British journalist who died with Kenya’s most guarded secrets

I reported to work at Nation Centre early one morning to find a “Please see me” note left on my desk by my boss, Managing Editor Joseph Odindo.

For those who attended high school in my day, a “see me” message from the headteacher wasn’t often a pleasant affair. It likely ended with a few strokes of the cane or a suspension from school.

Until you discover the amiable personality in Mr Odindo, he cuts the image of an intimidating boss, much so given his big frame and tendency to scream when he blows a fuse. A trained schoolteacher to boot, he was mentored at the Starehe Boys’ Centre by the dreaded police reservist Patrick Shaw.

Had he returned to teach at his old school, he automatically would have been appointed the discipline master.

PENDING ISSUES

Before I went to see him I made a quick run through my diary to see whether there were pending issues to be accounted for. Finding none, I walked to his desk to hear what he had to say.

The previous evening, he had received a telephone call from Alastair Matheson, a retired mzungu journalist who needed press coverage to expose a Kanu-era Jezebel lusting for the man’s expansive land in Karen.

“Book an appointment and hear what story he has for us,” said my boss, before adding, “The old man has been around for long and may have other interesting stories to tell besides the land matter.”

I did the story on the land saga and eventually the Kanu shark got off the retired journalist’s back. In those days, when it was cheaper to buy the judge than hire a lawyer, the old man was grateful the media had saved his land. A friendship followed.

Often, especially when he saw an item of interest in the media, he’d telephone me for a chat or ask me to have afternoon coffee with him at his Karen home.

KENYAN SECRETS

As a retired journalist, he knew how to tell a story — unlike some sources that have stories but can’t tell them well.

Most of the stories Matheson shared were picks from States of Emergency: Reporting Africa for Half a Century, his limited-circulation memoir, which is out of print. As he told the stories afresh, he kept telling me that it was only the tip of the iceberg, and that he’d soon share with me a “million” other Kenyan secrets he knew.

My first meeting with Matheson came in June 2002, which was just a few months to the exit of President Daniel arap Moi from power. At the time, the President was preoccupied selling youthful Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor against strong opposition from within the ruling party Kanu.

RETIRED JOURNALIST

But it was clear Mr Moi was ready to pull out every stop to ensure he had his way. From a subsequent meeting with the retired journalist, I learnt that the President had held a secret meeting with the British community in Kenya and had asked them to support his youthful candidate.

The old man told me the Head of State had made a strong case that Mr Kenyatta was the most trusted pair of hands to guarantee security for British interests in Kenya.

In his reign, Mr Moi had always played on Britain’s fears over her massive investments in the country — a perfect strategy to ensure London’s support.

On an ominous note, which came to pass five years later, Mr Moi had told his whites-only audience that he had reason to believe that should the opposition National Rainbow Coalition, coalescing around Mwai Kibaki, come to power, it would sooner rather than later split and possibly lead to bloodshed in the countdown to the 2007 election.

In the meeting, according to Matheson, the President said although Mr Kibaki was a gentleman, the coalition “had reckless people, including Kibaki’s own friends” who would easily plunge the country into chaos. It was a prediction Mr Moi, the long-necked political giraffe, got right.

FAKE NEWS

In our conversations, the retired journalist also recalled Mr Moi’s early days in power. Given Matheson’s influential position as Nairobi correspondent for the authoritative British newspaper the Observer and America’s iconic New York Times, Attorney-General Charles Njonjo would often offer tips with startling “news” and “revelations”, but which the journalist often took with a pinch of salt.

Unfortunately, the old journalist told me, the local media believed everything Mr Njonjo said to be gospel truth and went to town with it in screaming headlines.

He gave me the example of the time Mr Njonjo dropped a “bombshell” in Parliament that a “private army” had been formed in the Rift Valley to assassinate him (Mr Njonjo), Mr Moi, and Mr Kibaki, among other top Kenyan leaders.

The alleged mastermind of the plot, then Rift Valley police boss James Mungai, fled the country to Europe fearing arrest, but loudly protested innocence.

SENIOR POLICEMAN

A year later, the senior policeman “voluntarily” returned to the country, only for Mr Njonjo to call a press conference and declare the “file on the matter closed”. The journalist in Matheson smelt a rat and telephoned Mr Njonjo’s office the next morning for clarification.

The secretary told him Mr Njonjo was unwell. When the journalist insisted he had watched him on television the previous evening and he looked “very fit”, the secretary changed the story to say Mr Njonjo was “too busy to pick up the phone!” He never agreed to discuss the “Ngoroko” matter with the journalist.

The retired journalist also told me of a time he sent a friendly Cabinet minister to caution President Moi not to trust one-time British media-mogul-turned-conman Robert Maxwell.

INVESTORS

As with all fast-talking foreign “investors”, Mr Maxwell had gone to the President with tall tales of how he would turn around the then ailing Kanu-owned newspaper, Kenya Times, and help the ruling party “build the largest media empire on the continent”.

From his London sources, Matheson knew it was all hot air, and that Maxwell had been blacklisted in Britain as a man not to touch even with a 10-foot pole.

However, the emissary Matheson sent didn’t take the message to the President fearing State House officials who were “eating” from the crooked media tycoon would kill anybody who came to spoil the party.

Eventually, Maxwell cooked his own goose after he convinced President Moi to hive off part of Uhuru Park to construct a 60-storey behemoth as headquarters for the Kenya Times Media Group. In the furore raised by environmentalist Wangari Maathai, the world intervened to stop the project.

Not long after, Maxwell followed the project to the grave. So did the Kenya Times Media Group.

FOREIGN NEWS CONTENT

Matheson also vividly recalled how vicious ideological wars played out inside independent Kenya’s first Cabinet to the extent the left never knew what the right was doing. One morning, as head of the newly created Kenya News Agency (KNA), he was summoned to the Ministry of Finance to hurriedly sign a deal for the London-based Reuters News Agency to be supplying KNA with foreign news content.

Apparently, the right wing in the Cabinet had got wind the left-leaning Information minister Achieng Oneko was to sign a similar deal with the Soviet Union’s Tass News Agency that afternoon and were in a stampede to undercut Moscow.

In the afternoon, Matheson went to Oneko’s office to find the minister wasn’t aware a deal had already been sealed with Reuters. When told so, the minister turned to the Russian ambassador, who was present, and said: “Well, we’ve lost the game. You might have to consider giving your services for free!” The Russian obliged, only for “higher authorities” to quietly issue orders that KNA not touch anything from Moscow!

***

As chief information officer for the colonial government, Matheson was among the first people to be allowed to visit Mzee Jomo Kenyatta at the Maralal detention house, where he was staying with his youngest wife, Mama Ngina.

The journalist had gone to arrange Mzee Kenyatta’s first ever international press conference shortly before his release from prison.

CANCER TREATMENT

While having tea with Mzee Kenyatta, Matheson told me he noted the shy young woman next to him was expectant and was surprised that age and the long prison term hadn’t taken away “virility from the old man where it mattered”.

A few months later, the shy young woman gave birth to a baby boy, who is today the President of Kenya.

RIP: Early in October 2002, I got a telephone call from Matheson’s Kenyan wife, Alice, to say my friend, then 82, had died in London, where he was undergoing treatment for cancer. I wrote a news story about it for the Daily Nation and disappeared from the office to quietly mourn at my “local” in Nairobi West.

Regrettably the old man was gone with a sack full of Kenya’s most guarded secrets.

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