The girl every man wanted to take home to his mother

Many in the generation of Kenyan men who went to Uganda’s famous Makerere University with Edith Wanjiru Gitau in the 1950s testify that she was the kind of girl everyone wanted to introduce to his mother as a future wife.

“She was top of the class. She was beautiful, and she came from a good family,” a Makerere alumnus told me last week. Perhaps he tried his luck — the reason he didn’t want me to identify him in the story — but found Kenneth Matiba had beaten him to it!

As a student at Alliance High School, Matiba made a decision he would one day marry Edith Wanjiru Gitau, a beautiful girl in a neighbouring primary school. He had no idea the girl would accept him when she came of age. But the man who in later life would have determination to climb the world’s tallest mountains had convinced himself he would one day ask for her hand in marriage.

He finally did and they tied the knot  on April 8, 1961. For the next 57 years, the little girl he had first seen when she was 14 would be his wife, mother of his children, but above all, his best friend.

Many years after their marriage, Matiba was to confess that his greatest inspiration to work hard and pass at Makerere was because Edith was always top of her class.

“I never contemplated how I could ever face her parents to ask for her hand in marriage had I failed at Makerere, where Edith and her sister were always top in the class,” he would later say.

Edith and her elder sister, Joan Gitau, were pioneer students at  Alliance Girls High. They would proceed to Makerere where they graduated with top honours and returned to promote girls’ education in Kenya. Joan (later Mrs Joan Waithaka) would be appointed the first African headmistress at Alliance Girls. Many of past and present Kenyan women leaders went through the prestigious school. Joan remained a life-long mentor and role-model.

TRAIL-BLAZER

Edith was a trail-blazer in her own right, proceeding to the University of London for a Bachelor of Arts in Education, a Master of Arts from Columbia University in the US and post-graduate diploma in teaching from the University of London. She was pioneer headteacher at Moi Girls High School, Nairobi, and later lectured at the University of Nairobi.

Their father, Rev Musa Gitau, was a pioneer Presbyterian Church of East Africa clergyman at Thogoto Mission, Kikuyu. He was among Africans who played major roles in establishment of Alliance Boys, Alliance Girls, and the famous Kikuyu Mission Hospital. He has been immortalised in Musa Gitau schools in Thogoto.

Rev Gitau is said to have “discovered” Johnstone Kamau (Jomo Kenyatta), a young man  who had fled from Gatundu. Rev Gitau not only welcomed him to live with his family but also became his circumcision father.

A lifetime friendship blossomed with the Kenyattas. The PCEA clergy was one of the few people who never needed appointment to visit State House after Mzee Kenyatta became President.

Alexander Gitau, the reverend’s youngest son later served as the controller of State House for many years.

In a repeat of history, many years later when Matiba told Mzee Kenyatta he was taking his son, Raymond, for circumcision, the President asked that his two sons, Uhuru and Muhoho, be taken along.

SOUNDING BOARD

People who have closely interacted with the Matibas say Edith was the person her husband would turn to when he wanted to be second-guessed.

Multiple interviews with close family members agree on one thing: She was just about the only person who could get the strong-willed Matiba to change his mind whenever he was set on doing something. “Mama Susan (Edith) is the only person who could stop Matiba and make him rethink his decision. He was always receptive to her counsel, a courtesy Matiba rarely extended to anybody once he’d made up his mind,” said the family source, who chose not to be identified.

Humble to the core, Edith was also determined and her children would grow up with values.

Though she and her children went to some of the best schools in England and the US, she remained down to earth and during the time I worked for their company that published The People newspaper, she often spoke to her children in Kikuyu.

When I was at The People (now part of Mediamax Network that is majority owned by the Kenyatta family), Edith personally delivered milk from her farm for office use every morning. And whenever she wanted to see her daughter Ivy, who was the chief executive at the company, Edith would sit at the reception and wait for her turn.

WITCH-HUNT

In his biography, Matiba tells of an incident that illustrates how protective of her children Edith was, and has remained.

At the beginning of the political witch-hunt on her husband when he was Cabinet minister in 1987, State agents planted some information that Ivy, who was in college in England, was a member of the Mwakenya underground movement, and that she had attended a lecture by then self-exiled Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

The family strongly denied the allegations. But not sure how it would affect her daughter, Edith travelled to England to ensure her daughter wasn’t traumatised in a way that would affect her studies.

Not long after, her husband would be denied permission to travel to the US for his son’s graduation. Edith, though unwell, insisted she had to travel.

At Germany’s Frankfurt Airport, her sickness took a toll on her and she had to first sleep at the airport for medication before proceeding to New York. Standing behind the man she loved came with a heavy price, at one point narrowly escaping with her life when hired gangs struck on a mission to kill her husband.

It was in early June 1990, just a month before her husband was whisked away to be detained without trial, eventually suffering a stroke, and the beginning of his downward spill.

Edith was asleep at the family Riara Ridge home in Limuru, when she heard a commotion outside. With her in the house were only their daughter Julie, and a house-help. The hired gangs overran the night guard who they badly injured. They then broke into the house and to the bedroom where Edith was pleading with God to save their lives. The six burly men, who were seemingly well-trained, demanded that she tells them where her husband was hiding. When she insisted he wasn’t in the house — he actually had flown to Mombasa at short notice — they hit her on the head with a blunt object, leaving her collapsed in a pool of blood with a broken skull. She would be hospitalised for two weeks. As she recuperated at a friend’s house, where she was hiding for her own security, her husband was carted away to detention. In  following months and years while nursing her own head injuries and agonising about her husband kept incommunicado in detention, Edith had to criss-cross world cities ensuring her college-going children continued with their education.

FAMILY PILLAR

It was hardly the first time she provided a pillar for the family to lean on. In their early years as Matiba, the youngest ever PS at 31, travelled the world on government business, it’s Edith who was at home to take care of their young family of five children —  Susan, Raymond, Ivy, Julie and Richard — even as she made a career of her own as a high school head-teacher, university lecturer, and later a professional farmer.

In his autobiography, Aiming High, Matiba admits he is so much indebted to his wife for taking care of the family in his long absence as duty called.

He says that at one point in life, his children had composed a song “Home again”, to celebrate his home-coming after a moment out of the country.

Matiba records a moment when Edith, as strong as she was, had to break down at the police callous treatment of her husband. It happened eight months into his detention when he suffered a stroke after he was denied medication and access to his personal doctor.

At Nairobi Hospital, where he was secretly admitted, police used a fake name “Muchiri” which was actually the name of the plain-clothed security officer guarding him. However, word leaked and someone alerted Mama Edith on telephone that her husband was at the hospital in critical condition.

In good faith, she went to see the then Nairobi police commander who also doubled as the security officer in charge of detained persons, one GK Kinoti. With a straight face, the officer denied Matiba was in hospital, terming it a rumour.  “Your husband is well and in good health at Kamiti Prison”, he swore well knowing it was a cruel lie. “In that case” said Mama Edith, “I will go to the hospital and check it out myself. You can shoot me if you like but I am heading there!”

From Kinoti’s office, Edith consulted her lawyer and they resolved to issue a press statement to the effect that her husband had been admitted to hospital in a critical condition.

Knowing the local media would be intimidated not to carry the news, the two gave it to the BBC news service, which promptly broadcast the news to great embarrassment of the authorities.

With the news out in the public, Kinoti now called Edith to confirm the news, even heartlessly admitting that he actually was the one who had taken her husband to hospital! She broke down in disbelieve that it was the same officer who only hours earlier had told her it was all a rumour and that all was well with her husband!

That wasn’t all. She and Matiba’s mother were the only people allowed to see him in hospital. Not even his children!

KEEP OFF POLITICS

In his biography, Matiba acknowledges that Edith had strongly argued against her husband going into politics in 1979, but he had overruled her.

A very private person, Edith hadn’t wanted the intrusion that comes with politics. She had insisted that the family quietly gets involved in community and charity work as they still do, but didn’t at all like the publicity that comes with a political office. Her fear was always that there was too much dishonesty and witch-hunt in Kenyan politics that her husband, used to straightforward boardroom dealings, wouldn’t fit in.

However, when her strong-willed husband eventually overruled her, she accepted to live with it, but kept herself and her children at a much safe distance from the political arena as she could. None of her children has ever sought a political office.

HAPPY TO RESIGN

It is against that background that Edith could afford a big smile when on the night of December 8, 1988, her husband came home to announce that he would be resigning as cabinet minister – the first one to do so in Kenya’s history — the following day and quit politics, altogether.

“She felt relieved that finally I was quitting the hustle and headaches of politics”, Matiba said later. Earlier that day, Matiba had come under strong criticism from two of his Cabinet colleagues after he loudly protested against election rigging.

Matiba would return to politics, this time to campaign for political pluralism, after 15 months of silence.

The incident that provoked him to return to the fray was summons to the then police Special Branch offices to account for his movements. He was to say: “I had resolved never again to involve myself in politics. I had even kept away from my rural home for over a year to avoid any contact with my former supporters. I just wanted to concentrate on my business and be with my family.”

But after the interrogation by the Special Branch, he decided to plunge back headlong. “I had kept my silence but they provoked me. That’s when I decided to take the bull by the horns. Keeping quiet wasn’t doing me or the country any good.”

However, Edith saw trouble coming with the return of her husband to the political arena. She proposed that he grants her the power of attorney to transact personal and family matters on his behalf. He promptly did so. She could smell trouble from far. After the stroke he suffered in prison and another massive one while in a London hospital, Matiba lost ability to personally sign documents. It is a great testament to Edith’s strength that despite the downhill road travelled by the family patriarch in the past three decades, and the resultant decline in family fortunes, Matiba’s family to this day has remained a role model, holding together and keeping their heads high however tough the going gets.

It would be a real case of till-death-do-us-part when on the Sunday evening, April 15, Matiba took his final bow with Edith at his bedside at Karen Hospital. She was there for him when he went up the mountains, literally and otherwise, and was there for him when he came down the mountains of life. She shared in his joys and victories. But more importantly, she stayed to encourage him to remain strong amid pain and tribulation.