MY LEARNING ENCOUNTER WITH VINTAGE MICHUKI

Published on 23/02/2012 

By Kipkoech Tanui

Like many Kenyans I have my own little story about John Michuki. It is not about him as oppressive colonial DO or the lucky youth who at 32 became PS. It is not even about how he made silver and gold from colonial Kenya through three presidents, or how often he came out as a Kikuyu chauvinist and political bigot.

All that and a lot more have been said.

I was a young reporter profiling our movers and shakers for Sunday Nation in the 1990s. My editor, Nderitu, asked me to try out Michuki, whom after a cup of tea and biscuit-sized mandazi in Parliament, asked me to meet him in his office at Cargen House.

I was early for the meeting because I knew if you are five minutes late and he won’t see you. When I walked in, he was smoking and he surprised me by asking if he should stop. Though I wanted to say so I couldn’t. Those who knew him know what I mean when I say he spoke with a penetrating eye and dropped one word at a time, just to make sure the last has sunk in your mind.

So here we are in his office, not the multi-million shilling Windsor Hotel and Golf Club, which he also owns along with shares in other good ones in town, but the chips, kachumbari and sausages (not chicken!) from John and Jos downstairs. Turns out the fast food is his business and it is named after him and his wife Josephine. As we chat, he gives me the first lesson of life – "young man never fight with mshahara (money), it will kill you through alcohol, women and poverty".

Secondly, he told me something about scouting for cheap loans, and revealed frustrations he underwent trying to get financing from Kenya Commercial Bank which he founded, just because he was deemed anti-Moi. Reluctantly he went offshore, and that is how on low-interest loans he gave Windsor wings to fly.

I would flee

When one door is locked, he said with a pointed finger at me, look out to see if the latch on the window has a lock, for they never have, and we just let ourselves live in imaginary prisons.

In Parliament he had told me about his frosty relations with the then President Moi, whom he hilariously referred to Mtu Wa Kwenu (The man from your place). It was about the unpaid favours he claimed he granted him, including employing for him a bank manager who ended up as a Goldenberg suspect.

He also wondered how Moi ended up in power when he had "only a few flats in Nakuru". To him wealth and power were synonymous.

Later as we washed down our common-man’s lunch with soda, he said he had no problem allowing our photographer and I shadowing him for a day in his businesses and farms, but it had to be in August, which was five months away, when his daughter and son studying in Europe would be back for holiday. As I had deadlines to beat, I insisted it could not wait and we would use their pictures from the family album.

His face changed, he asked if I had a family and I said no. He told me a man must never allow an outsider to split his family, and he must involve his family in everything he does. He then went back to lessons on money and said he was what he was because he did everything for himself, his wife, and children. He added, neither myself nor Nderitu would change that.

I was feeling too small and could not wait to flee from the office, knowing I would never return. His standards were just too high and I felt he might even want to edit the story before I gave it to Nderitu. I also feared he was too egoistic and complicated, but not until I had my own family did I understand him, and by then I had missed his story.

I am convinced it is the wish to be with his family that brought him back from UK to die in Kenya.

Reporter’s father

Now this is not the Michuki many know, many of us know him because of public life. The only other journalist I am told who came close to his account failed because as he waited to interview him, and given he was late and called to say he could in the meantime have a soda, decided to order a beer instead.

When Michuki arrived at 1pm he asked him what he had achieved in half a day to reward himself with beer.

Apart from saying he would pay for lunch and not the beer, the ‘interview’ turned into a ‘lecture’ on financial discipline to the reporter.

He just had three points: If the reporter’s father drank beer at 1pm he would not have seen the inside of journalism class, he himself only takes one beer when he is sure he has made a thousand times more shillings than it costs, and if he did like him he would never be what he is. This surely is the side of Michuki we should toast to!

-The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.

ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke