Installation ceremony at mukurwe wa nya gathanga shrine: Karume, by seeking to wrest the position of Mt Kenya communities’ spokesman from Uhuru during the younger man’s greatest hour of need and relevance, has demonstrated that there is a potent struggle at the top in Central Kenya for post-Kibaki political control.
The unilateral investiture of James Njenga Karume as the Central Kenya communities’ spokesman and senior-most sage elder last weekend is the surest sign yet that it is no longer business as usual in the Mt. Kenya vote bloc, the nation’s largest and most cohesive in terms of insularity. The installation was attended by at least 5,000 elders and other people and its expenses were met by Karume himself, the billionaire underwriter of many another political initiative and campaign throughout Central Kenya over the years.
Another signal was sent out by the University of Nairobi Vice Chancellor, Dr. Joe B. Wanjui, when he said that he had looked far and wide for the person most likely to succeed President Mwai Kibaki and actually take his legacy forward and had alighted on none other than Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Dr. Wanjui endorsed Raila at the latter’s own residence in Nairobi in a recent meeting also attended by Karume, Charles Njonjo, MP Stanley Munga Githunguri, Nation Media Group Chairman Wilfred D. Kiboro (who is also the Standard Chartered Bank Group Chairman), Royal Media Group Chairman SK Macharia, the PNU Chairman, Colonel (Rtd.) James Imbui, businessman/golfer James Koome, MP Mithika Linturi and others.
The Power Barons Take a Stand
Karume, a former Kiambaa MP and one-time Defence Minister and Wanjui, a one-time CEO of multinational East Africa Industries (now Unilever Africa), have long been among President Mwai Kibaki’s staunchest election campaign financiers and advisers. They have been with him since at least his exit from the Daniel arap Moi regime on December 25, 1991, and the formation of the Democratic Party.
Karume, most probably Kenya’s first African millionaire in any denomination, was one of founding President Jomo Kenyatta’s most ardent supporters and courtiers. Karume and Dr. Wanjui remain among the richest, most powerful and influential people in Kenya, separately consulted and confided in by other power players, foreign envoys and regional leaders.
Dr. Wanjui endorsed the PM in the following fulsome terms: “I have been President Kibaki's supporter and friend for many years. I am still his friend and supporter. But after looking around and searching far and wide, the only person capable of consolidating the leadership and development Kibaki has established is Raila Odinga”.
A recent measure of Karume’s enduring clout in Central Kenya and among Rift Valley Kikuyus is that despite not making it back to Parliament in 2007 and being in his 80s, after his eldest son Joseph Karume Njenga died in a road accident in September this year, his funeral was attended by the President, Prime Minister, Vice President and scores of other dignitaries from all sides of the political spectrum, all of whom spoke from the podium and praised both father and son and yet the son had never held public office nor even dabbled in politics.
The power elite from all large ethnic communities and quite a few smaller ones were there to be seen to mourn with Karume, a pillar of Mt. Kenya politics and business and a leader of the Gema (Gikuyu, Embu, Meru and Mbeere) communities.
The return of Njenga Karume
Another measure of Karume’s clout was provided by Raila himself at the height of the 2007-08 post-election violence (PEV) and soon after. At an international press conference on January 3, 2008, Raila accused Karume of financing the banned sect Mungiki in the PEV and of doing this at meetings attended by Uhuru Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi. Later, as Prime Minister, Raila went far out of his way to apologise to Karume over his allegations and to seek to absolve him of any such wrongdoing. But he has never extended the same retraction to Uhuru.
Now that Karume has been invested leader and foremost elder of the entire Mt. Kenya region in a controversial ceremony at the Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga shrine in Murang’a, which symbolises the Agikuyu myth of origin, and has been thus elevated in opposition to Uhuru Muigai, son of Founding President Jomo Kenyatta, and Dr. Wanjui has joined the ranks of wealthy powerful Kikuyu elder statesmen who have declared they have no problem with a Raila Presidency, it is quite clear that things have fallen apart deep inside Mt. Kenya and the traditional centre cannot hold.
That centre has revolved around the Presidential families of the Kenyattas and the Kibakis, around which all other factors in the Mountain circle like satellites.
This is not the first time that a vast ethnic centre based around a Presidential family has failed to hold and the regional vote bloc voted with its feet in a direction not sanctioned by the patriarch(s) – it happened to the Daniel arap Moi hold on the Rift Valley at the 2007 General Election, in full view of the still-living patriarch, retired President Moi himself. Not only could Moi’s own children, including favourite son and heir Gideon, not get a word in edgewise to get themselves elected, but the fallout had the same figure at centre-stage – a Raila Odinga making a bid for State House.
Dr. Wanjui joins founding Attorney General Charles Mugane Njonjo and Kiambaa MP Stanley Munga Githunguri in declaring that Raila is fit and ready to be the Fourth President of Kenya. Although he has yet to make a public pronouncement on the matter, Karume, by seeking to wrest the position of Mt. Kenya communities’ spokesman from Uhuru during the younger man’s greatest hour of need and relevance, has demonstrated that there is a potent struggle at the top in Central Kenya for post-Kibaki political control.
The Kenyattas Deserted
Njonjo, Karume and Githunguri were among Jomo Kenyatta’s most loyal faithful retainers and enjoyed their greatest eminence during his watch. That they should now part ways with Uhuru in this fashion, while Kenyatta’s youngest widow, first First Lady Mama Ngina, the DPM’s mother, is still alive and has a voice in Mt. Kenyan affairs, bespeaks war in heaven.
Alone among Kenyatta’s most faithful retainers, Njonjo has never subscribed to the idea that a Kikuyu should succeed a Kikuyu at State House, not even when Kenyatta was alive. Other power, politics and business elite operatives seem to be coming around to Njonjo’s view, a generation after Kenyatta’s demise. Karume, who led the brazen and tribally chauvinistic Change the Constitution movement in the mid-1970s when Kenyatta was clearly at the end of his tether and Moi, having been VP for a dozen years and therefore Principal Assistant to the President, was poised to step in, has never been known to support a non-Kikuyu for State House.
It speaks volumes for great wealth that Karume not only survived the Presidential transition occasioned by Kenyatta’s death and Moi’s rise to State House but thrived and was always consulted by Moi throughout his 24-year-long Presidency. Any day now he should make his views explicitly known on the all-important tacit protocol question of whether a Kikuyu should succeed a Kikuyu at State House. All indications are that Karume has fundamentally revised his views and that this underpins his wish to lead the Central community from the front.
Karume was, after all, the powerful and controlling leader of Gema in the flashpoint year of 1969 – the year of the Argwings Kodhek fatal road accident and the Tom Mboya assassination – when a wave of atavistic oath-taking rituals such as had not been witnessed since the early 1950s spread throughout the Mt. Kenya region to the accompaniment of the chilling, trance-like chant “Bendera ndikoima Nyumba ya Mumbi (the Flag will never leave the House of Mumbi)”.
Githunguri, who was Executive Chairman of the National Bank of Kenya in Kenyatta’s final years, is Karume’s nemesis in Kiambaa and was initially an adversary of Moi’s, has seconded Njonjo’s support of Raila since at least 2005 and Kenya’s first national referendum, the Yes/No vote on the then Proposed New Constitution.
Dr. Wanjui has been a Kibaki insider throughout the President’s two terms in office and his breaking ranks with his old friend’s closest advisers on the matter of Raila’s suitability to take the Kibaki legacy forward is indicative of a deep schism in the President’s innermost inner circles.
The Center Cannot Hold
That the Mt. Kenya centre would not hold became apparent only recently, with the prospect of Uhuru’s crimes-against-humanity case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague proceeding to full trial and putting his political career into a tailspin for the foreseeable future looming larger by the day. When the three-judge bench of the ICC’s Pretrial Chamber II indicated that its decision on whether the cases of the so-called Ocampo Six would proceed to full trial would be announced on the same day, date and time, instead of a month apart for the first three accused and the second three, all signs were that a bleak near-future awaits Uhuru and his five co-accused.
Wealthy and powerful individuals like Karume, Njonjo and Dr. Wanjui have their own feelers and pointers deep inside the media, security, diplomatic and other investigative communities, both local and international, and consult widely, deeply and constantly. Their separate no-confidence votes in Uhuru must be based on the sort of strategic considerations that saw them build their business empires, nurture and grow them through the vicissitudes of the three Presidential administrations. Karume became a wealthy man even before Independence, under the British, and has grown his wealth and clout in all-weather conditions, politically speaking, for longer than Uhuru has been alive. For instance, Karume was among the very first Kenyans, in the very early 1950s, to be allowed by the colonial authorities to operate bank accounts in institutions like Barclays and Standard Chartered.
It was interesting that Karume felt constrained to deny that despite being crowned Mt. Kenya’s sage elder and national spokesman he had no interest in an elective political position. In recent years, Karume has not only acquired a wife who is half his age, he has also published an autobiography, From Charcoal to Gold, with the assistance of Mutu Gethoi of Embu County. Added to the feather-in-cap investiture as top elder, these accoutrements seem in the eyes of many to point to higher political ambitions for Karume. “I do not want to become the King of the Agikuyu but a leader because every community must be directed by one person,” Karume told the gathering of elders and locals at the shrine after his installation. Why he thinks that he ought to be the chosen one and why now are matters Karume left to speculation, but he promptly came under massive attack from Uhuru-compliant councils of Kikuyu elders, including an outfit that styles itself the Rift Valley Kikuyu Council of Elders, led by one Wachira Kamana.
Cracks in the Mountain
With these cracks in the Mountain, the Central Kenya vote bloc, which has concentrated all its energies on Kibaki since 1997 when it comes to Presidential elections, is clearly up for grabs. It is the most cohesive vote bloc in the nation and the most inward-looking, never having expended its votes on a candidate outside the Nyumba ya Mumbi (the House of Mumbi) to send him to the House on the Hill (State House). That there has been an intimate connection between the Nyumba and the House is evidenced by Kenyatta’s 15-year stay and Kibaki’s 10 years, making it 25 years in all so far. All eyes are now on how the Kikuyu intend to use their vast electoral clout in the absence of a Kikuyu candidate who can attract at least two other major blocs.
Can the Nyumba, or even just a significant proportion of it, finally find its way to handing the House on the Hill to Raila, as highly recommended by Dr. Wanjui, Njonjo and Githunguri and, any day now, Karume? Or are these men just dinosaurs from the dawn of Independence who have accumulated too much, have too much to lose and have no business seeking to tell a new generation of Mount Kenyans what’s good for them?
In the final analysis, Dr. Wanjui, Njonjo, Githunguri and Karume have only four votes between them and not three more general elections (Njonjo, for one, will be 92 next year). However, if the Mt. Kenya vote bloc’s latest generations learn the smarts of the kind of cohesion that dispenses with insular behaviour, a cohesiveness already enjoyed by the Luo and the Kalenjin, who are on record, unlike the Kikuyu, as having voted cohesively but not selfishly, they could well discover a completely new clout and niche – that of swing-vote factor and kingmaker. And it could well be a clout that is useful for much longer and much wider purposes than the navel-gazing self-regard of the past.
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