On September 1, 2017, the day the Supreme Court of Kenya nullified the 8 August elections, I was riding in a city-bound minibus matatu on Nairobi’s Waiyaki Way. I sat in front with the driver. The passenger seated next to me must have received a text message on his mobile phone because he began howling at the driver to tune in to the radio. The matatu was blasting hip-hop reggae at the time. It was a few minutes after 11.00am. What followed can only be best captured by a tragic-comedy playwright.
“The general election of August 2017 was not conducted in accordance with the constitution and the applicable law, rendering the declared results invalid, null and void. A declaration is hereby issued that the third respondent was not validly elected and declared as the president-elect and that the declaration is null and void,” pronounced Chief Justice David Maraga on Citizen Radio.
My fellow passenger, on hearing the words “invalid, null and void”, wailed loudly in agony, like someone who had been pricked by some sharp object, and called to his God – “Ngai” – so loudly that the driver was startled.
“Now see what these western people have done to us (one riu uria andu a ruguru matwika),” he harangued in the Kikuyu language. Shattered and stuttering, he spoke in staccato, unable to string his words together coherently. When his phone rang, he answered, “I am not in a frame of mind to talk right now……”
What followed was the incoherent muttering of someone possessed with schizophrenia. He cursed Maraga. He cursed the Kisii people collectively and insinuated how Maraga and his Kisii community were foolish and idiots. As if momentarily posing for introspection, he blamed the Jubilee Party political barons for allowing a non-Kikuyu to ascend to the Chief Justice’s position.
See what they have done to us
“Now see what these western people have done to us” (one riu uria andu a ruguru matwika), he harangued in the Kikuyu language. Shattered and stuttering, he spoke in staccato, unable to string his words together coherently. When his phone rang, he answered, “I am not in a frame of mind to talk right now……”
Since then, that matatu incident has variously manifested and replicated itself in different settings among the Kikuyus – individually and collectively. It is as if the Supreme Court ruling damaged their ethnic group’s psyche, causing a schizophrenic attack that cannot be explained rationally.
Days later, a friend confessed to me: “So this is how these people felt in 2013, when the Supreme Court ruled in our (Jubilee’s) favour?” It was a rhetorical question. “I was so angry, so affected on the day Maraga said Uhuru had not won, it looked like my world had gone on a tailspin.” Emotional and irrational, this friend even admitted to me that if he had his way, he would kill the Chief Justice.
“For how long will Raila disturb our peace?” is a refrain that has been gaining momentum in Kikuyu gatherings – in homesteads, churches, social functions and some select exclusive clubs in Nairobi – since the Supreme Court ruling.
The first ever Presidential Election Petition case No. 5 was taken to the inaugural Supreme Court of Kenya in March 2013 by the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD), the opposition coalition led by Raila Amolo Odinga. It sought to overturn the election victory of the Jubilee coalition led by Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, who today is the fourth president of Kenya.
The Supreme Court judges, led then by the president of the court, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, in arriving at their verdict, said: “In summary, the evidence in our opinion, does not disclose any profound irregularity in the management of the electoral process, nor does it gravely impeach the mode of participation in the electoral process by any of the candidates who offered himself or herself before the voting public.”
That Supreme Court judgment, read by Mutunga in under ten minutes (Kenyans, who had been waiting for days with bated breath for the judgment, were asked to read the entire judgement online) cast a shadow of devastation and disquiet among the opposition’s core supporters. Yet they took it in their stride, even as they were chided by the Jubilee coalition brigade to “accept and move one”. As much as they were hurt, they did not go into a frenzy of “political madness”, threatening to kill Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, and condemning and deriding his Kamba ethnic community.
Since September 1, 2017, I have numerously and repeatedly heard presumably reasonable and well brought-up Kikuyus propounding sickening theories about how some communities “need to be taught a lesson”, how David Maraga should not presume he is so important as to think “he cannot be taken out”. Such careless talk has been taking place among Kikuyu folks in social functions and places, including birthday parties, funeral services and restaurants.
To the consternation of even the most hardcore Kikuyus, the man claimed that if Raila ever became president, all Kikuyu men would be forced to wear kaptula – colonial-type khaki shorts that used to be worn by the regular police until early 1970s and which today are still worn by prisoners.
Maraga has been denounced and renounced in equal measure. The Kisii people – including all the communities that live in the western sphere of Kenya, mainly the Luos and Luhyas – have been collectively lampooned and considered to be “not too clever people” (ti andu oge). Ultra-Kikuyu sub-nationalists have been advocating for the murder of the Chief Justice and the leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga, as the “final solution” to this unceasing menace.
“For how long will Raila disturb our peace?” is a refrain that has been gaining momentum in Kikuyu gatherings – in homesteads, churches, social functions and some select exclusive clubs in Nairobi – since the Supreme Court ruling.
Fuelled by the MP for Gatundu South, Moses Kuria (jamba ya ruriri, or the brave warrior of the Kikuyu nation), who is on record for publicly and unapologetically advocating for the assassination of Raila, the Kikuyu people are now being primed, after being conditioned and socialised over time, that Raila encapsulates all their political problems, and that they would be better off and safer if he were to be taken out.
Let me illustrate this schizophrenic delusion that seems to have attacked a section of the Kikuyu community with a few anecdotes. Three weeks ago, I attended a birthday party in one of the gated, leafy and posh suburbs of Nairobi. After the people had settled down to whet their appetite, and later in the evening as they engaged in social drinking, the conversation naturally and ordinarily turned to politics.
As the conversation gathered more heat (as opposed to more light), one of the guests propounded a theory on why Kenyans (many Kikuyus conflate Kikuyu sub-nationalism with national patriotism and vice versa) should never vote for Raila Odinga. To the consternation of even the most hardcore Kikuyus, the man claimed that if Raila ever became president, all Kikuyu men would be forced to wear kaptula – colonial-type khaki shorts that used to be worn by the regular police until early 1970s and which today are still worn by prisoners. As ridiculous as his pronouncements were, he defended them fervently and vigorously. It was blatantly clear he was not bluffing.
“But as a Kikuyu I cannot vote for that Luo. As Kikuyus, we are called to vote for one of our own. It doesn’t matter if he is a drunkard, a thief or just plain inept. He is ours. That is who God has given us.”
Taken to task to explain where his weird theory emanated from, he reminded all and sundry that sometime in 2003, Raila had purportedly said that if he ever become the president, Kikuyu men would be hauled to Kamiti Prison. His interpretation of Raila’s warning (which yet to be proven): All Kikuyu men will be wearing shorts as long as Raila is the head of state.
This loose, flippant talk might have been treated as a sick joke, one which would have elicited awkward laughter, but it wasn’t. It was taken seriously by the crowd. The tragedy was that the middle-aged man spreading this falsehood was once the finance director of a blue chip company.
Ordained by God
Days after the Supreme Court overturned Uhuru’s win, my close friend’s mother – a respected leader of the Mothers’ Union of the Anglican Church of the Mt. Kenya region – called him and told him that she had an urgent thing she wanted to discuss with him. When they met, the mother went straight to the point: “John you must sack that housegirl of yours from western Kenya (the housegirl is from Kakamega County). You cannot continue keeping her. Do you know these people well? I will get you a housegirl from Murang’a.”
“Were it not for the fact that she is my beloved mother”, John told me afterwards, “I would have tongue-lashed her.” He told me that his mother had told him that “since these western people have no respect for us (how could they have overruled our win?) we should not have mercy on them.” His mother, a born-again Christian and well-educated in Kenya and the USA, did not find any contradiction in her counsel to her son, and if she did, she was not going to lose sleep over it.
Yet, it is my lawyer friend Nguru who encapsulates the irrational mood of the Kikuyu people that has pervaded their space post-September 1, 2017. “Yes the government of Uhuru and William Ruto has been corrupt, incompetent and messed up,” he told me two weeks after the Supreme Court ruling. “But as a Kikuyu I cannot vote for that Luo. As Kikuyus, we are called to vote for one of our own. It doesn’t matter if he is a drunkard, a thief or just plain inept. He is ours. That is who God has given us.”
A litigation lawyer of long standing, he argued that “where we have reached now, it matters not whether Uhuru won or lost, whether the Supreme Court’s decision is right or wrong. We must defend uthamaki (kingly leadership ship) by all means and by any means necessary. We must cast our lot with one of our own – and that is not a point for discussion or rationalisation.”
It was lunchtime and as a strict Catholic, he was headed to the Holy Family Cathedral in central Nairobi for the lunch-hour intercessional prayer to the Holy Mary Mother of God.
“The Kikuyu people are living in post-truth times,” says a Kikuyu elder associated with the Kenya Church group – an amorphous grouping of evangelical Christians that came together in the late 1990s. “Kikuyu professionals do not want to deal with justice issues, it is unpalatable” said the elder who did not want his name disclosed. “It is the elephant in the living room.”
To demand and sue for justice is to agitate for chaos, is to upset the status quo; justice has been criminalised to mean “destruction of property”.
As tragic as it is, said the elder, it is the church that has been fanning this fight against pursuing justice and truth. “Justice and truth have a way of being disruptive,” he said. “And the Kikuyu business and political elites have sworn that they must hold onto state power come what may.” The professional leadership coach and speaker told me that many Kikuyu evangelical pastors have aligned themselves to the Jubilee coalition and have been bribed to propagate pro-Jubilee messages of peace and stability. Anything outside of that boxed message is anathema to the preservation of Jubilee’s agenda of hoarding power. To demand and sue for justice is to agitate for chaos, is to upset the status quo; justice has been criminalised to mean “destruction of property”.
“The Kikuyu evangelical/Pentecostal pastors and new churches’ proprietors are involved in religious enterprise. They are in it for self-aggrandisement but also with a specific agenda: push Jubilee Coalition’s message of preaching that the president of the country is God ordained.”
A week after the Supreme Court’s unprecedented decision, pastor wa Ngunjiri, who preaches on Sunday mornings at Kameme FM, a Kikuyu vernacular station, took the trouble to explain in biblical terms why President Uhuru Kenyatta was cantankerous and furious in the afternoon of September 1, 2017. “When the ruler of the nation is agitated and seemingly untoward in his behaviour, there is a powerful message that God is relaying to the nation,” said the lady pastor, whose three-hour programme is listened to religiously by hoards of Kikuyus.
“God is asking us Kenyans to rally around the ruler, because it is not every day that a ruler is annoyed and unsettled,” cried the pastor on the airwaves. “The almighty God has already ordained a leader for us and that leader is Uhuru Muigai wa Kenyatta. It is the duty and obligation of every Kikuyu voter to come out and cast his or her vote for him, because we Kikuyus believe in and serve a living God.”
The mainstream established churches are no better, said my Kikuyu elder friend. The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) used to be a powerful Christian platform that kept former President Daniel arap Moi in check in the 1990s as the country grappled with a decade of reestablishing multiparty politics. “But today, it is a pale shadow of its former self.”
NCCK is mainly composed of five denominations – the Anglicans, the Methodists, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), Quakers (otherwise known as the Friends Church) and the Salvation Army. When the Secretary-General is speaking, he is presumably speaking on behalf of the five churches, a consensus that is normally agreed upon in its General Assembly.
“Yet, from a cursory glance of the press conferences that NCCK has held in the recent past, it is evident that Peter Karanja, an Anglican, is not really speaking on behalf of the five churches,” said my friend. “I can tell you without a doubt, the Quakers, the Salvation Army and a section of the Anglican church have been suing for justice and truth, and this is what leaders within NCCK have been fighting for every time the Christian body seeks to talk truth to power.”
But the PCEA, Methodist and another section of the Anglican church will hear none of that message. “Peter Karanja has been put on a tight leash – he can only speak of maintaining peace and the need for NCCK to respect the laws of the land and the government of the day. If he ever attempts to go outside of that script, he will be kicked out by the more powerful Kikuyu wing of the Protestant church body.”
The church in Kenya has never pretended that it is not ethnically aligned in its mission and vision. The PCEA and Methodist churches are regarded as Kikuyu and Meru churches. And rightly so, because a majority of its adherents and top leadership are Kikuyu and Meru.
The PCEA leadership openly threw its weight behind the President Mwai Kibaki government (2003–2012) and during the 2007-2008 post-election violence; some of its top leadership was allegedly even adversely mentioned as having abetted “retaliation violence” in sections of the expansive Rift Valley region. Although the Methodist church is not as “loud” as the PCEA, it also backed to the hilt the government of Kibaki, as it is currently backing the Uhuru-led Jubilee coalition government.
A PCEA church elder who attends the church’s Kirk Session in Kajiado County unabashedly said to me, “When it comes to supporting Uhuru, it is not about Christianity but about our political survival: we swore under oath to protect subsequent Kikuyu leadership after Mzee Kenyatta exited the scene.”
The Anglican church, on the hand, is a melting crucible of followers scattered across the country, much like the Catholic church. Hence, while the PCEA and Methodist churches are mainly concentrated in the Mount Kenya region and in the Rift Valley Kikuyu diaspora, Quakers and Salvation Army followers are mainly found in the western part of Kenya, specifically among the Luhya people of Bungoma, Kakamega and Vihiga counties. It therefore goes without saying that some leaders within the NCCK fraternity have been pushing for justice and truth for the simple reason that they hail from opposition areas that have been voting for Raila Odinga since 2007.
The financially and numerically powerful and stronger Kikuyu wing of the NCCK has not made the work of the religious organisation any easier. It has been unrelenting in its dogged determination to marshall support for the Jubilee coalition. A PCEA church elder who attends the church’s Kirk Session in Kajiado County unabashedly said to me, “When it comes to supporting Uhuru, it is not about Christianity but about our political survival: we swore under oath to protect subsequent Kikuyu leadership after Mzee Kenyatta exited the scene.”
Siege mentality
Obsessed with retaining state power at all and any cost, Kikuyu political barons have been bombarding the Kikuyu rank and file with messages of imminent annihilation if they do not band together to rescue the Uhuru presidency. The net result of this brainwashing is that it no longer matters how Uhuru wins the election – so long as he makes it to the helm. The peasant and urban poor Kikuyu are daily being socialised to look inward and to internalise ethno-centric values that inadvertently create a siege mentality. This mentality is then exploited by the political barons who can effectively use it to prey on their own people.
“The Kikuyu siege mentality, which is deliberately being created within their psyche, is preventing them from understanding the rest of the country’s anger about political injustices,” says Eric Wafukho, a leadership and management consultant. “So, with this apparent shielding of the average Kikuyu from the real political and societal problems ailing the country, the ordinary Kikuyu is made to live in a make-believe world, a world he thinks he controls, knows and understands.”
This statement rang true when my friend from Kangemi – a sprawling slum seven kilometres west of Nairobi city centre, who I had interviewed a month before the August 8 general elections, called me, a couple of days after Supreme Court ruling.
“We cannot allow these people to lord it over us and it does not matter that they now have enlisted the help of the Supreme Court – we will defend our leader by whatever means, because that is the only way we can ensure our survival,” said Thiong’o. “Uhuru has many faults and weaknesses, but we must overlook these shortcomings if we are to survive and are not finished by these western people.” To anchor his argument, he quoted a Kikuyu proverb: Iri Gikuyu, itire ukavi, which loosely translates to “As long as leadership is in Gikuyu hands, that is all that matters.”
The Kikuyu “business community” that was unleashed a few weeks ago in the Nairobi city centre and that was captured sporting dreadlocks are Mungiki members from Kayole – a densely and expansively populated ghetto located in the southeast of Nairobi.
I asked Thiong’o what he thought of the “Kikuyu business community” rolling into the central business district to ostensibly defend “Kikuyu property”. His answer was curt and to the point: “That is the way to go. We Kikuyus must defend our property.” Although my friend is nowhere near belonging to the Kikuyu propertied class, he, like many of the Kikuyu ghetto dwellers, have been unwittingly recruited to defend and fight for the class interests of his Kikuyu ethnic elites.
The Kikuyu business community is an euphemism for the notorious Mungiki youth group that cannibalised and preyed on its very own people in the late 1990s and the early part of the 2000s. When the youth group, which in the Kikuyu language means a multitude, descended from its base in the Kikuyu diaspora of the Rift Valley to seek refuge in Nairobi, it settled in the city’s slums, including Kangemi.
I can vividly recall Thiong’o being so terrified of his very own dreadlocked “brothers” who would show up at his house in the evenings to demand “protection” and “security” money. When the former internal security minister John Michuki cracked the whip on the group, he hailed Michuki as godsend. That was a decade or so ago. Today he does not find it a contradiction that the same group that used to send cold shivers down his spine is being resuscitated to surreptitiously defend a predatory Kikuyu elite leadership.
The Kikuyu “business community” that was unleashed a few weeks ago in the Nairobi city centre and that was captured sporting dreadlocks are Mungiki members from Kayole – a densely and expansively populated ghetto located in the southeast of Nairobi. Many of the privileged Mungiki members run the minibus matatus known as Forward Sacco matatus. Their adherents are transported into the city conurbation by these matatus with the sole mission of countering NASA youth mass action demonstrators. Hired expressly by the Jubilee coalition mandarins (this docket is being handled by Moses Kuria), they have been telling all who care to listen: “We the Kikuyus will rule this country, whether you like it or not.”
Enter the Kalenjin
As the Kikuyus are rolled out in the streets of Nairobi and Kiambu counties to defend their stake in the Jubilee coalition government, the Kalenjins have been waging their battle on a different and separate plane. Impeccable sources within Deputy President William Ruto’s camp believe that they are the people in control of the government, “more so now after the temporary Supreme Court setback,” said a Ruto confidante, who has worked in the deputy president’s office since 2013.
The claim that the Deputy President is actually the one running the Jubilee government is one I have heard since Uhuru and Ruto joined hands and formed a coalition government in 2013. As early as mid-2014, core staff in his office believed that Ruto was in control and has been running the show ever since.
The sharpest NASA critics that have been unleashed by Jubilee, particularly after the Supreme Court’s verdict, have been the Senator for Elgeyo Marakwet, Kipchumba Murkomen and the MP for Garissa, Aden Duale. It is not by coincidence that the two are some of Deputy President Ruto’s closest and most loyal foot soldiers. “That tells you just how many stakes Ruto has in the Jubilee Party and the government.”
The claim that the Deputy President is actually the one running the Jubilee government is one I have heard since Uhuru and Ruto joined hands and formed a coalition government in 2013. As early as mid-2014, core staff in his office believed that Ruto was in control and has been running the show ever since.
After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Kalenjin elite close to the powers-that-be have become even more fundamentally wedded to the belief that without Ruto, Uhuru is a sleeping duck. Among themselves, the Kalenjin elite, in their city hideouts, gossip about Uhuru and his rumoured drinking binges. Ruto, the Kalenjins point out, is a masterful tactician who is just waiting for the appropriate time to unleash his full potential.
A recent incident the Kalenjin elite like reminiscing about is the Mark Too funeral. Too was former President Moi’s trusted acolyte. When he died in December, 2016, many of the who’s who among the Kalenjin business and political class attended his burial on January 10, 2017.
My Kalenjin friends were later to tell me that Ruto, who attended the funeral with President Uhuru, belittled President Uhuru in the Nandi dialect. He ostensibly told the gathered crowd that he was the one in charge of the government and that the Kalenjin nation should stay firmly behind him. The talk of Ruto being in charge has been recurrent among the Kalenjin elite circles for a while now, so much so that they consider Ruto as the de facto president.
To many Kalenjins, the 2017 presidency is a forgone conclusion. “We are already looking ahead to 2022 and nothing will stop us.” Once Uhuru Kenyatta settles down for his final term, Ruto will supposedly roll out his best laid plans, not once, but numerous times, my Kalenjin friends tell me. Ruto, they say, has never deluded himself that the Kikuyus love him. “If the Kikuyus think they can outsmart our man, they are in for a rude shock. We will show them why we have been running the government even when their man has been at State House.”
Extremist Kalenjins like to think that Ruto will rule for 20 years – four years shy of President Moi’s rule, which lasted from 1978 till 2002. “Ruto will have ruled ten years of President Uhuru’s term (2013–2022) and then commence to rule his own two terms (2022–2032). Together with Moi, they will have ruled Kenya the longest time – individually and collectively.” This would be a political record that they are absolutely convinced will never be repeated.
Invariably, for the majority of the Kalenjin people, “the Supreme Court ruling is just a small irritating hiccup that once it is dealt with – and we are confident Ruto is going to fix the mess – Kenyans will have to contend with a long Kalenjin reign.”
By Dauti Kahura
Mr Kahura is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya
