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.

Later Mr Mutisya was to edge Mr Ngei from the powerful Machakos district Kanu chairman’s post in controversial circumstances. In Parliament, Mr Kikuyu was a supporter of a group of rebel politicians whom Mr Njonjo christened “the seven bearded sisters”. His association with James Orengo, Abuya Abuya, George Anyona, Mashengu wa Mwachofi, Koigi wa Wamere and Chelagat Mutai would cost him his seat -- and more.

“Before the conclusion of the case, I went to the Speaker and applied for study leave. I was surprised when the Speaker told me his hands were tied.”
But his tormentors were not about to give up. An election petition that had been filed by one of the losers, Paul Mbole Maneno, but which had remained unheard for nearly two years, was revived. The case was concluded in a record two months.

“I was served with petition papers in jail. During the hearing, counsel for the petitioner Satish Gautama, who was then President Moi’s lawyer, told me I was going to lose but would be allowed to contest the ensuing by-election.” In the by-election of December 11, 1982 Mr Kikuyu says he witnessed open rigging.

New boxes

“The counting had been completed, and I had trounced my nearest rival with 4,800 votes against approximately 1,000 votes. Then the district commissioner, who was the returning officer, announced that some more ballot boxes had been brought in. All the ballots in the new boxes were in favour of my rival, George Nthenge, who was declared the winner,” he said.

“I went back home and started small-scale farming. But six months after the by-election the ‘‘traitor’’ issue that was tailored to edge out Njonjo – who was then Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister – came up,” he said.

Mr Njonjo was accused of undermining the President, and a commission of inquiry was set up to investigate his conduct. After it all, Mr Moi called a snap election after dissolving Parliament in 1983.

Mr Kikuyu contested and won 13,000 votes against his closet rival, Mr Musau Ndanga, who managed to get slightly more than 5,000 votes. But in the 1988 elections, he lost the seat to Mr John Kyalo.

“The period between 1988 and 1997 was hard for me. During my time in Parliament we were earning about Sh10,000 a month. Leaders relied on handouts from well-connected politicians and the President. If you were in the wrong books, then your were doomed to suffer,” he said.

“My efforts to secure employment either in the parastatals or the civil service were frustrated by powerful people who believed I was anti-government and hence should be left to rot.

“I went down financially and psychologically. I would while away my time on my farm or with friends in pubs until the clamour for multiparty came in 1992.”

Election petition

He joined the Democratic Party of Kenya (DP), whose leader was Mr Kibaki, and later defected to Charity Ngilu’s Social Democratic Party in 1997.
He won the election that year and returned to Parliament. But he lost the seat again in 2002.

He lives like a peasant in Machakos, using matatus for travel as his old Peugeot pick-up was grounded two years ago.