Githongo thought his ties with the President were special

Working alongside the director of public prosecutions and a brand new Ministry of Justice – an institution phased out under Moi – John Githongo had the job of digging down through this purulent history, sorting through the layers of sleaze.

The Judiciary, which had become stuffed over the years with bribable magistrates ready to do Moi’s bidding, must be purged: scores would eventually be publicly denounced, dismissed or encouraged to retire. An inquiry, the Bosire Commission, was launched to probe the Goldenberg scandal. Another, the Ndung’u Commission, probed the land-grabbing phenomenon.

Then there were the two pieces of legislation Kibaki had announced on the lawns of State House soon after his inauguration on December 30, 2002: the Public Officer Ethics Act, which spelt out a code of conduct for public officers and obliged them to declare their wealth; and the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act, which created the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC), a doughty successor to the anti-corruption authority set up but rapidly neutered under Moi.

John helped ensure that the directorship of the new institution, which he eventually hoped to see given prosecutorial powers, went to Justice Aaron Ringera, whom he had befriended during his time at TI-Kenya on a long-haul flight to a World Bank meeting.

Convinced that this former solicitor general was the perfect candidate for the job, he went in person to lobby the various political party leaders – not all of whom shared his enthusiasm for Ringera – to support the appointment.

‘I put my reputation on the line, without hesitation or equivocation. I had complete faith in Ringera.’ John was also partly responsible for the KACC director being granted one of Kenya’s most generous civil service pay awards. The bigger the salary, the easier it would be for the holder of this key institution to resist temptation, he told the sceptics.

In NARC’s flurry of law-making, one thing, however, was made clear. These inquiries would not go to the very top of the chain. Moi’s lieutenants might be vulnerable to prosecution, but the retired president himself would remain beyond pursuit.

The new administration justified this stance on the grounds that ordinary Kenyans, grateful for Moi’s tactful withdrawal from the political scene, would be revolted by the sight of a venerable elder being hounded through the courts. It was an argument John endorsed. He should have been more alert to the gesture’s underlying message.

Even in the new-look, squeaky-clean, corruption-phobic Kenya, the really big players could expect to get off scot free, while the smaller fry would be held to account. As he put in his endless working days, friends from the old days noticed with concern that John, originally taken on as a consultant, now spoke in terms of ‘we’ when referring to State House.

It was ‘our government’, ‘our administration’, and when cynics expressed scepticism, he grew annoyed, for it meant doubting John himself. “He was using the language of government, when he should have seen himself as someone who had been seconded to government,’ says anti-corruption campaigner Mwalimu Mati. ‘He should have retained an intellectual distance, seen himself as an adviser, a specialist.’

Strong Man syndrome

Others viewed it as typical of a man who had to believe passionately in his allotted task to function at all If he had fallen prey to Strong Man syndrome, John was not the only smitten one. Bubbling with hope, the entire country needed, for a moment in history, to forget what it knew about Kibaki and his chums.

On the surface, there was little reason to view Kibaki, who had played the Kenyan system to the hilt as both vice president and Finance minister, as a likely champion of reform.

The first African to graduate from the London School of Economics, a former lecturer at what became Uganda’s respected Makerere University, one of the drafters of independent Kenya’s constitution, Kibaki was routinely described as ‘brilliant’.

But his glory days lay firmly behind him. Having swallowed one political humiliation after another under Moi, his preference for the unconfrontational role of Mr Nice Guy had won him the scornful sobriquet of ‘General Coward’ from political rivals, who quipped that Kibaki had never seen a fence he couldn’t sit on.

Yet suddenly Kibaki was recast in the role of national saviour by a coterie that, believing it held the moral high ground, thought nothing was now impossible. ‘Go home, tend to your goats and watch us govern this country,’ Justice minister Kiraitu Murungi told Moi, courting hubris with every patronising word.

Change the world

‘They got lost in their own rhetoric,’ says Ndii, with a shrug. ‘Because they had the instruments of State, they thought they could change the world. It wasn’t just John, all of them thought they were going to fix everything. Me, I was not a believer.’

It may have been a case of the ultimate idealist meeting the ultimate pragmatist, but John did not recognise the gulf in perspectives. Bonding with Kibaki came disconcertingly easily.

A politician with none of Moi’s instinctive understanding for the ordinary wananchi, Kibaki was an unrepentant intellectual snob. Whereas Moi, the former headmaster, was regarded as a leader who ‘knew how to talk to Kenyans with mud between their toes’, Kibaki was more likely to hail them as ‘pumbavu’ – fools.

He recognised and respected the rigorous quality of thought in the young man, who had strayed into State House at more or less the same age Kibaki himself had ventured into politics. There was also a certain inbuilt familiarity to the relationship.

The same faith

John’s accountant father had campaigned on behalf of Kibaki’s Democratic Party, and while the Kibaki and Githongo families were not exactly intimate, their children had gone to the same schools, they shared the same faith, they belonged to the same patrician milieu. In any case, affability came naturally to Kibaki, who possessed none of Moi’s gruff abrasiveness.

‘He’s a very unstuffy guy, very laid back and easy to shoot the breeze with,’ John remembers. The two regularly breakfasted together, and there were also many dinners, just the two of them tete-a-tete. Kibaki felt relaxed enough in John’s company to sit with him in the presidential bedroom, discussing politics, the price of oil, world affairs – never anything personal.

In John’s slightly star-struck eyes – who, after all, could spend quite so much time near the nation’s most important man without feeling a little giddy? – the President came to assume the role of alternative father figure, favourite uncle.

If John used the respectful ‘Mzee’ (Elder) when addressing the President, Kibaki addressed his anti-corruption chief as ‘Kijana’ – ‘young man’, a term that almost always comes tinged with paternal affection.

‘I used to think that relationship was very special. I had a huge amount of affection for Kibaki. Then I realised Kibaki was like that with everyone.’ Looking back, John would come to realise that he had allowed himself – as the overly cerebral often do – to be beguiled as much by a symbol as an individual. ‘At that time, everyone was dancing. Everyone was right to dance.’

Political players

Encapsulating the hope of a jubilant post-Moi nation, what Kibaki represented was more important than who he actually was.

John had the goodwill of the head of State, the envy of many veteran political players, his own staff and budget. It seemed, on the face of it, a great set-up from which to take on the forces of darkness.