Keziah Mbugua, heroine who fought for cheaper housing, exits the stage

When low-cost housing advocate Ingrid Munro first mentioned to me a woman freedom fighter in Soweto, Kayole, whose story, she averred, needed to be told, the idea was compelling enough for me to fall for. I had never interviewed a freedom fighter, let alone a female one.

Then competing priorities on both the source and the writer’s part crept in; the story kept being postponed — until that ominous September 13, when Mrs Munro called to inform me that the heroine was no more.

Keziah Wanjiru Mbugua, Cucu to family and friend alike, had died a breath away from the enviable nonagenarian bracket, effectively stumping my mishandled dream of interviewing a national hero.

Gone, too, was the rare opportunity of hearing the Mau Mau account from a woman as men have traditionally hogged the Mashujaa Day accounts space.

I was invited to her burial in Donyo Sabuk, Machakos County, 10 days later to glean from the eulogies what I would now never get from the horse’s mouth. However, my experience of Kenyan burials, where mourners are somehow all supposed to understand the local language, deterred me from grabbing that opportunity.

Given, moreover, that my routine duties did not allow me to travel out of Nairobi, I wondered if I might meet Cucu’s family and friends later, a wish that was granted last week, on October 14.

Cucu helped to create a housing project and building materials factory, which were used to build their new houses in Soweto. This was after they were evicted from old Soweto, which was too close to the airport for aircraft’s safety, in the late 1980s.

Elizabeth Mbugua, 55, Wanjiru’s lastborn, led the motley group, whose ages ranged from the matriarch’s two-year-old great-granddaughter, Baby Tiffany Watere, to 75-year-old Richard Gitahi Njoroge. They eulogised the former Mau Mau detainee, whose 712-member Kayole Mihang’o Muungano Group spear-headed a low-cost housing revolution in the city’s Kayole area.

By the time former Embakasi MP David Mwenje and his cronies parcelled out the eight-acre plot — one of the unresolved cases in the yet-to-be-released Ndung’u Report — each Kayole-Mihang’o member had a two-room house.

One of the star projects of the Africa Housing Fund (AHF) — a continental enterprise whose Kenyan office thrived until its founder executive director Ingrid Munro retired in 1999 — Kayole Mihang’o specialised in low-cost building materials.

They manufactured hollow concrete blocks, which not only lower construction material costs, but also provided better insulation against the vagaries of weather. Other products included red roofing tiles, windows and doors.

The visibility of the Kayole Mihang’o Muungano Group was such that, not only did it earn its chairperson Wanjiru the Head of State’s Commendation on December 11, 1986 by then President Daniel arap Moi, but also a lorry, courtesy of its achievements.

The sheer success of the group saw Wanjiru globe-trot to showcase the activities she was involved in at conferences in Sweden, Thailand, Denmark and Burundi, among others.

Wanjiru’s associates, including best friend Ingrid and daughter Elizabeth, believe it was her high profile and achievements that invited politicians’ envy, resulting in the grabbing of the factory and its assets, effectively killing a money-minter.

A lesser spirit could have been crushed by the loss of the factory that had transformed the Kayole Mihang’o group of previously homeless people to homeowners.

Not so Wanjiru; she and her husband, Jason Mbugua, were detained in 1954 at Kamiti and Manyani respectively, only to find their land in Londiani, Rift Valley, grabbed upon release in 1957 and 1958, respectively.

The detention and the relocation had steeled their resolve to confront and overcome the worst.

According to Boniface Mbugua, 32, who spent many hours with Cucu, imbibing her detention experiences, her three-year stint at the Kamiti Maximum Prison saw her participate in soul-destroying mass burials every Friday (see sidebar, above).

Taken into custody

“Grandma told me she used to feed freedom fighters, including grandpa, in the forest. When grandpa was arrested, she was inevitably taken into custody,” Mbugua told DN2.

“The church played a very significant role in her arrest, profiling them (worshippers) as pro- and anti-independence.”

And did Cucu tell the former project coordinator of Mathare Youth Sports Association the meaning of Mau Mau? His mother, Elizabeth, interjects: “Mau Mau doesn’t have a specific meaning. Mum said it had to do with eating in a hurry to avoid arrest.”

Although her husband died in 1989 before he could taste the fruits of low-cost shelter, the Kayole Mihang’o experience had instilled in Wanjiru the no let-up spirit. She was determined to do even more for the homeless.

That was the genesis of Jamii Bora Trust, of which she was a promoter, key inspiration and an active recruiter of new members until the time of her death.

She fought an epic battle between 2005 and 2007 to wrest Kaputiei New Town from high-profile vested interests, who sought to grab the plot from the poor it was intended for, although she herself never had a house in the town.

However, like all former members of the Kayole Mihang’o group, she was absorbed into Jamii Bora Trust. Not all Jamii Bora Trust members have homes in Kaputiei New Town.

When Jamii Bora Sacco became a bank, Cucu was highly involved in the creation of the Yawezekana Sacco that ‘adopted’ the members.