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Former Cabinet minister Mbiyu Koinange_
The Jomo Kenyatta presidency saw the emergence of Mbiyu Koinange as the most powerful politician in the 15 years that Kenyatta ruled.
Eloquent, immaculate and as the first Kenyan to get a Master’s degree in the 1930s, Koinange had managed to cut the image of an African liberal, which made him, at one time, to become Ghana President Kwame Nkurumah’s adviser on pan-African matters.
In liberation politics, Koinange was in a class of his own. The colonial authorities were disappointed that they did not manage to detain him.
He was abroad when the crackdown that followed the State of Emergency commenced.
Again, the Senior Chief Koinange family had been implicated in the murder of Senior Chief Waruhiu – an assassination that triggered the crackdown and arrest of Jomo Kenyatta.
As a result, Koinange continued to mock the colonial regime from abroad. He remained “Kenya’s most wanted”.
With the negotiations for independence starting in 1960, Kenyatta asked Koinange to represent him, but the British did not want the “wanted” Koinange in their midst.
The issue paralysed the talks for days. Nonetheless, Koinange cut the image of a suave politician, emerging as the man to watch in independent Kenya.
His relationship with Kenyatta was solidified during the days they were both teachers at Githunguri Independent Teachers College, which they had started to train the bulk of the Kikuyu elite.
MARRIED KOINANGES’ SISTER
Kenyatta had married Koinange’s sister, Wanjiku. They had had a daughter, Jenny, before Wanjiku died.
Fast forward to State House. Koinange, as Kenya’s de facto Prime Minister, did not disappoint. Always photographed beside Kenyatta, they referred to each other in private notes as “Kolofi” — meaning quarrelsome — but an indication of the strong bond that they had.
When Koinange’s name would later find its way into the report of the select committee investigating the disappearance and murder of populist Nyandarua.
North MP, J.M. Kariuki in 1975, Kenyatta ordered the committee chairman, Elijah Mwangale, in the presence of Charles Rubia, to delete Koinange’s name and that of his (Kenyatta’s) bodyguard, Wanyoike Thungu, before tabling the report in the House that afternoon.
As a result, Koinange was loved and loathed in equal measure. It took the genius of another group led by Attorney General Charles Njonjo to make sure that Koinange (and his ilk) did not get the presidency after the ailing Kenyatta died.
One avenue used by Njonjo, and which later led to his fall, was to convince Kenyatta to stop the 1976 change-the-Constitution group that wanted to bar Vice-President Daniel arap Moi from automatically succeeding Kenyatta. With Koinange as its titular head, the group’s mouthpiece was GEMA official Dickson Kihika Kimani, an all-politics-and-no-principle rabble-rouser. Kihika operated from Nakuru.
Njonjo, who also had the president’s ear, managed to persuade Kenyatta to stop Kihika and his supporters from paralysing the country with their campaign.
It is not that Njonjo loved Moi; he thought the man could be more easily manipulated than Koinange.
According to Moi’s biographer Andrew Morton, it was Njonjo who had floated Moi’s name as Kenyatta’s vice-president as he and Kenyatta rode together in the president’s limousine. Moi was a skilful organiser, ruthless loyalist, and shrewd operator too.
“That’s the man I am going to appoint,” said Kenyatta as he shook Njonjo’s hand.
Besides Njonjo, Kenyatta’s nephew, Dr Njoroge Mungai, was a member of the oligarchy. However, his political rise was tamed in 1974 after he lost his Dagoretti seat to little-known Dr Johnstone Muthiora.
A medical doctor who served as Kenyatta’s physician, Dr Mungai was thought to be a likely successor. He held high profile ministerial positions, including Defence and Foreign Affairs.
Outside politics, Kenyatta’s head of the civil service, Geoffrey Kariithi, was arguably the best illustrator of power.
A man who could single-handedly craft the Cabinet, Kariithi was the person Kenyatta trusted in handling government affairs. If Kariithi said no on any official policy, Kenyatta would agree.
Thus, Kariithi would be the only daring civil servant to rehearse on a Kenya without Kenyatta — complete with dirges done by St Stephen’s choir.
He ran the government in his own style and understood his work as that of protecting the government’s image in the face of many political mistakes.
One needs to see the thousands of letters copied to Kariithi by permanent secretaries to have a feel of the power that he wielded.
MOI PLAYED IT SAFE
Moi played it safe in the Njonjo, Kariithi, and Mwai Kibaki camp.
While everyone, interestingly including those in his camp, thought he was a “passing cloud”, Moi in phase one of his leadership insulated himself from Koinange’s camp by having Njonjo as his right-hand man.
Another person brought into the fold was Godfrey Gitahi (GG) Kariuki — a newcomer in the political mix.
Moi’s phase one was shortlived and abruptly ended with the attempted coup of August 1981. His trust in his political friends not only waned, he started a deliberate effort to sink all of them.
Karithi had quit the civil service in 1979 to join politics, giving Moi a chance to bring Jeremiah Kiereini (and later Simeon Nyachae) in the head of civil service position. But neither of these two could match Kariithi’s valour.
The 1982 coup attempt frightened Moi, but it also gave him an excuse to rid himself of the Kenyatta-era security group.
And so went Commissioner of Police Ben Gethi, who was detained at Kamiti Maximum Prison despite having played a role in quelling the insurgence.
Major General Kariuki, the Air Force commander who had reported to his seniors and Moi the impending coup, was jailed for four years.
Inside State House, Moi, in the second phase of his leadership, started to replace his inner circle with close friends.
It was Kiereini who, after the August 3, 1982 Cabinet meeting, informed all ministers and other regular visitors that they would require prior appointment and permission before going to State House.
By this time, Njonjo and Vice-President Mwai Kibaki had formed separate camps. Moi, with total backing from a military that had Jackson Mulinge at the helm together with Lieut-Gen John Sawe and Lieut-Gen Mahmoud Mohammed, intensified his hold on power and decided to sink his political friends.
First, he went for Njonjo, and in choreographed chicanery, told a rally in Kisii that there were people “undermining the vice-president” and that Western powers wanted to impose their own leader on Kenya.
Kibaki, happy that Njonjo’s fall would benefit him, joined the traitor chorus, unaware that five years later, he would face the same fate.
The Njonjo-Affair, as it came to be known, gave Moi another excuse to clean the terrain of politicians sympathetic to Njonjo, who had become a politician.
Thus, when Moi called a snap election in 1984, he managed to use the provincial administration to rig out those who did not “toe the line.”
“When Mzee Kenyatta was there, I used to sing like a parrot. Politicians must toe the Nyayo line or leave,” Moi once said.
Source-Daily Nation