Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua during the launch of DAP-K new headquarters at Karen, Nairobi on January 27, 2025.
Looking at and listening to Mr Rigathi Gachagua today, the Luhya adage vindu vichenjanga (things change) immediately comes to mind.
The vindu vichenjanga cliché gained traction through a Luhya song in 2017 by Amos Barasa, implying changing times and suggesting that President Uhuru Kenyatta would be defeated in the 2017 General Election. That, however, did not happen.
Mr Gachagua is a man who, over the past two years, has rapidly transformed from a Deputy President to an impeached politician and now a prospective regional kingpin, threatening to make his former boss, Dr William Ruto, a one-term president.
Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka (left) and former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.
Mr Gachagua is emerging as a man willing to abandon all the stances he was once known for, shedding the image of a government hawk to become its harshest critic and revising his previous public statements with new ones – never mind that they are the opposite of his earlier speeches.
This week, as he met Kalonzo Musyoka and DAP-Kenya’s Eugene Wamalwa in an apparent coalition-making mission, one could hardly imagine that this was the same Mr Gachagua who, as a running mate in the 2022 campaigns and subsequently Deputy President, openly expressed disdain for the Wiper Party leader.
In August 2023, for example, the then Deputy President told mourners in Machakos at the funeral of Anne Kalekye, mother of Mwala MP Vincent Musyoka, that residents of Ukambani should abandon Mr Musyoka for leading them astray. The two are now close political allies.
However, the person who has probably suffered the most in Mr Gachagua’s Saul-to-Paul conversion is President Ruto, who has, over the past five months, become his punching bag.
This is the same leader Mr Gachagua once praised as “a well-meaning gentleman with whom I did not even enter into a written agreement in 2022 because I fully trust him.”
Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka (left), his DAP-Kenya counterpart Eugene Wamalwa, and former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua when they met at Karen Blixen in Nairobi.
Today, in Mr Gachagua’s mind, President Ruto – whom he once lauded as “passionate about people’s issues and only opposed by jealous men for no reason” – is now “a betrayer of trust, a one-man show, and deserving of rejection at the ballot.”
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology lecturer Charles Mwangi describes it as politics, “where competition plays out just like in a love relationship – when it turns toxic, all care goes out the window.”
“It is perfectly in order for Gachagua to change with time, especially since the things he once said in favour of President Ruto and his government led him to a thankless send-off (after being impeached in October 2024). Maybe disowning his past statements could give him a comeback – that is politics,” says Mr Mwangi.
The Gachagua who once fervently supported the Affordable Housing Programme, claiming it would create jobs for millions of youths, is today among its harshest critics.
“Those lecturing the President about this affordable housing programme are simply clueless about the visionary agenda Dr Ruto has for this country,” he declared in March 2023 while in Murang’a County.
Back then, Mr Gachagua also said, “We are deliberate in dignifying people’s lives, and (in a direct jab at Mr Raila Odinga), we cannot take lectures from politicians who have thrived by packing people in slums as their voting bloc.”
Today, however, Mr Gachagua believes the programme should be abolished, branding it “one of the biggest fraudulent undertakings by the Ruto administration, a business opportunity for selling cement, steel, and iron sheets to benefit the well-connected in this government.”
Similarly, he has had nothing but kind words for Mr Odinga in recent days, especially after the former Prime Minister lost the African Union Commission Chairperson vote.
The Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), which Mr Gachagua once supported as Deputy President, is today described by him as a “death trap for Kenyans due to its impracticality and inefficiencies, where the key target is looting the more than Sh100 billion meant for infrastructure revamping from the previous National Health Insurance Fund.”
Housing levy
Mr Gachagua also sees the two new and enhanced deductions as a serious raid on the payslip, predicting that they will be President Ruto’s biggest downfall in the 2027 General Election.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua is strategically positioning himself as a political hero.
“Once a new government is sworn in, that housing levy will have to be abolished. We must restore the dignity of payslips. Kenyans have suffered too much,” Mr Gachagua said last month.
In 2023, when the levy was introduced, Mr Gachagua touted it as an employment creator, dismissing opponents and taunting journalists—whom he accused of being used to fight the programme—that they would still pay the levy whether they liked it or not.
A man such as National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah was once, in Gachagua’s mind, “a visionary, principled, and community defender in the National Dialogue Committee, ensuring our interests are safe with him.”
Today, however, Mr Ichung’wah has become “a man who has pawned his brain to President Ruto, a puppet used to air all manner of infamies to disparage even his own community.”
While in office, Mr Gachagua praised Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro as “a man with a political future, whom I will spare no effort to groom and shape.”
That was before Mr Nyoro launched a campaign to politically undermine the 59-year-old Gachagua, with allies such as Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu calling for the Mathira-born DP’s removal and replacement with the 38-year-old Kiharu MP.
Today, Gachagua has changed his tune, describing the Kiharu MP as “a man with no stand... even when something monumental is happening, he remains silent.” Mr Nyutu, on his part, has turned into one of the former Deputy President’s most vocal supporters.
The ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party, which Mr Gachagua once described as “the Mountain party that we will all enrol into for now and for 2027,” has now become, in his words, “a leprosy zone to be avoided.”
From left: Kisii County Senator Richard Onyonka, Wiper Party Leader Kalonzo Musyoka, Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, Democratic Action Party of Kenya (DAP-K) leader Eugene Wamalwa, Former Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malalah and DAP-K Deputy Leader Wafula Wamunyinyi during the launch of DAP-K new headquarters at Karen, Nairobi on January 27, 2025.
As he prepares for his hyped Mt Kenya declaration – which he says will inform the region’s voters on the direction to take in 2027 – Mr Gachagua has announced plans to unveil a new party, signalling the sudden and irreversible demise of UDA.
Dowry negotiations
Even his own Mathira MP, Eric wa Mumbi, once “a man I fully trust and endorse as the right leader to inherit my seat as I move higher to serve as DP,” has now become an adversary.
Mr Mumbi, who once considered Gachagua a father figure (even playing a role in his dowry negotiations and payment for his marriage to Murang’a Woman Rep Betty Maina), has dismissed him as “the impeached and nearly unhinged man,” while Gachagua now describes him as “a political toddler in the President’s praise-and-worship team, whose inclination to sell-out politics is unmatched.”
But it has not been all from positive to negative – Gachagua has also adopted new alliances and views.
For instance, as Deputy President, he described the Kikuyu Council of Elders as “that greedy and divisive entity that we cannot even entrust with the simple task of brewing our traditional liquor (Muratina) for us.”
He alleged that the elders would fast-track the brewing process using chemicals to make it ready faster, “so they could get drunk sooner.”
However, he has since reversed course and is now frequently seen in their company, consulting them in preparation for his 2027 political strategy.
Similarly, he has abandoned his previous stance of attacking Kenya’s founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and his family – including former President Uhuru Kenyatta and their business interests. Mr Gachagua has since publicly apologised to the Kenyatta family and embraced them as senior figures, both economically and politically.
Reflecting on his transformation, Mr Gachagua told worshippers in Meru County last week that he had undergone a “Damascus moment.”
“I was a bitter man before the 2022 General Election because of the challenges I faced. I came to office with bitterness, but through prayers – and I thank my wife, Pastor Dorcas, for her prayers –within a year, I was a healed person. I have forgiven everyone who wronged me and have asked for forgiveness from those I wronged,” he said.
mwangilink@gmail.com
