Is the Uhuru-Ruto alliance a repeat of tactics used by Moi to contain Raila?

As the Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto roadshow goes gallivanting all over the place ahead of a starring role at The Hague courtroom drama, I am becoming more and more convinced that the whole show is scripted and directed by none other than one Daniel arap Moi.

The wandering minstrels and a large supporting cast are determined to milk maximum political capital out of the International Criminal Court command performance, using a piece of drama right out of Moi’s playbook – stoking up ethnic hatred as a means to crafting political alliances.

A little history is in order. In the mid-1990s as then President Moi started crafting a re-election strategy ahead of the 1997 polls, his inner circle convened the Gema-Kamatusa talks.

They talks were aimed at reconciling the Gema (Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association) communities of central Kenya with the Rift Valley communities (Kalenjin, Masai, Turkana, Samburu), and uniting the two groups against the Luo.

The Kikuyu, of course, had borne the brunt of vicious bouts of ethnic terror in the Rift Valley designed by the Kanu diehards as their response to the multi-party campaign in the early 1990.

The attacks by the so-called Kalenjin warriors initially targeted the Luo, seen then as the key opposition forces, before lashing out at all other ‘‘alien’’ communities in the expansive Rift Valley, including the Kisii and the Luhya.

However, at some point, President Moi decided he needed to mend fences with the Kikuyu and hence the talks at his Kabarak home and Nakuru State House involving prominent politicians from the Gema and Kamatusa communities.

At one famous meeting at Kabarak, the message was not just the need for reconciliation between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin, the principal protagonists in the Rift Valley clashes, but the need for the two communities to unite against a common foe – Mr Raila Odinga’s Luo.

The message from the Moi camp was that the Kikuyu and Kalenjin were natural allies: They had tasted power and amassed wealth, which had to be protected from ‘‘communists’’ who were good for nothing but making noise and destroying property.

The attempt did not quite work, but Mr Moi never abandoned the mindset that the Kalenjin and Kikuyu are natural allies.

It was during that period of wooing the Kikuyu that he identified the young Uhuru Kenyatta as a leader worth nurturing.

After retaining power in 1997, President Moi tried another experiment, teaming up with Raila Odinga in a ‘Nilotic Alliance’ to counter the threat posed by the Kikuyu who remained fiercely in the opposition.

But even as he wooed the Luo, Mr Moi’s eye was still on the Kikuyu whom he saw as more reliable guarantors of his wealth and security once he left office.

As he crafted the post-Moi dispensation, he brought in Mr Odinga as secretary-general of the youthful new-look Kanu hierarchy unveiled to carry the flag in 2002, but identified Mr Kenyatta as his anointed successor, a daring move pushed by emerging power-brokers of the day, including his son Gideon and former Youth for Kanu ’92 activist, one William Ruto.

The rest, as they say, is history. Mr Odinga led a massive rebellion out of Kanu to ensure Mwai Kibaki’s victory and Mr Kenyatta’s defeat in a battle of two presidential candidates from central Kenya.

One story from the 2002 polls that has never quite come out is that Mr Kenyatta might never have been Moi’s chosen candidate at all; he was a decoy planted to guarantee a Kibaki victory!

Mr Kibaki, in a way, had ensured President Moi’s survival with the advent of multipartyism in 1992 by forming the DP and splitting the opposition vote.

Ten years later, it was payback time, and another 10 years later, the outgoing President Kibaki seems to have tapped Mr Kenyatta as his favoured successor.

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto have teamed up again after parting ways in 2007, and Mr Moi might be full of “I told you so” in reminding the Kalenjin community how he warned them against following Mr Ruto into the Odinga orbit then.

The drama unfolds as Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto prepare for The Hague opening by uniting their fans against the selfsame Odinga.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia. com