Jirongo: Political strategist or just a clown in smart suit?

At his sudden and baffling death he had four wives — official. At the burial of his daughter in March this year, in his own words, he drew attention to his rich past love life. In his comical ways, at the prayer service, he admitted he would have been the son-in-law to former Nominated MP Zipporah Kittony, but lost his lover because of cheating. But by then, this beauty queen had already birthed Jirongo’s daughter, Lorraine. In typical Jirongo fashion, he said all these things in the presence of his ex, Caroline Kittony, and her husband.

Jirongo’s escapades were legendary. When he was swimming in money he also enjoyed the softer side of life, the thrill of the hunt and a kill here and there. He once told me that his political detractors took the message to his benefactor, Mzee Daniel arap Moi, at State House. 

“They told him that I had used the YK’92 money to house nine women (including wives then) in various posh estates in Nairobi, and that I was too busy carousing and making lightening stops at the various homes,” he told me. 

Jirongo was summoned to State House. He was shaking like a leaf, worried that it would be a dressing-down by the renown Bible carrier, disciplinarian and no-nonsense rungu wielder. 

“We were very close with Moi then. He was like a father to me. I knew the question would come. I had been tipped off by a close friend who picked the information from the intelligence circles,” he said.

I suspect, as usual, he must have smoked, then gargled water and chewed gum before going to State House. 

Jirongo loved what former President Uhuru Kenyatta now calls uji, and had constant engagement with it when opportunity presented itself. He is one leader who did not mind pictures being taken of him with friends, with the table sagging under the weight of whiskies, wines and gins.

A few years ago he blacked out somewhere near Sarit Centre. And, in pitch darkness, passers-by found him, windows rolled up, in slumberland with his pistol on the lap. They were good people, they recognised him, and assisted him back to the road. His Range Rover had given the wall by the roadside a crushing kiss. 

A caveat; I am not implying that Jirongo was on one of his nocturnal expeditions the night it is claimed he crashed into a bus and died around Naivasha, while only hours before that he had shared uji with his friend and Speaker of the National Assembly, Moses Wetang’ula. 

That, however, is a matter of ongoing police investigation. So let us go back to the sweaty and trembling Jirongo standing before the gigantic Mzee Moi, his legendary eyes piercing through the young man. 

He told us Moi did not even allow him to sit, he just laughed, and the decibels were only second to former Cabinet minister William ole Ntimama’s.

“Kijana naskia wewe sasa ndiye dume unatangatanga katika vijiji vya Kenya na wanawake, mbegu na pombe! Hii kazi nyingine utaweza?” Jirongo quoted Moi. (I hear that you are the bull busy chasing women and drinking alcohol across the country. Won’t this affect our campaign?)

But after cautioning him on the dangers of living life in the fast lane, Moi told Jirongo to be careful.“Wanawake wamefilisisha wanaume wengi duniani. (Women have bankrupted many men in this world),” Moi said. 

Then again, in his hilarious and clownish humour, Jirongo added: “Mzee aliniuliza hizo nguvu zote unapata wapi na kazi zingene zako unafanya saa ngapi? Unawezaje kuwafuraisha hawa wote? Wewe ni ndume ya wa Luhya kweli! (Where do you get the energy for the sprees, and at what time do you do your own work? You are truly a Luhya stallion!)

Read: Questions linger over Cyrus Jirongo’s last moments after fatal car crash

Controversies about the romantic side of CJ, as friends called him, followed him to the last day, with rumours flying around that the vehicle he was driving belonged to a certain city woman. Receiving the guests coming to condole his family after the tragedy have been his four wives — from the Kalenjin (not Zipporah Kittony’s daughter!), Maasai, Kamba, and Kikuyu community, respectively. A Luhya friend wondered why he did not pay dowry to a Luhya family, but, quickly laughed it off and said with Jirongo you never knew what to expect.

Jirongo’s hilarious side came out well when he was having a good day. He would reminisce the good old days, but then as the talk continued, he would start going back on how painfully and cruelly his life, property and financial empire was dismantled by the system he helped create. From distorted tape recordings that purported he was plotting to overthrow Moi, to a falling-out with a top Office of the President Permanent Secretary over a love triangle, and land disputes. He would not agree to the fact that he was part and parcel of a corruption gravy train eating Kenya from the inside.

He was also cagey about how the Sh500 note came to bear his name. 

But he would insist that the moneybags that oiled the YK’92 operations came from State House, and the architect was the then spy chief James Kanyotu and close associates of Moi.

“People mistakenly think that I was running YK’92. There were other strong forces pulling the strings from behind closed doors in State House, Harambee House, Kabarnet Gardens and Kabarak. However, I can’t deny that Moi changed my life,” said Jirongo, but quickly points out that Moi later changed his heart, and that is when he started being arrested, his property seized and auctioned. 

Sometime ago, Jirongo told Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna in a Podcast that he had written a book, but would not release it yet because doing so could endanger his life. Sifuna asked him whether those who are unhappy with him are still in power. He replied in the affirmative. Indeed, the man had many enemies. He had crossed many a line. 

Many are now intrigued by the contents of that book, and whether it will ever be published. One thing is certain; the life of this man cannot fully come out in a book. He had told friends there are secrets that he would take to the grave, and he has done so. 

For example, the book would most likely not reveal the identity of the powerful politician who conned him out of his 30 Friesian cows by tricking him into believing that he wanted to “conceal” them on his farm to avoid being auctioned. Nor would the book mention that he surrendered his title deeds and that his properties were shared among certain influential politicians after receiving death threats and harassment. 

This mystery book would also not give answers on why Kenyans had a difficult time trusting him. Jirongo’s name was synonymous with political terrorism and mafia-like campaign operations. However, and forgive the language, the man had balls of steel. He had made many claims, including murder and grand theft against some powerful people. 

When Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi temporarily defected to the Rainbow coalition, before bouncing back for a “Simon Makonde” stint as Moi’s vice president he said: “Kanu is at its weakest, we have it by the balls and what we should do is squeeze it harder!” 

And for sure, someone was squeezing Jirongo’s with burdizzo pliers. The “Bull of Luhyaland” was constantly standing on his toes and watching his back. 

Of course this is just in analogous to the economic and political ruin, endless court cases, debt recalls and general disillusion that followed him. One of the cases in court, and for which Jirongo had been found liable, was that he sweet-talked Cotu Secretary-General Francis Atwoli, into giving him a “soft” loan of Sh100 million merely on “verbal agreement”.

The funnier side was that Jirongo was to pay back with an extra Sh10 million in 50 days! As they say, hiyo pesa ni kama imekunywa maji! (gone down the drain). This leaves Atwoli with another reason to mourn Jirongo, with whom he was a member of the “Luhya Unity” choir. 

In the first instalment, I shared the story of the ties that bound the three “brothers” – President William Ruto, Kipruto Kirwa and Jirongo after the 1997 election, and how their lives separately orbited around Moi and how the grand old man worked to split them by plucking Ruto into an assistant minister’s office at Harambee House. We looked at the way they separately played Russian roulette kind of politics, they often won but sometimes they lost.

Read: Eyewitnesses: Cyrus Jirongo’s final moments before crash

So, to progress that discussion, in 2002 Ruto stood by Moi and backed his skewed choice of Uhuru Kenyatta to succeed him. Kirwa backed Mwai Kibaki. Ruto lost his bet, but still ended up in Parliament as MP. Kirwa’s was what our youths call “sure bet”, he ended up as the Minister for Agriculture.

Jirongo, like Ruto, stuck to Kanu but lost the Lugari seat to Dr Enock Kibunguchy. Then in 2007, he bounced back but on a party that echoes Moi’s pre-Independence Kenya African Democratic Development Union (KADDU). Kirwa ran in Cheragany with Kibaki’s flag but lost. Ruto, who backed Raila Odinga on an (ODM) ticket, cried foul over the election results.

Post-election violence imploded and rivals, Kibaki and Raila agreed to share power in a Grand National Government. Ruto became the Agriculture minister in the Kibaki-Raila nusu mkate government. Quite a succulent slice from the half-loaf!

Ruto’s fortunes kept soaring towards the sky from 2007 and, in the 2013 and 2017 elections, he and Uhuru rode to power as Kirwa’s and Jirongo’s plummeted. The Constitution had been changed, and it barred presidential candidates and their running mates from contesting parliamentary seats. Jirongo was in the presidential race in both the 2013 and 2017 elections, but quickly fizzled out.

Before the 2022 race, Kirwa was Ruto’s party leader in the current United Democratic Alliance (UDA), but jumped ship to join Raila at the last minute. But it turned out to be a bad gamble. Ruto won the presidential race and Kirwa — though he said he does not regret — missed the opportunity to return to the Cabinet. 

In 2022, Jirongo did not run for president, but tried his hand on Kakamega gubernatorial seat on a different party — the United Democratic Party (UDP), but lost. Knowing him, in 2027, if he had lived to see the day, he would probably have been on the presidential ballot paper likely on a different political party, against his former friend-turned-foe, Ruto. 

Jirongo would almost predictably have not made much impact, for it seems his sun started sinking into the Western horizon slowly from 1993, only to rise a little then dim again and fast after 2013. I have no idea if, for Ruto and Kirwa, there would have been any form of rapprochement before 2027, but it is very unlikely.

This is because of how principled Kirwa is, his sustained criticism of the president since he assumed office, and Ruto’s own unforgiving nature. But as they say, in politics, a week is a very long time, and so are the next two years. 

As for Ruto, he is still playing hardball, and his sun is shining bright. I at times laugh when I imagine the first interview of his life as MP that I did for the Nation in 1997, when he told me that he would be in politics only for 15 years because he was not a tumbocrat and Parliament was not a retirement home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still at it. And he wants to remain there till 2032 — and who knows, maybe even beyond. 

The question remains whether Jirongo was a political strategist or a political clown in a smart suit, suave lifestyle and taste for the finer things life offers. That we leave to history to judge, for it is the common denominator in all our lives. 

Read: DCI starts probe into Cyrus Jirongo's death, talks to last people to see him alive 

I can’t stop without these three quick anecdotes. I was looking for a secret dossier Jirongo wrote and shared around 1996, and I made strident calls to him three years ago. On that day he happened to be flying to Tanzania. He stopped by Standard Group offices to pick me up for the short journey to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport so that we could have a chat. Just after the City Cabanas underpass, I noticed the insurance holder on his car’s windscreen was Amaco’s.

Amused, I pointed out that Ruto’s firm insures his car. He took a look at it and hit the roof. He asked his driver about it. The driver blamed someone else in his new office that was near MP Shah Hospital. I wondered why he had not noticed it before. I thought to myself the man must have been juggling too many balls in the air at that point in life. 

Let me retell briefly the story of how Jirongo, who was our “mole” in Kanu, deliberately told us, (I at the Nation), Martin Mutua (The Standard), and Peter Leftie (The People) a blatant lie on what Moi had supposedly said in a closed-door MPs’ meeting. Kanu had just got into a “cooperation" arrangement with Raila’s National Development Party and there was clamour for constitutional review.

The government and opposition had decided to set up a 26-member team. Each party was jostling for a big share so as to influence the reform path. Those wary of Moi feared that the ever cunning politician would control the committee.

Then Jirongo, in a bid to scuttle the plan and plant the seed of suspicion in Raila’s head, and cast Moi as a sungura mjanja acting in bad faith, told us: “Moi came into the meeting and said we should not worry, we can even take half of the seats and leave the rest for kina Raila and Kibaki.” That was a juicy story, and an automatic page one headline.

Moi protested and wrote a long letter to the Nation to which the management responded with a page one commentary. Moi called the Nation’s top ownership. For a week, I didn’t know whether I had a job or not.

Thanks to three veterans for navigating this shameful episode of my career and saving my skin — Wangethi Mwangi, Joseph Odindo and Njeri Rugene. Jirongo never apologised, but time healed this wound and we resumed our rapport after a long hiatus. But I had learnt my lesson, albeit painfully. 

Jirongo was many things to many people, but he has gone to rest. May he get blissful rest. Like Raila, his life and death will continue to be part of our national conversation through our lifetime. 

On a light note, and with respect to his family, I cannot resist saying that his life and my interaction with him reminds me of the lyrics of the legendary American country music king, the late Conway Witty’s song: 

I wanna live fast, 

love hard, die young

And leave a beautiful memory...

I have not said that he often wittingly conned his way and cut too many corners. What I must say is that he was largely loyal to his friends, and had the memory of an elephant —which he almost was.

Fare Thee Well CJ.

Kipkoech Tanui is a veteran journalist, columnist, political commentor, and member of the Kenya Editors Guild.