Casual suggestion that landed Moi the top job
The abrupt resignation of Vice President Joseph Murumbi in June 1966 had left President Jomo Kenyatta in a dilemma. Though Murumbi was not a member of the inner circle at State House, Kenyatta had not expected him to call it quits so suddenly. What proved tricky for Kenyatta was that though the rebel pro-Jaramogi Odinga camp had been pushed out of government, the camp loyal to the president was bitterly split into three groups, their only common denominator being loyalty to the president, but each separately scheming hard to have the vantage point in the Kenyatta succession. On one hard was cabinet minister, Tom Mboya.
He had played the crucial role in vanquishing Odinga, and naturally saw himself as successor to the aging Kenyatta. Besides, Mboya was a heavy- weight in his own right. He was a brilliant schemer. He had money. He had important friends in Washington. And unlike Odinga whose constituency was largely ethnic, he had a cosmopolitan following.
On the other hand was the Kikuyu faction in the Kenyatta cabinet which viewed the presidency as the exclusive property of Central Kenya, and was hell-bent on stopping Mboya. But the Kikuyu camp was also divided within its own ranks. One group gravitated around then De- fence minister Njoroge Mungai.
Attorney General Charles Njonjo fronted the other. Their common rival was Mboya, but left in a room without Mboya, they would tear each other to shreds. Yet Kenyatta needed the three rivals – Mboya, Mungai and Njonjo – in his corner to keep the young nation together. In any case, though Odinga’s fire had been extinguished, it was still smoldering. For seven months Kenya was without a VP as Kenyatta agonised over whom to give the job and not unsettle the intricate power balance in his cabinet. Then, early in January 1967, Kenyatta happened to tour Rift Valley province where he was hosted by the senior-most politician in the area, Home Affairs minister Daniel Moi.
For some reason, the president had asked Attorney General Charles Njonjo to have a ride in the presidential limousine. In an interview with Moi British biographer, Andrew Morton, many years later, Njonjo would disclose: “I never knew why the president wanted me to ride in his vehicle that day. Moi was our host and we traversed a huge section of Rift Valley from Nakuru, Baringo, Eldoret and ended up at Kericho.”
Along the way, the president brought up the topic of the vice president and told Njonjo he knew the country was still anxious that he names his assistant. Then out of the blue, Njonjo said: “Look the way Moi has organised this tour and the support he has; Why not give him the job?” As was typical of old Kenyatta, Njonjo was to recall, the President went quiet for a long moment to a point he couldn’t tell whether it was that he had not heard him or had dismissed his suggestion.
“After the long pause, the president”, Njonjo was to disclose, said: “That sounds good: Be in my office first thing tomorrow morning we talk about it.” Come morning – January 7, 1967 – Njonjo was at State House, Nakuru, for a late breakfast with the head of state, where, after an- other long pause, he was told: “You can now go.
I will think about it all.” On the way back to Nairobi, Njonjo heard on his car radio that Daniel Moi had been appointed third Vice President of Kenya. A casual remark he had made had opened gates for the man who would be Kenya’s longest serving Vice President (11 years), as well as the longest serving President (24 years). For Kenyatta, settling on Moi as the third vice president was an inspired choice. He posed no threat – or so it appeared – to any of the rival camps.
After all, Moi was from a humble background. He had no much external exposure. But above all, he showed no ambition. To the brilliant – and arrogant – Mboya, Moi was not a person to give too much thought. For the Mungai group, Moi was accept- able because, as they figured, they would get him out of the VP perch as soon as the coast was clear. As for Njonjo, Moi was a safe pair of hands to back all the way to the presidency as long as he (Njonjo) would be the man calling the shots.
Battle of wits With a non-threatening Vice President in place, it was now a free-for- all battle for the Kenyatta succession as far as the three rival camps were concerned. The first major contest was set to be the November 1969 general election. As it turned out, the 1969 election was an anti-climax.
A major contender, Tom Mboya, was cut out by an assassin’s bullet four months to the major political derby. The person High Court convict- ed of pulling the trigger on Mboya, Isaac Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, asked for lenience because he had been sent by “the big man” whom he never mentioned by name.
The said “big man” has never been known. With Mboya not in the picture, it was now bare knuckles for the Mungai and Njonjo camps. First came the mysterious oathings to the effect that the presiden- tial motorcade shall never “cross River Chania”, meaning outside the Kiambu county. In an interview, retired PCEA clergyman, the Rev. John Gatu told this writer of a meeting at State House, Nairobi, the day Kenyatta ordered the oaths stopped.
Recalls Rev. Gatu: “The church had said no about the oathings and organised public demonstrations to say as much. Kenyatta summoned us (church leaders) to State House and wanted to know what was going on. After our brief, he called his officers and told them he wanted to hear no more of the oathings. And that was it.”
Then the battle moved to the ruling party, Kanu. The succession plan those days under the single party system was that Kanu would nominate the candidate (s) to contest the presidency in case of a vacuum in the office. The ruling party president, as he was called those days, also happened to be the State president, and the party vice president the State vice president. Inevitably, that meant the No.2 person in the Kanu hierarchy would almost automatically be assured the presidency if a vacancy arose.
To ensure Moi wasn’t going anywhere as future president, the Mungai camp conspired to wrestle the Kanu vice presidency from him. Party elections were scheduled in 1973 and the Mungai camp put out a line-up to remove Moi and his allies. Mungai himself would go for party vice presidency. But the Njonjo camp had not been sleeping, either.
They had their own line-up with Moi to take on Mungai. Days to the major showdown, intelligence leaked out that the Njonjo/Moi camp would triumph against the Mungai group. Kenyatta would not allow a major split within his troops, and the party elections were cancelled with no future date given.
On realisation that Kanu, as a national organ, would prove tricky to achieve a narrow ethnic agenda, Mungai forces designed a new path. They sponsored formation of a welfare association for the Mount Kenya region, the Gikuyu Meru Embu Association (Gema). Though began as a welfare grouping, Gema hardly concealed its political agenda. In his memoirs, Gema life-long chairman, the late Njenga Karume, discusses at length the Gema agenda that ensured only Gema “candidates” were voted to parliament from central Kenya in the 1974 election.
Indeed, no lesser person, in Njenga’s own words, was so alarmed by Gema ethnic politics than Kenyatta. Karume wrote in his autobi- ography that when told about the Gema line-up of candidates for Nairobi in the 1974 election, Kenyatta had said with a little dis- comfort: “Karume, that is not good enough. Nairobi is for all Kenyan people.”
But scooping all electoral seats in Nairobi and Mount Kenya regions would not be good enough for Mungai and his Gema backers as far as Kenyatta succession was concerned. Moi was still Kanu and the national vice president. That way, he – rather the Njonjo camp – still had the head start in the succession equation.
Mungai and Gema’s next agenda was to change the constitution and remove the clause that categorically stated that the vice president would take office in the first 90 days of a vacancy arising in the office of the president, one way or the other. The campaign kicked off in ear- nest in mid 1976, led by one Kihi- ka Kimani, then Nakuru North MP.
It turned out so reckless in its parochial agenda that Kenyatta called it off and threatened to lock in “any- body who went around threatening other Kenyans”. “Kenya is for us all”, Kenyatta had told the change-the-constitution crowd at Nakuru State House and told them they risked going to jail if they went ahead with the anti-Moi campaign.
It was yet another victory for the Njonjo-Moi camp. But that was only a battle won. The war raged on. Anti-Moi forces, however, wouldn’t have much time to manourve. As fate would have it, President Kenyatta would die less than two years after failure of the change-the-constitution movement. But before Kenyatta died, the Mungai-Gema forces made yet one last attempt to stifle Moi’s chances. Kanu national elections were scheduled for September May 1978.
Yet again, President Kenyatta learned the party elections would divide the country down the middle. He again called them off, but said they would be held soon. There would be no ‘soon’ as he died 3 months later. On August 22, Moi was sworn in as Acting President and, on October 14, the same year, the second President of Kenya. As we can tell it for the first time, it was a long journey that had seen Moi twice almost tender his resignation as VP, just like his two pre- decessors, Murumbi and Odinga. - By KAMAU NGOTHO
No comments:
Post a Comment