaching a message that entrenches their hatred for Raila Odinga.”

A poll survey conducted recently by a professional research group showed that if presidential elections were to be held today, William Ruto would win by 45 per cent countrywide, and in the Mt Kenya region, he would garner a very strong support. The poll’s sample size, significantly larger than the usual 3000 people, was picked across the 47 counties. The somewhat surprising poll results dissuaded the firm from publishing its findings and making them public. Ruto is considered an incumbent, and therefore a frontrunner, and the only person who has explicitly said he would be gunning for the presidency come 2022. His is not only a brand name, but he has name recognition across the country.

To tame the deputy’s presidential ambitions and to curtail his perceived inroads into Central Kenya and the larger Mt Kenya region, his political nemeses in the Jubilee Party have been making his interlocutors lives’ in the region, difficult.

“The hauling of the Kiambu governor to court and making him spend some days in police cells over corruption charges is part of the handshake’s efforts to throttle the DP’s penetration of the area,” said the former senior civil servant. “When he was thrown into custody at the Industrial Police Station cells, Ferdinand Waititu (Kiambu Governor) was visited at night by a Jubilee Party mandarin allied to President Uhuru’s wing who mocked him by telling him ‘to now call the DP’ to bail him out.” The mandarin allegedly warned Waititu that he was going to pay for his cavorting with the Deputy President.

Governor Waititu apparently is not the first Central Kenya politician to be “punished” by the “handshake team” for not toeing the line: “The first to be tamed was the deleterious Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, who immediately after the swearing-in of President Uhuru Kenyatta for his second term in November 2017, was seen as Ruto’s point man in Central Kenya. He was slapped with an unpaid tax accumulated over the years that effectively cooled his heels,” said the former senior civil servant.

Yet, according to the senior civil servant, it was Governor Ann Mumbi Waiganjo, formerly known as Ann Waiguru, who had to be quickly nipped in the bud because she was thought to be running ahead of herself. Immediately after being confirmed as the Governor of Kirinyaga, after a protracted court battle filed by her opponent, former Gichugu MP and 2013 presidential contender, Martha Wangari Karua, it is alleged that Governor Ann Mumbi Waiganjo went around telling and whispering to anybody who cared to listen that she was primed to be Deputy President William Ruto’s running mate come 2022.

“The Kirinyaga governor was therefore seen as a possible and viable teammate of Ruto in his search for a deputy from the all-important Mt Kenya region,” said the former civil servant. “To stop forthwith that talk that apparently was interpreted as rallying the larger Mt Kenya region in the direction of the Deputy President’s team 2022, the governor was aptly reminded of the National Youth Service (NYS) mega scandal that took place in 2016 when Ann Waiguru was the Cabinet Secretary for Devolution.”

The sudden change of tune by the Kirinyaga governor is not out of step, said my source: “That today she is singing the ‘handshake tune’ is not as a result of a Damascus moment, the realisation that after all, it isn’t a good idea to be a deputy president of Kenya. It is the flexing of power of the opposing sides within the Jubilee Party at play.”

Since her change of tune regarding local and national politics, the governor has had to face the wrath of some of her constituents: Last month, when she went to open a market in Kagumo town, she was jeered by a mob that she claimed was paid to do so. Paid to do so, because it told her off over her support of “the handshake” and the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI).

Kagumo town in Kirinyaga Central constituency is the hotbed of Kirinyaga County politics. And this is not the first time the governor was being chased away from Kagumo: When she was campaigning for the governor’s seat, she was also one time ferreted out of the town. It took the intervention of Purity Wangui Ngirici, then campaigning for the Women Representative seat, to help her navigate around Kirinyaga County.

“It is Ngirici who held Ann’s hand in a manner of speaking and showed her the ropes in Kirinyaga,” said one of Karua’s chief campaigners. “Waiguru didn’t know the nooks and crannies of the county – it was Ngirici who showed her around. Remember Ngirici was always a William Ruto person: the helicopter she was campaigning in – which was emblazoned with her name Wangui – was lent to her by Ruto.” Purity Wangui Ngirici hails from one of the two most powerful families in Mwea: Mbari ya Douglas, (the clan of Douglas) and Mbari ya Mkombozi (the clan of the saviour). She is married to Ngirici, who is the son of the late spy master James Kanyotu.

Ngirici, who is in her late 40s, is the Women’s Rep, but by and large she controls the politics of Kirinyaga: three-quarters of all the elected MCAs owe allegiance to her. To checkmate her, the governor equally nominated her loyalist MCAs to counterbalance Ngirici’s force. Ngirici has trashed the handshake and has been telling the Kirinyaga electorate that the BBI’s motive is to unload Raila onto them by creating additional executive positions.

In Ngirici, Ruto has a powerful ally in the county. It is, therefore, not improbable to imagine where Ngirici’s politics are headed: in 2022 Ann Mumbi Waiganjo will have a worthy opponent for the governor’s seat. And if all factors remain the same, it is also not too difficult to imagine whose drumbeats she will be beating: William Ruto’s.

On the peripheries of Mt Kenya region, other Ruto allies include the Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichungwá, Kandara MP Alice Wahome, Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro and Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri. “These are relatively young MPs (of course apart from Kimani) in age and politics. They are pragmatic enough to know where their political bread is buttered; not with Uhuru, but with Ruto…so it’s nothing personal,” said a Jubilee Party politician from Mt Kenya.

In an area where 70 per cent of the incumbent MPs are thrown out every five years, these MPs are closely reading the signs on the wall – and the signs on the wall currently in the Mt Kenya region are that William Ruto is the man to beat.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Rebels Within: The Politics of Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga in Central Kenya

By Dauti Kahura THE current clamour by a certain section of the political class across the board to change Kenya’s constitution is not anything new; we have been here before. Two years before the death of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, in August 1978, and after the hotly contested 1974 general election, this clamour reached its zenith, with its protagonists coming out openly to hold public barazas across the country to caution people about the danger of having one Daniel arap Moi succeeding Jomo. This group wanted the constitution changed so that a vice president could not automatically become president upon the death of the president, an amendment that would have made it impossible for Moi to succeed Jomo. Moi was a Kalenjin from Baringo and the so-called “Kiambu Mafia” despised him and could not in their wildest dreams countenance the fact that a non-Kikuyu could ascend to State House.

Nearly forty years later, in February 2018, a little-known and first time MP for Tiaty constituency in Baringo County, received wide media coverage when, out of the blue, he proposed changes to Kenya’s 2010 constitution. The 45-year-old MP, William Kamket, through his Constitution Amendment Bill 2018, advocated for the inclusion of a powerful position of prime minister and the scrapping of the position of deputy president. (The current constitution is hardly a decade old, having been promulgated on August 27, 2010.)

Less than a month later, on March 9, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his strident political nemesis, Raila Amolo Odinga, in a surprise manoevure, appeared on the steps of Harambee House – the seat of government – to declare a political détente by publicly shaking hands and smiling broadly for the cameras. Soon after, Raila, who had successfully petitioned Uhuru’s contentious presidential win on August 8, 2017 at the Supreme Court, only to stay away from the fresh presidential election on October 26, 2017, started agitating for constitutional change.

Through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) formed immediately after the handshake, Raila has repeatedly said he is advocating for a future “all inclusive” government that will be devoid of cycles of violence that invariably manifest themselves every election year. The former prime minister, who has been tasked with spearheading BBI – a body made up of both President Uhuru and Raila’s circle of confidantes – has said that the Initiative will come up with suggestions on areas in the constitution that need to be changed. Since then, there have been additional disparate voices supporting this clamour for change, among them the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB).

Through Building the Bridges Initiative (BBI) formed immediately after the handshake, Raila has repeatedly said he is advocating for a future “all inclusive” government that will be devoid of cycles of violence that invariably manifest themselves every election year. The former prime minister, who has been tasked with spearheading BBI – a body made up of both President Uhuru and Raila’s circle of confidantes – has said that the Initiative will come up with suggestions on areas in the constitution that need to be changed.

The Kiambu Mafia

But we have been here before. Barely two years into his imperial presidency, the septuagenarian Jomo Kenyatta surrounded himself with political honchos from Kiambu, who in due course were to infamously acquire the sobriquet Kiambu Mafia. The group consisted of Jomo’s inner kitchen cabinet; among the most powerful were his brother-in-law Mbiyu Koinange, the de facto leader, his nephew Dr. Njoroge Mungai and James Gichuru, who, during Kenyatta’s detention years acted as the president of the KANU party, holding fort until 1960 when he vacated the seat for Kenyatta after the latter’s release from prison. It is this Kiambu Mafia that saw to it that political power was firmly established and consolidated among and within an emerging Kiambu cabal, so much so that the cabal boasted that “Uthamaki ndugakera Chania.” (“The political kingdom will never see the light of day beyond Chania.”) Chania is the river that flows through Thika town. It is the river that divides Kiambu County from Murang’a.

With cracks beginning to emerge between Mzee Kenyatta and his first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, as early as 1965, the president and the cabal felt confident enough to take on Jaramogi and his band of supporters in the ruling party KANU. First, to show his disaffection and to dissociate from Jaramogi, Kenyatta did away with the Luo cap that Jaramogi had gifted him, which Kenyatta often proudly wore.

It was in the aftermath of this disagreement that the scheming of the Kiambu Mafia, with the full knowledge of the president, came into full view when it called for a KANU conference in Limuru town in 1966. With the sleight of hand of the cabal’s project now exposed, the mandarins, with the help of the brilliant, cosmopolitan and, urbane politician Tom Mboya (who happened to be a Luo), warily crafted the idea of eight vice presidents to tame and humiliate Jaramogi. The eight vice presidential slots were divided among the then eight provinces of the country.

The deliberate picking of Limuru town in Kiambu District as opposed to holding the meeting in Nairobi, the capital city, was very telling. Was Mzee Kenyatta and the Kiambu Mafia telling all and sundry that the country’s Uthamaki now rested in Kiambu District?

Mysterious deaths and political assassinations

However, the ideology of Uthamaki (based on the idea that only people from the Kikuyu ethnic group are entitled to run the country) only gained feverish currency among the Kikuyus after the assassination of the mercurial Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Thomas Joseph Mboya on July 5, 1969, at the tender age of 39. It was around this time that the famous 1969 oath- taking was secretly and hurriedly organised to ostensibly bind the Kikuyu community to defend its Uthamaki from andu aa ruguru (communities from Western Kenya).

“The secretive oathing of 1969 was the zenith of Uthamaki consolidation,” Nelson Mwangi Gichohi, the former all-powerful Nakuru District Commissioner, once told me. “Most of the oathing was concentrated in Gatundu division. There was also oathing in Nyandarua District, but I will be lying if I tell you I know the specific locations.” (Gichohi died at the age of 96 and was buried on October 5, 2018 at his Nyandarua farm.)

The Mafia was wary of any politician who remotely seemed like he would succeed the aging monarch Jomo Kenyatta who had suffered his first stroke in 1969.

However, the ideology of Uthamaki…only gained feverish currency among the Kikuyus after the assassination of the mercurial Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Thomas Joseph Mboya (TJ) on July 5, 1969, at the tender age of 39. It was around this time that the famous 1969 oath-taking was secretly and hurriedly organised to ostensibly bind the Kikuyu community to defend its Uthamaki from andu aa ruguru (communities from Western Kenya).

“With an aging and ailing Jomo, who was prone to stroke attacks, the Kiambu Mafia worried that his death might occur before they had dealt with all the real and imagined opposition,” a retired politician from Central Kenya, who was then a young man and who witnessed first-hand the political machinations of the dreaded and ruthless Kiambu Mafia, told me. “Their first hurdle was to clear the opposition within the mainstream KANU party, before moving in to deal with the KADU wing of the ruling party.”

KADU, which stood for Kenya African Democratic Union, had been an opposition party in the lead-up to the 1963 general elections. Its chief protagonists, among others, were Ronald Gideon Ngala and Daniel arap Moi. The party propagated a “majimbo” constitution that would be based on federalism, a system of government that was favoured by the “White Highlands” British settlers who wanted regions to have more autonomy.

On January 29, 1969, five months before Mboya was gunned down on Government Road (today Moi Avenue) at 1.00pm as he stepped out of a chemist’s shop. But five months before, [Clement Michael George] Argwings Kodhek was involved in a fatal accident at the junction of the present-day Wood Avenue and Argwings Kodhek Road. He was 46 years old when he died.

Meticulous and suave, Kodhek, a UK-educated barrister, had been Jomo’s lawyer at his trial in Kapenguria in 1952, alongside Dennis Pritt, a Queen’s Council (QC) and Achhroo Ram Kapila, among others. At the time of his death, Kodhek, whose English names’ initials were turned into a play of words by his Luo people – Chiedo Mor Gem (meaning the oil of Gem), was the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the MP for Gem.

Read also: IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Why the current push for a referendum is a distraction from the reforms Kenya needs

On December 12, 1972, Ronald Ngala, who had been KADU’s president and a founding member before the party was dissolved in 1964 to join KANU, was involved in a mysterious freak accident at Konza, 15km from the Machakos town junction. Thirteen days later, on Christmas Day, the former Minister of Power and Communications died at the Kenyatta National Hospital aged 49. Nobody has ever explained why Ngala, who traditionally celebrated Jamhuri (independence) Day with the president, was travelling to his coastal home on that Jamhuri day.

In March 1975, the Uthamaki “hyenas ate one of their own”, as the politician John Keen put it. The badly mutilated body of Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (popularly known as JM), the 46-year-old MP for Nyandarua North and an Assistant Minister in the Office of the President, was found in the Ngong Hills Forest. JM’s eyes had been gouged out and his lifeless body had been left in a path frequented by hyenas.

“Furious Nyeri Kikuyus immediately accused the Kiambu Mafia of killing JM,” recalled Gichohi. Although JM’s rural home was in Ol Kalou, where he had a big farm, his ancestral origins were in Nyeri. The Kikuyus from Nyeri vividly recalled what the Kiambu Mafia had said in 1966 – that Uthamaki would never transcend River Chania.

Gichohi narrated how three years before the death of Jomo, the Kiambu Mafia, suffering from “psychological insecurities generated by the founding president’s ill health”, felt sufficiently threatened by JM’s rising popularity countrywide to the extent that they decided to put a stop to his presidential ambitions. On many occasions, said the late Nakuru DC, the Mafia had warned JM to cease his political ambitions but he ignored them.

The formation of a parliamentary select committee to investigate the death of JM was aimed at assuaging the hurt nationalist feelings of a majority of Kenyans who identified with JM. It also sought to exonerate Jomo’s government from suspicions that it had ordered the killing of the populist politician. The select committee was chaired by Elijah Mwangale, the then the MP for Bungoma East. To seemingly lend credence to the committee, it included some of JM’s friends like Waruru Kanja.

The committee’s final report incriminated Mbiyu Koinange, the then Minister of State in the Office of the President and Jomo’s bosom buddy and brother-in-law. Furious that the Mwangale-led committee had dragged Mbiyu’s name in the report, Jomo is reported to have said that to have Koinange’s name in the report was like having his own name there. The president trashed the report, which also led to the sacking of cabinet ministers John Keen, Masinde Muliro and Peter Kibisu. Keen was the Assistant Minister for Agriculture and the MP for Kajiado North. Masinde was the Minister of Co-operatives and the MP for Kitale East. Kibisu was the Assistant Minister for Labour and the MP for Vihiga. They all were accused of endorsing and supporting the report.

Within just six years, the Kiambu Mafia had snuffed out the lives and political careers of two political heavy weights – Tom Mboya and JM Kariuki. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the former vice president, was put under house arrest between 1969 and 1971. Still, the years between 1970 and 1976 were dicey times for the Kiambu Mafia. Mzee Kenyatta’s health was failing by the day, and it was just a matter of time before they woke up to the fact that he was no more.

To the extent that they did not want to be caught flat-footed, the Mafia must have realised that it was impossible to eliminate every possible threatening political force, so they cleverly came up with a political scheme: the creation of a party within a party. The creation of Gikuyu Embu Meru Association (GEMA) by the Kiambu Mafia apparently coincided with the weakening of the ruling party KANU. GEMA, which was supposed to be a welfare organisation in theory, was in fact a vehicle for the Kiambu political protagonists’ scheme to propagate Uthamaki philosophy as they sought to strangle KANU’s nationalist credentials, which were a direct threat to their devious plan.

The “Change-the-Constitution” movement

As Mzee Kenyatta’s health was deteriorating quickly, the Kiambu Mafia hatched another plan towards the end of 1976: the Change-the-Constitution mantra. With a constitution that expressly said that in the event that the president was incapacitated or suddenly died, the vice president would automatically take over the reigns of power, the Kiambu Mafia fought tooth and nail to stop Daniel arap Moi from succeeding Mzee Kenyatta.

The front man for the group was Dickson Kihika Kimani, the MP for Nakuru North and the controversial leader of the Ngwataniro Mutukanio land buying company. In September, 1976, the group, led by the political operator Kimani, held its first meeting in Nakuru to propose that the rules of succession be modified. A month later, Kihika, whose base was Nakuru but who had aligned himself with the Kiambu Mafia, repeated the assertion on October 3 in Limuru as he held a fund- raising meeting.

The activities of the Change-the-Constitution protagonists were stopped by the all-powerful Attorney General, “Sir” Charles Njonjo, who, two days later, issued a terse statement: “It is a criminal offence for any person to encompass, imagine, devise, or intend the death or deposition of the President.”

Kenyatta followed Njonjo’s statement with his own from State House: “The government reiterates its earlier statement by the Attorney General.” Thus the Uthamaki project of the GEMA/Change-the- Constitution group of 1976 had been nipped in the bud.

Before his fall from grace in 1983, Charles Njonjo, the influential and powerful Attorney General, is reputed to have boasted that were it not for him, Vice President Moi would not have ascended to the presidency. “Had I not laboured single-handedly, to ensure that the provisions of the constitution were adhered to, Moi would not have been president and there would have been chaos in the country,” Njonjo is reported to have said this to all who cared after Moi had entered State House.

When Moi became president, Kihika Kimani pledged his loyalty to him with the following statement on September 8, 1978, two weeks after Mzee’s death: “President Moi is the only natural leader Kenyans have with the necessary qualifications to lead the nation following the untimely death of President Kenyatta…It is the people, the majority of Kenyans, if not all, who are now pleading with him to become their President.”

Cynics believed that this professed loyalty was just a scheme to buy time, as many in the Kiambu Mafia believed that Moi would be a lame duck president and would not hold office for long. They were wrong: Moi consolidated his power and remained in office for 24 years. (In their book, The Kenyatta Succession, Joseph Karimi and Philip Ochieng describe the various intrigues, plots and personalities behind the Change-the-Consititution movement.)

Kenya’s political folklore has it that before his ouster from public life (through a commission of inquiry into his conduct by President Moi), Njonjo had since the early 1970s been conspiring and marking time to succeed President Jomo Kenyatta. His presumed support – apparently through proper constitutional means – for Moi and his wars with the Kiambu Mafia were a ruse in his master game plan to wrestle state power from Moi after taking credit for “planting” the former vice president in State House. His infamous remark, “Engethua ndogoria itingekinyera nyeki” (A limping leader sheep cannot lead the rest of the flock to greener pastures), suggesting that Moi was a weak president and therefore just “a passing cloud”, was used to incriminate and label him a traitor.

The return of Uthamaki

Twenty-four years after GEMA and the Change-the-Constitution adherents had failed to stop Vice President Moi from taking over from Kenyatta, who quietly died on the night of August 22, 1978, the Uthamaki project reared its head once more on the eve of the third multiparty elections in Kenya in December 2002. The scion of the Kenyatta family, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, was running for the presidency against Mwai Kibaki, a portly conservative politician from Othaya, Nyeri County, who had united with Raila Odinga to form a formidable opposition to the younger Kenyatta and Moi’s KANU party.

Kenya’s political folklore has it that before his ouster from public life…Njonjo had since the early 1970s been conspiring and marking time to succeed President Jomo Kenyatta. His presumed support – apparently through proper constitutional means – for Moi and his wars with the Kiambu Mafia were a ruse in his master game plan to wrestle state power from Moi after taking credit for “planting” the former vice president in State House.

The Kiambu mandarins of Change-the-Constitution movement of 1976 sought the help of Jaramogi, who in their first meeting in Nakuru, sent his political ally and former Kenya People’s Union (KPU) leader, Achieng Oneko, to represent him. For some time it looked like Jaramogi was ready to lend the outfit his nationalist credentials. Even though the Kiambu Mafia had orchestrated Jaramogi’s political banishment, they craved for his singular political support.

The Change-the-Constitution movement of 1976 was a scheme by a certain section of the Central Kenya carpetbaggers to stop a Rift Valley Kalenjin politician from succeeding President Jomo Kenyatta. The current push for changing the constitution has been interpreted in certain quarters of the Rift Valley region as a plot by a certain Central Kenya political cabal to stop another Rift Valley Kalenjin politician – Deputy President William Samoei Ruto – from taking over from President Uhuru Kenyatta… Then as now, a section of the ruling Jubilee Party, led by a section of the Central Kenya political class, has roped in Raila Odinga, Jaramogi’s second son, to help them push for a change in the constitution. Although, these same political players have in the recent past called Raila all manner of names, including telling him he is a “slow punctured politician” and is “too old and should retire”, they now seem to have rediscovered his political usefulness. David Murathe, President Uhuru’s lackey and chairman of the Jubilee Party, recently said that Raila should not think of retiring from politics, since he was still energetic enough and Kenya needed his style of politics.

The build-up to the Change-the-Constitution push of four decades ago was preceded by deaths, house arrests, and incarcerations. Will the current Change-the-Constitution movement also be accompanied by the death of certain politicians’ careers? Only time will tell.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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The Rebels Within: The Politics of Kieleweke and Tanga Tanga in Central Kenya

By Dauti Kahura Felistas Waguthi’s mirth is unmistakable: She laughs easily and has lot of hilarious stories galore. When she was young, she must have been stunningly beautiful: chocolate-dark skinned, she is tall and has an athlete’s body. At 75 years and living in Kirimukuyu location in Tumu Tumu sub-location in Mathira constituency, Nyeri County, 140km north of Nairobi city, she has seen it all – but one thing that has been constant – her life has been riven with staggering poverty.

I found her peeling some pint-sized potatoes that looked like marble balls. “The harvest was poor, there wasn’t enough rains,” Felistas told me, in her mud-house that had dangerously hanging soot in the “sitting room”. She cooks, entertains and sleeps in the oblong shaped mud house. I have experienced and lived poverty, but Felistas’s searing poverty was mind numbing in a county celebrated as agriculturally fertile and rich. “We are looking to being given relief maize by the (national) government,” said Felistas. “Many people in my locale do not have enough food.”

On my way to visit her, I had passed through Murang’a County using Kenol-Saba Saba-Murang’a road. I noticed the stunted maize crop that had obviously failed because of the inadequate rains. Stopping in Murang’a town to refill, I engaged some local residents, who told me Murang’a County was already receiving relief maize. I arrived in Kirimukuyu in time to find Felistas with a 2kg packet of unga (maize flour) and a kilo of Basmati rice. “There is a young man here in my village, I knew his father in the 1960s, he is been sending me some foodstuff, especially rice and maize flour – like he has done today,” said the granny.

“All our leaders are capricious and greedy,” ventured the old lady. “They do not care for anything or anyone. They are just interested in self-aggrandizement. They have contributed to this poverty that abounds in this area.” To illustrate her point, she digressed and told me the story of her elder brother. “My elder brother – now deceased had been born disabled, so as the last born, I spent many years looking after him. In his last five years of his life, he suffered greatly, and couldn’t leave the house. ‘Isn’t there something like a national fund for the disabled?’ she posed aloud. There is not an office in Nyeri I didn’t enter. I wanted some help from our elected leaders and government for my brother. When I tell you all these leaders – from the top to the lowest – are only interested in grabbing everything for themselves, believe me. “It is the same young man who frequently sends me flour and rice my way that helped me in those five years that my brother was sick.” See also: UHURU’S PYRRHIC VICTORY: Uthamaki’s suffocating hold on the Kikuyu people

Felistas told me she used to work for an English master in Nairobi in 1965, two years after the country gained independence. “My white boss treated me better than any of our leaders have ever treated us,” said a nostalgic Felistas. “I gave up on our leaders a long time ago: They are masters of deceit and subterfuge. My life belongs to the Lord, who sustains me and who has kept me going all through these hard times. If I had relied on the leaders, do you think I would be alive today?” She was not asking me, she wanted me to know the contempt with which she held the politicians, who every cycle of five years, came to lie to her, on how they were going to improve her life.

Barefooted, Felistas’s feet told the story of a resilient woman who had faced the vagaries of life stoically. The feet had trekked many kilometres in search of food for her children in yester years and, they were still doing the same for her grandchildren, who were playing outside her mud structure.

“Mathira ya githomo”. The educated Mathira. That was how Mathira, her constituency was once referred to. In the days gone by, Mathira produced some of the best and most educated Nyerians. But today, it has sunk to the bottom of the ladder. “Illiteracy, poverty and unemployment are the order of the day,” said James Karani, my boda boda ride when I was in Karatina. “Do not forget that Mathira is where competing politicians brag on how they can boil a pot of githeri with KSh1000 notes, until it’s cooked.”

Karani took me to Wariruta trading centre, an outpost on the Karatina-Nyeri Road. We met young men who were chewing muguka – a bitter-sweet stimulant of the miraa species, whose leaves chewed long enough makes you feel high. Others were playing pool, still others idled around. “It is at Wariruta that you will find all manner of drugs,” Karani reported to me. “Cocaine, heroine, marijuana, you name it. I grew up in Wariruta and went to school with many of these guys, so we interact, but I am puzzled by how the drugs find their way here.”

Karani told me the young men and women had refused to take up farming. “Look at the farms, there isn’t anything growing or any animal movement. Farming takes too long, the young people do not have the patience for the crops to grow up, when there is betting and hustling. In idiomatic English, a hustler is a prostitute. So, drunkenness among the youth of Wariruta, has become the norm. “The youth have become fatalistic and hopelessness and restlessness has become their way of life,” said Karani. “They no longer believe in the country’s politics or politicians. When Uhuru came to Karatina town to campaign for the August 8, 2017 general elections, the youth yelled and shouted at him when he asked the Mathira people to vote for the Jubilee six-piece-suit. ‘We are farmers, we don’t wear suits’ replied the youth. It was their way of telling him, they were tired of five-year-cycle of politics that had failed to improve their lot.”

On my way back to Nairobi, I wanted to sample the Sagana town nightlife. So, I used the Nyeri- Sagana highway. Sagana is at the “Makutano” junction of Kagio-Kutus-Kerugoya road that took you into the heartland of Kirinyaga County and the Nyeri-Sagana highway. I saw, in the one street town, twilight girls, peddling their wares to the truckers who stop at Sagana, on their way to Meru, Isiolo, Marsabit, Moyale and Mandera. I remembered what Karani in Karatina had told me: many of the youth in Central Kenya have chosen the “hustler life”, which though is replete with avoidable risks, they opted for it nonetheless, because the returns are immediate and rewarding, as opposed to waiting for the rain-fed crops to sprout and be sold in the markets for peanuts.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant. The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.