The Kamotho I knew: A man for all seasons ...and reasons

Joseph Kamotho

Former Kanu secretary general and Mathioya MP the late Joseph Kamotho. 

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • From a Cabinet Minister for Higher Education, flying Kenya’s flag on his top-range car, to a humble shopkeeper on Nairobi’s Koinange Street after the political witch-hunt of the ’80s that swept aside politicians perceived to be Njonjo-men, John Joseph Kamotho went the full length and breadth of power and penury. He will be remembered as a politician who defied his community to stick with the ruling party, which he fondly dubbed ‘Baba na Mama,’ and benefited immensely for this

Politics is not a soccer match between Gor Mahia Football Club and AFC Leopards Club. That is what John Joseph Kamotho — who died in South Africa this month — told journalists at Parliament Buildings, Nairobi, in reference to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

He was graphic: “Football is straightforward. You cannot score from an offside position. In politics, you can score from anywhere and with a leg or even Diego Maradona’s hand of God!”

The occasion was some time in 2001, just before a Kanu Parliamentary Group meeting, whose party he was the Secretary General.

The meeting had been called by President Moi to rubber stamp a merger with Raila’s defunct National Development Party (NDP). “Mark my words, this marriage will not last,” Kamotho warned. ‘Divorce proceedings will begin at the wedding!”

“JJ”, or Kaleft (the meaning of his name in Kikuyu) as he was fondly called, was a wordsmith with a penchant for prickly phrases, snappy and styled in Soviet Union-era Kremlin. And he was sometimes snobbish.

He lived in two worlds — in the East and the West — at a time when the globe was divided into capitalist and socialist blocs. This exposed him to propaganda and Machiavellism, both of which he practised in his statements.

At the peak of his political career, Kamotho belonged to the ruling party’s wing — known as Kanu A — that was fronting the late Prof George Saitoti, then Vice-President, to succeed President Moi.

Another wing, Kanu B, was opposed to Prof Saitoti, preferring younger generational Kanu politicians who included Uhuru Kenyatta, Musalia Mudavadi and Kalonzo Musyoka.

Kamotho and Prof Saitoti, who was also the party’s vice-chairman, were targeted. Indeed, at the delegates conference at Moi International Sports Complex, Kasarani in 2001, Prof Saitoti’s post was diluted and even his attempt to vie for one of the four slots was blocked — Uhuru, Mudavadi, Musyoka and Coast politician Katana Ngala were given the posts in a chorus.

Kamotho’s post was similarly given to Raila.

After the meeting, journalists sought a comment from Kamotho about the party elections.

“Which elections?” he shot back. “That was a marketplace!”

For sure, Kamotho’s was an accurate prediction. Divorce proceedings, in what became to be called “the short-lived Kanu-NDP merger”, began immediately after Kasarani.

Raila’s supporters expected Moi to position him as the successor, which did not happen. The merger did more harm to Kanu than strengthen the party of independence, tearing it into pieces with Moi’s anointment of Uhuru as the 2002 party presidential candidate. They all scattered, and the rest is history.

To borrow playwright Robert Bolt’s title, Kamotho was a man for all seasons. His lowest ebb, in my view, came in 1983 during the political hurricane that fell the then powerful minister for Constitutional Affairs, Charles Mugane Njonjo.

Moi had accused Njonjo of conspiring with some foreign powers to topple him. The Njonjo Inquiry, headed by the late Justice Cecil Miller and Justices C B Madan and Effie Owuor, absolved him, but not before a political witch-hunt swept aside politicians perceived to be Njonjo-men.

Kamotho was among them. He went on to lose his Kangema parliamentary seat in that year’s snap elections to the late John Michuki.

From a Cabinet position as Minister for Higher Education, flying Kenya’s flag on his car, Kamotho and other Njonjo-men became pariahs in society.

They were shunned by people in the streets and in social places. No one wanted to associate with them for fear, as was routine at the time, of being expelled from the only political party in the country allowed by the then Constitution.

Kamotho took it in his stride. He saw poverty. He began selling soda, sconce and bread, among other small items, from a kiosk in Nairobi’s Finance House on Koinange Street. By his side in the kiosk was his wife Eunice, who never abandoned the former minister at that critical hour.

Kamotho used to call friendly journalists to the kiosk, including this writer, to draft for him hand-written press statements... which on a many occasions were ignored by the media, but he never gave up.

One day in 1987, President Moi made a trip to Nyandarua District and Kamotho appeared from nowhere and caught his eye. That day marked Kamotho’s political resurrection.

Party gospel

In the Kanu-era jargon of the time, Kamotho became Nyayo damu and went all over Central Province preaching the party gospel and praising Moi’s leadership.

Kangema Constituency was split, closing him in Mathioya, which he won and bounced back. He was appointed assistant Minister for Transport and Communication and never looked back, eventually making it to the Cabinet again.

His high moment in Kanu came with the death of Moses Budamba Mudavadi in February 1989. Mudavadi had been flown from a hospital in Europe the previous year to come and get elected as Kanu Secretary General at Nyayo stadium.

Kamotho, from Central, got the powerful post in what was seen as Kanu’s political re-arrangement, sharing out the party’s top posts to regions — Moi as President and Saitoti as his vice from Rift Valley, Peter Oloo Aringo as chairman from Nyanza, Japhet Lijoodi as treasurer from Western, and Musyoka as organising secretary from Eastern.

Kamotho’s ascendance to the pinnacle of power in both the party and the Cabinet marked the turning point, during which he became the Kanu cockerel that crowed every hour, the darling of party diehards, and an irritant to the anti-Moi populace.

He paid the price as he was to lose his parliamentary seat with the re-introduction of multi-party elections in the 1992 polls, prompting his acerbic remark that “even a dog would have won on a Ford-Asili ticket” in Central province.

He was referring to Ford-Asili Kenneth Matiba’s political wave in the province that brought in 31 MPs, mostly from the region, sharing it out with Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party’s 23 seats, mainly from Nyeri and Meru regions.

It was during his tenure as the party’s secretary general that he rubbed his opponents the wrong way.

The most memorable is when former minister Fred Gumo went public and claimed that Kamotho had insulted the Luhya community by calling them “cooks and watchmen”, which Kamotho vehemently denied.

But Gumo’s political message had already achieved the intended purpose, as this estranged Kamotho from the community and indirectly marked his slow-motion fall from the Moi-era power barons.

He was henceforth condemned into the Saitoti political grouping, which had no favour in the Moi succession line.

Having learnt the bitter way, he never wanted to go back to selling goods in a kiosk. He took time to study Moi and perfected his loyalty to the man who ruled the country for 24 years with the articulate oratory of a court jester.

He never tired in reminding Kenyans wherever he went that Kanu ni baba na mama, and Nyayo juu juuu zaidi! Kamotho would praise Moi and say unrealistic things without blinking an eye to the extent that, some time in 1993, he tickled Moi with laughter at a public meeting in Karatina.

Anti-Moi sentiments

After the 1992 elections in which nobody in Central wanted to hear anything about Kanu, Kamotho, who had been rewarded with nomination to Parliament and named into the Cabinet, rose to welcome Moi during a fundraiser.

The anti-Moi sentiments in the region were so high that no person wanted to attend a Moi function, so school children would be bused to the president’s rallies to make the crowd.

“Mzee,” Kamotho started, “huu umati wote na watu wote wa Mkoa wa Kati wako ndani ya chama kinachotawala cha Kanu!” (Mzee, this crowd and all the people of Central Province swear their allegiance to the ruling party, Kanu).

This sent the dignitaries, who were privy to the anti-Kanu sentiment in the region, reeling with laughter.

Kamotho was brilliant and intellectual in his handling of ministerial and party matters. He answered phone calls even late into the night from journalists to answer every question posed to him.

At the height of the Kanu regime, he was once asked to comment on rampant corruption. “Kanu never promised zero tolerance on corruption in its campaign manifesto,” he quipped.

When the Goldenberg scandal broke out in the 1990s and put Saitoti at the centre of the scam, Kamotho steered clear of the controversy, preferring to avoid speaking on it even when it raged in Parliament.

He used his experiences in Kanu to avoid treading on the paths of powerful politicians in the Moi era. For one, he avoided Njonjo, who was powerful in the first phase of Moi’s rule. Later, he never crossed paths with powerful Minister Nicholas Biwott, even as he supported Saitoti as the man to succeed Moi.

When he realised that the late Dr Josephat Karanja, a former Vice-President, had lost favour with Moi in 1989, Kamotho aligned himself with a group of politicians led by the late Limuru MP Kuria Kanyingi to bring down the VP.

As a politician, he knew when to act for his own good. Before the 2002 elections, he read the signs and knew Kanu was a sinking ship, so he deserted the party he had so eloquently defended.

Mr Kamotho, who died aged 72, will be remembered as a politician who defied his community to stick with a ruling party, and who benefited immensely for this.