My dalliance and then big falling-out with Moi

After my release from detention, I met Moi in a meeting called by Kenneth Matiba and attended by Mwai Kibaki and G.G. Kariuki — then a powerful team. They assured me there would be no rigging if I was still interested in vying for the Nakuru North parliamentary seat, which I was — and which was held by Kihika Kimani.

After I won the seat in the 1979 elections, G.G. Kariuki, who emerged as a powerful figure in the first years of the Moi presidency, invited me to his home where he delivered to me an offer to be a Cabinet minister.

I accepted but asked to be a backbencher for one year to raise questions in Parliament for my Nakuru North constituents.

DICTATORSHIP

But after one year, I and Moi’s one-man, one-party dictatorship were completely incompatible. President Moi had transformed his government from a possible democracy to a fearful dictatorship.

Shortly after elections, Moi invited me and my wife to his Kabarak home where we had a sumptuous early morning breakfast.

After eating, Moi asked me to stop raising land issues in Parliament because the government had no land to give the poor. He said the only land there was belonged to Kikuyu and Kalenjin elites from whom he could not take the land.

I told Moi land was one reason Kenyans fought for independence and failure to give poor people land could make his government more unpopular than the colonial one.

UNPOPULAR

By the time the Moi party, Kanu, lost the elections in 2002, his government was more unpopular than the colonial government.

When I told Moi that people wanted him to be the Joshua that would take them to Canaan, after President Kenyatta had taken them out of Pharaoh’s oppression in Egypt, taken them across the Red Sea of the Mau Mau war but left them in the desert of abject poverty when he died, Moi completely refused to identify himself as Joshua and only took his family and a few people to Canaan.

He warned me against calling for land reform, which freedom fighters had fought for in the struggle for independence.

LAND OWNERSHIP

Rather than appreciate my support for his call to lower the price of land to 500 shillings per acre, Moi warned me not to arouse people from their slumber of ignorance or I would be taken to slumber myself — “usiamshe walalao au utalala wewe”.

It became clear he had no ambition to move Kenya from the Third World to the First World.

Instead of doing everything to take Kenya to the First World, Moi’s ambition as was that of Kenyatta before him, was to stealthily, and in the dark, take his family and a few friends to the Canaan of ill-gained riches, while leaving masses of poor people in the desert of abject poverty.

Growing up, and later, when I went to Cornell University in the US, it became quite clear that under President Kenyatta, we had won not independence with democracy, but self-rule without freedom.

BLACK MASTERS

And instead of getting leaders who would take us to the promised land we had only substituted white masters with black masters who were completely unacceptable.

When I returned to Kenya and thought of where to start the struggle for democracy, I chose journalism. And though Kenyan leadership bragged of being democratic, when I exposed real problems in a weekend column in the Sunday Post, the police would not fail to pay me a visit. Later the Sunday Post was bankrupted with over-taxation, and with J.M. Kariuki assassinated, it became clear to me that to fight for poor people, I had to go to Parliament.

Then I was detained.

While in detention, Kenyatta died and Moi, whom I thought might become our saviour refused to become Joshua. And though he protected me against rigging in the 1979 elections, soon, I became convinced that rather than being our saviour, Moi would be our oppressor.

LIBERATION FROM TYRANNY

Under Moi, Parliament did not solve problems. It needed liberation from tyranny.

Instead of being a tool of liberation, Parliament was a victim and instrument of dictatorship.

As for me, I was under more tyranny as an MP than I was as an ordinary person. Police watched over me 24-7 wherever I went, including parliament.

Worst, I have never seen more scared MPs than when Parliament was changing the Constitution to make Kenya a de jure one party state. Threatened with detention without trial, MPs simply choked with fear.

Finally, I concluded this period of terror as an MP by being detained while a sitting MP, contrary to the law. Surprisingly, when I was finally arrested and locked up in detention, I heaved a sigh of relief. Under Moi, I was freer in detention than in Parliament.

SECTION 2A

After burying democracy with Section 2A of the Constitution, public killing of freedom of expression followed in September 1984 when Moi demanded: “I call on all ministers, assistant ministers and every other person to sing like parrots. During Mzee Kenyatta’s period, I persistently sang the Kenyatta tune until people said: ‘This fellow has nothing to say, except to sing for Kenyatta’. I said: ‘I did not have ideas of my own’. Why was I to have my own ideas? I was in Kenyatta’s shoes and, therefore, I had to sing whatever Kenyatta wanted. If I had sang another song, do you think Kenyatta would have left me alone? Therefore, you ought to sing the song I sing. If I put a full stop, you should put a full stop. This is how the country will move forward. The day you become a big person, you will have the liberty to sing your own song and everybody will sing it.”

After Moi’s declaration, the country did not move forward. It continued to move backwards. How can people without a voice develop? Moi could not have greater disregard for Kenyans than this!

CORRUPTION

Moi never had commitment to eradicating corruption.

When I was elected chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Moi demanded my immediate resignation or he would dissolve the committee. Falsely, Moi said as chair of PAC, I would witch-hunt civil servants.

But I refused to resign because the accusation was baseless. I had absolutely no intention to victimise anyone against whom there was no evidence of corruption. In any case, rather than victimise anyone, I was myself victimised when several by-elections were held to vote me out until I was eventually removed.

Moi had no quarrel against corruption. He never questioned the report of the Ndegwa Commission, which allowed civil servants to do business with the government they worked for when that would give them unfair and corrupt advantage over ordinary people who did business with government.

FIGHT KIBAKI

However, I would see the worst face of corruption when Moi invited me to State House, Nairobi, mainly to recruit me to fight his Vice-President Mwai Kibaki.

After the meeting that was also attended by Jeremiah Kiereini and Simeon Nyachae, Moi made a fantastic display in briefcases that were lined upon the entire four walls of the room and were full of money. Was this money that Moi was dishing out to people who went to State House his or taken from State coffers?

But Moi was not just corrupt by not accounting for public, government money. He also believed he was some kind of god as told by some of his worst flatterers. Once, I attended a public meeting in Kericho, which the president addressed. Upon return to Nakuru State House, some people like William Lasoi and Kariuki Chotora started telling him how his body, like Jesus’, had radiated light when he was on the podium. And rather than admonish his flatterers, Moi laughed his head off, seeming to believe the lie.

We cannot discuss Moi without looking at the philosophy of Nyayoism that shaped his entire presidency.

KENYA, PERSONAL FIEFDOM

Nyayoism literally means President Moi would govern in the footsteps of President Kenyatta.

But Moi believed Kenyatta had governed Kenya as a personal fiefdom where no line was drawn between public or personal money. Moi would, therefore, also govern Kenya without drawing a line between Moi and State money.

Strangely enough, when the Kikuyu elite heard that Moi would govern as Kenyatta had to the exclusive benefit of his Kikuyu ethnic elite, they believed Moi too would continue to govern Kenya to the exclusive benefit of the Kenyatta family and the Kikuyu ethnic elite.

It hardly occurred to them that when Moi said he would govern as Kenyatta did, he would govern the country to the exclusive benefit of his Kalenjin ethnic elite who now saw themselves in power like the Kikuyu elite had when Kenyatta was president.

FAVOURITISM

It beats the mind how the Kikuyu elite could have imagined that Moi, whose Kalenjin community also wanted to enjoy the benefits of power, would have intended to govern Kenya to the same exclusive benefit of the Kenyatta family and Kikuyu elite that had benefited under Kenyatta.

But the misunderstanding of the Kikuyu elite that Moi would favour them while in power was to the benefit of Moi, whose administration they were willing to tolerate and exploit.

Nyayoism also meant that Moi would govern Kenya with the same one-party dictatorship that Kenyatta had governed Kenya and would suppress democratic freedoms and rights as Kenyatta had.

In the spirit of Nyayoism, Moi would also continue to detain without trial, jail and force into exile critics, dissidents and opponents of his regime, the same way Kenyatta had.

I say so because Kenyatta and Moi put me in a slumber of 13 years in detention and political imprisonment.