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Kenya: A Classic Case of a Nation Stuck in The Mud!

By: Jerry Okungu

[ Posted On: 2006-12-06 ]

In July 1969, the Kenyan Police shot and tear-gassed mourners that had gone to pray for the body of Tom Joseph Adhiambo Mboya. The same Kenyan police had to repeat the same high-handedness all over Kenya. Every major town in Kenya was ablaze with riots soon after Mboya was gunned down.

A week later, it was all systems go in Nairobi, Naivasha, Nakuru, Kericho, Ahero, Kisumu, Oyugis, Homa Bay and Rusinga Island as Mboya's body rolled down to the lake.

Every urban stop-over was a battle ground with the police. The fight was over Mboya's dead body. The grieving public was in conflict with the government that they believed had killed him. They saw no sense in the killer carrying the victim's body home for burial. What they didn't understand was that the real killers had remained in Nairobi.

Three months later, an even uglier confrontation with the men in helmet was to ensue at Russia Hospital when Kenyatta dared to enter Kisumu so soon after Mboya's assassination.

His quarrels with Jaramogi at the hospital were just an excuse.

The fracas had nothing to do with Odinga. Those newspaper placards carried by women who asked Kenyatta to his face where Tom Mboya was, were the real issue.

The Kisumu residents, like many people all over the country, wrongly or rightly believed that President Kenyatta or his closest allies in the cabinet had a hand in Mboya's death.

That confrontation left scores of innocent people dead at the hands of the police and Kenyatta's bodyguards. And the deaths didn't just occur in Kisumu town; they spread all the way to Ahero and Awasi, forty-two kilometers away from Kisumu.

After the Kisumu incident, the only opposition party, KPU that Odinga headed was proscribed. Odinga and all his KPU Members of Parliament were immediately detained without trial.

Their crime? That they had organized the Kisumu riots.

Kenya then started on a long journey to a defacto single party state that allowed Kenyatta to be elected unopposed for two more terms. Had it not been for his death in old age, the old man would have ruled us for as long as he lived.

This God-like worship was what Moi inherited in 1978 when Kenyatta died.

At the age of 54, Moi was to enjoy this relative political dominance for fourteen years, punctuated by the 1982 Air Force Uprising before he could yield to pressure to legalize political pluralism.

If Kenyatta is credited with detaining those who fought for his release from prison like Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his cell-mate Achieng Oneko, Martin Shikuku, Jean Marie Seroney, Wasonga Sijeyo, Ngugi wa Thiongo and a host of other political hotheads from the University of Nairobi, Moi had the honour of putting Jaramogi under house arrest, detaining his son Raila Odinga several times, Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Akongo' Oyugi, Koigi wa Wamwere, Gitobu Imanyara, Wanyiri Kihoro and hundreds of Mwakenya followers that rebelled against his dictatorship.

If Kenyatta is credited with unleashing the General Service Unit on university students whenever they ran riot over this or that, Moi must be remembered for unleashing the GSU on mothers of political detainees at All Saints Cathedral where they were whipped and flushed out of the church sanctuary, most of them stark naked in front of cameras.

Moi also has the distinction of having presided over a well designed soundproof detention torture chambers in the basement of Nyayo House where terror was unleashed on in-mates without the benefit of being heard by passersby.

Moi also has the distinction of turning against his friends like Kenyatta before him.

He threw Njonjo out of power after Njonjo had made him king together with Njonjo's sidekicks like JJ Kamotho and GG Kariuki at the time. He threw out Kibaki from the vice presidency after realizing that he had neutralized the Kikuyu factor in the system.

He used and dumped many a giant in politics as he wished. If you doubt it, ask Josephat Karanja in his grave. If you doubt it, ask George Saitoti and JJ Kamotho who are still alive

The story of state terror versus the people of Kenya is long. It can never be told in a newspaper article. It is a tale that can only be captured in a novel worthy of a Hollywood movie script.

It has its twists and turns, highs and lows with bits and pieces of comic relief. It is a story of civilized man gone mad with power. It is a story of a seemingly sensible group of people getting drunk with power with a streak of control mania slowly receding into animalism.

This is the story of Kenya under Kenyatta and Moi.

Kenyatta's era will well be remembered as the era when Kenyans were not allowed to dream or imagine the death of a head of state! Imagining or dreaming the same and sharing with your wife, colleague or friend would earn you a long jail term under the then Kenyan High Treason laws. Therefore for those of us who were fond of imagining the day Kenyatta would die, we kept those imaginations to ourselves. For the creative of mind who thought about the possibility of Kenyatta dying long into the night and then went ahead to have nightmares about it, we had to wake up and swear not to share our dreams with our friends. It too was high treason.

Police brutality at the University of Nairobi campus in the 1970s and '80s was a ritual.

It had to take place at least once every year with bloody consequences, some of which ended in casualties or permanent disability. The police would invade the main students' dinning hall in broad day light, teargas the hall and with charging batons; students would fly from the top floor and land on the road with broken limbs. That was when the police would have their fill of joy; hit to smithereens those whose limbs were already broken!

If they rioted years later because JM Kariuki had been murdered, it was because that had been the culture of the university community. The whole society had surrendered their freedom of thought to the political system. The only form of resistance could only be found with the corridors of the university lecture halls. More importantly, they had to riot for JM Kariuki even on pain of death from the riot squads because JM was their friend. He had in life shared his concerns about the future of Kenya with them.

He had said it a thousand times that inequality in Kenya was a vice that was worrying.

He could not understand why Kenya, whose population stood at 10 million, could afford 10 millionaires only! For these reasons, they faced the dreaded GSU countless times on the streets of Nairobi and in Nyandarua forests.

If they were back on the streets in 1990, it was because another cabinet minister had been murdered during the Moi regime. Again tear gas never deterred them from pouring into the streets. They rioted on the streets of Nairobi, Kisumu and in the valleys and hills of Got Alila.

After Ouko's death, it was all systems go. Street riots and battles with the now worn out police, coupled with pressure from the churches, mosques, civil society and international donors forced Moi to cave in. Multipartyism was ushered back into our political system but not before Kivutha Kibwana, James Orengo, Reverend Njoya and a host of other political activists were clobbered on the streets of Nairobi by the state police.

This week's fresh encounter with the State Police in the era of President Kibaki was a stark reminder that we are not yet out of the woods. Our past sad history of police brutality, state terror and human rights violations have come back to haunt us. If we didn't have these scenes as frequently in the last four years, it was a lull before a storm.

So fellow Kenyans, as we brace ourselves for the 2007 elections, let us belt up and put on our running shoes. By the look of things, the battle to State House will get bloodier and uglier as we move closer to the ballot box. May the strongest and most violent man or woman win the race!

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

Jerry Okungu is a freelance political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya. Jerry also serves as a Board Director at The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. Jerry has written extensively on issues affecting Kenya and the rest of Africa over the years. Other articles written by Jerry Okungu are available at this location

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