Gakiha Weru
23 March 2008
analysis
Nairobi — Jomo Kenyatta's presidency was an experiment that began rather well, until he transformed himself into a virtual monarch who would instigate numerous changes to the independence constitution to consolidate his hold on power.
It was an experiment because the country was emerging from decades of colonialism and a nation was cobbled together from diverse communities that had little prior interaction - the first tentative steps towards statehood were basically made by groping in the dark.
A few factors caused the evolution of Mzee Kenyatta, from the fiery orator who had for years electrified the populace with his visions of a country built on democratic ideals to the imperial ruler who did not put too much thought into tossing dissenters into detention.
First, in the years leading to independence, Kenyatta had assumed legendary status to the extent that few people, including his contemporaries in the struggle, could contemplate independence without him.
This is what essentially led Jaramogi Oginga Odinga to declare in 1960 that there was not going to be independence until Kenyatta was released from detention.
Kenyatta therefore took over the leadership of the country under extraordinary circumstances. He was widely viewed as the man who would deliver the country from servitude and lead it to freedom.
Kenyans were drunk with optimism and a generous dose of euphoria as the country had just managed to dislodge the colonial authority that had been in place for close to a century.
It is therefore understandable that by the time they realised that some things were going wrong, it was too late.
In a paper titled Constitutional Transformation and the Crisis of Governance in Independent Kenya, constitutional scholar Githu Muigai writes that Kenyatta's personality and charisma effectively dwarfed his peers.
"The monarchical tendency in African politics was best exemplified by Jomo Kenyatta. Gradually, significant political power over party and state was ceded to him, making him and his close advisers almost the sole determinants of the direction of change," Muigai writes.
In addition to a mesmerised country, most ministers in the first cabinet had little initiative of their own.
In his book, Walking in Kenyatta struggles, Duncan Ndegwa, the first secretary to the Cabinet, reports that most ministers held the president in such awe that instead of helping him find solutions to the problems confronting the young nation, they looked up to him to provide solutions, thereby enhancing his big man status.
Kenyatta's absolute hold on power was also informed by the need to neutralise his critics led by Vice-President Jaramogi, whose ideological differences with Kenyatta made a fractious fallout imminent.
By the time Jaramogi resigned from government in 1966, it was clearly emerging that the country had a president who was not going to tolerate any kind of dissent.
And he did not hesitate to remind everybody that he was boss. In his famous last encounter with Jaramogi in Kisumu in 1969 when Kenyatta's entourage was stoned, he told his former friend, "If we hadn't been friends for such a long time, I would have taught you a lesson."
KPU, which Jaramogi had formed after resigning from the government, was immediately proscribed and prominent officials and independence heroes such as Bildad Kagia and Ochieng Aneko found themselves cooling their heels in jail. In Parliament, dissenters found themselves in plenty of trouble. In 1975, when Martin Shikuku declared that there were attempts to kill Parliament the same way Kanu had been killed, he was supported by the Deputy Speaker, Marie-Jean Seroney.
Within a matter of days, the two politicians were picked up by the police from Parliament and led off to detention where they remained until 1978 when they were released by President Moi in the early days of his presidency.
The detention of Mr Shikuku and Mr Seroney sent the starkly clear message that even the privileges of Parliament amount to zero if one was criticising Kenyatta's administration. By the end of the 1960s, it became necessary that Kenyatta's failing health was kept secret in keeping with the image of the omnipotent leader.
In his book, Mr Ndegwa records that some time in 1967, Kenyatta suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma for nearly three days.
When he regained consciousness, he told the then head of the civil service and close confidant that during his comatose state, his spirit had sojourned to a place he called Weru Wa Wakagaa - a place full of brightness - where he experienced great inner peace. This incident was kept under wraps and only people close to Kenyatta got to know about it.
Kenyatta also had scant respect for the constitution. In 1974, when Paul Ngei, with whom he served time in prison, was found guilty of an election offence and barred from contesting his parliamentary seat in the subsequent by-election, Kenyatta changed the constitution to make it possible for him to pardon Ngei, thereby handing the minister a new lease of political life. And once in while, Kenyatta would demonstrate the awesome military power at his disposal.
One such incident happened in 1975 after the assassination of Nyandarua North MP JM Kariuki. Nairobi experienced days of riots and it was evident that there would be a rebellion if nothing was done to quell the unrest.
Then out of the blues, Nairobi streets were closed to traffic and squadrons of the Kenya Army and Air Force marched through the streets along with the several police officers. Kenyatta was standing outside Cameo Cinema on Kenyatta Avenue.
Low-flying Air Force jets swooped through the streets sending city residents scampering for safety.
A front page Daily Nation headline read, "Kenyatta Takes a Strange Salute", and captured the bewilderment with which the strange parade was received by Kenyans.
Military people later explained that what had taken place was a "power demo" by Kenyatta. The president was basically saying he would not hesitate to hit trouble makers with everything in his arsenal.
Though Kenya remained a multiparty democracy, since KPU was a banned, nobody attempted to start a party to compete with Kanu. Such was Kenyatta's stranglehold on politics.
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