Kalembe Ndile unmasked

We chart the course of Tourism and Wildlife assistant minister Kalembe Ndile's life from his days as a cleaner and carpenter to his wild ride in politics. When I arrive for my interview with Assistant Minister Kalembe Ndile, the famous neck brace has vanished barely a week after he was treated at Nairobi Hospital for injuries he is said to have suffered as he fled an irate mob in Mwingi. 

I quickly discover that everything is fast-paced in the Kibwezi MP’s life — including his rise from carpenter to assistant minister for tourism and wildlife.

We are getting all cosy in Parliament Buildings and the man rolls his eyes, adjusts his jacket — he says he bought it from a hawker — and bursts into laughter. He laughs a lot, even at himself.

"Nilipima nikaona hapa lazima nihepe (I weighed the situation and realised that I had to take off)," he says of his much-publicised encounter with a mob during a cultural festival in Mwingi a fortnight ago. 

He scratches his head, and adds: "I'm told some top provincial administration officials and the MPs had a good laugh when they saw me sprint toward the car. They clearly enjoyed the drama, yet my life was in real danger." 

At the time of the incident, Ndile went on record thanking God that no one had been hurt in the confrontation. He turned up at the hospital 48 hours later and is reported to have collected the P3 form normally used to pursue assault charges — possibly against his arch-rivals in Ukambani politics, Mwingi North MP Kalonzo Musyoka, David Mwanzia of Machakos Town and David Musila of Mwingi South.

Ndile is a survivor in many ways, but it is the Mwingi escape, graphically captured on TV, that proves just how agile the man can get when push comes to shove. The MP not only left behind the crowd baying for his blood but also outran his security detail, opened the door of a moving Land Rover and jumped in. 

Yet he is on record having poked fun at Langata MP Raila Odinga for having sought refuge under a table during mob trouble at a Ford Kenya meeting in Thika during a leadership contest pitting Odinga and Wamalwa Kijana in the mid-1990s. 

Ndile had a field day imitating the drama, calling Odinga a coward — until the dramatic pictures from Mwingi were broadcast, and he found himself in the same position. But politicians have short memories, and Ndile can afford to laugh off his own experience. "You would have done the same if it were you," he tells me. "That mob had been incited."

I am getting conflicting signals from this man, who has earned a reputation for defending the landless in a region known for a harsh environment. Just a week before the cultural festival, he confides, he had been to Mwingi "to meet the landless". 

“Yes, it's even true that I made comments to the effect that a local chief was too thin compared with chiefs in my area," he says cheerfully, clearly having made a complete recovery from the injuries he is said to have suffered. 

It was rather naive of him, though, to have expected a rousing welcome on the home turf of the man touted to be the top dog in Ukambani politics, and the man who routinely ranks high in opinion polls as the man to watch in the next presidential election. 

But Ndile is clearly no respecter of public opinion and enjoys needling Musyoka, who has  almost fanatical support in much of Ukambani. You might argue that walking into the lion's den, literally  the case in Mwingi, where he must have known that no one would be laying out the red carpet for him, was not one of his wisest decisions.

But close encounters of the scary kind are the stuff of Ndile's life, he says, though he has not done badly for a man who never collected his school certificate for lack of fees. 

“Nimepata shida mingi” (I’ve had many problems)," says the MP, supporting his head on his hands.  He started out as a councillor and fellow MPs have told him to outgrow his beginnings in politics, often in response to his irreverent remarks delivered in his high tones.  

Raila Odinga once referred to him as a “ highway king pin” — a veiled reference to speculation that Ndile's background is less than savoury.  He fires off a quick response: “A councillor, yes, I don't mind. That is where I started my political career. A highway robber? Forget it, not me”. 

The highway robber thing gained currency in 1998 after Livestock and Fisheries Minister Joseph Munyao (then an opposition back bencher) asked the Minister for State Julius Sunkuli to explain why Kalembe — after one of his many brushes with the law — was being held and what crime he had committed.

“Sunkuli told Parliament that he had been briefed by his security team that I was a wanted highway robber, but that was all Kanu propaganda. That was the time I was the chairman of Makueni County Council and fighting some local MPs for grabbing public land. They were determined to fix me,” recalls Ndile.

Being called names is not really a big deal for a man whose pre-occupation for many years was pure survival. He is more likely to see his critics as being envious of his ability to gatecrash into the political party, despite his humble beginnings. 

There's nothing he enjoys more than being able to point out that he now shares a place in the August House with seasoned politicians, millionaires and members of famed political families.

Still mesmerised by his seemingly spectacular achievements in politics, Ndile can talk for hours on end about his "long and tortuous" journey to the top.  For the fast talking politician, the world is divided into us and them — the poor and the rich. He seems not to recognise that, by virtue of being an MP, he is now a member of the privileged class that enjoys stupendous allowances and benefits that include bodyguards, official cars and even security at home.

Did the Mwingi scare etch permanent marks on his psyche? Most likely, even for a man who simply refuses to take life too seriously.  So did his stint as a loader with the Bayusuf Bros trucking company in Mombasa. “Fertiliser in 50kg bags ‘burnt’ my neck,” Ndile recounts, pulling up his shirt collar to show me the scars of a difficult past.

He soon got a promotion that saw him stationed in the managing director's office — for his prowess at scrubbing floors.  He also made furniture on the side. He was kicked out when he played truant in order to fetch a table he had made for a customer.

Jobless, he opened a food kiosk and a hardware shop. Not for anything would he go back to the days when his mother would boil raw paw paw for dinner. He is referring to the “ngwa-ngwete?”  famine that  ravaged Ukambani in the 70s. “Ngwa-ngwete” means “dying in spite my ability” and captures the situation where even the rich had trouble feeding their families because there was hardly any food to be found in the region. 

Other MPs swagger past us as I try to figure out what it takes to rise from the bottom of the heap to being called the Honourable Kalembe Ndile, a title many keep long after they have been thrown out of Parliament. 

“Never mind,” says Ndile, interrupting my thoughts. He then talks of the days he would load pebbles into a tin that served as a food dish in order to convince his teacher that he had lunch.

His grass to grace story done, I ask how Ndile the university student is faring. Fed up with criticism from his many detractors, he once announced that he would enrol for a degree course. It never worked out that way and he is now pursuing a diploma in community development and project management at a college located at Vision Plaza on the Mombasa Road. 

The father of nine says he hasn’t collected his 'O’ level certificate from the defunct Emali Secondary School because of school fees arrears. “Do you know that the headmaster of the school was an uncle to Caroline Mutoko of Kiss FM?” he asks me. 

We are both pondering how he was able to register for a diploma course without a school leaving certificate as a group of orderlies and journalists interrupt us to ask him whether his sore neck has healed. “Ni uchungu kidogo tu” (It’s slightly painful)” Ndile answers as he runs his hand round his neck. The laughing man can't resist the opportunity to tuck in: “You will also be attacked one day and we will see what will happen.” 

He then picks up the story:  “I forgot about the O' level certificate and ended up sitting the British GSE. I did English, Kiswahili, Geography and one other subject ... I can't remember which, but they were four subjects.” 

Ndile has no time for academic theories on leadership and power, so you'll never catch him reading Machiavelli’s The Prince. “I use my instincts,” he explains.

Some months ago, he sold his Isuzu Trooper in the hope of buying a bulldozer to build shallow dams in his constituency. “Was that a publicity stunt?” I ask. “No, no, I really meant it and the car was actually sold," he says. "The problem is that it did not fetch as much as I thought it would.”

Ndile's first attempt to contest an elective post ended miserably — when voters failed to recognise his name in the ballot papers, he says. They did not know who Richard Ndile was.

“People told me that they couldn't see “Kalembe” in the list and that was the end of my bid to capture a local civic seat. In 1997, I hurriedly added Kalembe to my official names and was easily elected.” Kalembe, his nickname, means a small jembe in Kikamba and it's not clear how he got it.

What are his prospects of seeing Parliament again, now that he has crossed swords with the political heavies in Ukambani, I ask. He is quick to respond: “I don't owe allegiance to anybody apart from God. This thing about a Kalonzo (Musyoka) wave is all a fallacy spread in big towns,” he says.

I have clearly touched a raw nerve. Before I can move on to the next question, he declares that “Kalembe is not a not a coward” and  he has “fought many wars in my life and this is nothing".

I have stumbled on another side of the MP. After being made an assistant minister in the fallout of last year's referendum, he had this to say of Musyoka and Odinga during a party to celebrate his promotion: “They used to brag about their ministerial posts. I'm now their senior since they are mere MPs.” 

Still, there are times he bites off more than he can chew. “The Mwingi incident was nothing," he confides. "I have been in worse situations, like the day I had to wear a dress to escape  arrest.”

In 1998, the self appointed squatters representative shocked everybody at the burial of Makueni MP Prof Mulwa Sumbi when he told then President Daniel Arap Moi that a provincial commissioner, politicians and other senior civil servants had grabbed land.

“The crowd cheered when I told the President that more prominent people should die so that roads in Makueni and other areas of Ukambani could be repaired,” he explains, voice raising a decibel higher.

Determined to go the whole hog, he mischievously told the president that most of his senior officials had arrived at the funeral late because they had to pass through the lands offices.

Ndile was clearly enjoying his few minutes of fame as the crowd cheered. What he didn't know was that a security team had been ordered to grab him before leaving the meeting. As the President stood to leave, the Makueni criminal investigations officer approached Kalembe and asked him to “please co-operate, you are under arrest".

He had a brainwave as he was unceremoniously dragged  to a Land Rover. “I wailed, ooooh! ooooh, saidia, saidia,” Ndile recalls. A crowd quickly gathered and Charity Ngilu, then of the Social Democratic Party, appeared.

“That is when I knew that Ngilu was brave and a tougher than most men," Ndile adds. “She blocked the police car and dared the CID boss to arrest her instead.” The police quickly released Ndile, sensing crowd trouble.

He boarded one of the vehicles in Ngilu's encourage and took refuge in Nairobi but was later arrested and charged with nine offences, including insulting the President. All were dropped when he joined Parliament in 2002.