Nyong’o: Had it not been for spy chief Boinett, Kibaki wouldn't have been president

He attracts admiration and resentment — ask the nurses — in equal measure. Battle-hardened Kisumu Senator Anyang’ Nyong’o has seen it all — from university halls, exile in Europe, opposition benches, a cancer ward, as Cabinet minister and now a member of the opposition in Senate.

While his supporters adore him as a liberator and reformer, his detractors regard the 67-year-old political scientist as an arrogant trouble-shooter. But there is no doubt that the lover of zilizopendwa (golden oldies) is a consummate theoretician, avid reader, writer and a radical who speaks his mind.

In his upcoming book, Kenya At 50, Prof Nyong’o who has authored several works including A Leap Forward, says the Narc dream was deferred because the coalition failed the test of building a democratic and inclusive state.

The political scientist is now pushing for what he calls “consociational democracy” which, he says, would ensure each ethnic segment is fairly represented in government.

And to heal the heal the country after the March election, the ODM honcho suggests that a government of national unity is best for Kenya.

“I am not saying this because we are now out of power but I honestly believe a grand coalition type of government would be more exclusive and tone down the tribal tensions.”

He also told us why he is going back to college.

Q: You wailed at the University of Nairobi’s Taifa Hall when you learnt about the disappearance of your brother Anam.  

A. He was working for Esso at a time when I was in bad books with the Nyayo dictatorship. He was investigating theft at Esso when he stepped on important people’s toes. He was last seen driving into the ferry and his car was found on it. Police refused to co-operate in investigations to find out the cause of his disappearance. When I called for a public enquiry, (dreaded police reservist) Patrick Shaw told me: ‘be careful lest what happened to him happens to you. We believe they pushed him out of the ferry to intimidate me. We recovered the car, but we have never found the body.

Q. You died and resurrected.  How did you learn about your death?

A. It was after the election and I had gone to New York for a United Nations meeting of the Committee of Experts on Public Administration to which I belonged after which I flew to California on May 2 for a medical checkup in California which was long overdue. I should have had it in January but the elections were around the corner. While being treated for prostate cancer two years ago, I was put on a hormone therapy.

This is aimed at depressing the production of testosterone to starve prostrate cells which feed on it. Testosterone is what makes you a man in every sense. So the treatment leads to loss of libido.

But you would rather postpone your going to Hell than go to Heaven with a hard-on. The effects of the treatment were supposed to end in November.

Then somebody started a rumour on Facebook that I had died. I even received an amusing message about my death. I have always wondered how a dead man was supposed to reply to a message.

A friend wrote:  ‘Mrng jatenda, hpe inkare.kindly gochne jo media madalakaa ni yu ok, nikech rumours gi ozidi kendo jopiny nigi wasiwasi.

(Morning my leader, I hope you are fine. Kindly call the media people in Kenya and inform them that you are okay. Because these rumours are too much and people are worried).’ I later called the guy to say I was okay.

Q.  While a student at Makerere University, you wrote the poem ‘Daughter of the Lowland’ which sags with phallic imagery.

I cannot let my testicles be crushed/ when I am wide awake/ By the ghosts of an alien clan/ In the half-lighted boom cave / No!/ When I unsheathe the family spear/ And unfeather the poison-horned arrow;/ When I expose the daughter of the lowland/ To village gossip and contempt/ Then the books that I have read smash my testicles in my sleep/ my testicles have not been smashed by heavy books. What was the motivation?

A.  I was responding to Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino in which she attacks Ocol suggesting that education destroys men. I am saying education is valuable but it should not alienate or undermine the role of the man as a defender of the realm.

Education should be equated to restoration, not civilisation. You can be civil in your own culture. Secondly, the poem was a response to growing anti-intellectualism, attacks on intellectuals in Makerere as ivory tower.

That is why I said that heavy books had not smashed our abilities to contribute to the good of society. That education was desirable and intellectuals had their role to play.

The poem articulates the position that political power cannot destroy us. I wrote many poems but I lost them to the Kanu dictatorship which used to raid our houses and collect everything.

Q. You left the academy for politics. Has politics “crushed your testicles?”

A. Ha..ha..ha. That is terrible. The Nyayo regime detained us. They subjected us to dehumanising conditions when we were incarcerated in police cells but they did not destroy us. 

Q. And what made you abandon the academy for politics?

A. Some of us were drawn into politics by the authoritarianism of the post-independent state. There was nobody in Kanu to tell the king that he was naked. We decided to sacrifice and so after the 1982 coup attempt I went into exile in Mexico.

That is when Lupita was born. Her name is drawn from the Guadalupe, the saint patroness of Mexico. Lupe is the short form of Guadalupe. 

Lupita is the diminutive way of referring to a young Lupe. She reminds us that we have seen places in our struggles to improve democracy and God has a way of paying back. You see she is going places.

Q. Who radicalised you?

The literature I read at Alliance and my teachers such as Paddy Lewin who taught me religious education and Trevor Foulkes who exposed us to Athol Fugard, Shakespearean literature such as Julius Ceasar and Richard The III which captures peasants resisting tyranny, Ezekiel Mphalele’s Down Second Avenue and Alex La Guma’s a Walk in the Night.

The title was inspired by the Ghost scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ghost tells Hamelt: I am thy father’s spirit/ doomed for a certain term to walk the night/ and in the day confined to fast in fires/ till the foul crimes committed in my days of nature/ are burnt and purged away.”  I believe like Shakespeare’s ghost, Kenyans are also doomed to walk in the night.

Q. What body of literature do you find intellectually awakening?

A. Biographies and books on development and national politics. I love Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and the biography of Martin Luther King.  I found Frank Chikane’s Eight Days in September about the ouster of Thabo Mbeki revealing about power politics. I would encourage our leaders to also read William Gumede’s Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of ANC. When I read it, I called out a friend in South Africa and asked him to watch out what was happening in the ANC. Mbeki was ousted a few months later.

Q. You are a busy man. Do you find time to read?

A. I pick a book and read at night. Or when I feel I want to be inspired. I read and buy books mostly when I am travelling. I also write my columns even when I am travelling.

Q. You are a lover of ‘Zilizopendwa’. When is the last time you took Dorothy out for a dance? 

We do but not as often as we did when we got married. The demands of public life have eaten into our routines.

Q. What are you reading now?

A. The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father by Sally H. Jacobs. I think the writer would have done more research. I used to drink with Obama Senior together with my friend Joel Mutune when I was teaching at the university and I could drive him in his pick-up to his house in Upper Hill where the Civil Servants’ Club is now situated. He had a small girl there who he only referred to us “sweetie.”

He never once mentioned her name. Whenever she could look at us he would say: ‘These are young men. Leave them alone.’  I later left the country and I was not surprised that he died in a road accident. He was very astute, very assertive and didn’t have much time for people he considered less intellectual.

Q. Obama Snr had strong ideas against African socialism. You, too, are a strong advocate of social democracy which seems to have failed to take root in Kenya.

A. The Ndegwa commission warned of a system of accumulation in which politicians and bureaucrats use state apparatus to accumulate private property. Social democracy places emphasis on use of state power for social capital such as health, infrastructure and security. I tried this in 2003 when, together with Charity Ngilu, I pushed for a comprehensive health insurance for all Kenyans. It was resisted by forces with vested commercial interests.

Q. You don’t ready anybody here?

A. I read Kuki Gallmann, the writer of I Dreamed of Africa and African Nights. I think she is a fantastic short story teller. Charles Mangua is another good writer.

But I am more inspired by books such as Achebe’s A man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah. In fact I travelled to Lagos in June to speak about Achebe and Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s contribution to literature and democracy in Africa.

The audience, appeared uncomfortable when I celebrated Achebe’s role in the expansion of democracy, perhaps because his role in Biafra’s ill-fated attempt at secession. 

 Q. Speaking of Achebe, who lent his voice to the Biafran cause of self-determination, you have been accused of deploying your immense intellect to the political cause of the Luo nation.

The Biafran war occurred because of lack of recognition of individual and people’s rights. Nigeria’s First Republic abused the rights of the Biafran nationals who thought that the right for self-determination could be exercised to prevent abuse. There was a Biafran state.

That is why everybody wanted to help including the poet Christopher Okigbo who volunteered as a soldier in the Biafran army, but was unfortunately killed while carrying weapons. I have spent my intellectual resources in defence of the Kenyan cause.

You cannot trample on a people’s rights and expect them to keep quite. Speaking up on the assassination of people such as Tom Mboya and detention of Ochieng Aneko because they were Luo and denying their children economic opportunities is not Luo nationalism.

Jaramogi was invited by the colonial governor and asked to form government but he declined. He said: ‘I cannot do so because our leaders, our patriots are still in detention’. That is the highest form of national sacrifice. Raila would do the same in 2002.

The Luos had been subjected to an exceptional dose of oppression by the post-colonial state. The attempt to isolate Luos was the highest level of fascism. But people who also resisted dictatorship from the ruling tribe also suffered such as Ngugi, Micere Mugo, Wanyiri Kihoro, Koigi wa Wamwere. I would stand up against a Luo President who is oppressive.

Q. You wrote the famous letter in 2010 to the UN denouncing Kenya’s efforts to postpone the ICC cases. Do you still stand by that position?

We will certainly oppose the pullout scheme. The genesis of the matter is clear. The Waki Commission suggested names of people it believed were highly culpable for the violence. The government was told to come up with a credible process or the issue will be taken up by the ICC. We in ODM wanted a local tribunal. Cabinet approved the Bill but it was defeated in Parliament by those who are now saying ICC should get off their backs.

You remember the song ‘don’t be vague let us go to The Hague.’ The process of demonising the ICC started when the names were made public with some people saying that somebody was behind the case. Then they embarked on shuttle diplomacy to campaign for a deferral. ODM wanted a referral.

Our party was concerned that the campaign was being presented as a position of the coalition government. That is why we wrote to explain that we were not party to the shuttle diplomacy.

Q. So who was behind the campaign?

A. Former President Kibaki, Kalonzo Musyoka and the current President were very involved. When the matter came up ahead of the elections Uhuru said that in the event he formed the government, they will treat ICC as a personal challenge. Uhuru said he will not put Kenya in jeopardy. We are saying this is betrayal and dishonesty against the people. Uhuru and Ruto should be men of their word.

If you know you are innocent why are you afraid or demonising the court? Witnesses are withdrawing in suspicious circumstances. What truth is somebody hiding?

Kenya is a signatory to the Rome Statute, making it Kenyan law. Article 2(6) of the Constitution is clear that any treaty or convention ratified by Kenya shall form part of the laws of Kenya under this Constitution and every government has a duty to honour the undertakings of previous governments including the Statute.

Q. Are you suggesting that Uhuru and Ruto are victims of their choices?

A. Certainly yes. And Kenyans as well.  Somebody said choices have consequences. People did not realise what he meant. Of course, he was not dictating to Kenyans who to elect. But he made it clear that if you elect somebody who is indicted, we must be ready to face the consequences.

Q. But some say Anyang’ Nyong’o, the self-proclaimed captain of mass action, which is partly blamed for the 2008 violence should also be in the dock at the ICC. 

A. I called for mass action to protest a stolen election. I did not call anybody to murder. I was not involved in the atrocities that were committed.  Instead police used violence on us as we mourned the dead. Justice must not only be done but it should be seen to be done as well.

Q. Tom Mboya was assassinated. Jaramogi withered away with unfulfilled ambition. Time does not appear to be on Raila’s side. Do you see the Luo nation producing a person who can be embraced by the whole country in the near future?

A. Ya mungu ni mengi. Don’t forget the people who hoisted the Kenyatta presidency that killed Mboya and persecuted Jaramogi or their relatives are still around. They think that the politics Jaramogi embraced and Raila inherited remain a threat to their interests. But circumstances change. It is not impossible. It depends on the credibility of the electoral process. With the current so-called independent commission which cannot release the votes which parties received, no one should expect fair competition. 

Q. There has been this argument that it is time for Raila to exit the political scene.
A. Do you know a man called Abdullahi Wade? He vied for the presidency five times. Kibaki won the third time. Cord will choose who will be the flag-bearer. I believe Raila will still be strong. In politics you cannot speak with finality. Who knew that Kibaki will win the 2002 election? I remember him sneaking into our meeting at the Kakamega Golf Hotel uninvited. He sat on table far away from where we wre discussing with Mike (Wamalwa Kijana), Ngilu and other leaders about who should be our compromise candidate. 

Mike was a gentleman. He said ‘you guys I want to run for this thing’. We told him ‘look Mike’ we want you to support Kibaki. Mike agreed to help. This is one of the things that informed Raila’s selfless ‘Kibaki Tosha’ declaration.

But this country has a reason to respect another man: (former army) chief Daudi Tonje for institutionalising the culture to play the rules and reform the army. I also strongly believe that had former intelligence chief Wilson Boinett not put his foot down that Kanu had lost the 2002 election, history would have been different.

Q. What would have changed?

A. Moi would not have handed over power. There was an attempt by Samuel Kivuitu at City Hall to delay the election results. I can remember Ngilu and I rushing to Muthaiga and asking Kibaki to declare victory.  Narc was a fantastic opportunity to institutionalise the politics of inclusion. We hoped that the coalition shared the vision that the Kenyan project will remain at the front regardless of the transition in government.

Q. So what went wrong?

A. I started becoming uncomfortable when I sensed lack of command. The government lacked a uniting force and I, together with Moses Wetang’ula, thought the President could play that role. Narc leaders suggested that we go for a retreat in Naivasha to address the emerging issues. Mike and I were very close. I wrote his famous speech in Nanyuki where he asked us to put all our cards on the table.

I remember Nyiva Mwendwa spoke strongly for party unity. After Nanyuki we were told the President had recovered. He convened a meeting to discuss the Nanyuki issues at this long room in State House. But after the meeting, David Mwiraria, Kiraitu Murungi and Chris Murangaru escorted the President to his office. We don’t know what they discussed but the Nanyuki resolutions were never acted upon.

Q. And what is this letter which you wrote to Kibaki but never delivered to him?

A. The conflict in Narc was made worse by the 2005 referendum.  I warned Francis Muthaura with whom we had a great relationship that we should adopt a common front to avoid a split. I asked a meeting to discuss how the coalition will forge ahead after the referendum.

Unknown to many Kenyans, after we in the ‘No’ campaign won, I was asked to draft a letter to be sent to President Kibaki by members of our camp telling him that we were ready to continue working together and explore ways of enacting a new constitution.

Raila called on the eve of the day we were to send it. He said; “watch the 7 o’clock news. That letter might not be necessary.” President Kibaki announced that he had disbanded Cabinet. Narc collapsed because of Kibaki’s inability to keep it together as a democratic force.

Q. Under what circumstance were you writing sermons for Bishop Okullu?

A. He was a great friend of my father. Actually, my father presided over Okullu and his wife’s wedding. And later Okullu would preside over mine with Dorothy. He edited the Target magazine for which I occasionally wrote.

Okullu was really political. But we started comparing notes while I was a lecturer at the university. Later he facilitated me to attend a world conference on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation in Korea and Namibia.

Kenya At 50hat’s how I came to write his famous 1991 Easter sermon calling for multi-party democracy. It is me who encouraged him to write his biography Cry for Justice. I also wrote Jaramogi’s famous speech of Kamukuji in 1991.

Q. Nothing about you shows that you are a son of a preacher.

A. Ha ha ha ha…I am actually contemplating going back to the university to study sacred theology, especially idolatry which is the most condemned in Paul’s letter.

Yet the extent of idolatry today is alarming. Christians idolise power, property, individuals and lies.

The church has perverted worship. Jesus told the preachers ‘take little with you, shake the dust off your feet.’ The main objective of Christian mission today is personal aggrandisement. Even political leadership is swallowed by idols.

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