Daniel arap Moi: An Essential Link Between Kenya's Past and Painful Present

There is a sinister historical revisionism taking place in Kenya which would explain the acrimonious reaction to the announcement of the contested presidential election result and its genocidal manifestation in the Rift Valley province: the obliteration of former president Moi from Kenya’s historical consciousness.

As I pointed out to some acquaintances, the untrustworthy election process and the hasty swearing in of Kibaki at State House are practically an imitation of what Moi himself did in either 1992 or 1997. Whichever year it was, I distinctly remember people making fun that Moi’s swearing in had taken place in the kitchen rather than in front of Kenyans.

One acquaintance replied that Kibaki’s rehearsal of the same process is infuriating because Kenyans are wiser than they were during the 1990’s and do not want to be made the fool of again. Initially, I accepted this argument as a case of “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” That was before the massacres in the Rift Valley, the burning of a church with women and children in it, and the hacking to death of those who tried to escape from the flames. The assault on a house of worship was a message that the killers did not take issue with the presidential result or with the land occupied by their victims. The killers had a problem with the people’s very existence as human beings.

The discrepancy between the killings after the 2007 elections and the relative peace following the “kitchen swearing-in” by President Moi in the 1990’s has led me to notice that in all the chaos and vitriol being poured, little mention is made of Moi’s regime, yet he was president longer than Kenyatta and Kibaki combined. Those who stand to benefit from the artificial silence imposed on 24 years of Kenya’s history are obliged to explain why they should not be held morally accountable for the loss of life witnessed in Kenya over the last few months.

The press, for instance, forgot this history in its reaction to the government's decision to suspend live broadcast. It behaved as if it was the end of press freedom in Kenya as we know it. Robert Nangila of NTV, for example, righteously announced barely two hours after Kibaki’s swearing in that that Kenya had descended into dictatorship and oppression. I am not justifying the government’s decision; I am simply expressing shock at the a-historicity of Nangila’s statement pronounced with so much conviction. He probably was a child when a journalist under Moi’s regime was paralyzed after being thrown off a balcony on the second floor, when Bedan Mbugua’s Beyond Magazine was banned for reporting on the electoral irregularities under the mlolongo (queuing) voting system, when Mbugua and David Makali were imprisoned for nine months, or when Gitobu Imanyara was detained despite his ill health. Unlike the journalists of the 1990’s, today’s journalists report election irregularities and openly suggest that they were orchestrated by Kibaki’s government without exposing themselves to physical risks.

It defies logic that a journalist could self-righteously demand, from the safety of Nation House, sympathy from Kenyans regarding the suspension of live broadcasts while ordinary Kenyans were engaged in running battles with the police or were being massacred by paid and organized killers. If journalists want to challenge the Kibaki government’s restriction of press freedom, a better position would have been to fight to protect the legacy of their predecessors which they now enjoy, rather than pretend they are blazing revolutionaries in the path to press freedom in Kenya.

The intelligentsia has been another active participant in the distortion of Kenya’s history. NTV aired a documentary series The Making Of A Nation directed by Hilary Ng’weno, a nuclear physicist. The series was a commendable attempt to capture on film a comprehensive political history of Kenya since just before independence. Unfortunately, its major flaw is its accent on ethnicity at the cost of all else. Viewers were presented with a historical narrative in which every historical event was motivated by tribe, so that Moi, Kenyatta and other historical players appeared as tribal robots rather than as human beings with histories, personalities, ideological interests, all united in their quest for power.

As a result, certain intricacies of power were downplayed. For instance, the Change the Constitution group that sought to prevent Moi from automatically assuming presidency was intent on keeping power within Kiambu, and particularly within a certain clique, rather than within the entire Central province. Similarly, the primary motivation for which Moi perfected tribal balancing into an art was the desire to remain in power, not to be a Kalenjin as the documentary implied. Moreover, Moi was defter at the act than was depicted by the documentary. He must have known of the internal dynamics of each ethnic group as well as the ideology and personality of various individuals, hence his appointment of Mwai Kibaki – from Nyeri – as vice-president rather than Charles Njonjo or another Kikuyu from Kiambu district. The reasons for which he favored Elijah Mwangale or Moses Mudavadi over Martin Shikuku were more complicated than these politicians’ ethnicity. The draconian laws, increase in political persecution and detentions were politically designed to keep Moi in power following the August 1, 1982 coup, an event that the documentary gave little attention. 

The incitement of ethnic hatred that relied on the trivialization of Moi’s tenure was heard from politicians who were once professors and who publish books as academic work despite the long absence of the said individuals from academic institutions. It remains unclear why an individual whose profession is to facilitate human understanding erects intellectual stumbling blocks in Kenya’s consciousness. What is clear, however, is that the proliferation of professors and PhD holders in Kenya’s parliament is a symptom of the fact that the pursuit of knowledge in Kenya has been emptied of its intrinsic value and reduced into a pathway to power.

When Kenyans eventually repent of our collective sins, we shall have to confess the prostitution of our God-given intelligence at the altar of arrogance and power. We shall also have to accept that the Western-oriented education on which we are willing to spend most of our personal and national resources is fundamentally flawed. Western schooling for Africans subordinates the pursuit of knowlege to the search for access into initially white, patriarchal dominance that now sports an African face. Western education thus distorts the soul, brainwashes the mind and, as we have now witnessed, suppresses our intellect and moral instincts.  It makes educated Africans owe professional allegiance to the Western academy rather than to their own societies. The call for an education system with African languages of instruction is not fancy nationalism – it is the fight for our soul and survival. And Kenyans need only look at Tanzania for proof of the fact.

Another group involved in the suppression of Moi from Kenya’s historical consciousness is the current political elite. Without Moi, they are able to present Raila as a victim of Kikuyu hegemony and forget his record as the longest-serving detainee under Moi’s regime. The absence of Moi from political discourse also obliterates the corruption of Moi’s henchmen now elected on an ODM ticket and eliminates Kibaki's tenure under the Moi presidency. It also absolves ODM of the primary role that they played in helping Kibaki get to State House in 2002. Corruption scandals such as Goldenberg are swept under the rug despite their devastating effect on the Kenyan economy, and Paul Kamlesh Pattni, the young man who swindled Kenya, comfortably creates a new slate on which he claims that “Mimi ni mmoja wenu” (I am one of you).

The suppression of Moi’s presidency from Kenya’s public consciousness has devastating effects on Kenyans that extend beyond politics. It leads young people to arrogantly present themselves as trail-blazing revolutionaries, yet their obvious ignorance of where Kenya has come from will lead them to repeat the mistakes that older Kenyans sacrificed their lives to redress.

Secondly, it creates a culture of irresponsibility. Through the narrative of Kikuyu hegemony of astronomical proportions, we fail to hold all Kenyans responsible for their actions. We evade questions such as the following: why did Moi choose Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor if the Kikuyu were his enemy in the first place? Why did he need the Kikuyu support when he had won two terms in office without it? Why did Raila decide to join KANU under the leadership of the man who had imprisoned him for so long? If ODM is so convinced of a Kikuyu conspiracy, why did Raila choose to back Kibaki in 2002 instead of going alone as Kalonzo Musyoka did in 2007? Why did Kibaki make this agreement, despite his evident interaction with Raila in the years preceeding the 2002 elections?

The third effect of a Moi-less Kenyan history is the dumbing down of Kenyans and ultimately, the thriving of the murderous instincts that we now see. By preventing us from understanding Moi as a complex human being and leader, the trivialization of Moi’s legacy and the caricature of Moi that academics now present favor the myth of Kenya as having had only Kikuyu presidents and therefore as a country of Kikuyu vs. everybody else. The myth leads to the development of negative ethnicity which people use to dismiss the astounding achievements of people from their own ethnic groups simply because those people were not in government, or worse, because they are not Kikuyu. Surely, Kenyans are mutilating themselves if they do not honor the legacy of the thousands of famous and ordinary Kenyans from all ethnic groups who have made our country internationally recognizable.

The trivialization of the Moi legacy eliminates the practice of analyzing varied, intricate and complex concepts simultaneously, which in turn renders Kenyans vulnerable to simplistic formulas. This simplicity blinds Kenyans to the complex interaction between ethnicization and the disempowerment of all Kenyans who have been reduced from human beings to voting robots. The games that Moi, Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila and Kibaki played demonstrate that none of them minded the isolation of ethnic groups as voting blocks as long as those blocks voted in their favor. The basis of the deal that Raila and Kibaki struck in 2002 essentially was “I give you my voting block today, you give me yours tomorrow,” with no consultation with the respective ethnic groups as to whether they were prepared to honor the deals made in their name. For these decisions, it is now Kenyans – not the politicians concerned – who pay the heaviest price.

On that National Day of Repentance which I hope for, Kenyans will affirm that we are not simply voters: we are human beings with feelings, intellect, histories, families and careers.  We have the intelligence to make our own decisions, and many of us vote on the basis of a combination of numerous factors, not simply because we are puppets of politicians from our own ethnic groups. We are not voting slaves to be sold on the electoral auction block to the highest ethnic bidder.

The fourth disaster preempted by a Moi-less Kenyan history is the failure to engage the effects of colonialism on our country. The Moi tenure is dismissed because it challenges the myth of Kikuyu hegemony, which in turn helps us ignore the problems inherent in Kenyatta’s rule. While Kenyatta accepted independence as a gift from Britain in form of a constitution designed to protect British settlers, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Pio Gama Pinto argued that Britain had no business patronizing Kenyans because we won our independence legitimately. Few address the nationalist point of view of the two latter men in order to claim that Kenyatta’s main issue with Jaramogi was that he was a Luo. And by avoiding the contradictions that Kenyatta’s legacy represents for the Kikuyu, Kenyans avoid the ultimate contradiction: while Kenyans kill each other of small plots of land, British settler families still profit enormously from the land they stole from Kenyans during colonial rule.

One incident that illustrates this absurdity occurred some years ago, towards the end of Moi’s tenure. It was reported in the news that some Maasai herdsmen were grazing their land on the ranch of some white landowner. The argument of the herdsmen was simple: it did not make sense that their animals, threatened by drought, should die and that the herdsmen’s livelihood be threatened while the pasture in the ranch lay idle, reserved for wild animals and for pleasure. The logic was ignored by the District Commissioner – whose post is so colonial – who subsequently asked the herdsmen to vacate the land. The fact that we are willing to hate and kill each other while protecting the colonial legacy would be comical, were it not for the graveness it represents.

The failure to deal with the land question since colonial times explains why Kenya’s press is antagonistic to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Our journalists associate Mugabe with extremism because of his policy on land ownership, and now they have joined the Western world in expressing concern that ANC leader Jacob Zuma will become another Mugabe. How can Kenyan journalists be so clueless about the ideological and political implications of what they report?  

Surely, it is saddening to see the preference of Kenyan TV stations to air the potentially inflammatory comments of the EU chief election observer over the appeals for peace from prominent Kenyans such as Bethuel Kiplagat and Lazarus Subeiywo. The two eminent men have now been compelled to reach Kenyans through paid advertisements, while the Euro-Americans are getting essentially free coverage through news bulletins. When the Catholic Bishops were reading their statement on December 29, their live coverage was cut short in order to present comments from the US and German ambassadors to Kenya.

My patience reached its limit during a news item on NTV, in which we were shown Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with people reportedly running away from Kenya. An American tourist was given the opportunity to pass judgment on our chaotic country, while a Kenyan lamented that he was returning back to the US because he saw no future for himself in Kenya.  How can Kenyan journalists be so favorable to the West at the expense of Kenyans who are commendably struggling to sort out our problems? Are Kenyans born after independence suffering from an inferiority complex?

There is a link between the apparent lack of what Fanon called "international consciousness" and the failure to deal with the implications of colonialism and the suppression of the Moi legacy. Both depend on an artificial suppression of history, which emanates from the desire to exercise control, be it by Western institutions or African politicians.

As one who spent my childhood and young adulthood under Moi’s presidency, this historical loss is personally profound. As a child, I loved President Moi because I drank the free school milk that used to be delivered to primary schools. As a teenager, I was fascinated by him. During his visit to my high school one Saturday afternoon, I got close enough to request his autograph. I was a hero for the rest of the weekend until the following Monday morning when our headmistress subjected the whole school to a lecture about the need to respect an elderly statesman. The end of my A-level education was marked by a visit to Lokichoggio sponsored by the president, an event which was vividly remembered by my former classmates during a recent reunion. To this day, the trip represents the furthest trip north of Kenya that I have ever taken.

As a university student, I had enough reasons to dislike Moi. Family acquaintances had suffered for criticizing the Moi regime, its suppression of freedoms and entrenchment of poverty in the country. In the final year of my undergraduate study, I participated in a student demonstration against the politically organized “tribal clashes” and was beaten by riot police. Nevertheless, I have never held a grudge against Moi, even after my father had been publicly humiliated in the streets during the 1990’s. In fact, I was deeply hurt when a fellow church member said he was afraid that I would resent him because he was hailed from Moi’s Kalenjin tribe, yet it had never even crossed my mind to associate Moi’s actions with this young man, a wonderful guitar player who patiently showed me the ropes during my short-lived interest in music. And for the first time in my life, I recognized the pain of those closely associated with public figures out of destiny rather than out of choice or ideological persuasion.

The obliteration of Moi’s history – both the pleasant and the painful – from Kenya’s consciousness is therefore the obliteration of my own. That is why I am insulted to hear young people, some of whom I taught 10 years ago, pretend that they are the first to champion liberties that others suffered for before the were born or when they were still children. During the campaigns, I was shocked to hear ODM’s William Ruto criticize Kibaki for misleading Moi. In so doing, he demonstrated disrespect for Kenya’s most prominent elder by implying that Moi could not and had never made decisions independently and without manipulation. The worst thing that anyone can do to a mzee, for whom African traditions demand respect, is to make his whole life seem inconsequential in the present.

Similarly, the glee of Kenya’s press at the electoral defeat of Moi’s sons and political associates, while understandable, is irremediably naïve and dangerous, for what is being done to Moi historically is being done physically to Kikuyus in the Rift Valley province.

It is time for Kenyans to embrace their history, with its glories and pitfalls, in order to understand where we are coming from and where we are going. Moi’s legacy is inextricably ours as Kenyans, whether we like that legacy or not. We must not be cowards and shy away from looking at the flaws and triumphs of his presidency. Otherwise, we will continue to believe in the deadly illusion that we can make the world better by exterminating that which we do not like; be it a historical legacy or a group of people whom we hate by virtue of their very existence.