Kibaki’s final nod to Dedan Kimathi as he pays homage to the freedom fighter

Few public moments during Mwai Kibaki’s presidency are as poignant as when he stood side-by-side with Dedan Kimathi’s widow at the inauguration on Friday last week of a full-fledged university in Nyeri named after the freedom fighter.

The occasion was rich with symbolism as the 82-year-old Mama Mukami Kimathi spoke from the presidential podium, with the 81-year-old Kibaki smiling indulgently next to her.

Here was Kenya’s third President personally on hand to pay homage to the late Mau Mau leader. Nor could one miss the fact that the long-delayed honour was being celebrated in Nyeri County, which is the birthplace of both the President and the freedom hero.

In fact, it is not a stretch to say that Kibaki and Kimathi, with their very different personalities, are the two most illustrious sons Nyeri has produced since Kenya became a country.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta loved to give roaring speeches about the freedom struggle. Curiously, Mr Kibaki has always been very circumspect on that topic.

Though Mzee’s liberation credentials have never been in doubt (surely the British did not jail him because he was a chicken thief), historians are generally in agreement that he was never a member of Mau Mau.

Kibaki was in college when the State of Emergency in Central Kenya was in full swing. Being a child of Nyeri, the events of the time no doubt left an indelible mark in the psyche of the future President.

Certainly, there must have been young men of his acquaintance who joined the Mau Mau ranks and died fighting, and some who are still alive today.

So, when President Kibaki went to award the charter to the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, we were seeing a man coming to pay both a personal and collective debt, which would hopefully bring closure to a chapter that remains very much embedded in Nyeri County’s modern history.

I once had a chat with a member of Mr Kibaki’s immediate family who told me that the President admires “successful” people. The unspoken question for me was how Mr Kibaki defines success.

In newspaper photographs, he looks happiest when he is mingling with business leaders and CEOs at the annual galas KRA organises for top taxpayers. But might there be another persona other than the narrow stereotype we have of Mr Kibaki, that of a man who fawns over wealth and golf and country clubs?

Once, I was conversing with an elderly friend of Mr Kibaki’s at the man’s country retreat in Limuru, not too far from the birthplace of the writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

He was not particularly flattering on the subject of the famous novelist, who is a near contemporary of Mr Kibaki and actually followed him to Makerere.

“He went abroad and left his (first) wife to die in poverty,” Mr Kibaki’s friend sniffed disapprovingly. I doubt the President would put it any differently though, perhaps, he would prefer to use less brutal language.

Mr Kibaki belongs to a generation and a mindset which was brought up to believe that success lay in a good education, followed by a top career in public service or business.

Still, the President is too knowledgeable and astute to fail to appreciate that other career paths, though unfamiliar to him, do not necessarily mean a failed life.

In fact, he was the only government minister who attended – as chief guest – the 1977 Nairobi launch of Ngugi’s novel Petals of Blood. Certainly in his mind he knows a figure like Kimathi represented something far beyond the ordinary, though it is unlikely Mr Kibaki would have had the inclination to join the Mau Mau in the forests even if he had had the opportunity.

I wonder, though, what he thinks of Mike Sonko, who is the MP for the very same city constituency Mr Kibaki launched his political career from, and who opinion polls indicate is headed to win Nairobi’s senate seat with a landslide.

Or, put in another way, what does Sonko’s emergence tell the President of the changes the country has gone through since he first joined politics 50 years ago?

[email protected]