Living through Saba Saba year

For those of us who began working in the newsroom in 1990, it felt like chicks prematurely kicked out of the nestling.

We were just past 20 years, but the newsroom made us look and act like we’d hit 40s.

For the editors, getting a headline wasn’t a headache. They were spoilt for choice.

Events were unfolding at a frenetic, maddening pace.

By midday, a headline would be found only for a bombshell to drop by three o’clock and the would-be headline relegated to a second lead story.

BREAKING STORY

Then, just as the paper was going to bed (the newsroom language for going to print), the real stopper would come and the would-be headline would be pushed to inside pages.

I remember one day when the newspaper was going to bed. Then lawyer Paul Muite, who had gone underground to escape arrest over the Saba Saba crackdown, showed up in the newsroom with his wife in tow.

The newspaper lead page had to be recalled from press to create room for the breaking story.

I was also in the newsroom on the day Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia and Raila Odinga were arrested on July 4, 1990.

The news came past eight when everybody was packing for home. By then upcountry editions had begun rolling off the press.

MULTIPARTY

Only the city edition carried news of the arrest.

Elsewhere, US Ambassador Smith Hempstone had just arrived at a holiday camp on the slopes of Mount Kenya after hosting the July 4 US Independence Day party.

He had just filled himself a glass of Jack Daniels when he heard the news on a shortwave radio.

He madly drove back to Nairobi nursing a terrible thirst and wishing someone hadn’t brought the radio near him.

The year had opened with drama right from day one, the New Year day, when PCEA cleric, the Rev Timothy Njoya, declared 1990 would be the year of multipartyism.

Only the Daily Nation had the guts to splash the story.

ROBERT OUKO

The following day, the newspaper’s Managing Editor, George Mbugguss, stayed underground.

Security men were instructed to look for him but he outwitted them by showing up at the office of the dreaded Internal Security Permanent Secretary Hezekiah Oyugi.

Throughout the week, politicians foamed at the mouth and sweated in special areas as they competed to condemn Rev Njoya and sing praises to the king, oops, to His Excellency.

Hardly had the Njoya storm calmed when, in the second week of February, Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko was whisked away from his bedroom, killed and a corrosive acid poured on his body.

Days later he was buried in a laboratory made skull and reconstructed face.

His real skull had been flown to London for forensic tests by the Scotland Yard.

DEMOCRACY
Early in April, His Excellency the Big Man held rallies in all provincial headquarters with the last one in Nairobi where he announced that Kenyans had “told” him they didn’t want a multiparty political system.

He decreed debate on multipartyism was officially closed. No, Anglican clergy, Bishop Henry Okullu, answered him:

“You haven’t heard anything yet. The debate has just begun,” the bishop said.

Early in May, Matiba and Rubia called a press conference and demanded that Kenya return to a multiparty system.

On the same day, Mr Hempstone told a gathering of Rotarians that in future, his government would channel development aid only to nations that practised multiparty democracy. The battle was enjoined.

SURVEILLANCE
At a crisis security meeting convened at State House, the spear-carriers in the government called for detention of Matiba and Rubia.

The more sycophantic even called for detention of the US ambassador!

Wise counsel prevailed and none of the actions was taken — not yet. But the season of madness had begun.

Matiba, Rubia and dozens of other Kenyans were put on round-the-clock surveillance.

I remember one day when Matiba and Rubia made to walk to the offices of the Weekly Review magazine at Agip House for an interview.

Tens of policemen were sent to blockade the magazine offices and deny them entrance.

INTIMIDATION

A few minutes later when they walked to the offices of their lawyer Paul Muite at the Electricity House, they found another police contingent camping at Muite’s door.

When they angrily pushed their way in, six policemen followed them inside the lawyer’s office and insisted they must listen in to the client/lawyer conversation!

Later in the evening when Muite went to retrieve his vehicle from the underground parking, he found it had been given a new coat of “paint” using human waste.

He had to pay street boys to clean it, the same ones who had been hired to do the dirty job!

Business must have been good for the street boys that day!

FEAR
Nobody felt safe anywhere. One day as then Cabinet minister Mwai Kibaki walked out of a shopping mall, he met an old friend who was recuperating from a mysterious skin disease following a poisoning incident staged by security agents.

Kibaki was so shocked and whispered to his friend that he would be visiting him at his home to know what had happened.

At the friend’s place, Kibaki couldn’t talk inside the house.

They sat at a far corner and still feared the fence was listening in and reporting them to the Big Man!

Security men had tried to kill Kibaki’s friend on suspicion that he was the secret liaison between Kibaki and some clergymen critical of the government.

REPORTING
In those days, I used to live off Limuru Road, which was the route used by Matiba when travelling to his home at Riara Ridge in Limuru.

One day we woke up to find leaflets all over demanding a return to a multiparty system.

I wrote the story of the leaflets in the Kenya Times newspapers where I worked.

In the evening, five uninvited guests came to my tiny one-bedroom house and forced themselves on the sofa.

I had to sit on the stool, the only other furniture in the tiny room.

The “guests” were the area chief and his Administration Police officers.

LEAFLETS

They demanded to know why I had reported the story of the pamphlets. I told them it was the kind of job I was employed to do.

“Young man, that is the kind of a story that can cause us lose our jobs,” they angrily told me.

“But I never said you’re the ones who wrote or distributed the pamphlets! Why would anybody take offence on you?” I asked them.

“Look here,” the chief replied, “when our superiors, including the President, read that kind of story, the impression created is that we, as the area administrators, aren’t doing our job, which is why dissidents are distributing seditious documents all over the place. That can get us fired at the drop of the hat!”

On the Saba Saba day, July 7, the area where I lived near Banana shopping centre went into flames, as rioting mobs clashed with police.

Five people were shot dead and tens clobbered senseless. For three days there was no public transport and we had to walk to work.

On the first day, a Monday, I got to the office past midday and found my boss seething.

“You have decided this is your kiosk to be walking in when you wish?” he asked me.

When I attempted to explain why I was late, he cut me short:

“Do you mean to say any day there is a hitch in transport we won’t be producing the newspaper!” I had nothing to say.

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