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Kenya: Mahihu Takes Succession Tale to the Grave
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
COLUMN
24 April 2008
Posted to the web 24 April 2008
John Kamau
Today in his Ndundori farm in Molo, Eliud Muchoki Mahihu, once a powerful figure in the Kenyatta presidency, will be buried.
But it is a regret that the man died without telling his part of the story in the Kenyatta succession where he played a central role.
If it was not for Mahihu, Kenya's history would have been different, yet apart from newspaper interviews, there is no single biography or autobiography on the man.
As a nation we can't afford to lose part of our history as it goes unrecorded. Where are our historians and political scientists?,
This is the man who short-changed the Kiambu mafia that wanted to snatch power after Kenyatta's death by making a dawn call to then vice president Daniel arap Moi, Attorney General Charles Njonjo and health minister Mwai Kibaki before Kenyans woke up on August 22, 1978 to learn about Mzee's death.
Mahihu was willing to tell that part of the story and always retained a small piece of paper that a Dr Wassunna wrote to confirm that Kenyatta was no more.
This is part of Kenya's heritage and it would be prudent for the Mahihu family to search for it and hand it over to the National Archives. Mahihu had also written a manuscript, picked some local journalists to edit it, but was dissuaded by relatives not to publish it. He was spilling lots of beans and ruffling feathers.
The story of Mahihu is not only about the colonial administration, where he played a key role as a Mau Mau de-oathing officer, but it is also about the double-agent strategy employed by these young officers in their work with colonialists while sympathising with freedom fighters.So central was Mahihu's role that he caught the attention of Time magazine in November 1962 which described him as a husky African district officer.
Mahihu was regarded by some contemporaries as a Home Guard and an anti-Mau Mau. But he was part of a small select of Africans who were getting prepared to take over the administrative functions in a new independent Kenya. By the dawn of independence, Mahihu was working in Kirinyaga as a District Commissioner- one of the first blacks to hold such a position and by 1964, he was appointed a Provincial Commissioner and posted to Embu.
Kenya's post-colonial history might be lost if leading personalities do not share their past and with Mahihu a huge chunk is going to the grave and this is a challenge to our universities to seize that chance.
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Kamau is associate editor with the Business Daily.
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