When Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta died at an age estimated at over 90, a shaken and mournful nation could not ask questions.
But the press officer who watched him through his last earthly assignment was quietly and bitterly pointing an accusing finger.
“Mahihu (Eliud) was there; Mbiyu Koinange was there. Why did they take Kenyatta to State House Mombasa and not Pandya Memorial Hospital. He should have received first aid at Pandya,” Lee Njiru says in a documentary aired by NTV.
Mahihu was the Coast Provincial Commissioner and Koinange a Minister of State in the Office of the President. Mr Njiru was Kenyatta’s press officer between 1977 and 1978.
President Kenyatta’s last day was spent at the Msambweni Primary School in Kwale, and Mr Njiru recalls a day that had all the signs of things going astray.
“Even before he collapsed , they should have seen his behaviour when he hosted Kenyan envoys abroad. He was flustered,” Njiru recalls in an interview with NTV’s Linus Kaikai.
“He forgot his fly whisk. We had to send a car and stop the (Likoni) ferry,” recalls Mr Njiru. He calls it a matter of fate. Mr Njiru was a junior information officer in Kakamega, the headquarters of the then Western Province, when he was ordered to report to State House, Nakuru. One of President Kenyatta’s press officers had taken leave and State House required a temporary replacement.
“When I went to State House I was taken to Mzee. He was in a small room. I was trembling. He told Koinange, ‘Look he is trembling. Koinange helped me by telling Kenyatta: ‘It is the right of every citizen to tremble in front of his president.’”
Kenyatta easily stood out among leaders agitating for Kenya’s independence. He was much older than most of his freedom struggle peers but also had the air of the leader of choice in the group, complete with a commanding presence and voice.
“His eyes were rough,” says retired politician Simeon Nyachae then a provincial commissioner. “He had those eyes that make you feel loved or intimidated,” adds Joseph Kaguthi, also a former PC.
He was as a result the unanimous pick of all the leaders including Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who turned down an offer by the colonial authorities that would have made him the first prime minister of a self-governing Kenya. Jaramogi instead made a terse demand; there will be no independence without Kenyatta.
“Jaramogi believed Kikuyus had shed more blood for the liberation of the country more than any other group, ethnically speaking. Then there was Jomo Kenyatta who was older, who was more worldly, who was more experienced,” explains author Miguna Miguna.
When he was estimated to be over 70, Kenyatta became the country’s first prime minister, and a year later the first president. Harambee, supposedly derived from an Indian work chant and meaning pulling together, became his rallying call for the new nation whose myriad challenges included healing the rifts arising from the bitter struggle for independence particularly in Kenyatta’s native central Kenya region. Kenyatta wasted no time in exerting his authority.
“We were only eight million people; he was beginning from zero,” says Senator GG Kariuki.
Former head of the civil service Francis Muthaura and close confidante of President Mwai Kibaki, whose first posting was Mombasa as a district officer, says Kenyatta liked delegating which is why provincial commissioners became very powerful.
“Then there were the people surrounding him, especially the security... Most of them were illiterate and upbeat. They were mesmerised by power,” says Mr Njiru.
But Kenya was not an island. The West was checking the spread of communism and was not ready to lose the newly independent state to the East.
According to Lancaster talks veteran John Keen, “The newly independent nation was nevertheless to fall into the trap of the so-called ideological war of the 1960s between the West and the East; capitalism and communism, the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The intrigues of the complex cold war struck the heart of the Kenyan government separating President Kenyatta and his close friend and vice-president Oginga Odinga.”
According to Mr Muthaura, “the fallout was engineered by the cold war” while GG Kariuki believes that “the international environment separated Kenyatta and Odinga… the British painted Odinga as Jomo’s opponent.”
Mr Nyachae agrees: “Although Kenyans didn’t want to talk about it, the problem was not Mzee… the problem was instigated from outside.”
Former political detainee and Member of Parliament Koigi Wamwere says that, “Initially, the struggle was between capitalism and socialism.”
The Kenyatta-Odinga rivalry culminated in a series of tragic events that began with the assassination of Pio Gama Pinto, a freedom fighter of Goan descent.
“He shouldn’t have been the first one to be assassinated,” says Mr Keen of the young nationalist who was Jaramogi’s strategist.
According to Wamwere, “Pinto was killed because he was seen as the brain behind socialism in Kenya.”
“Naturally, Jaramogi thought he could succeed Kenyatta who he said was like a second god,” says Miguna Miguna.
A year after Pinto’s death came the political liquidation of Jaramogi who was then vice president of both the country and the ruling party Kanu. The mastermind of the liquidation was Tom Mboya, the youthful political genius who was Kenyatta’s sidekick.
“He (Jaramogi) didn’t realise what lengths the other side had gone to stop him. He was an open-minded person and a believer in democracy. The other side was not democratic at all,” says Wamwere.
“Even though nobody wants to say it, the fight was about power,” says Miguna Miguna.
But Mboya himself could not last long after helping remove Oginga from the political centre. In 1969 a gunman fired several shots at him as he stepped out of a chemist shop on Moi Avenue.
“Mboya was not killed for the same reason as Pio Gama Pinto. Whatever ate Mboya was the struggle between him and his fellow capitalists when it came to succeeding Kenyatta,” says Wamwere.
Of Mboya, Keen says: “He was eloquent, he was smart, he knew what he was doing.”
A ceremony to open the Soviet-built New Nyanza Hospital in Kisumu ended up becoming a platform for Luo resentment against the Kenyatta government.
Kenyatta travelled to Kisumu on October 25, 1969, to open the hospital; but coming only four months after Mboya’s assassination, the ceremony ended in bloodshed with the presidential guard and the police shooting over 50 people dead when a commotion occurred on the presidential dais.
“When we went to the Russia hospital, young men were booing,” recalls Mr Nyachae who was then a PC and present at the function. “When you push people who have guns, they shoot,” he adds.
Kenyatta: Kitu gani KPU hapa munasema dume. Wanafanyia nini hii nchi ya Wajaluo (What is this thing called KPU. What are they doing to the Luo nation)?”
Kenyatta: Kwa nini huwezi kuwapatia chakula unajaza tumbo lako (Why don’t you give them food; you are filling your own stomach?
As the 1970s began, Mzee Kenyatta was ageing fast as the political intrigues around his administration continued to deepen.
The President’s inner circle grew in power and influence as the old man advanced in age. More and more, his handlers began to appear as the real bearers of political power. In this circle was Koinange, who in addition to being minister of state was also Kenyatta’s in-law.
“Mbiyu was almost everything to Kenyatta,” says Mr Keen. And behind the scenes was Kenyatta’s chief bodyguard Wanyoike Thungu whose name was to be linked to another ugly episode of the Kenyatta era, the killing of flamboyant politician JM Kariuki.
Then there was Charles Mugane Njonjo, the powerful Attorney General who was the enforcer in chief of Kenyatta’s will.
“He enjoyed the fact that he knew things would go perfectly well the way he wanted them to go,” says Dr Richard Leakey of Mr Njonjo who Keen describes as “educated, eloquent in Parliament, smart dresser and an excellent lawyer”.
JM, the flashy, wealthy and charismatic politician from Nyandarua, was killed in 1975. And like Pinto and Mboya, JM’s death joined the list of the mysterious killings, unexplained to this day. His death reawakened the national conscience to the unfolding intrigues of end-game politics.
Did JM have it coming?
Everybody kept quiet apart from JM who said ‘I would do so’. I think from that day he became a marked man”.
In a report, a parliamentary committee submitted its findings on the death of JM and placed blame squarely on Kenyatta’s doorstep.
The Elijah Mwangale report linked Koinange and Thungu to JM’s death. Kenyatta was furious. He ordered the committee to delete Koinange’s and Thungu’s names because it was as good as naming him. The committee obliged.
The mid 1970s saw the decline in both activity and health of the President and the intensifying of political activity related to below-the-surface schemes by politicians to succeed him.
A group calling itself Change the Constitution Movement emerged, its leadership made up of politicians from Kenyatta’s central Kenya region. As the name suggests, the group’s agenda was to change the Constitution to prevent Vice President Moi from ascending to power in the event of Kenyatta’s death.
Influential politicians Njenga Karume and Kihika Kimani were among the strong proponents of the movement. They enlisted in their ranks a Njoro-based police unit that owed its allegiance to the provincial police boss James Mungai who was said to have personally harassed Moi.
“(Of Moi) being slapped, I don’t know but he was mishandled by Mungai. Terribly mishandled,” says GG.
However, the group did not achieve its objective and did not last long because of one reason: Njonjo. The AG made it clear that it was criminal to imagine and encompass the death of the President.
Because of Njonjo’s no-nonsense firmness, Kenyatta’s final months in office were characterised by relative quiet. By defending the Constitution, Njonjo laid a fine indirect free kick for the equally calculating Moi. The unassuming vice president targeted only one constituency; President Kenyatta.
Pesident Kenyatta had engaged the autopilot by 1976. He left Moi to represent him in meetings around the country and abroad. He retreated to State House spending much of his time between Mombasa and Nakuru where traditional dancers helped wind down his evenings.
