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An affable golfer, a non-confrontational politician, the gentleman of Kenyan politics: These were some of the phrases used to describe former President Mwai Kibaki.
Perhaps the description that stuck most was ‘General Kiguoya’ given to him by his friend-turned-political nemesis Kenneth Matiba.
The duo had been serving in then-President Daniel Moi’s government when the 1988 Mlolongo elections were held. The election was shambolic and the mismanagement stirred Matiba’s anger. He planned to resign.
Kibaki had won his Othaya seat but was subsequently sacked by Moi as vice president and moved to the Health ministry.
Kibaki and Matiba had allegedly agreed to resign together and front an alliance for the next elections as the clamour for multi-party democracy was gathering steam. Matiba saw the possibility of beating Moi at the poll.
But when it was time to resign, Kibaki balked. Matiba read this as Kibaki’s spinelessness and cowardice. He named him General Kiguoya (coward).
This was not the first time Kibaki had avoided confrontation. His first show of political cowardice came after nearly 10 years of his political career.
It came from a scare at the 1969 polls, when Kibaki ran for the Bahati parliamentary seat (now Makadara) in Nairobi. His main challenger was Jael Mbogo.
The first woman shorthand typist at the City Council of Nairobi and second national chairperson for the giant Maendeleo ya Wanawake after Phoebe Asiyo, Mbogo was very popular in the area and gave Kibaki a run for his money.
Mbogo told the Guardian in 2009 that she was on the verge of winning the poll when the government intervened on behalf of Kibaki, then a senior minister in Jomo Kenyatta’s Cabinet.
Police officers were deployed and the results delayed for days.
“I was so far ahead in early vote counting that even the BBC reported that a young woman had felled a government minister,” Mbogo told a Guardian reporter.
“Kibaki stalled the result and then robbed me of victory. Because he looks so holy, people are still asking if he really was capable of stealing this election.”
After that near-election defeat, Kibaki relocated to Othaya, where he ran in 1974 and won. He won in subsequent elections until his retirement in 2013.
Analysts saw the retreat to Othaya as a direct result of the Mbogo scare. The activist ran three times but never won the seat.
Back to the late 1980s, as Matiba and other Second Liberation heroes – Martin Shikuku, Paul Muite, Gitobu Imanyara, James Orengo, Raila Odinga and Charles Rubia, George Anyona among others – clamoured for the multiparty system, Kibaki remained in government.
He discouraged the agitators for multiparty politics as thinking of doing the impossible. Kanu was so entrenched it could not be challenged, he said.
Muite told a local daily, “Kibaki took absolutely no part in the Second Liberation. On the contrary he was strongly opposed, including hurling insults like ‘trying to fell a Mugumo tree with a razor-blade’.”
Second Liberation heroes were tear-gassed, beaten at political rallies, detained and some, such as George Anyona, jailed on charges of sedition.
When the fight was nearly won, Kibaki resigned from Kanu and ran for president in 1992. He emerged third. He ran again in 1997, emerged second and became the leader of Official Opposition.
During Moi’s last term, the economy was in shambles; his authoritarian tendencies undiminished yet the President was still a towering figure in national politics.
As the Leader of Opposition, Kibaki was expected to keep the government on its toes. Not much can be said of what he did in that role. Was General Kiguoya living up to his name?
Analysts had rightly observed that the fragmented opposition had been the cause for the losses in the 1992 and 1997 general elections. As 2002 approached, there was a need to change tack and push a united front.
Here, too, Kibaki did not take the lead. Charity Ngilu did.
Ngilu, then leader of the National Party of Kenya led talks to bring the fragmented opposition parties together. Kanu was formidable, the cockerel having swallowed the tractor that was Raila’s National Development Party.
Ngilu brought on board Kibaki’s Democratic Party and Kijana Wamalwa’s Ford Kenya. By-election time in 2002, the National Alliance of Kenya had 14 affiliate parties.
Some sources say as the negotiations continued, it became apparent that Kibaki would not back down from running.
Moi’s succession planning gave the opposition alliance an easier choice. The President chose greenhorn Uhuru Kenyatta to fly the Kanu flag, causing a massive rebellion led by Raila and other Kanu stalwarts.
The breakaway team took the Liberal Democratic Party as their vehicle and joined the opposition alliance. Soon, the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition was formed.
Kibaki was given the mantle because the alliance believed that a Kikuyu against another Kikuyu candidate would split Mt Kenya region votes and give them victory.
Narc swept to victory, even though a bad accident had meant the candidate could not campaign as he was away in London for treatment.
Once elected president, Kibaki reneged on a pre-election pact NAK had signed with Raila’s LDP. The appointment of ministers favoured Kibaki and he was non-committal on a push to change the constitution in 100 days, as he had promised, and make Raila prime minister. Was he being kiguoya, afraid that his powers would be clipped?
So Kibaki’s first term turned turbulent. As he stayed behind the scenes, he was surrounded and shielded by old friends, virtually all Kikuyu.
The government lost a referendum in 2005 and he fired several of his Narc partners from Cabinet. Things went downhill from there. In that term, Kibaki did not give a single media interview and rarely took questions at news conferences.
Following the disputed 2007 election and the violent aftermath, Kibaki seemed less in control of the country.
The Guardian reports of the Daily Nation warning Kibaki: “If Kenya disintegrates, history books will record that the collapse of a once great, united and prosperous country happened on your watch”.
The Star wrote in a headline: “Where is Kibaki? … as Kenya slips into anarchy”.
He finally gave in, and agreed to form a coalition government with Raila as prime minister. But this was after more than 1,300 were killed and up to 600,000 people displaced in the post-election violence that followed.
The gentleman of Kenyan politics, or General Kiguoya, took the easy way out and served his full two terms.
He did not endorse anyone to succeed him in 2012 and retired quietly to Othaya. BY THE STAR