Kenyan-born woman’s rise to the top in Australia

From her days as a pupil at Kabiruini Primary School, Lucy Gichuhi showed early signs that she was bound for greater things.

Her father Justus Weru recalls that besides the respect she commanded from her siblings as the firstborn in a family of 10 children, she was a class monitor from as far back as lower primary.

“She was commanding, authoritative and her instructions would be taken seriously by everybody. She was also a disciplinarian,” Mr Weru recalls.

Moreover, the 83-year-old reckons that leadership runs in the family and his daughter, now aged 54, will be continuing the legacy.

“The leadership is inborn because my father was a sub-chief,” says Mr Weru who retired in 1991 from his long career as a primary school teacher.

Now the Australia Senate is poised to have an unlikely member who possesses such attributes as one of its 76 senators: Mrs Gichuhi.

After the Australian High Court nullified the election of Mr Bob Day who was vying alongside Mrs Gichuhi for a chance to represent the Family First Party in the Senate during elections of July 2016, it ordered a special vote recount.

Following the recount, concluded on Thursday in Australia, Mrs Gichuhi emerged as the one to replace Mr Day in the Senate to represent the party. Now all that is needed is her being confirmed by the court.

And if she overcomes a citizenship obstacle that is dogging her, with some claiming she is also a Kenyan, she will be sworn in as a senator, joining the 11 representing the state of South Australia. The Kenyan High Commission in Australia has, however, said she gave up her citizenship for an Australian one.

FAMILY FIRST PARTY

“We ask God to bless her and give her the big responsibility. She deserves that,” her sister Josephine Wangui told Lifestyle on Thursday.

“We knew that at some point she would advance. And now that she has become a senator, we think she can even be the president,” she added, beaming with optimism. Ms Wangui is the 7th born in the family that had eight girls and two boys.

Mrs Gichuhi, who travelled to Australia in 1999 with her husband William and their three children after being awarded a permanent resident visa, became politically active early in her stay.

She was attracted to the Family First Party, which she says started in a church, because of its Christian ideals.

The party takes a hard line stance on a number of controversial issues. It opposes the use of surrogate mothers, rejects mercy killing, disapproves of the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research and supports the prosecution of not only those who sell sex but those who buy it.

The party also believes alcohol advertisements should be banned from all mass media channels and sporting apparel. It also holds that the theories about carbon emissions triggering climate change are fallacies.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it is plant food. The more crops can get of it the better they grow,” says a statement on the party’s website.

Mrs Gichuhi told Lifestyle that the ideals of Family First drew her attention to it.

“Australians vote for the party, unlike in Kenya where the focus is more on individuals. Voters pay special attention to party manifestos and their ideals,” she said on phone.

It is because of the party voting system that Mrs Gichuhi now has a chance to join the Australian Senate; because after Mr Day, the Family First contestant who was elected to the Senate was kicked out by the court, the opportunity fell on her.

“Despite the fact Mrs Gichuhi only received 152 first-preference votes, she’ll receive the rest of Family First’s votes, placing her as favourite to take a seat in the Senate,” Australia’s state broadcaster ABC reported.

Explaining why she has stayed in Family First for years, Mrs Gichuhi said her father’s go-getting attitude while raising his family was a big factor.

“My father had a job and was able to keep his coffee farm. This became the financial solid rock that would see him educating and empowering all his 10 children,” Mrs Gichuhi said in a campaign video she released in June 2016.

ECONOMIC EXILE

“There is no doubt in my mind that his positive influence attracted me to the Family First policies — empowering families through jobs and removing barriers that would hinder family-owned businesses,” she added.

But before she got consumed in Australia politics, before she even took a flight to the former British colony, she had made a mark in Kenya among those close to her.

In her father’s observation, she was always an intelligent girl.

For her O Level examinations at Mugoiri Girls, she scored a Division One, a remarkable achievement for a girl who used to walk barefoot to during her primary school days at Kabiruini, the same institution where her father was a Kiswahili and English teacher.

From Mugoiri she headed to Lwak Girls, situated in present-day Siaya County, with the support of Christian missionaries and teachers at the previous school.

After Lwak, she was admitted to the University of Nairobi where she pursued a degree in commerce, majoring in accounting.

“When she finished school, she worked with different companies locally,” the father said.

Her being awarded a permanent resident visa to Australia, Mrs Gichuhi explained to Lifestyle, was possible because of the skills she and her husband had.

“The economy was not good and the crisis forced their relocation. She was also after academic studies and she managed to study law,” says Mr Weru.

At the time they left, Mrs Gichuhi was an accountant while her husband was a quantity surveyor. They have since been residing in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, at a town called Mawson Lakes. Their children are now aged 29, 24 and 19 years.

And unlike the Green Card scheme where successful applicants are guaranteed US citizenship, in the permanent resident visa scheme they had to live and work in Australia for two years before they qualified to become citizens.

Mrs Gichuhi says they were short of resources when they landed in the world’s smallest continent but somehow they managed to stay afloat.

“My husband and our three children arrived in Australia with less than 1,000 Australian dollars (Sh78,242). We had no concept of welfare,” she says.

“Thankfully, within a month, my husband was employed. And three months later, I got a job too. Only a few short years later, we began the great Australian dream of home ownership; the Family First policy of gaining financial freedom has always been my passion,” she adds.

Her first job in Australia was at the Auditor-General’s department.

“This was an enormously challenging time in my life; combining full-time employment with parenting responsibilities, relational and financial challenges and the lack of social capital that I was so used to back home,” she recalls.

In Australia, the couple pursued further studies. She became a lawyer while her husband became an engineer.

Mrs Gichuhi says she enrolled at the University of South Australia as a mature age student in September 2012.

“I did full-time studies, day and night classes, summer and winter school, cross-institutional studies — anything I could find to complete my studies. My long-term dream became true when I was admitted to the Supreme Court as a practising lawyer in November 2015,” she says.

Her passion for education, her sister Wangui explains, saw her pay school fees for her siblings.

GENEROUS AND KIND

“If it were not for her, we couldn’t have got our education,” she says, adding that Mrs Gichuhi paid for her fees at Moi Equator Girls Secondary School in Nanyuki and later at the Universal College of Accountancy in Nairobi.

“Whenever she heard that any child was struggling with studies, she would chip in and ensure that they completed their studies,” says Ms Wangui, who is currently a teacher.

Her father is proud that all his children got a decent education, all having gone to university with the exception of one. The family’s lastborn aged 35, currently lives in Australia with Mrs Gichuhi.

Besides her siblings, Mrs Gichuhi has previously supported members of her extended family in Hiriga village, Nyeri County.

“She is generous and kind to all. She has saved some people in settling hospital bills,” Mr Francis Njogu, a resident of Hiriga, told Lifestyle.

“We are praying hard for her because she has been helping many people and she continues to help,” Ms Wangui added.

Her brother Githungo Weru says more than 10 relatives and villagers have pursued their higher education abroad due to Mrs Gichuhi’s assistance.

“She assists them on procedures of acquiring a passport. She commits herself to ensure everything is smooth at home. She is well versed on legal issues and she is good in offering advice,” says Mr Githungo.

At their rural home, the facilities available are proof that the family has been receiving her support.

After dealing with a rough road in a trip that was punctuated with short rains last weekend, we arrived at the homestead to find the father taking a break from his daily activities. He welcomed us at his stone-walled building as he was watching television on a flat screen. There is an air of sophistication in the furnishings of the house.

“She connected us to electricity and we have never been late or failed to pay monthly bills,” says Mr Weru.

The village is at least 10,000 kilometres from where Mrs Gichuhi lives but they have been communicating often.

“We are always in contact. She calls my father regularly to inquire how he is fairing. They spoke last week. It is either he calls or she calls but we frequently check on each other,” her brother Githungo Weru says.

And due to the distance separating Mrs Gichuhi’s two homes across the Indian Ocean, life in Kenya and Australia is different in many aspects. The contrast in the political arena, she notes, is very big.

“Only in Australia can that former barefooted 10-year-old African girl dream of influencing cultural change and public leadership and actually do it,” says Mrs Gichuhi.

 “In Australia, politics is a possible career path. At times, public leadership is not a matter of whether you want it or not. It’s a matter of upholding civic duty.”

OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE

She adds: “In most African countries, the average citizen does not have a chance of entering public domain or even becoming involved with politics. But here in Australia, we are free to dream. It’s a principle which demands we stand up and protect this value that has shaped this country.”

Another difference she has noted is that  the Australian campaign period is relatively shorter, lasting only four weeks. Also, it is unlikely to have a party in Kenya that espouses conservative Christian beliefs as the one Mrs Gichuhi is in. Her father is happy that she is a member of a church-oriented outfit.

“I used to be a leader at the local Catholic church. I used to go with my children and my wife. Even when they grew older, we used to go to church. I go to church to date,” said Mr Weru. “If she is going on with the church, that is very good.”

At the moment, all Mrs Gichuhi is doing is wait for the verdict of the Court of Disputed Returns, a division of the Australian High Court, on whether it will endorse the recount process it ordered. The matter of her citizenship has also been raised and the court is expected to give verdict on the same.

To be a senator in Australia, one must not hold dual citizenship and although Mrs Gichuhi changed her citizenship in 2001 when the Kenyan Constitution did not allow a person to be a citizen of two countries, some people want the matter to be cleared. Australia’s acting shadow attorney-general Katy Gallagher told ABC on Thursday that the citizenship matter was a “complicated legal issue”.

“After obtaining legal advice from senior counsel, the Australian Labour Party is considering making a further submission on this matter when the Court of Disputed Returns considers it again next week,” she said. “This is not about Mrs Gichuhi. This is about the integrity of the Senate and electoral system.”

Mrs Gichuhi, on her part, cannot wait for a chance to represent her party in the Senate and to fight for the rights of South Australia residents.

“I see it as an opportunity to give back to this great nation,” she said in a statement after the vote recount went in her favour.

At her home, her father and relatives are still praying for her.

“I was very happy to hear that she had passed the hurdle (of vote recount),” her father says.

The last time she was at her rural home was in December last year during a commemoration event for her mother who died in 2013.

“We nicknamed her ‘Senator’ after she vied in the election,” recalls her sister Wangui, adding that even if Mrs Gichuhi did not succeed at the first attempt, she was sure to rise again.

“She doesn’t lose hope. If she wants something, even if she doesn’t succeed she just pushes,” says Ms Wangui.