How I helped to prolong Moi’s brutal tyranny and lost the plot

This has been a week replete with cloying hagiographic narratives mainly perpetrated by mainstream media on the one hand and total deconstruction of former president Daniel arap Moi’s legacy by social media players, who cannot conjure enough pejoratives to describe the man.

As a result, those people who had not known any other head of state until they became adults may be quite confused; they may not understand the contradictions in Moi’s personality.

Was he all bad or all good, or was he just an ordinary mortal with excessive powers he handled badly? The debate is bound to continue long after the country’s second president is buried.

But, in the meantime, there is precious little left to say of a general nature. I, for instance, cannot wax rhapsodic about the nurturing qualities of 'Maziwa ya Nyayo', for I never drank any.

At the same time, I was never anywhere near the Nyayo House torture chambers for, although I spent most of my working life in the newsroom, I was too disinterested in politics to get on the radar of the dreaded Special Branch.

Today, things are completely different for me, but that is a sordid tale for another day.

MULTIPATYISM

Nevertheless, like every Kenyan who lived under the Nyayo dictatorship, I was in one way or the other affected, for no one could ever escape the effects of his failed policies in every aspect of life, be it political, economic or social.

Those years were marked by systemic corruption, systematic dismantling of economically viable enterprises, high-level tribalism, which culminated in state-sponsored inter-tribal violence every election cycle, human-rights abuses that targeted government critics, detention without trial, torture, jail-terms on spurious charges, enforced exile, and a compromised justice system.

But none of these things really affected me directly and I had no reason to care too much about the state of the nation.

But this obliviousness would not last long. It so happened that this was at the height of the agitation for multipartyism after the repeal of Section 2(A) of the Constitution, which had turned Kenya into a de jure single-party state.

The opening up of democratic space in 1991 meant that we all had to choose sides and many Kenyans rejoiced that they could, at last, vote freely.

TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT

So it happened that 1992 was the first multiparty elections in which those who participated in the struggle for the second liberation and suffered heavily for it (Kenneth Matiba, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and others), and one who sat pretty in Kanu until the last moment (Mwai Kibaki), tried to wrest the presidency from Moi. They failed.

I am still ashamed about the role I may have played in that failure, but of course there were mitigating circumstances.

I had lost my job, was looking after a very young family, and was nearly hopeless. When I got a chance to work for a new publication known as The Weekend Mail, I grabbed it.

My recruitment was quite dramatic. One day, while walking in town in a deep funk, I learnt that veteran editor Philip Ochieng had launched the weekly. (I had previously worked at Kenya Times where Mr Ochieng was boss, and few employers had much time for anyone associated with the Kanu paper).

When I sauntered into Continental House, where the paper was based, there was no preamble. “What took you so long?” Ochieng asked, looking up. “Sit down and write an editorial.”

There and then I had to think of an idea, set it down, and edit three news analyses before we could discuss my terms of employment.

PROPAGANDA AGENTS

It was not until three days later that I learnt that the publication was “owned” by very senior people at State House, and was meant to be a vehicle for wreaking havoc on opposition candidates through calumny and propaganda.

Our efforts must have worked wonderfully because, in the end, Moi won the first multiparty election, although it is said he actually snatched victory from Matiba.

I have never been proud of the articles I wrote that whole year after getting tips from fellows I didn’t even know (they must have been State agents).

Indeed, I believe I lost trust when I refused to slander a judge for seeking lodging in John Michuki’s Windsor Hotel, a matter I could not verify independently. The fellow who did write the story was, in the end, amply rewarded.

ABETTING TYRANNY

On the day that Moi was declared the winner, the paper abruptly folded. What was most hurting was that we were not even paid our dues and there could be no appeal to anyone.

People at the Big House who had generously given us their personal telephone numbers immediately went mteja, and that was it.

I had unwittingly helped prolong a brutal tyranny for another five years, and the reason given for that extraordinary treatment was that I had been a mole in Mr Kibaki’s employ all along. I still can’t believe it.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]