Eliud Mwamunga, the lion of Voi who took on land grabbers with zeal

If the ability to create a balance between public and private life is the hallmark of emotional intelligence, former Cabinet Minister Eliud Timothy Mwamunga proved adept at it.

For he was obsessively unforthcoming, yet notoriously loud and boisterous in public.

Whether he was speaking about ranching, which he was passionate about, or hitting out at a political rival, Mwamunga was famous for his entertaining grandiloquence and verve.

His constituents in Voi, Taita- Taveta, who he represented in Parliament for many years, remember him for his relentless campaigns against land grabbing, protection for ranchers, water provision and education.

When he joined the local government as a clerk to the county council in Taita-Taveta he convinced the civic leaders to sub-divide and register empty rangelands into ranches to keep off land grabbers, speculators and brokers, as a result protecting more than one million acres of community land.

He registered many parcels as ranches and named them according to the administrative locations where they were located.

SHREWD MOVE

This shrewd move, according to former Wundanyi MP Mashengu wa Mwachofi, did not endear him to many people, who promptly labelled him a “land grabber masquerading as the poor man’s watchman.”

An astute politician and a shrewd businessman, Mr Mwamunga is credited with helping shape Kenya’s trade policies and Africanisation of commerce.

After leaving Makerere, Mr Mwamunga briefly taught at Ribe Teachers’ Training College in Kilifi before enrolling for a law degree at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. It was during his time at Ribe in the 1960s that he met his wife, Priscillah, then a teacher at St John's Girls’ High School in Kaloleni.

From his early days as a student at Shimo-la-Tewa in Mombasa, Alliance High and later Makerere University in the 1950s where he trained as a teacher, Mr Mwamunga cut the image of a lonely and reserved man for there were very few people who could match his educational qualifications then.

It is because of his impressive scholarly credentials that he vied for the Voi Parliamentary seat in 1969 unopposed, clinching the seat at the young age of 34. He went on to enjoy a 20-year uninterrupted stint as MP.

RISING STAR

His rising star saw him serve as a Cabinet minister under Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi. His career in the Cabinet took him to various portfolios such as Commerce and Industry, Environment and Natural Resources, Lands and Settlement, Information and Broadcasting and Works, Housing and Physical Planning.

Yet like the impulsive Icarus in Greek mythology, his fast-paced political career was always beckoning.

His time as MP for Voi was rudely cut short in 1988 when he was defeated during the Kanu nominations which adopted the controversial queue voting.

Earlier, he faced accusations of having misused the constituency’s Sh1 million raised by President Moi in a funds drive. His protagonist, Laban Kitele, then Supplies and Marketing minister, demanded in Parliament that he surrenders the money or face prosecution.

Dumbfounded, Mr Mwamunga sprang up from his seat and declared that the money was with the district commissioner but the DC denied it, leaving the minister wounded and chastened.

Consequently, Mr Moi relieved Mr Mwamunga of his duties as Minister for Works, Housing and Physical Planning, ending his political career.

RESOUNDINGLY BEATEN

In the 1988 General Election, Mr Mwamunga was resoundingly beaten by newcomer Adiel Kachila who managed 12,588 votes against his 1,028.

With the advent of multipartyism in the 90s after years of repression, Mr Mwamunga teamed up with his long-time friend Mwai Kibaki and John Keen to usher in the “second liberation”.

Mr Kibaki, then 60, resigned from the government on Christmas Day after serving for 28 years in various capacities – nine of them as Vice-President – before being dropped after the 1988 elections.

But even with the repeal of Section 2A, which allowed the formation of more parties, the proponents of second liberation failed to capture the presidential seat after individual interests among the opposition figures led to a split of the original FORD party, giving Moi a chance to reclaim his seat with relative ease.

This defeat left the opposition luminaries licking their wounds with some like Mwamunga deciding to “retire” from public life and concentrate on dairy and beef cattle farming at his Ndara Farm — out of public glare.

PHILANTHROPIST

Unknown to many people, the soft-spoken politician was a philanthropist to a fault based on what he did to his immediate community in Sagalla where he built two churches at Ishamba area: One for the Anglican Church of Kenya and another for the Presbyterian Church of East Africa with the former bearing his mother’s name.

So beloved was Mwamunga by his community that a women’s group of 40 recently went to his expansive Ndara Farm to assist in the harvest of pojo (green grams), work that took four days. When he inquired about the charges, the group said they had volunteered the service for free to their elderly leader.

“Ninyi sio mnanisaidia mimi, mimi ndiye niwasaidie ninyi” (you are not supposed to help me, I am the one supposed to do so) and with this, he paid them handsomely with promises of supporting their income-generating activities in the future.

Narrating his encounter with the politician at his Ndara Farm, the headteacher of Mwamunga Primary School was “shocked” to learn that the former minister was not aware of the existence of the school named after him.

PERMANENT CLASSROOM

But when invited to be the chief guest, he readily accepted and in the process single-handedly built a permanent classroom for the school. He also went ahead to build Mwambiti Secondary School next door through donor funds.

The former minister’s critics, however, speak about his unorthodox ways and means of dealing with land transactions that frequently landed in court for arbitration.

 A case in point was the 2014 land dispute between his Voi Development Company Limited and Agam Investments Limited which he lost in the High Court when he tried to stop the investor from repossessing a plot he had sold to the company.

During the trial, the ex-minister denied entering into any transaction with Agam Investments, claiming that it was not even party to the sale of the property. The court thought differently and he lost the case.

People privy to his social and business life also told the Sunday Nation that Mwamunga had a "peculiar" character of driving in the middle of the road from his Ndara Lodge Hotel to the Mombasa-Nairobi Highway, forcing other motorists to give way.

STRONG POINTS

Although education was one of the minister’s strong points, to some of the constituents, the strong-willed politician was "stingy" whenever approached by university students for bursaries or financial assistance in the 1990s.

For some local ranchers and small-scale miners, Mr Mwamunga was a ruthless man wherever they crossed the red line involving some of his interests within the said industries in the constituency or county.

Still, Mr Mwamunga, who was born on July 21, 1935 in Ishamba Village at the foot of the Taita Hills, was described by those who knew him as a highly religious person with a passion for land protection and education. They remember when he stood his ground against the conversion of Moi Stadium in Voi into a bus park, claiming he was the owner of the land and that he had donated it to the adjacent Mwanyambo Primary School.

He will also be remembered for being the owner of the land where Voi Police Station is built and also for his initiation of the establishment of the Coast Institute of Technology though he had opposed its naming. He wanted it named Taita Taveta Institute of Technology.

A man of calm demeanour, the lion of Voi’s roar went silent on Saturday, June 9, 2018, aged 82, while undergoing treatment for a gastrointestinal infection at a Mombasa hospital.

Additional reporting by Jonathan Manyindo