Michuki upheld and broke law equally

It was no accident that when Mr John Michuki chose a name for his exclusive swanky establishment opened on the outskirts of Nairobi in the late 1980s, he called it the Windsor Golf & Country Club.

The House of Windsor, of course, is the British royal family, a name adopted in 1917 when King George V signed a royal proclamation replacing the historic name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The paean to British royalty probably would have been expected of a man who owes so much to a colonial administration that lifted him from poverty and obscurity to great wealth and power.

It might seem odd then that after serving the colonial regime so faithfully and evidently retaining affection for the old links, Mr Michuki saw no contradiction in recasting himself with the coming of Independence as a fierce nationalist.

And in his case not so much a Kenyan patriot, but an ethnic nationalist who by his actions and utterances signalled his belief that the same Kikuyu people he fought as a colonial functionary now had a divine right to rule Kenya or generally dominate the political and economic arena.

In the best traditions of the colonial public servant, Mr Michuki was a stickler for law and order.

This was best exemplified by the legacy of the ‘Michuki Rules’, by which he demonstrated that an unruly and chaotic public transport sector dominated by rogue elements and quasi-criminal cartels could be brought to heel by strict and unyielding application of the law.

But at the other end of the scale were a series of actions that revealed a dangerous and almost criminal disregard for the law.

As Internal Security Minister, Mr Michuki had no hesitation in proclaiming responsibility for the infamous raid on the Standard Group by hooded and armed policemen.

His “if you rattle a snake expect to be bitten” comments showed the excesses he would resort to while wielding power.

Related to the unprecedented assault on a media house was the role of the Artur brothers.

The Armenian thugs were brought into the country courtesy of an association with well-connected businesswoman and political activist Mary Wambui.

She boasted links to State House that apparently persuaded the Internal Security Minister to confer on the extremely dubious characters some security consultancy for the Kenya Police

Perhaps it was the training ground of a colonial-era district officer that made Mr Michuki believe in two sets of laws — a nice and orderly version for the genteel upper-crust elite; and a crude and brutal one for the ‘natives’ who did not know their place in the natural order of things.

Thus the repressive policies that gave police power to kill without recourse to the courts.

This culminated in the crackdown on the outlawed Mungiki sect where scores young men in Murang’a, Kiambu, Nairobi and other parts of the country were summarily executed on mere suspicion.