Maths professor had to master the art of politics

He was making a serious bid for the presidency as one of the longest-serving MPs and senior cabinet minister, yet Prof George Saitioti had never overcome the image of a reluctant politician.

By the time he died on Sunday in a helicopter crash in Ngong, Prof Saitoti had served a continuous 29 years as MP, and virtually all of them in senior cabinet position including a long stint as Vice President.

As minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, the sometimes awkward and hesitant politician occupied one of the moist powerful and strategic dockets.

That was confirmation that he had fully mended fences with President Kibaki, whom he used to refer to in angry and bitter terms whilst a loyalist in the President Moi’s Kanu regime at a time when he his current boss, and predecessor in the number two seat, was firmly in the opposition.

Prof Saitoti died while making a determined bid for the presidency on the ticket of President Kibaki’s PNU, but that was not to indicate that he had secured the endorsement of the incumbent.

It is more a reflection of the fact that President Kibaki has long eschewed party politics, leaving PNU up for grabs.

Prof Saitoti moved adroitly to fill the apparent void, forcing others who might have been interested in securing the presidents support base, notably Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, launch their own parties.

Taking control of PNU was an indication that after all those years in politics, Prof Saitoti had become his own man and determined to chart his own political direction.

When he was plucked out of academia with nomination to parliament in 1983, with the powerful post of Finance Minister to boot, it was clear that Prof Saitoti was headed for big things.

But he also seemed a hapless marionette whose destiny was being crafted and shaped by then President Moi and the power-man of the regime, Nicholas Biwott.

After serving one term as a nominated MP, Prof Saitoti was duly elected in his own right as MP for Kajiado North.

The extraordinary steps powerful figures in the Moi government took to make sure he was elected, from the gerrymandering that that carved out a suitable constituency in Ngong district to the strong-arm tactics that ensured he went unopposed, provided tell-tale signs that the power-brokers of the day had special plans for Prof Saitoti.

The 1988 elections came about at a time when powerful forces around President Moi were arrayed against then Vice President Mwai Kibaki.

Moi had crafted the entire poll as an anti-Kibaki strategy, a prelude to finally dropping a long-suffering vice president who had already been shunted to the sidelines.

‘Loyal’ politicians across the country, particularly in central Kenya, were primed and funded to wage battle against Kibaki and his allies on the premise that the sitting VP was ‘anti-Nyayo’, or at least lukewarm in his support for a system that thrived on sycophancy and the personality cult.

It was thus no surprise when Mr Kibaki was dropped as vice president and relegated to the ministry of health, to be replaced as number two by a surprise choice, newcomer Dr Josephat Karanja.

Within a short time, it become apparent that Dr Karanja, who had no grassroots support and few political friends, was just a stop-gap VP, placed there to warm the seat till the opportune time.

Barely six months into his as VP, April 1989, Dr Karanja was hounded out of office; and Prof George Saitoti become the sixth man to take the seat that is often described as a heart beat away from the presidency.

He proved himself a loyal and stalwart of the Moi regime, but even as he amassed power, wealth and influence, Prof Saitoti was never seen as anything more than a mere appendage of the awesome political network controlled by Mr Biwott.

If he ever sought to strike out in his own, a big Achilles heel was his lack of any solid political constituency.

While he was pulled into politics touted as champion of the Maasai community and a representative of Rift Valley interests, Prof Saitoti’s ethnic identity, or lack of it, made him unable to build a base.

He represented a multi-ethnic constituency in a Maasai region, but while politically he was proclaimed a leader of the community, he didn’t speak the language, needing the services of an interpreter while addressing political rallies.

By the time he first contested the Kajiado North seat in 1988, it had become public knowledge that Prof Saitoti was a Kikuyu. He was born of Kikuyu parents in apart of what is now Kiambu County, who migrated to Ngong area while he was still a child.

It was also known that his given name was George Kinuthia Kiarie, alias Muthengi, before he adopted the Maa name, Saitoti, probably as a means towards securing an education in Ngong at a period when the Kikuyu were looked on with suspicion by the colonial regime.

Way before he become a famous public figure, the dual and optional identity allowed Prof Saitoti him to sit in the East African Legislative Assembly as George Kiarie.

Once firmly entrenched in the politics of President Moi’s Rift Valley mafia, it obviously served Prof Saitoti well to play down, if not disavow, his central Kenya roots.

One problem was that in the dispensation to come, like the present as he aims at the presidency, he was to have a difficult time winning his community support.

Prof Saitoti has always bristled when issues of his ethnic background arise. In recent time, he has tried to address the delicate issue by referring to himself as of mixed Maasai-Kikuyu blood.

In an environment where the solid ethnic base is a key ingredient in politics, Prof Saitoti has also tried to make his peculiar situation a strength rather than a weakness, emphasising that he is a de-tribalised Kenyan in a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic constituency, a true nationalist rather than an ethnic leader.

Even though he was ranking low in opinion polls, Prof Saitoti was working hard to project himself as a natural successor to President Kibaki, especially targeting the two regions from which he claims kinship, central Kenya and Rift Valley, that both might be rudderless with the coming elections.

In the Rift Valley he has actively sought to project himself as one of their own, reaching out specifically to retired President Moi’s Kalenjin community that presently looks to Eldoret North MP William Ruto as its champion.

Mr Moi has no time for Ruto, who helped virtually dismantle the once all-powerful Kanu and is now, with Uhuru Kenyata, to face trial at the International Criminal Court over the 2007 post-election violence.

Mr Ruto is also a presidential candidate, but all polls show that his prospects are limited despite string support within his community.

If trial at The Hague makes Mr Ruto;’s candidacy untenable and his community has no alternate—Mr Moi’s son, Gedion, who assumed control of Kanu after Mr Kenyatta decamped is a no-hopper—Prof Saitoti could well have projected himself as viable defender of their interests.

A similar scenario could have played out in the Mt Kenya region where Mr Kenyatta has exploited The Hague indictments to capture strong support within the community.

Although Mr Kenyatta has launched an aggressive and full-blown presidential campaign, the ICC cloud still hangs over him.

If unable to run, Prof Saitoti could have been amongst the contenders seeking the floating vote, and unlike Ms Martha Karua and Mr Peter Kenneth, he has never come out as a foe of Mr Kenyatta.

He has also come out as a loyal, trusted and effective minister in the Kibaki government despite past mutual hostility.

After years of serving the Moi government, he might have found the Kibaki administration like a breath of fresh air, especially given the leeway to do his job and not just “used and dumped” as he might have felt previously.

After the 1990 Saba Saba riots organized by proponents of multi-party democracy, Prof Saitoti was picked to chair the Kanu Review Committee that listened to people across the country before recommending a minimal set of reforms.

However, the committee played deaf to incessant calls for a multi-party system, and instead reported that the people wanted the Kenya to remain a single-party system under Kanu.

The futility of that position was seen the following year when President Moi gave way to the pressure and allowed formation of opposition political parties.

One of Prof Saitoti’s enduring legacies, and a most dubious one at that, was the Goldenberg scandal by which powerful figures in the Moi regime skimmed billions from the public coffers.

As Minister for Finance—responsible for the approvals that facilitated brazen looting that virtually bankrupted the country, sent inflation and interest rates into the stratosphere, and saw collapse of the Kenya shilling—he could never escape being tarred with the Goldenberg brush.

It was the Goldenberg scandal that cost him the Treasury docket after the 1992 elections, being replaced with Mr Musalia Mudavadi as donors withheld aid demanding accountability and clean-up of the financial systems.

Prof Saitoti had only narrowly retained his seat with the return of multi-party elections in 1992, but he least was kept on as vice president despite being dropped as Finance minister.

That he again had to fight very hard to be re-elected in 1997 despite his senior position illustrated his tenuous hold on Kajiado North, but the biggest shocker was to come with constitution of the new government when President Moi declined to re-appoint him as vice president.

In a rare move, the president left the post vacant for 14 months, ignoring the public clamour for a substantive number two, the threat of constitutional crisis if the presidency fell vacant and an opposition move led by Ugenya James Orengo, now minister for Lands, to move a motion of no-confidence on grounds that the government was not properly constituted.

Finally, when President Moi was moved to re-appoint him, it must have done no good for Prof Saitoti’s ego and confidence that it was by casual and dismissive roadside remark to the public to the effect that “we will now see whether your sufurias (pots) will fill up.”

By then, Prof Saitoti should have been well aware that he no longer occupied a special place in the Moi court, especially on the presidential succession planning.

The final humiliation was delivered in the run-up to the 2002 elections when President Moi, serving out his final term, plotted a succession strategy that included formalising Kanu’s merger with Mr Raila Odinga’s National Development Party (NDP)and unveiling a youthful new Kanu hierarchy, with political neophyte Uhuru Kenyatta at the helm.

It remains hardly believable to this day that an experienced operative like Prof Saitoti never saw the writing in the wall.

He was genuinely shocked during the March 2002 Kanu Delegates Conference to realise right on the floor that he was not in the new lineup.

His angry rebuttal to President Moi’s—the famous ‘there come (sic) a time’ speech—has become the stuff of legend.

“There come a time, there come a time when the nation is more important than an individual”, he told the assembled delegates before being hustled off the stage.

Then came Moi’s endorsement of Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred successor, and another public humiliation when the outgoing president pointed to Prof Saitoti at a rally and intoned:

“Huyu profesa ni rafiki yangu, lakini urafiki an uongozi ni tofauti (This professor is my friend, but friendship and leadership are not the same)”.

That surely was the final straw, and when Kanu newcomer Raila Odinga led the rebellion from within against Uhuru Kenyatta’s handpicked crowning, Prof Saitoti this time did not hesitate.

Along with another prospective candidate Kalonzo Musyoka, he joined the en-masse stampede from Kanu and handed Mwai Kibaki victory on the Narc ticket.

But it was not long before he broke ranks with the ex-Kanu that had joined the victorious coalition under the LDP flag.

Ha had aligned himself firmly with President Kibaki by the time the 2005 referendum on the new constitution led to the final split.

By then Prof Saitoti had already earned himself plaudits for successfully steering President Kibaki’s legacy project, the free primary education programme.

One of the of the most enigmatic politicians in Kenya, Prof Saitoti’s epitaph has been written many times, yet he had this uncanny ability to bounce back, earning himself the tag of the proverbial cat with nine lives.

One of Prof Saitoti’s fabled comebacks was witnessed last year when he announced his presidential bid.

By the time of his demise he had turned the president’ party, PNU, into his own, and been to all corners of the country opening party offices and selling his bid.

“Mnafikiri kwa muda huu wote nimekuwa nimelala, ama nilikuwa najipanga? (Do you think all this time I have been serving you I have been asleep, or preparing myself? Let every Kenyan know that I am contesting this office,” he declared in Kajiado town at the launch of his bid.

A former mathematics professor at Nairobi University, Prof Saitoti was plucked out of relative obscurity with nomination to Parliament and appointment as Finance minister in 1983, after stints on the boards of Mumias Sugar Company and Kenya Commercial Bank.

Mr Biwott saw in the university don a useful technocrat who was, nonetheless, unable to create his own independent political base.

“While Saitoti was not Maasai by blood and or even cultural adaptation, he could have made a good compromise candidate in that he can attract Maasai votes, as well as those of the Kikuyu.

“If he became president or he mounted a serious campaign, the Maasai would have considered him one of their own,” novelist Henry ole Kulet told the Nation on Sunday. Throughout his reign, President Kibaki demonstrated strong confidence and respect for Prof Saitoti.

Perhaps the only time President Kibaki has come out in defence of anybody outside the First Family, he once released a rare statement publicly declaring his confidence in the minister after against stinging attack by First Lady Lucy Kibaki over the Sachangwan petrol tanker inferno.

President Kibaki often called him just by his first name, George. Prof Saitoti’s stoic mien was however known to frustrate his allies.

Before the 2002 stampede form kanu, his on-off ally in Maasai leadership, National Heritage minister William ole Ntimama, threw up his hands in exasperation at the Suswa grounds on Prof Saitoti dithered on a resolution to walk out on President Moi.

Then there was the 1990 poisoning incident. In the wake of Foreign minister Robert Ouko’s assassination, rumours spread that the then VP had also narrowly survived killing by poison Both he and President Moi firmly denounced the stories.

It was many years later that he was to confoirm that something had happened. “If there is anybody who has been subjected to tribulations, it is I, Prof Saitoti. At one time they even tried to poison me”, he told a public rally at Kikuyu in 2003.

There was also his contribution to the debate on the report of the Parliamentary Select Committee that probed Dr Ouko’s death:

“How come the committee never deemed it fit to investigate why the Vice-President was almost dying at the same time?” he asked, “at the time Ouko was killed, I had been poisoned.

“I was unconscious. Saitoti was on his deathbed. This is not my original skin,” an emotive Prof Saitoti said, displaying his hands.

Prof Saitoti was born in 1944 at Gikambura village of Kikuyu in Kiambu to Zacharia Muthengi Kiarie and Zipporah Gathoni. In the 1930s, the family moved to Ngong’ in Kajiado.

He attended local primary schools and thenm noved to Mangu High School before clinching a scholarship to Brandeis University outside Massachusetts, USA.

“It was a place of high, high academic quality. I think it also broadened our minds a great deal. Being a Wien scholar at Brandeis laid the foundation for my success," he told Nation at a rare interview at Elementaita Country Lodge early this year.

After graduating from Brandeis, Prof Saitoti earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Warwick in England where he wrote a thesis on algebraic typology.

In 1972, he returned to Kenya and was appointed mathematics lecturer at the University of Nairobi, rising to Prof and head of department.

The author of ‘The Challenges of Economic and Institutional Reforms in Africa: Contemporary Perspectives on Developing Societies’ however left the scene without writing a memoir and little is known about his private life.

He is survived by his wife Margaret and two adopted children, and died only two months away from his 67th birthday.