Hillary Ng'weno
11 December 2007
Nairobi — In public President Jomo Kenyatta and his close supporters blamed the 1971 conspiracy to overthrow his government upon a few misguided individuals, but privately the reports of the coup plot were being taken very seriously.
Some of Kenyatta's closest allies saw the plot not merely as being aimed at overthrowing the Government, but also as being against the whole Kikuyu community as well as the neighbouring Embu and Meru.
Earlier that year, a few leaders had set up the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru Association (Gema) to look after the social and economic interests of members of the three major communities that live around Mt Kenya. Now Gema would serve a political purpose, that of defending Kenyatta's government and the political power that the Kikuyu in particular and to a lesser extent the Embu and Meru wielded though him.
Gema's aims were no different from those of older tribal associations that had been operating from before independence such as the Luo Union which Oginga Odinga had helped set up as far back as 1946, the New Akamba Union, the Abaluhya Association, the Kalenjin Association and the Abagusii Association.
Had little clout
Some of these had origins in the pre-independence days when the colonial government confined African political activities to the district level. By the mid- Sixties, most of them were moribund and had little clout in the political arena.
From its very inception Gema was different. It strove to improve the cultural and social lot of the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru, and for a while at the beginning it concentrated on cultural and social activities. It set up a Gema Child Welfare Fund to help orphans and destitute children; it set up Gema football clubs in Nairobi and in Gema areas. But its first senior office bearers were prominent politicians.
Julius Kiano, Minister for Local Government, was chairman. Mwai Kibaki, Minister for Finance, Economic Planning and Development, was treasurer. Jeremiah Nyagah, Minister for Information: Jackson Angaine, Minister for Lands and Settlement; Maina Wanjigi, Assistant Minister for Agriculture, and Lucas Ngureti, Assistant Minister for Cooperatives and Social Services, were founder members. Kenyatta himself was Gema's patron. It was natural, therefore, that Gema should be seen as principally a political organisation despite denials to the contrary by its top leadership.
The conspiracies against the government in 1971 had the effect of drawing the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru communities even closer, but by the same token also set them apart from the rest of the Kenyans. By the end of 1972, partly because of the strident rhetoric of the more prominent Gema leaders, there had grown a widespread perception outside Gema areas that Kenyatta was becoming a prisoner of narrow ethnic forces that militated against his national status. Gema was becoming a liability to Kenyatta's government.
It was probably because of the public relations problem Gema was causing the Kenyatta government that in 1973 the organisation attempted to lower its political profile by replacing some of its top leaders with prominent businessmen and professionals. Kiano, Kibaki, Nyagah, Angaine and most other politicians stepped down or were defeated at elections for Gema offices. Among the new team were Njenga Karume, chairman, Duncan Ndegwa, vice-chairman, and Dixon Kihika Kimani, organising secretary.
Karume was a leading businessman in Kiambu. He held directorships in a several major companies, including Credit Finance Corporation, Guinness East Africa, United Transport Company and East African Road Services.
Duncan Ndegwa was Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya. Born in 1926 and educated at Makerere University in Uganda and later at St Andrews University in Scotland, where he got an honours degree in economics and history, Ndegwa served as permanent secretary it he Minister of Finance before being appointed head of the civil service soon after Independence. In 1967 he was appointed Governor of the Central Bank.
Engage in private business
It was a committee chaired by Ndegwa that in 1971 drew and presented a report on civil service reform that paved the way for civil servants to engage in private business even as they served the government.
Initially defended on the ground that with the best African brains and talent at the time being tied up in the civil service it was going to be difficult if not impossible to Africanise the private sector of the economy then dominated by whites and Asians.
The Kenyatta government accepted most of the recommendations of the Ndegwa report. One result was a rapid growth of an African capitalist class whose members had a foot in both the private and public sector. Few at the time foresaw the massive corruption in public institutions that these recommendations would eventually lead to.
Kihika Kimani, Gema's new organising secretary, differed from the other leading figures in the organization in that he was born, grew up and lived all his life in the Rift Valley. Like Karume, he did not go far in education. Like Karume, he was a self-made man. A big landowner, Kihika Kimani helped form the large Ngwataniro Company Ltd which had 20,000 shareholders and was capitalized at the then princely sum of Sh27 million. The company owned farms in Njoro, Laikipia, Solai, Mau Narok, Nakuru and Elmentaita. It ran a number of welfare schemes for its shareholders and their families, including a secondary school in Nakuru that it had built at a cost of Sh7 million.
Business skills
These then were the men who took over the running of Gema. Within a year they used their business skills, acumen and muscle to launch Gema Holdings Ltd with an initial capital of Sh50 million and broad-based shareholding confined to members of the three GEMA communities.
Other tribal associations had their business activities, but with the possible exception of Luo Union Thrift Company, but most of them had flopped. In scope or breadth of vision they simply did not begin to compare with Gema Holdings for the simple reason that they did not have the manpower and experience which Gema Holdings could rely upon to realise its investment goals.
They did not have their members in key government and commercial institutions to give them support or advice. With this support Gema would within a short time buy up several companies and acquire a number of major agricultural properties.
The business operations of Gema Holdings went some way to reduce Gema's political visibility, but it was only for a while. The new Gema leaders may have been prominent in their respective business lines, but a few of them had feet firmly planted in both worlds. As Governor of the Central Bank, Duncan Ndegwa, was very much a political player, always conscious of the interests not merely of the nation at large, but also those of the man who appointed him, Kenyatta, a consummate politician.
Soft spoken and generally unknown outside the business world, Njenga Karume was nevertheless a nominated MP. Kihika Kimani was an elected MP and chairman the Nakuru branch of Kanu. His Ngwataniro Company was heavily involved in Nakuru politics and had successfully sponsored many of its members for elective office both at the parliamentary and local government level. In Nakuru and the neighbouring Molo area Kihika Kimani was king.
In due course politics would return to centre stage in Gema activities. When that happened, at least two of the organisation's top leaders, Karume and Kihika Kimani, would be in the thick of things.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
