The Governor Malcom MacDonald signing the proclamation which brought Kenya’s new constitution into effect in 1963. On his left is the then Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta on his right, Kadu President Ronald Ngala. Standing are the Attorney-General A.M.F Webb(left), and the Deputy Governor, Sir Eric Griffin-Jones.
| File | Nation Media GroupNews
Premium
Political mischief dating back to Jomo days and lessons we never internalise
If Jeremiah Kioni thinks Jubilee Party has had troubles, he should look at history and see the trend. Political parties have become supermarkets where one can buy a politician.
They have also become spaces of political mischief. As Kioni fights to save Jubilee from his adversaries, Kanini Kega and Sabina Wanjiru, he should know that these are just actors in history. In some years, like many others before, they would be footnotes of history.
Our history has records of individuals aided by the executive to either seize or destroy political parties – and later become victims.
So Kanini and Sabina are on the right pages of history. My only fear is that we learn little from the unforgiving history, so we have political parties that are temporary shelters after 60 years of independence. More so, voters are as nomadic as the politicians.
In 1963, when Jomo Kenyatta called Kadu leaders "self-conceited grasshopper politicians" within a "cramped and warped party", he set the stage where the ruling party, Kanu, would go flat out to destroy the existing Opposition.
The man used to lure members out of Kadu, and weaken it, was Jaramogi Oginga Odinga – who later became the first victim of single-party rule. From then on, the political supermarket was opened.
"I had not foreseen [that]," Odinga wrote in his autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru. "I worked hard to have Kadu absorbed into Kanu; I hoped that an augmentation of strength would ginger up the party, and, most important, would end disunity and tensions among the people so that our united national energies could be harnessed in the building of the country… I must admit that I calculated falsely…far from strengthening the party, [the merger] introduced dangerous divisive policies and forces into Kanu and made the dilution of Kanu policies from within possible."
And that is the lesson that politicians fail to learn. On Friday, I watched Uhuru Kenyatta lament about attempts to steal his Jubilee party by the Ruto administration. I remembered how the Jubilee government served a similar dosage to Ford-Kenya.
Let us trace the origins of our political bad manners. Jomo used the carrot-and-stick formula to kill the Opposition Kadu, which closed shop in November 1964. First, the ruling party said that the Opposition had no role in shaping the policy and that development funds would flow according to priority. Secondly, senior government positions were reserved for those who supported Kanu.
There are reasons why presidents have always wanted to weaken the Opposition. Jomo was desperate to do away with the Majimbo constitution and was looking for numbers.
He also wanted a "Yes" Parliament, as William Ruto wants now. Today, there is still academic debate on whether Jomo wished to destroy the opposition party or was looking for a two-thirds majority in Parliament to enable him to change the Constitution.
Former Kadu MP Martin Shikuku was the first to claim that Kenyatta was only after a two-thirds majority. Whatever the case, he had, by November 1964, managed to bring on board the entire Kadu leadership, starting with Daniel arap Moi, Ronald Ngala, and Masinde Muliro.
What interests me is how Oginga Odinga, after campaigning in the Kadu regions, and luring legislators to cross over to Kanu, would become the first victim of a strengthened Kanu. Politics, in most instances, is a backstabbing game!
Following Kadu's dissolution, and after Kenyatta had secured the numbers, Moi became the greatest beneficiary as Kenya became a republic. Moi was appointed to the powerful Ministry of Home Affairs, previously held by Odinga – who became vice-president with no significant docket assigned to him.
Another loser was Ronald Ngala. Although he was appointed the chairman of a parastatal, Maize Marketing Board, he would not enter the Cabinet until two years later, in 1966.
By then, he was politically eclipsed by Moi. By the time he died in 1972 in a road accident, Ngala was no longer the possible alternative to Kenyatta. That position had gone to Moi.
If you think that the registrar of political parties does not play executive politics, look at the history of that docket – whatever name we have called it before. When Odinga sought to register Kenya People's Union, the registrar of societies was used by Attorney-General Charles Njonjo to delay the registration and thus deny the party a chance to carry out campaigns even when by-elections were pending.
It is on record that the registrar mischievously recognised the KPU on the nomination day, May 21, 1966, thus limiting the party's ability to campaign. This mischief is the same we still see at the Registrar of Political Parties – and its predecessors – while dealing with parties out of favour with the Establishment.
Even Parliament has not been spared in this mischief. For instance, when 31 MPs declared their loyalty to KPU, Jomo turned to Parliament to amend the Constitution and change defection rules.
This constitutional clause stopped the automatic crossing of the floor without going through a by-election. With the help of Tom Mboya, he also started engineering defections to weaken the Opposition party.
KPU leaders were described as "arrogant dissidents” out to "destroy national stability". To weaken the party, he branded Odinga as a "tribal leader" and used Moi's office to seize the passports of KPU's officials and MPs, thus limiting their mobility.
There were more claims – primarily by Moi – that the KPU was holding secret meetings with the Tanzanian government to topple the government.
It is the same accusations that we hear today directed to Raila Odinga by the likes of Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung’wa and Kiharu's Ndindi Nyoro over his push to have Ruto address the high cost of living (or share power, depending on which side you subscribe to).
In taming Oginga Odinga's rise, what worked for Kenyatta was the fifth amendment to the Constitution, which was the first agenda of business after Parliament opened in April 1966. The amendment forced MPs who resigned from Kanu to seek a new mandate from the electorate at the end of a parliamentary session. Rather than face an election, most of the would-be KPU MPs melted back to Kanu.
After Parliament voted 97-11 for the new amendment, Kenyatta ended the parliamentary session and set the stage for the Little General Election in which Odinga was boxed into the Nyanza region.
KPU only operated for three years, and by 1969, after the Kisumu riots, the party was proscribed, and all its MPs and senior officials were detained without trial. Others, including Bildad Kaggia, had been lured back to Kanu.
Fast forward to President Moi when he helped to break up the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) by luring its official Martin Shikuku to the State House for a meeting; that meeting created suspicion within the party, even before it was registered.
Some insiders claim that the intelligence organised Matiba's homecoming from London to create a second force within Ford hitherto associated with Jaramogi. It was only a matter of time before Matiba, who held no position within Ford, called for elections to pick the most popular candidate.
His mantra was 'let the people decide', and it curtailed Jaramogi's automatic candidature. The "help" came from Attorney-General Amos Wako, who announced that FORD factions could be registered as different parties to differentiate between Odinga's Agip House and Matiba's Muthithi House faction. By helping create those divisions, Kanu was the primary beneficiary of the bitter divorce.
The multiparty Parliament that was elected became a circus as Kanu worked to weaken the opposition parties through defections. MPs sold their seats. There were 30 by-elections between 1993 and 1997. Of these, 13 were due to opposition defections; 10 were called because of the death of MPs, five as a consequence of petitions, and two following resignations. Kanu was the main beneficiary.
Ford-Kenya would also split due to Jaramogi's relationship with Kanu. In May 1993, Jaramogi started a cooperation policy with Kanu, much to the chagrin of the Opposition.
In July 1993, he admitted to receiving Sh2 million from Kamlesh Pattni, the man associated with the Goldenberg scandal. This gift created fissures within Ford Kenya and led to several Young Turks' departure and the party's weakening.
Another such mischief would see Kanu lure Raila Odinga to abandon the opposition politics and back President Moi after the 1997 general election. This saw him dissolve his party National Development Party and join Kanu. It was like history repeating itself.
For his part, Mwai Kibaki lured members of Kanu into the government and saw the likes of Njenga Karume join Kibaki's administration as he tried to weaken Kanu.
There are many such tactics on record – and even Uhuru Kenyatta is not a saint in those games. The problem is that we spend billions of shillings financing political parties, but we end up having political supermarkets stocked with politicians on sale.
