Scores arrested in Mwakenya crackdown

Prof Kariuki says Mwakenya was an overt movement dedicated to democracy. Photo/FILE

The Moi regime launched a serious crackdown on Kenyans who were agitating for greater democratic space at the start of 1986.


It was sparked by two events. The aborted 1982 coup and the subsequent change in the Constitution to make Kenya a one-party state under Kanu.


The target was university lecturers and intellectuals, who were perceived by President Daniel arap Moi as the brains behind Mwakenya, a Swahili acronym for Patriotic Union of Nationalists to Liberate Kenya.


Intelligence service termed it as underground Marxist movement seeking to topple Moi, with the support of foreign masters mainly from the East who were against Kenya’s leaning towards the West.


But Prof Isaiah Ngotho Kariuki, a former Dean, Faculty of Commerce at the University of Nairobi, who was one of the brains behind Mwakenya has no apologies over what he believed were efforts to free Kenyans from the stranglehold of dictatorship and parochialism.


“Our movement was not clandestine. It was a public movement where we gave open lectures and distributed literature to tell Kenyans what was wrong with the society and what we wanted changed,” said Mr Kariuki, an expert in taxation who was detained twice by Moi from 1986-1988 and again from 1990 to 1992.


He continued, “It was a tool for democratic struggle, a progressive lobby group, and open forum that was only forced underground by unnecessary crackdown. We could distribute leaflets to explain to the people our position, mostly on multi-party and democratic process”.


The group distributed underground publications like Mpatanishi (The Reconciler) and Mzalendo (Patriot).

But the government responded with a heavy hand, where intelligence officers would raid the library of the University of Nairobi and confiscate any book to do with Marxism, Lenism and Socialism, while at the same time, lecturers were arrested.


Their crimes were possession of Mwakenya documents or the failure to report their Mwakenya contacts to the authorities. But most of them were given already written statements to sign implicating themselves.

Those who refused were tortured and detained, while those who signed under duress were sentenced to jail for admitting their crimes.


“Those who signed I cannot blame them because the torture was very severe like using a burning cigarette on one’s genitals.

“The best thing was to tear the paper, so that one could get a severe beating but at the end of the day, there would be no document to sign,” said Prof Kariuki.


On March 5, 1986, a number of the so-called dissidents were arrested, tortured and detained without trial. They were; Prof Kariuki, Maina Kinyatti and sociologist Prof Katama Mkangi. Within a period of one month, a total of 48 people had been detained on grounds of being dissidents.


Others were: leading historian Atieno Odhiambo and two lecturers in the law school, Mukaru Ng’ang’a and Wanderi Muthigani.

While former Prime Minister Raila Odinga had been detained earlier for his alleged connection to the 1982 aborted coup, others that followed later were Mirugi Kariuki, Paddy Onyango and Wanyiri Kihoro.


Moi termed them as “social and political misfits’’ who were being misguided by their foreign masters to propagate ill-conceived ideologies of Marxism.


One Moi’s favourite reference was “the bearded elite”, given that the majority of them wore beards.


Prof Kariuki, who still maintains his trademark long beard argued, “To the Moi regime, anybody keeping a beard was seen as a Marxist or communist.

“They didn’t’ have to look for other reasons to arrest you but simply having a beard and being a lecturer was enough”.


They were detained variously and interchangeably in Shimo La Tewa, Kamiti, Manyani, Naivasha and Kodiaga prisons. Prof Kariuki argues that they were victims of Moi’s paranoia and the cold war between West and East.