To show Matiba gratitude, we must say never again to bad governance
President Uhuru Kenyatta visits former Cabinet minister Kenneth Matiba at a Nairobi hospital. He viewed Matiba as his role model. FILE PHOTO | PSCU
What you need to know:
- In the campaign for a multiparty system, the entry of Matiba changed the landscape.
- Matiba’s success as a businessman was a living rebuke to a system built on lies, looting and kickbacks.
Kenneth Matiba changed Kenya, no question about it.
I recall like yesterday the May 3, 1990 press conference when he and Charles Rubia called for multipartyism; the events of Saba Saba and the bloody crackdown; the subsequent Kanu Review Committee and its whitewash job; the 1991 Kanu conference where political pluralism was allowed; the first Ford rally at Kamukunji grounds, which was the biggest ever seen since independence; and the heroic return of Matiba from his London convalescence.
Oh yes, we remember, above all, the climate of fear which Matiba confronted and overcame for good.
Nobody can stop an idea whose time has come.
Particularly not a threadbare regime that was a byword for misrule and which would have aptly fitted the recent insult on Africa by Donald Trump.
MULTIPARTY
Foreign Minister Robert Ouko had been brutally murdered a few months before Matiba’s call, apparently because, as a later book by then-US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen was to reveal, he alone among a Kenyan delegation to Washington DC, had been honoured with a meeting with President George Bush Senior at the White House.
Such was Kenya. Curiously, the Kenya government then unleashed a witch-hunt on “rumourmongers”, which included Matiba and Wangari Maathai, rather than investigate the high-level murder.
True, Matiba was not the first to campaign for a multiparty system.
Clergymen Timothy Njoya and Henry Okullu had spoken before.
But the entry of Matiba changed the landscape. With him was not only Rubia but also Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
ACTIVISTS
It is said there were other heavyweights on the sidelines who had at first agreed to go public with Matiba but got cold feet.
From the start, the Matiba group comprised Jaramogi’s son Raila, and lawyers Paul Muite and Gitobu Imanyara.
Other politicians, lawyers and civil society notables joined in when the coast became clearer.
Moments of history have a knack of converging all at once.
Exactly the same day Matiba and Rubia issued their challenge, US ambassador Smith Hempstone was at a Rotary luncheon where he made a similar call.
Months earlier, the Berlin Wall had fallen, signalling the end of the Cold War.
Dozens of African countries were forced by the changing international order to ditch one-party autocracies.
ROLE MODEL
The first East African leader to correctly read the geopolitical shift was Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, whose endorsement of multiparty democracy in Africa caused a ruckus in Nairobi.
Uhuru Kenyatta’s reference in his condolence message to Matiba as his mentor and role model has been questioned by some people, who prefer to view him as Daniel arap Moi’s creation.
I think Uhuru’s message was heartfelt.
Many people don’t know that he went against his entire family, which had trooped to Mwai Kibaki’s corner, to openly campaign for Matiba in 1992.
It is also rarely remembered that Uhuru had in 1990, shortly after Matiba was detained, pulled together a group of sons of prominent Mzee Kenyatta-era Kenyans to call on the Nyayo state to open up the democratic space.
DANIEL MOI
It has been widely noted that Moi has not sent a condolence message to Matiba’s family.
Not even an apology to Matiba’s wife, Edith. The wonder is whether Moi even feels a sense of contrition.
Years after the storm settled, Sunday Nation writer Emeka Gekara did a remarkable interview with an ailing Rubia, and asked him what he thought of Moi, his jailer.
Rubia reflected for some moments, and answered: “Moi is a small man”.
He did not mean in size, or position. He meant something else altogether that perfectly defines Moi.
BUSINESSMAN
Moi should be looking at the replay of Matiba’s life with a sense of shame.
Shame, as Karl Marx once said, is a “revolutionary” sentiment. It humanises.
The construction of the Moi dictatorship was driven by a personal sense of inadequacy.
That is why it reacted violently to those who exposed it as a fraud.
Matiba’s success as a businessman was a living rebuke to a system built on lies, looting and kickbacks.
The greatest lesson from Matiba’s life is that we must never again go back to that kind of misgovernance. Ever.
Warigi is a socio-political commentator [email protected]
