10 thoughts on “Luos and Kikuyus Have No Problem Between Themselves – Mrs Hellen Opwapo”
From Twitter:
“Asking Uhuru to attend a second presidential debate on the Land issue and Foreign Policy is like asking a serial killer to report his crime to the police.”
When Uhuru is exposed as corrupt his sycophants invent the notion of the existence of elaborate Luo plots to finish him and the Kikuyu. When RAO is exposed as corrupt, his sycophants invent the notion of the existence of elaborate Kikuyu plots to finish him and the Luo. This is quite evident even on social sites on the Internet where there is a rabid anti-kikuyu and anti-Luo sentiment, a tsunami wave sweeping common sense away depending on prevailing ethnic sympathies. It is comical to see claims from certain quarters that Luo’s and Kikuyu’s do not have problems, just like an ostrich that sticks its head in the sand during a sandstorm and convinces itself that the storm does not exist. Perhaps the people behing these voices consider the obvious tensions as policy based and actually believe it, very much like the majority of the presidential candidates that claim their parties are policy based on social democracy and not tribal groupings. Shameless and clueless Kenyans lying to each other and themselves with their robot supporters nodding their heads or yelling in agreement. Madimoni wote!
Kikuyu bashing will NOT change or erase the comments (revelations) that Miguna is making. It would is my experience that whenever people present the truth they are branded madmen, called lairs, personal attacks and the claims of money having exchanged hands being the order of the day. Why is there no attempt whatsoever to address the issues Miguna has raised? Miguna’s personality, character, dress code, ethics and past history has been dissected and examined thoroughly BUT not one person has attempted the same with the information he has made public. Fortunately there are those of us that see beyond the cheap lies and propaganda being used to counter the likes of Miguna, and we are growing in number every day.
wakikuyu wakabila ona walivomtupa Mudavadi.Hawa ni watu wabaya hawataki makabila mengine.Kikuyus won’t ´vote for other tribes and are using Ruto to get Kalenjin votes for tribal mungiki boss Uhuru.
Luos have suffered under the leadership of all Kenyan presidents. At Jomo Kenyatta time Argwings Kodhek and and Tom Mboya, some of the best Luos died under suspicious circumstances.DO Makasembo was the same.Robert Ouko died mysteriously during Moi’s time.Ex MP of Gem Otieno Ambala died suspiciously and so was the MP of Gem at that time, Harace Ongili Owiti. Under Kibaki Dr. Odhiambo Mbai also died suspiciously. These were at least prominent Luos, but thousands more died in the struggle for a better Kenya, and through bad politics by these selfish leaders.
Whether we cry out loudly or whisper in undertones, the truth remains that what is ailing our country is tribalism. We have left the best of our leaders unlistened to just because we want to identify ourselves with tribal chieftains. We celebrated at the promulgation of the new constitution but before the grass could grow on tne ground from where we danced, we are already taking sides by campaigning basing on tribal numbers. It is a shame to listen to some Kenyans arguing that the best candidate is one who can strongly defend his tribe successfully from the rest of Kenyans. I believe the best presidential candidate is one who can unite all Kenyans by overseeing the county’s resources dispatched equitably. Such a person is a true defender of the entire nation. Kenya will only meet its development needs the day we shall move away from voting along tribal lines.
For an office widely billed as being on the verge of losing most of its imperial trappings and becoming much more a chairmanship of the nation’s Board than a command and control centre, the Kenyan presidency is still attracting many of our most assertive political operatives.
They are falling over themselves in a headlong dash, seeking after a de-fanged national CEO-ship that looks suspiciously like a hankering after maximum power and influence.
The presidency will, of course, still be the apex office in the land. It may no longer prorogue Parliament at will, it may no longer decide the carving up of the national development and opportunities’ cakes and even its nominees to the Cabinet and most other public sector offices will be subject to fairly autonomous vetting. But it will still retain the command-in-chief of the Armed Forces, the intelligence communities, both local and international, will be at its disposal, the Treasury and administrative structures will still, in many key respects, defer to State House and Harambee House.
WAZEE JOMO, MOI AND KIBAKI
What’s more, even a comparatively toothless presidency can still play the political scene like a chess master, impacting both regions and the nation powerfully and enduringly. The presidency is still the top office, even when shorn of certain ‘personal rule’ characteristics enjoyed by Wazee Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki.
Finally, an Odinga – Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga – a man who hails from a political dynasty that has spent the bulk of its career ensuring that the office is indeed shorn of its immense powers, looks poised to make an unassailable bid for the presidency.
Given Raila’s game-changing endorsement of Kibaki in October 2002 and the fact that the two men are now the power-sharing principals of the Grand Coalition regime, the outgoing PM ought to have a much easier time of stepping into Kibaki’s shoes. Instead, some of the stiffest opposition to Raila becoming president emanates from Kibaki’s own political backyard of Central Kenya where it has long been conventional ethnic wisdom that the presidency must under no circumstances go to a Luo.
The Kikuyu-Luo rivalry is one of those abiding tribal hatreds that are underpinned by passionate prejudices of a blood-feud-like intensity, which, however, when examined in the clear light of day by rational minds, can barely stand scrutiny. What does it consist of, beyond the fact that Kenyatta and the Jaramogi led Kenya into Independence in one of the most inspiring and triumphant political alliances in our history and then had a dramatic falling out?
The sense of betrayal on both sides of the fence would be laughable if it did not have such dire consequences over the years. The Kikuyu felt betrayed in that the Jaramogi took on the foremost of his fellow founding fathers, Jomo, so soon and so openly after Independence; the Luo felt betrayed that the Kikuyu elite gathered around Jomo were divvying up the new nation among, excluding everyone else and buying out the White Highlands and other assets of the fleeing colonists across the nation. The Kikuyu settlement in the Rift Valley took the ominous pattern early of Kiambu Kikuyu, Kenyatta’s own people, not of Nyeri or Meru people, for instance.
THE AGE OF ASSASSINATIONS
And then the fallout turned deadly. On February 24, 1965, Jaramogi’s right-hand man, Pio Gama Pinto, a nominated MP of Indian (Goan) descent who had also been jailed as a Mau Mau sympathiser by the British, was gunned down in the driveway of his residence on Nairobi’s Lower Kabete Road (near where Sarit Centre now stands). This killing came a month after the slaughter in Nyeri by elements of the army and the paramilitary General Service Unit of the Meru Mau Mau general known as Baimungi and his supporters, who were threatening a return to the forests if their ragtag forces were not absorbed into the Armed Forces.
The same week Pinto was gunned down, in the faraway US, five armed men rose from a crowd and mowed down Malcolm X, the firebrand American civil rights leader. It was the age of high-profile political assassinations. Barely 20 days before Kenya’s Independence, in Dallas, Texas, the 35th American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was shot dead as he rode in an open limousine on November 22, 1963.
In 1968, two great American leaders were assassinated within two months. First came Dr Martin Luther King in April of that year and then, on June 6, presidential brother and candidate Robert Francis Kennedy, who had served his brother JFK as Attorney General in 1961-63. That was the year that the first post-independence general election was scheduled in Kenya, but it was postponed for a year after Kenyatta fell seriously ill while holidaying in Mombasa.
The following year, 1969, was the flashpoint year for Kikuyu-Luo relations. Between January and early November that year, the Luo community lost two senior Cabinet ministers and suffered the imprisonment without trial of the Jaramogi himself. First to go was Foreign Affairs Minister CMG Argwings-Kodhek, one of Kenya’s first and most courageous African lawyers and a nationalist of note in a road accident near the Pan Afric Hotel. The accident has remained suspicious to this day. And then came Thomas Joseph Mboya, gunned down like his friends from Boston, the Kennedy brothers, allegedly by a lone assassin on Saturday July 5, 1969. Mboya’s nationalist credentials were of the first water.
A murderous top cabal somewhere at the very top in Kenya in the 1960s was mimicking the worst and most sinister of American events and literally getting away with murder. After the riotous incident at the Russia Hospital in Kisumu in October in which the president’s motorcade was stoned and Odinga’s detention as well as that of the entire top leadership of the Kenya People’s Union was ordered, Kikuyu-Luo relations lay in tatters that have yet to be mended to this day.
FIRST OATH SINCE THE 1950s
The Kikuyu elite around Kenyatta at the time, widely referred to as the “Kiambu Mafia”, even went to the extent of organising the first oathing ceremonies in the Mt Kenya regions since the early 1950s, when Kenyatta had been jailed by the British for “managing Mau Mau”. These ceremonies enjoined all Gikuyu, Embu, Mbeere and Meru people aged 12 and over to ensure that bendera ndikoima Nyumba ya Mumbi (the flag [the Presidency] will never leave the House of Mumbi]). Most of the rest of Kenya sleepily initially assumed that all this open-secret oathing was pointedly aimed at the Luo and the Luo only.
Kenyatta, who was Mboya’s elder by 40 years, lived another nine years after 1969, during which he consolidated his imperial Presidency in ways that alarmed not only the Luo but much of the rest of the nation. In their classic study of the African phenomenon of “personal rule” in the 1960s to the 80s, Why Africa’s Weak State Persists, US analysts Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg (the latter co-wrote The Myth of Mau Mau with John Nottingham) noted that its key characteristics were, “Widespread removal of constitutional rights and protection from political opponents, the elimination of institutional checks and balances, the termination of open party politics and the regulation and confinement of political participation, usually within the framework of a ‘single party’ ’’.
This was the route Kenyatta took after Mboya’s assassination and Odinga’s banning and detention, all the time taking the greatest care not to remove the constitutional guarantee of a multiparty state but in practice making Kanu the only legitimate political entity in the land. When the bendera finally left the House of Mumbi in 1978 upon Kenyatta’s death and Moi ascended to the presidency, the new Big Man proceeded to give Kenyans an object lesson in the “personal rule” paradigm that would last 24 years and become even more egregious than the Jomo model.
Moi actually removed the constitutional clause that allowed for more than one political party and then, using Vice President and Minister for Finance Mwai Kibaki and Attorney General Charles Njonjo in early 1982, inserted the nefarious Section 2(a), explicitly making Kenya a one-party state and the Kenya African National Union the only legal political organisation. Kibaki moved the motion and Njonjo, although no ally of his, seconded him. The Moi era had well and truly begun.
In the political sector at that time, the only voices heard in opposition to this draconian move were those of the Jaramogi and George Anyona. On August 1, 1982, elements of the Kenya Air Force mutinied and attempted a coup. It was brutally crushed.
POWER, PATRONAGE, PURGE
According to Jackson and Rosberg, the constituent components of the system of personal rule include clientilism, patronage and purges to perpetuate rule. Kenyatta and Moi wielded these components with abandon. And although he has managed a presidency that was distinctively different from that of the Kanu chieftains, Kibaki has nonetheless also exercised a degree of clientilism, patronage and purges. For instance, he purged the entire Cabinet after losing the first national referendum on the then proposed new constitution in November 2005, firing the whole lot of them except Vice President Moody Awori and Attorney General Amos Wako.
The next President of Kenya will, constitutionally speaking, exercise much more restricted options than even the outgoing Kibaki’s. The presidency is unlikely ever to regain its clout of the Kenyatta era or of the Moi era until the removal in November 1991 of Section 2(a). The next President will not even enjoy Kibaki’s largely unused clout. If the Kikuyu myth of why a Luo should not be President is that because he would avenge the terrible falling out of the 1960s, the very context of such revenge has been removed by constitutional evolution and bitter experience. The prospects of personal rule inside the presidency have receded forever, however powerful and overwhelming a personality he might possess – and Raila does possess a political persona like none other, a fact that will increasingly come to the fore the nearer Kibaki’s exit from the scene looms.
MUTUAL MYTHS
The Luo myth of why another Kikuyu must not succeed Kibaki is an inhibition that is shared by many other communities beyond Luoland and seems to hold more water than the mere fear of reprisals expressed by many a Kikuyu in reference to the prospect of a Luo ascendancy to the presidency. The Luo, like many other Kenyans, fear that an Uhuru Kenyatta presidency would last a decade, taking all the way to 2022 and bringing the number of years that a Kikuyu will have been the occupant of State House to 35 (including Jomo’s 15 and Kibaki’s 10).
Perhaps the sum of all these fears is basically unfounded, given that the new constitutional order has moved Kenya beyond the fiat of personalised rule. Jackson and Rosberg’s long-ago conclusion, that, in most African states, non-institutionalised governments “where persons take precedence over rules” prevail, may be effectively out of date now, certainly with reference to Kenya. President Raila Odinga will not necessarily preside over the destruction of Kikuyu Cabinet ministers nor will he detain anyone without trial just because such things happened 40-plus years ago, much less a Kikuyu communal figurehead of his father’s standing. Nor would a Kikuyu president replay the Great Betrayal of the 1960s and re-oath the Nyumba regarding the bendera. It is high time two of Kenya’s most iconic communities exposed their most deep-seated fears to rational scrutiny and watched them wilt in the light of day.
Kenya: Ominous Oaths
Time Magazine – Friday, Aug. 15, 1969
When a black Kenyan these days says, “I’m going to Gatundu for a cup of tea,” his friends know that it may be a cover-up for something else. Gatundu is the residence of Kenya’s President Jomo Kenyatta, and “tea drinking” is really oath swearing. Unlike the tribesmen who swore secret oaths to join the Mau Mau rebellion against foreigners in the 1950s, Kikuyu by the thousands are swearing oaths against fellow Kenyans in the President’s backyard.
This ominous new outbreak of tribal tension was set off by last month’s assassination of Tom Mboya, who was the Minister of Economic Planning and Development in the predominantly Kikuyu government. Mboya was a member of the Luo tribe, a rival of the Kikuyu. The arrested suspect is a Kikuyu. In addition to reacting to possible trouble with the Luo, the Kikuyu are also closing ranks in preparation for a national election within the next eight months.
Vast Scale
The Kikuyu, according to one participant, strip naked, then hold hands in a circle around a darkened hut. The Kikuyu, according to one participant, strip naked, then hold hands in a circle around a darkened hut and chant an oath before entering it. Inside the hut they eat soil and swear to follow the oath. “The government of Kenya is under Kikuyu leadership, and this must be maintained,” goes the pledge. “If any tribe tries to set itself up against the Kikuyu, we must fight them in the same way that we died fighting the British settlers. No uncircumcised leaders [for example, the Luo] will be allowed to compete with the Kikuyu. You shall not vote for any party not led by the Kikuyu. If you reveal this oath, may this oath kill you.”
The vast scale of the Kikuyu activity got into the headlines in Kenya last week with the accidental crash of three trucks. All were jampacked with Kikuyu, and survivors said that they were traveling to or from Kenyatta’s home. Thirteen passengers were killed, 105 injured. The presence of so many Kikuyu on the road to the President’s house raised suspicions that the tribe was engaged in a clandestine operation. In Parliament, members of Leader Oginga Odinga’s opposition party charged that the Kikuyu were engaged in oath taking on the grounds of the President’s residence. When a government spokesman denied such ceremonies, claiming that they were simple expressions of loyalty to Kenyatta, there were cries of “Shame! Shame!”
The Kikuyu, so the story went, had asked Kenyatta, who is a member of the tribe, to allow mass oath taking. Outsiders do not know Kenyatta’s response, but there is no doubt that his yard has become the scene of mass oath ceremonies. Many non-Kikuyu citizens fear that Kenyatta, the founder of the country, has been pressured into allowing tribal factionalism at the expense of national unity and his own policy of pulling the tribes together. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901233,00.html
Reading the Tea Leaves on the Kenyan Elections: Patterns of Violence and Political Alliances
By David W. Throup
Nov 16, 2012
Uhuru Kenyatta’s advisers remain divided. The older cohort of wealthy Kikuyu business leaders, mainly in their 60s and 70s, suspect that a third Kikuyu president cannot be elected and that other ethnic communities must be given a chance to hold the presidency. Jomo Kenyatta (Uhuru’s father) and current President Mwai Kibaki—both Kikuyu—have held power for 25 of the 49 years since independence in 1963. Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, ruled for the other 24. Now is the time, many assert, for a Luo (Odinga), a Luhya (Second Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi), or a Kamba (Vice President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka) to take the reins. Kenyatta, they caution, might be unelectable, incapable of drawing voters beyond his Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru bailiwick on the slopes of Mount Kenya. This so-called GEMA or Mount Kenya coalition comprises about 30 percent of Kenya’s population and, even given a high differential turnout for the region’s favorite son, is unlikely to comprise more than 35 percent of the total vote.
The Kikuyu old guard has not thrown its support and financial backing behind Kenyatta, and its members are exploring other ways to undermine Odinga. Some are supporting Raphael Tuju, a Luo advertising executive and former cabinet minister, in the hope that he will attract votes away from Odinga, but so far Tuju has gained little traction. Most are waiting to see whether Kenyatta decides to run, but some are convinced that he is unelectable and that a vote for Uhuru is in reality a vote for Raila. If Kenyatta stands for election, he is almost certain to come second in the first round on March 4 and to go forward into a second-round runoff a month later. But Odinga is almost certain to win a second round, with 60 percent of the vote to Kenyatta’s 40 percent. The bulk of supporters of the minor candidates—who should win at least 30 percent between them in the first round—are likely to split two-to-one in favor of Odinga in the second round. Even if Kenyatta were ahead on March 4, which is improbable, he would almost certainly lose the second contest. A number of prominent Kikuyu are attempting to persuade Kenyatta to stand down and to throw his support behind Mudavadi, his vice presidential running-mate in the 2002 election.
A year ago, Musalia Mudavadi was a firm ally of Raila Odinga, who helped him resurrect his political career after the debacle of 2002. Going forward, he may prove a formidable challenger. The Abaluhya, Mudavadi’s ethnic community, are the country’s second-largest ethnic group, with some 19 percent of the population. But as a merger of 14 sub-ethnicities that came together only in the 1930s, they have historically been fragmented. The Bukusu, from the northern Bungoma District in Western Province and Trans Nzoia in Rift Valley Province, are the largest sub-group, making up some 40 percent of the Abaluhya community. The Bukusu have always been inclined to go their own way and have little love for Mudavadi, a Maragoli from Vihiga in the south. Most Bukusu favor Eugene Wamalwa. If Kenyatta remains in the contest, then Mudavadi and Wamalwa will probably split the Abaluhya vote. But if Kenyatta were to withdraw, the whole community would likely rally round Mudavadi in order to propel him into the presidency. Most Mount Kenya (GEMA) voters would probably accept Mudavadi as the next best thing to Kenyatta. A former foreign minister and minister of finance in the 1990s, he is considered competent if not very charismatic, and he has the additional advantage of being acceptable to former president arap Moi and his sons, who are now in control of KANU. Thus, competing on his own against Kenyatta, Mudavadi has little support—gaining only 7.4 percent in the Gallup opinion poll. But as Kenyatta’s preferred candidate, he would run close to Odinga and could even win, attracting voters who would never cast their ballots in favor of Kenyatta.
The Kikuyu old guard insists that if Kenyatta is serious about protecting Kikuyu economic interests and preventing Odinga with his redistributionist policies capturing State House, then he had better withdraw and throw his support behind Mudavadi. A number of younger Kikuyu businessmen, mainly in their 30s and 40s—that is, members of Kenyatta’s own age cohort—take a different view. They insist that he must contest the election and must adopt any means to win—including ethnic oathing (pledging allegiance to the Kikuyu candidate) and ballot stuffing. In fact, oathing of rural Kikuyus started eight months ago. http://csis.org/publication/reading-tea-leaves-kenyan-elections-patterns-violence-and-political-alliances
From Twitter:
“Asking Uhuru to attend a second presidential debate on the Land issue and Foreign Policy is like asking a serial killer to report his crime to the police.”
2nd Presidential Debate on Fb 25th will focus on land and economy.
When Uhuru is exposed as corrupt his sycophants invent the notion of the existence of elaborate Luo plots to finish him and the Kikuyu. When RAO is exposed as corrupt, his sycophants invent the notion of the existence of elaborate Kikuyu plots to finish him and the Luo. This is quite evident even on social sites on the Internet where there is a rabid anti-kikuyu and anti-Luo sentiment, a tsunami wave sweeping common sense away depending on prevailing ethnic sympathies. It is comical to see claims from certain quarters that Luo’s and Kikuyu’s do not have problems, just like an ostrich that sticks its head in the sand during a sandstorm and convinces itself that the storm does not exist. Perhaps the people behing these voices consider the obvious tensions as policy based and actually believe it, very much like the majority of the presidential candidates that claim their parties are policy based on social democracy and not tribal groupings. Shameless and clueless Kenyans lying to each other and themselves with their robot supporters nodding their heads or yelling in agreement. Madimoni wote!
Kikuyu bashing will NOT change or erase the comments (revelations) that Miguna is making. It would is my experience that whenever people present the truth they are branded madmen, called lairs, personal attacks and the claims of money having exchanged hands being the order of the day. Why is there no attempt whatsoever to address the issues Miguna has raised? Miguna’s personality, character, dress code, ethics and past history has been dissected and examined thoroughly BUT not one person has attempted the same with the information he has made public. Fortunately there are those of us that see beyond the cheap lies and propaganda being used to counter the likes of Miguna, and we are growing in number every day.
wakikuyu wakabila ona walivomtupa Mudavadi.Hawa ni watu wabaya hawataki makabila mengine.Kikuyus won’t ´vote for other tribes and are using Ruto to get Kalenjin votes for tribal mungiki boss Uhuru.
Luos have suffered under the leadership of all Kenyan presidents. At Jomo Kenyatta time Argwings Kodhek and and Tom Mboya, some of the best Luos died under suspicious circumstances.DO Makasembo was the same.Robert Ouko died mysteriously during Moi’s time.Ex MP of Gem Otieno Ambala died suspiciously and so was the MP of Gem at that time, Harace Ongili Owiti. Under Kibaki Dr. Odhiambo Mbai also died suspiciously. These were at least prominent Luos, but thousands more died in the struggle for a better Kenya, and through bad politics by these selfish leaders.
Whether we cry out loudly or whisper in undertones, the truth remains that what is ailing our country is tribalism. We have left the best of our leaders unlistened to just because we want to identify ourselves with tribal chieftains. We celebrated at the promulgation of the new constitution but before the grass could grow on tne ground from where we danced, we are already taking sides by campaigning basing on tribal numbers. It is a shame to listen to some Kenyans arguing that the best candidate is one who can strongly defend his tribe successfully from the rest of Kenyans. I believe the best presidential candidate is one who can unite all Kenyans by overseeing the county’s resources dispatched equitably. Such a person is a true defender of the entire nation. Kenya will only meet its development needs the day we shall move away from voting along tribal lines.
The Sum of All Fears
Saturday, January 7, 2012 – 00:00 — BY JOE ADAMA
For an office widely billed as being on the verge of losing most of its imperial trappings and becoming much more a chairmanship of the nation’s Board than a command and control centre, the Kenyan presidency is still attracting many of our most assertive political operatives.
They are falling over themselves in a headlong dash, seeking after a de-fanged national CEO-ship that looks suspiciously like a hankering after maximum power and influence.
The presidency will, of course, still be the apex office in the land. It may no longer prorogue Parliament at will, it may no longer decide the carving up of the national development and opportunities’ cakes and even its nominees to the Cabinet and most other public sector offices will be subject to fairly autonomous vetting. But it will still retain the command-in-chief of the Armed Forces, the intelligence communities, both local and international, will be at its disposal, the Treasury and administrative structures will still, in many key respects, defer to State House and Harambee House.
WAZEE JOMO, MOI AND KIBAKI
What’s more, even a comparatively toothless presidency can still play the political scene like a chess master, impacting both regions and the nation powerfully and enduringly. The presidency is still the top office, even when shorn of certain ‘personal rule’ characteristics enjoyed by Wazee Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki.
Finally, an Odinga – Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga – a man who hails from a political dynasty that has spent the bulk of its career ensuring that the office is indeed shorn of its immense powers, looks poised to make an unassailable bid for the presidency.
Given Raila’s game-changing endorsement of Kibaki in October 2002 and the fact that the two men are now the power-sharing principals of the Grand Coalition regime, the outgoing PM ought to have a much easier time of stepping into Kibaki’s shoes. Instead, some of the stiffest opposition to Raila becoming president emanates from Kibaki’s own political backyard of Central Kenya where it has long been conventional ethnic wisdom that the presidency must under no circumstances go to a Luo.
The Kikuyu-Luo rivalry is one of those abiding tribal hatreds that are underpinned by passionate prejudices of a blood-feud-like intensity, which, however, when examined in the clear light of day by rational minds, can barely stand scrutiny. What does it consist of, beyond the fact that Kenyatta and the Jaramogi led Kenya into Independence in one of the most inspiring and triumphant political alliances in our history and then had a dramatic falling out?
The sense of betrayal on both sides of the fence would be laughable if it did not have such dire consequences over the years. The Kikuyu felt betrayed in that the Jaramogi took on the foremost of his fellow founding fathers, Jomo, so soon and so openly after Independence; the Luo felt betrayed that the Kikuyu elite gathered around Jomo were divvying up the new nation among, excluding everyone else and buying out the White Highlands and other assets of the fleeing colonists across the nation. The Kikuyu settlement in the Rift Valley took the ominous pattern early of Kiambu Kikuyu, Kenyatta’s own people, not of Nyeri or Meru people, for instance.
THE AGE OF ASSASSINATIONS
And then the fallout turned deadly. On February 24, 1965, Jaramogi’s right-hand man, Pio Gama Pinto, a nominated MP of Indian (Goan) descent who had also been jailed as a Mau Mau sympathiser by the British, was gunned down in the driveway of his residence on Nairobi’s Lower Kabete Road (near where Sarit Centre now stands). This killing came a month after the slaughter in Nyeri by elements of the army and the paramilitary General Service Unit of the Meru Mau Mau general known as Baimungi and his supporters, who were threatening a return to the forests if their ragtag forces were not absorbed into the Armed Forces.
The same week Pinto was gunned down, in the faraway US, five armed men rose from a crowd and mowed down Malcolm X, the firebrand American civil rights leader. It was the age of high-profile political assassinations. Barely 20 days before Kenya’s Independence, in Dallas, Texas, the 35th American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was shot dead as he rode in an open limousine on November 22, 1963.
In 1968, two great American leaders were assassinated within two months. First came Dr Martin Luther King in April of that year and then, on June 6, presidential brother and candidate Robert Francis Kennedy, who had served his brother JFK as Attorney General in 1961-63. That was the year that the first post-independence general election was scheduled in Kenya, but it was postponed for a year after Kenyatta fell seriously ill while holidaying in Mombasa.
The following year, 1969, was the flashpoint year for Kikuyu-Luo relations. Between January and early November that year, the Luo community lost two senior Cabinet ministers and suffered the imprisonment without trial of the Jaramogi himself. First to go was Foreign Affairs Minister CMG Argwings-Kodhek, one of Kenya’s first and most courageous African lawyers and a nationalist of note in a road accident near the Pan Afric Hotel. The accident has remained suspicious to this day. And then came Thomas Joseph Mboya, gunned down like his friends from Boston, the Kennedy brothers, allegedly by a lone assassin on Saturday July 5, 1969. Mboya’s nationalist credentials were of the first water.
A murderous top cabal somewhere at the very top in Kenya in the 1960s was mimicking the worst and most sinister of American events and literally getting away with murder. After the riotous incident at the Russia Hospital in Kisumu in October in which the president’s motorcade was stoned and Odinga’s detention as well as that of the entire top leadership of the Kenya People’s Union was ordered, Kikuyu-Luo relations lay in tatters that have yet to be mended to this day.
FIRST OATH SINCE THE 1950s
The Kikuyu elite around Kenyatta at the time, widely referred to as the “Kiambu Mafia”, even went to the extent of organising the first oathing ceremonies in the Mt Kenya regions since the early 1950s, when Kenyatta had been jailed by the British for “managing Mau Mau”. These ceremonies enjoined all Gikuyu, Embu, Mbeere and Meru people aged 12 and over to ensure that bendera ndikoima Nyumba ya Mumbi (the flag [the Presidency] will never leave the House of Mumbi]). Most of the rest of Kenya sleepily initially assumed that all this open-secret oathing was pointedly aimed at the Luo and the Luo only.
Kenyatta, who was Mboya’s elder by 40 years, lived another nine years after 1969, during which he consolidated his imperial Presidency in ways that alarmed not only the Luo but much of the rest of the nation. In their classic study of the African phenomenon of “personal rule” in the 1960s to the 80s, Why Africa’s Weak State Persists, US analysts Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg (the latter co-wrote The Myth of Mau Mau with John Nottingham) noted that its key characteristics were, “Widespread removal of constitutional rights and protection from political opponents, the elimination of institutional checks and balances, the termination of open party politics and the regulation and confinement of political participation, usually within the framework of a ‘single party’ ’’.
This was the route Kenyatta took after Mboya’s assassination and Odinga’s banning and detention, all the time taking the greatest care not to remove the constitutional guarantee of a multiparty state but in practice making Kanu the only legitimate political entity in the land. When the bendera finally left the House of Mumbi in 1978 upon Kenyatta’s death and Moi ascended to the presidency, the new Big Man proceeded to give Kenyans an object lesson in the “personal rule” paradigm that would last 24 years and become even more egregious than the Jomo model.
Moi actually removed the constitutional clause that allowed for more than one political party and then, using Vice President and Minister for Finance Mwai Kibaki and Attorney General Charles Njonjo in early 1982, inserted the nefarious Section 2(a), explicitly making Kenya a one-party state and the Kenya African National Union the only legal political organisation. Kibaki moved the motion and Njonjo, although no ally of his, seconded him. The Moi era had well and truly begun.
In the political sector at that time, the only voices heard in opposition to this draconian move were those of the Jaramogi and George Anyona. On August 1, 1982, elements of the Kenya Air Force mutinied and attempted a coup. It was brutally crushed.
POWER, PATRONAGE, PURGE
According to Jackson and Rosberg, the constituent components of the system of personal rule include clientilism, patronage and purges to perpetuate rule. Kenyatta and Moi wielded these components with abandon. And although he has managed a presidency that was distinctively different from that of the Kanu chieftains, Kibaki has nonetheless also exercised a degree of clientilism, patronage and purges. For instance, he purged the entire Cabinet after losing the first national referendum on the then proposed new constitution in November 2005, firing the whole lot of them except Vice President Moody Awori and Attorney General Amos Wako.
The next President of Kenya will, constitutionally speaking, exercise much more restricted options than even the outgoing Kibaki’s. The presidency is unlikely ever to regain its clout of the Kenyatta era or of the Moi era until the removal in November 1991 of Section 2(a). The next President will not even enjoy Kibaki’s largely unused clout. If the Kikuyu myth of why a Luo should not be President is that because he would avenge the terrible falling out of the 1960s, the very context of such revenge has been removed by constitutional evolution and bitter experience. The prospects of personal rule inside the presidency have receded forever, however powerful and overwhelming a personality he might possess – and Raila does possess a political persona like none other, a fact that will increasingly come to the fore the nearer Kibaki’s exit from the scene looms.
MUTUAL MYTHS
The Luo myth of why another Kikuyu must not succeed Kibaki is an inhibition that is shared by many other communities beyond Luoland and seems to hold more water than the mere fear of reprisals expressed by many a Kikuyu in reference to the prospect of a Luo ascendancy to the presidency. The Luo, like many other Kenyans, fear that an Uhuru Kenyatta presidency would last a decade, taking all the way to 2022 and bringing the number of years that a Kikuyu will have been the occupant of State House to 35 (including Jomo’s 15 and Kibaki’s 10).
Perhaps the sum of all these fears is basically unfounded, given that the new constitutional order has moved Kenya beyond the fiat of personalised rule. Jackson and Rosberg’s long-ago conclusion, that, in most African states, non-institutionalised governments “where persons take precedence over rules” prevail, may be effectively out of date now, certainly with reference to Kenya. President Raila Odinga will not necessarily preside over the destruction of Kikuyu Cabinet ministers nor will he detain anyone without trial just because such things happened 40-plus years ago, much less a Kikuyu communal figurehead of his father’s standing. Nor would a Kikuyu president replay the Great Betrayal of the 1960s and re-oath the Nyumba regarding the bendera. It is high time two of Kenya’s most iconic communities exposed their most deep-seated fears to rational scrutiny and watched them wilt in the light of day.
Kenya: Ominous Oaths
Time Magazine – Friday, Aug. 15, 1969
When a black Kenyan these days says, “I’m going to Gatundu for a cup of tea,” his friends know that it may be a cover-up for something else. Gatundu is the residence of Kenya’s President Jomo Kenyatta, and “tea drinking” is really oath swearing. Unlike the tribesmen who swore secret oaths to join the Mau Mau rebellion against foreigners in the 1950s, Kikuyu by the thousands are swearing oaths against fellow Kenyans in the President’s backyard.
This ominous new outbreak of tribal tension was set off by last month’s assassination of Tom Mboya, who was the Minister of Economic Planning and Development in the predominantly Kikuyu government. Mboya was a member of the Luo tribe, a rival of the Kikuyu. The arrested suspect is a Kikuyu. In addition to reacting to possible trouble with the Luo, the Kikuyu are also closing ranks in preparation for a national election within the next eight months.
Vast Scale
The Kikuyu, according to one participant, strip naked, then hold hands in a circle around a darkened hut. The Kikuyu, according to one participant, strip naked, then hold hands in a circle around a darkened hut and chant an oath before entering it. Inside the hut they eat soil and swear to follow the oath. “The government of Kenya is under Kikuyu leadership, and this must be maintained,” goes the pledge. “If any tribe tries to set itself up against the Kikuyu, we must fight them in the same way that we died fighting the British settlers. No uncircumcised leaders [for example, the Luo] will be allowed to compete with the Kikuyu. You shall not vote for any party not led by the Kikuyu. If you reveal this oath, may this oath kill you.”
The vast scale of the Kikuyu activity got into the headlines in Kenya last week with the accidental crash of three trucks. All were jampacked with Kikuyu, and survivors said that they were traveling to or from Kenyatta’s home. Thirteen passengers were killed, 105 injured. The presence of so many Kikuyu on the road to the President’s house raised suspicions that the tribe was engaged in a clandestine operation. In Parliament, members of Leader Oginga Odinga’s opposition party charged that the Kikuyu were engaged in oath taking on the grounds of the President’s residence. When a government spokesman denied such ceremonies, claiming that they were simple expressions of loyalty to Kenyatta, there were cries of “Shame! Shame!”
The Kikuyu, so the story went, had asked Kenyatta, who is a member of the tribe, to allow mass oath taking. Outsiders do not know Kenyatta’s response, but there is no doubt that his yard has become the scene of mass oath ceremonies. Many non-Kikuyu citizens fear that Kenyatta, the founder of the country, has been pressured into allowing tribal factionalism at the expense of national unity and his own policy of pulling the tribes together.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901233,00.html
Reading the Tea Leaves on the Kenyan Elections: Patterns of Violence and Political Alliances
By David W. Throup
Nov 16, 2012
Uhuru Kenyatta’s advisers remain divided. The older cohort of wealthy Kikuyu business leaders, mainly in their 60s and 70s, suspect that a third Kikuyu president cannot be elected and that other ethnic communities must be given a chance to hold the presidency. Jomo Kenyatta (Uhuru’s father) and current President Mwai Kibaki—both Kikuyu—have held power for 25 of the 49 years since independence in 1963. Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, ruled for the other 24. Now is the time, many assert, for a Luo (Odinga), a Luhya (Second Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi), or a Kamba (Vice President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka) to take the reins. Kenyatta, they caution, might be unelectable, incapable of drawing voters beyond his Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru bailiwick on the slopes of Mount Kenya. This so-called GEMA or Mount Kenya coalition comprises about 30 percent of Kenya’s population and, even given a high differential turnout for the region’s favorite son, is unlikely to comprise more than 35 percent of the total vote.
The Kikuyu old guard has not thrown its support and financial backing behind Kenyatta, and its members are exploring other ways to undermine Odinga. Some are supporting Raphael Tuju, a Luo advertising executive and former cabinet minister, in the hope that he will attract votes away from Odinga, but so far Tuju has gained little traction. Most are waiting to see whether Kenyatta decides to run, but some are convinced that he is unelectable and that a vote for Uhuru is in reality a vote for Raila. If Kenyatta stands for election, he is almost certain to come second in the first round on March 4 and to go forward into a second-round runoff a month later. But Odinga is almost certain to win a second round, with 60 percent of the vote to Kenyatta’s 40 percent. The bulk of supporters of the minor candidates—who should win at least 30 percent between them in the first round—are likely to split two-to-one in favor of Odinga in the second round. Even if Kenyatta were ahead on March 4, which is improbable, he would almost certainly lose the second contest. A number of prominent Kikuyu are attempting to persuade Kenyatta to stand down and to throw his support behind Mudavadi, his vice presidential running-mate in the 2002 election.
A year ago, Musalia Mudavadi was a firm ally of Raila Odinga, who helped him resurrect his political career after the debacle of 2002. Going forward, he may prove a formidable challenger. The Abaluhya, Mudavadi’s ethnic community, are the country’s second-largest ethnic group, with some 19 percent of the population. But as a merger of 14 sub-ethnicities that came together only in the 1930s, they have historically been fragmented. The Bukusu, from the northern Bungoma District in Western Province and Trans Nzoia in Rift Valley Province, are the largest sub-group, making up some 40 percent of the Abaluhya community. The Bukusu have always been inclined to go their own way and have little love for Mudavadi, a Maragoli from Vihiga in the south. Most Bukusu favor Eugene Wamalwa. If Kenyatta remains in the contest, then Mudavadi and Wamalwa will probably split the Abaluhya vote. But if Kenyatta were to withdraw, the whole community would likely rally round Mudavadi in order to propel him into the presidency. Most Mount Kenya (GEMA) voters would probably accept Mudavadi as the next best thing to Kenyatta. A former foreign minister and minister of finance in the 1990s, he is considered competent if not very charismatic, and he has the additional advantage of being acceptable to former president arap Moi and his sons, who are now in control of KANU. Thus, competing on his own against Kenyatta, Mudavadi has little support—gaining only 7.4 percent in the Gallup opinion poll. But as Kenyatta’s preferred candidate, he would run close to Odinga and could even win, attracting voters who would never cast their ballots in favor of Kenyatta.
The Kikuyu old guard insists that if Kenyatta is serious about protecting Kikuyu economic interests and preventing Odinga with his redistributionist policies capturing State House, then he had better withdraw and throw his support behind Mudavadi. A number of younger Kikuyu businessmen, mainly in their 30s and 40s—that is, members of Kenyatta’s own age cohort—take a different view. They insist that he must contest the election and must adopt any means to win—including ethnic oathing (pledging allegiance to the Kikuyu candidate) and ballot stuffing. In fact, oathing of rural Kikuyus started eight months ago.
http://csis.org/publication/reading-tea-leaves-kenyan-elections-patterns-violence-and-political-alliances