In the morning, First President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was announced dead on August 22, 1978, three men rushed to Nairobi State House where the body would lie in state. They were nominated MP who had been a senior cabinet minister but lost in the election, Dr. Njoroge Mungai, a sitting Cabinet minister Paul Ngei, and an immensely influential nephew to Mzee Kenyatta who is still around but retired from active politics.
Besides viewing the body, the trio had another even more urgent agenda. They wanted to lobby the Cabinet not to pass a resolution that saw Vice President Daniel arap Moi sworn-in as acting president for 90 days as indicated in the Constitution. The swearing-in was supposed to be preceded by a resolution of majority cabinet ministers.
The less noted clause provided that “if for any reason the Vice President is unable to take the oath of office” – the main one of which would have been absence of endorsement by the cabinet – the cabinet would pick one of their own to be the acting president.
Now, in the afternoon of that fateful August 22, the three plotters were determined to lobby enough cabinet members and block the swearing-in of Mr Moi as acting president in favour of a person amenable to their power designs.
Dr Mungai had never hidden his ambitions to succeed Mzee Kenyatta, who was his first cousin. At Parliament cafeteria, he would generously throw “rounds” to broke MPs. After he had taken one too many tots of his expensive liquor, he would tap his gold watch and say: “It’s just a matter of time we be having this drink up the hill” – meaning State House.
At his expansive Magana Farm on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, Dr Mungai had constructed a huge dais where he would be meeting with delegations coming to pledge loyalty once he was sworn-in to the throne.
The late President Jomo Kenyatta’s personal physician Dr. Njoroge Mungai displays some of the Mzee Kenyatta’s medical reports during a past interview at his Kikuyu home as he denied the reports that the Kenyatta death was out of neglect.
Deep state
Dr Mungai had been the de-facto leader of the 1976 change-the-constitution group. They had wanted an open-ended succession process that included the cabinet picking one of their own as acting president for only two weeks when delegates of Kanu — the only party at the time— would meet to vote in a new presidential candidate.
On the day Mzee Kenyatta died, then Foreign Affairs minister Dr Munyua Waiyaki would tell me many years later that Dr Mungai & co. failed because the “deep state” was already ahead of them and put all arrangements in place for VP Moi to succeed Mzee Kenyatta.
Long before the President’s death was announced even to members of the cabinet, the “deep state” had ensured Moi travelled from Nakuru to his Nairobi home and the GSU commandant Ben Gethi instructed to personally take charge of security.
Next, the “deep state” ensured there would be no meeting until the entire cabinet was at State House. Had a Cabinet meeting taken place, the Mungai axis would have had its way, Dr Waiyaki was to tell me years later.
Come the hour of voting, Head of the Civil Service GK Kareithi suddenly surfaced in the room with a written resolution that the cabinet had endorsed swearing-in of Moi.
Before the anti-Moi cabinet ministers knew what was happening, Chief Justice Sir James Wicks was inside the room complete in official robes and the oath of office to swear-in Mr Moi!
It happened as swiftly as the 2007 evening swearing-in of President Mwai Kibaki to embark on his second term.
In this picture taken on October 20,1969, Dr Njoroge Mungai, then Kenya’s Minister for Foreign Affairs presents a trophy to Mr John Harun of the Nairobi Area rifle shooting team as the then Police Commissioner Benard Hinga and GSU Commandant Ben Gerthi look on.
Kenya’s first cabinet
But give it to Dr Mungai – as to Dr Mukhisa Kituyi – the men are made of sterner steel and are go-getters.
Dr Mungai was in the 15 member team that formed the first independent Kenya cabinet in June 1963. The remarkable thing about them is that nine, or 60 per cent, had attended Alliance High School at about the same time in the 1940s. I guess in small talk preceding or after cabinet meetings, they would crack jokes about their school days.
From Alliance, Dr Mungai wanted to study medicine at the prestigious Stanford University School of Medicine, when denied a visa to travel to the United States, he became adamant and opted to be a bus driver in Nairobi until an opportunity came to study medicine.
Some light came at the end of the tunnel when the prestigious South Africa’s Fort Hare University –which didn’t allow black students to study medicine, offered him a course in hygiene as a bridging course to be admitted to study medicine at Stanford. It worked.
As the first Minister of Health, he opened the first medical school in Kenya. Next, he became minister for Defence, and played a critical role in defeat of the Shifta secession attempt in north-eastern Kenya.
As minister for Foreign Affairs – Dr Kituyi definitely will like this – Dr Mungai played critical role to have located in Nairobi the first and biggest UN offices located on Africa soil – The Unep and Habitat headquarters.
Postscript: Dr Njoroge Mungai’s daughter Gathoni Mungai, was once married to Michael Kijana Wamalwa who was Dr Kituyi’s friend and boss at Ford Kenya party, and one-time Vice President. You can see this presidency thing runs in the veins of friends and clans, and – as Gideon Moi would put it – in “doktoris” as well. BY DAILY NATION