June, 1982: Month of Kenya’s profound political landmarks

No month in the first 40 years of our independent history contains as many fiery landmarks as does June 1982.

About a year earlier, President Daniel Moi began resorting to deeply damaging anti-democratic actions to quell the discontent building up from his autocratic and incompetent governance. He was clearly bereft of ideas to mitigate rising tide of deprivation and anger.

I recall taking my good friend, Prof Ben Kipkorir, a central figure in Mr Moi’s inner circle, to lunch in February 1982 to persuade him that the crackdown was not the answer. But he said Mr Moi’s initially tolerant approach had been misunderstood as a sign of weakness and that was the source of the problems.

When the tougher Moi measures failed to quell the discontent, he decided to resort to outright force as the principal tool to manage political challenges. The following chronology captures the unimaginable depths to which Mr Moi was prepared to plunge the country in order to retain power.

At a minimum, this pre-August 1 summary unambiguously dispels the notion that it was the coup attempt two months later that forced Moi to abandon his democratic inclinations.

June 1: On Madaraka Day, President Moi announces an unprecedented assault on all the rights we had inherited at independence. He seems to have been spooked in particular by the formation of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Kenya African Socialist Alliance (Kasa). His venom was also directed at the nation’s intellectuals, activists and students.

June 2: George Anyona, one of the country’s most learned and determined parliamentarians for change, and Jaramogi’s principal assistant in the formation of Kasa, is detained without trial.

June 3: Attorney John Khaminwa, among Kenya’s most distinguished counsels, is detained for petitioning for Mr Anyona to be produced in court.

June 3: President Moi announces radical moves to tame the University of Nairobi, whose teachers and students are providing the ideas and passion for change. “Anti-Nyayo” students will not be admitted, he says, and asks his followers to gather at the university and publicly expose “dissidents”. He also claims that six lecturers were teaching subversion and violence tactics.

June 4: Kenyatta University lecturer and Mau Mau researcher Maina wa Kinyatti is detained for possession of “seditious literature”. Maina was also an adviser to Mau Mau fighter and former Cabinet minister Bildad Kaggia, the putative Kasa co-head.

June 6-8: Lecturers Kamoji Wachira (a Kasa founder), Al Amin Mazrui, George Mkangi and Mukaru Ng’ang’a are detained.

June 9: Kenya is formally declared a one-party state, after Parliament approved 158-0 an amendment to the constitution proposed by Constitutional Affairs minister Charles Njonjo, which was seconded by Vice-president Mwai Kibaki. This was done through the legendary “Section 2A” line: “There shall be in Kenya only one political party, the Kenya African National Union.”

June 18: I flee Kenya, having been alerted by a senior police official’s secretary, who is a fan of Viva magazine, that I am shortly to be detained.

The above in fact was merely the start of a long, brutal crackdown, which took Kenya into a period of prolonged darkness for a decade, and continued on a lesser scale after multiparty politics resumed in 1992.

The accumulating grievances and growing repression had also alienated sections of the armed forces, resulting in the bloody coup attempt on August 1.

Mr Moi’s scorched earth campaign smashed even the most nominal democratic norms. Torture chambers were built in the basement of the government’s Nyayo House in the heart of Nairobi (where I spent two days in 1986 despite being a UN official on a visit; subsequently my citizenship was revoked illegally). Scores of activists were killed. In the 1990s multiparty era, ethnic violence was used to intimidate communities into supporting Kanu.

Despite the horrors I have enumerated, any assessment of President Moi – and this is not one - should include his achievements, which include bringing into government members of communities that had never had such representation and a huge growth in educational access, especially universities, which were very few.

Similarly, Jomo Kenyatta’s regime also perpetrated own horrors, and while they were not as egregious as Mr Moi’s, they made it easy for him to carry on in the same vein. In one area, though, the Kenyatta regime was chillingly worse: It undertook systematic assassinations of political leaders such as Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki and Pio Gama Pinto to ensure that power stayed within an inner circle of Kiambu oligarchs.

Among the principal reasons Mr Moi could carry out this level of repression were his growing military ties with the United Kingdom and, more important, the United States, beyond the normal confines of Cold War alliances. Jaramogi wrote a stinging memorandum to the US in early 1982, labelling the new arrangements as a “violation of our sovereignty”. He also pointed out that one result of this treaty was the US Navy’s dredging of the Mombasa Harbour to accommodate the larger naval vessels arriving to use air and port facilities for its “rapid deployment force”, which was undermining the submarine stability of the historic Old Town, a Unesco World Heritage site.

How much was given up in this agreement was made clear when a US sailor, Frank Sundstrom, pleaded guilty to robbing and murdering sex worker Monica Njeri – but he was freed on Sh500 “good behaviour” bond. The Standard captured it aptly: The Kenya prosecutor had “assumed the role of the defence counsel”. One can imagine how much more Mr Moi gave away in return for political and security support for the government.

President Kibaki did put up a strong fight on granting exceptions the US sought for its soldiers from some International Criminal Court provisions, but I am not aware where precisely that ended.

Considerable study has been done on this long period of severe repression, but much less exists in the mainstream narratives about the variety of pro-democracy movements that were challenging the drift to dictatorship. Even less is known about the underground groups challenging the system itself.

But despite this reign of terror, there was an astonishing political vibrancy and support for reformers, albeit expressed discreetly.

Writer Nyambega Gisesa listed in the Nation two months ago the variety of above and underground publications that proliferated in the Moi era: Mwakenya: The Unfinished Revolution by Maina wa Kinyatti; Cheche Kenya (InDependent Kenya), The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Never Say Die, Pambana and Mpatanishi, Moi’s Reign of Terror, Struggle for Democracy in Kenya , Kenya: A Prison Notebook, Mother Kenya, A Season of Blood and Kenya Twendapi?

Nyambega reported on a meeting at the University of Nairobi’s Ukombozi Library and the Mau Mau Research Centre, organised by the veteran liberationist Shiraz Durrani. Attending were some of those who were now coming out in the open to document their resistance. The only person who had been known was Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the movement’s spokesperson, Shiraz said.

Throughout the descent towards dictatorship, there was a real ferment among Kenyans at every level to exercise their democratic rights and many individuals and groups came up with alternative visions of how they wanted Kenya to be. And yet now with all the gains in education, in information technology, our greater strength in numbers, there are fewer expressions of critical thinking in the infinitely freer democratic space that we now occupy.

There was a time in the anti-colonial struggle and after when our fellow African Americans looked to Africa and its fraternal friends for inspiration, among them Cabral, Senghor, Nyerere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah, Mugabe, Mandela, Fanon and Walter Rodney. We are again now witnessing with great delight the burst of African American thought and analysis to address the continuing horrors of police brutality and the wider oppression in virtually area they are subject to. Kenya’s once vibrant civil society and our learned leaders in universities and think-tanks need to once again lead the way for all of us and those in government.

Perhaps because I am outside, it is puzzling to see that among the few examples of an alternative vision that some are holding up is advocacy for a political party led by William Ruto. We do need more parties, but his record makes it clear that we would be led right back to the strongman rule that Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi embodied.

Two months away, we will celebrate the tenth anniversary of what is one of the world’s great constitutions. This is the time therefore for our thinkers and activists to produce ideas on how we might achieve its goals, especially with Raila Odinga playing an important role within government.

I know the BBI initiative is controversial for some of us, but I have always believed that one should analyse with brutal honesty, and then proceed with principled pragmatism. If it is possible in good conscience, we should take advantage of this particular opportunity of the referendum to move things forward, even if in a limited fashion.