Former President Daniel arap Moi. Photo/FILE
By NATION REPORTER
Posted Tuesday, April 3 2012 at 22:30
Posted Tuesday, April 3 2012 at 22:30
As the architect behind Kamatusa, former President Moi must have monitored Tuesday’s meeting in Eldoret with keen interest.
Before joining Kanu, Mr Moi and former Coast political supremo Ronald Ngala were members of Kadu, a political party whose primary motive was to protect interests of small groups against dominance by the Kikuyu and Luo who had found a home in Kanu at independence.
The Kamatusa alliance brings together the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana and Samburu.
After the collapse of Kadu, Mr Moi would revive Kamatusa in the 1990s to fend off a strong wave of opposition to his presidency mainly by the Luo and Kikuyu elite.
The Gikuyu, Embu and Meru (Gema) initiative, which is largely credited to former Defence Minister Njenga Karume, was packaged as a cultural organisation, but its main interest was to protect the political interests of member communities.
In 1994, Mr Moi pushed for an alliance between Gema and Rift Valley communities as part of his plot to isolate the Luo who the former President described as “political nomads.”
This would be the subject of the infamous Gema-Kamatusa talks led by Mr Karume and then Energy Minister Nicholas Biwott.
The silent rallying call was that the two communities had accumulated wealth through business which was threatened by the Luo, then projected as anti-enterprise.
Probably the irony of yesterday’s meeting is that the revival of the political grouping is being spearheaded by Eldoret North MP William Ruto, a Moi political student but who has since fallen out with him and rose to compete with Mr Moi for dominance in Rift Valley politics.
It also meant to rally support for Mr Ruto who has accused Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a Luo, of engineering his prosecution for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.
The gathering at Catholic Pastoral Centre in Eldoret comes a fortnight after a meeting of Gema leaders in Limuru during which Deputy Prime Uhuru Kenyatta who also facing similar charges at the ICC, was “anointed” the leader of the community and flag-bearer in the next presidential election.
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