Man who predicted Kibaki presidency tells of Moi days

Former Machakos Town Member of Parliament Jonesmus Kikuyu holds the rare distinction of being a legislator who went to jail for having a vision.

In the 1980s, Mr Kikuyu, then a first-term MP, served a six-month jail term for predicting two happenings, one of which was to come true two decades later.

While having drinks with friends, he said the day would come when Mwai Kibaki, then the minister for Finance in the Moi government, would be president and he a cabinet minister. One prediction was to come true when Mr Kibaki was sworn in as the third President of the Republic in 2002. Mr Kikuyu is still waiting for the fulfilment of the other prediction.

“I hope President Kibaki, who benefited from my prophecy, will help me realise mine,” he joked during an interview with the Sunday Nation near Machakos town.

When he made the prediction, Mr Kikuyu, then a fiery young politician, was having drinks with friends at the popular T-Ten bar in Machakos when a heated discussion began. Those were the days when imagining the death of the President was treasonable.

“Kanu was the only party then. As a new MP, I felt I was the new blood that was to correct the wrongs of the regime. It was unheard of for people to question authority, but I felt I was the change that people needed. So, as I sat with my friends, former Machakos mayor Peter Muia Ndunda and councillor Peter Tuva Malatu, we found ourselves debating the unmentionable,” he said. Moments later Special Branch agents were looking for him.

“The two left me and rushed to the late Mulu Mutisya, then a powerful Kanu figure in Ukambani. Mulu had a direct telephone line to the President, and he told him what I had said. Shortly, I was surrounded by intelligence officers. I was frogmarched outside and bundled into a police Land-Rover.”

He was taken to court the next day and charged and remanded at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.

“They first charged me with high treason. After a month the charge was changed to sedition and then later behaving in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace,” he said. He was sentenced to six months in prison, and the then powerful Attorney-General Charles Njonjo asked the Speaker of the National Assembly to declare the Machakos Town seat vacant.

The MP had quit his job as the headmaster of Mitaboni ABC Girls’ Secondary School to contest in the 1979 General Election, just two years after his graduation from Kenyatta University with a degree in education. As an active student leader, Mr Kikuyu had been a marked man since his days at KU. In fact, were it not for a close relative who was in the Special Branch, he would have been detained in 1976 for allegedly organising student riots during the first anniversary of the murder of JM Kariuki.

“In the riots, students removed the last three letters at the Kenyatta University signboard to read Kenya University. This was to show Mzee Kenyatta that we did not like the way he was handling the JM murder saga,” Mr Kikuyu said.

His maverick nature was to land him in trouble after he went to Parliament for refusing to play ball. Just a year after his election, Mutisya, who was then the chairman of the New Akamba Union (NAU), invited him to meet President Moi at State House, Nairobi, together with Paul Ngei, then a minister and MP for Kangundo.

During the meeting, the President urged the leaders to work together for the benefit of the Akamba people.

Pulled us back

“The President gave Mr Mutisya and Mr Ngei Sh40,000 each and myself Sh10,000. It was a lot of money then, but what puzzled me was that, as we were walking out with Mr Ngei leading us, the President held my hand and Mr Mutisya’s and pulled us back.”

“Back to the room Moi told us ‘maliza hii mtu’ (finish this man) in reference to Mr Ngei who, by then, had been driven out of State House. In the absence of Mr Ngei the President gave us more money; Mr Mutisya got another Sh100,000 and me another Sh50,000.”

He said he asked Mr Mutisya the meaning of all this, and the senior politician replied: “Young man, this is what they call politics -- not the type you were playing at the university.”

Back in Parliament, Mr Ngei told his colleagues how he had a “smooth” meeting with the President and fellow Kamba leaders. “I wondered whether I should tell him he had been set up, but I let the thought pass,” Mr Kikuyu said.