It's Our Turn to Eat (14 page)

Kenyatta had revealed the expansionist plans he nursed for his community during the Lancaster House Conferences, to the dismay of other delegates. ‘He said that the Gikuyu must be allowed to take up land in the Rift Valley…Immediately there was a long-drawn-out “Aaah” from the Kalenjin and Maasai representatives, and Willie Murgor from the Eldoret area produced a whistle and blew a long note of alarm on it,' recalled Michael Blundell in his memoirs.
²⁵
Borrowing money from Kikuyu banks and Kikuyu businessmen, tapping into the expertise of Kikuyu lawyers, the president's fellow tribespeople rushed to buy the land of departing whites under a million-acre resettlement scheme subsidised by London. Descending from the escarpment, they flooded in their hundreds of thousands into the previously off-limits Rift Valley, seizing lands the Kalenjin and other communities regarded as having been temporarily appropriated by the white man, but rightfully theirs. Given a selling scheme based on the principle of willing buyer, willing seller, there was little the poorer tribes could do.

The Kikuyu knew in their hearts that they were doing unfairly well out of the Kenyatta presidency. But those fortune favours can always convince themselves their luck is somehow deserved. It was
their
community that had suffered at the hands of the British, the Kikuyu told themselves,
their
community that had risen up against the oppressor,
their
community–better-educated thanks to its early exposure to the missionaries–which taught less politically-aware Kenyans what it meant to be free. More sophisticated, cannier than their fellow Kenyans, they had led the way in these, as so many other areas, and had surely won in the process the right to both lead the country and eat their fill. By 1971, the conviction that this pleasant state of affairs should be rendered permanent had so hardened in Central Province that a party within a party was formed–the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association (GEMA), whose aim was to change a constitution which provided for vice president Daniel arap Moi, from a small coalition of Rift Valley pastoralists known as the Kalenjin, to take over in the event of the president's death. If ever there was an expression of ethnic hubris, GEMA was it.

That golden era ended in 1978, when Kenyatta took ill on a podium in Mombasa, collapsed in the men's toilets and later died. Despite GEMA's best efforts, the presidency went to Moi, who could now take his revenge after years of being patronised by Kenyatta's Kikuyu cronies. His power would be built on Kenya's smaller tribes' fear of a repetition of Kikuyu rule. Moi's publicly declared philosophy might be ‘
Nyayo
'–to walk in the ‘Footsteps' of the revered Kenyatta–but for the Kikuyu, nothing would be the same again. It was now the Kalenjins' turn to ‘eat' at the trough of the state. The Kikuyu still flourished, but they now did so in spite of government patronage, rather than because of it. In Nairobi, the
matatu
routes, the taxi trade, the hotel business, real estate–areas where the domineering KANU government enjoyed no control–were all in Kikuyu hands. GEMA went into voluntary liquidation in 1980, its dreams shattered.

Once Moi gave in to pressure to end single-party rule in 1991, it was natural that the discontented Kikuyu community, at the fore-front of every curve, should launch the first opposition parties.
Kikuyus today cite this as evidence that not only were they responsible for Kenya's first liberation–from colonial rule–they should also be thanked for its second, from the one-party system. In every election that followed, Nairobi and Central Province would repeatedly, fruitlessly, vote against KANU, a constant reminder to Moi that this important section of the community rejected what he stood for. When the first serious ethnic violence in Kenyan history broke out in the early 1990s, with 1,500 ‘foreigners' who had settled the Rift Valley during the Kenyatta years killed by local Maasai and Kalenjin and hundreds of thousands brutally cleansed–with the support of the police and government officials–the Kikuyu interpreted it as a warning that ethnic extermination was not entirely out of the question. ‘Lie low like envelopes or be cut down to size,' declared Moi's chauvinistic Maasai minister for local government, William Ntimama. Whatever protestations Moi made that he was Father to One Nation, the Kikuyu would see this bloodletting, an early signal of what the future held that no one wanted to heed, as punishment for a successful community's defiance.

It was sometimes hard to tell exactly where government incompetence ended and deliberate sabotage began. But the collapse of the coffee industry, troubles in the tea factories, the decline of Kenya Cooperative Creameries–all involving sectors at the heart of the rural Kikuyu economy–would be viewed by the Kikuyu as part of a malevolent plot to pauperise the tribe Moi feared. And they pointed to the state of the roads, schools and hospitals in Central Province as further proof of the president's vindictive determination to make them pay for past ‘eating'. While Eldoret, Moi's home town, got what every analyst agreed was a superfluous airport and bullet factory, the Kikuyu got potholes and schools more like farmyard barns than educational facilities. That might not have been so bad if the country as a whole was prospering, the thinking went, but just look at Moi's pathetic economic record and compare it with the growth rates of the Kenyatta era. This was what you got when a bunch of illiterate herdsmen were allowed to run the country.

 

Such, then, was the community from which John Githongo hailed. He was a member of the House of Mumbi, a house whose story was in many ways synonymous with that of Kenya itself, a community that managed to combine a bitter sense of grievance with a superiority complex nurtured during the long years of Kenyatta indulgence.

Most African countries have their version of the Kikuyu: hardworking, economically aggressive ethnic groups whose success in business, skill at interacting with the globalised economy and bumptious faith in their own prowess so intimidate the rest that the fear shapes a nation's destiny, reducing politics to a none-too-subtle expression of resentment by the less successful. In the Democratic Republic of Congo it is the Luba, in Nigeria the Ibos, in Rwanda the Tutsi, in Cameroon the Bamileke, in Ethiopia it was once the Eritreans. The ‘Jews of Africa', these groups often dub themselves, and the things once said in Europe about the Jews are muttered about them: ‘All they care about is money, money, money,' ‘Give one a job and the whole clan takes over,' ‘They keep themselves to themselves, just can't be trusted.' And when things turn nasty, and politicians whip up ethnic hatred to please the crowds, it is these groups that pay the price.

One of the characteristics the British left behind in Kenya was a very Anglo-Saxon enjoyment of jokes. Kikuyu jokes are legion, as often as not cracked by ‘
Kyuks
' themselves, who have reclaimed their derisive nickname with the same confidence with which they once reclaimed their land.

Two newborn babies are lying in the maternity ward, and careless nurses get them mixed up. How to establish which is which before the very Luo Mrs Otieno and the very Kikuyu Mrs Kamau come to pick them up? ‘Easy,' says Matron. ‘Just jingle some coins in front of each and see what happens.' One baby falls asleep. The other wakes and holds out a pudgy hand. ‘See?' says Matron. ‘That one's Otieno, that one Kamau, end of story'…How can you tell if a Kikuyu is dead or only faking? Drop your wallet next to his bed, and if he doesn't immediately reach for it, he's definitely for the morgue…Then there's the one about the Kikuyu conductor of a crashed
matatu
who
complains that his passengers keep dying before paying for their seats; and the one about the Kikuyu suitor whose idea of a romantic first date is to give the girl a hoe, take her to his
shamba
and put her to work.

The Kikuyu, in the popular mind, account for both the best and the worst in Kenyan culture. On the one hand, the vast majority of the ambitious youngsters who join the African diaspora each year, heading to the United States, Britain and Canada in search of business degrees and professional training, are Kikuyu. On the other, they make up a bigger share of the Kenyan prison community than any other ethnic group. ‘Where you find Kikuyu, there you find thieves,' goes the saying.

When I asked an urbane Kikuyu banker, John Ngumi, for a summary of Kikuyu qualities, he produced, at machine-gun speed, a list of characteristics which juxtaposed unabashed ethnic pride with a clear insight into just why so many of his fellow countrymen found the Kikuyu irritating. ‘We're thrusting, we're loud, we're hard-headed and we're everywhere. We're too many, we're greedy, many of us lack finesse, even our table manners leave a lot to be desired. We're Africans in the raw, we don't make apologies for what we are. We're the ones who keep Nairobi fed and watered and provide a host of small services that keep the country running. The problem is there aren't enough of us to dominate, yet we're too large to ignore. We are at once both obnoxious and indispensable.'

Travelling Kikuyuland, a common note emerges, whether one is interviewing a snaggle-toothed ninety-year-old farmer in the Kiambu hills or an elegantly suited banker in a Nairobi bar, and it is one that swiftly becomes wearing. It's the note of entitlement: a sense of being special, different, better–and therefore more deserving. ‘If you did an experiment and took five Luos, five Luhyas, five Kambas and five Kikuyus and gave them the same amount of money to invest, the Kikuyu would be far, far ahead,' a Kikuyu businessman will say without embarrassment. ‘We simply work harder than other Kenyans.'

The great irony is that over twenty-four years of Moi rule, a community viewed as a national bully by the nearly 80 per of Kenyans
who were
not
Kikuyu would come to think of itself as put-upon victim. For despite all Moi's efforts to redress the post-Kenyatta dispensation, Central Province and Nairobi, a heavily Kikuyu city, still do better than any other region of the country.
²⁶
‘The notion that the Kikuyu have been marginalised is total baloney, a persecution complex,' says economist David Ndii, himself a Kikuyu. ‘If you look at any indicators–health, education, access to piped water, access to electricity–the Kikuyu always come out on top.' He is equally scathing about the notion that the community contributes more than its fair share economically. ‘When you examine the data it turns out to be bullshit. The most productive people in Kenya, in terms of output per head, are pastoralists. One pastoralist can own two hundred head of cattle. The Kikuyu don't understand geography and they don't understand mathematics. These myths have to be exploded.'

Perhaps that sense of superiority is rooted in the peasant's wonderment at being blessed, in a largely arid country, with the miracle of moist and fertile soil. Spooning up
githeri
, a mixture of beans and maize kernels, on the
shambas
, residents will cite Isaiah 18, which speaks of a land beyond the ‘rivers of the Cush', and a people ‘tall and smooth-skinned…feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers', as proof that the Promised Land, far from being located in Israel, is actually to be found between the blue foothills of Mount Kenya and the misty mountain ranges of the Aberdares.

The men around Kibaki assumed that, as a Kikuyu, John Githongo would share that sense of entitlement. He would know that certain matters were best kept from those outside the House of Mumbi. Secretiveness had always come naturally to the Kikuyu, takers of terrible oaths: it was one of the traits the British had singled out for criticism, and the lean Moi years, when ethnic solidarity was the only defence possible against a rigged system, had underlined the importance of discretion. ‘Matters of the heart are not like the palm that greets everyone,' goes a Kikuyu saying.

In addition, they knew that John would have imbibed a deep respect for his elders as part of his upbringing. In rural Kikuyu
villages it was unheard of for a child to criticise or interrupt an elder. Directly addressing a parent was regarded as unacceptably brazen–‘How are things on the mother's side?' was the polite, if roundabout, way of saying, ‘How are you, Mum?'–and children were expected to stand when an elder entered a room, or to step into the bushes if they met an adult on the road.

Admittedly, John's ancestors originated not from Kibaki's Nyeri but from Kiambu, an area whose inhabitants were regarded by Kikuyu further north as sneaky and deceitful. But what really mattered was that he was a Kikuyu. His father, accountant for Kenyatta, was privy to the Kikuyu elite's financial secrets. Joe Githongo had paid a personal price during the Moi era, and proved his credentials during the rumbustious multi-party years, working as a fundraiser for Kibaki's Democratic Party. The Githongo family had prayed and played with other Kikuyu families, and John had gone to school alongside the scions of the country's leading Kikuyu dynasties. If he could not be trusted to take the interests of the clan to heart, to instinctively grasp what mattered to the House of Mumbi, then who could?

At this point a question poses itself, one that may never be satisfactorily answered. When the elderly members of TI's board put John Githongo's name forward for the post of anti-corruption chief and their friends in government enthusiastically agreed, did they do so anticipating that one day they would need to appeal to his sense of tribal solidarity? Was his appointment, which originally seemed so well-intentioned, in fact the most cynical of political moves, the propelling of an impressionable young man into a position where, should a crisis develop involving his own community, he would find it virtually impossible to resist outside pressure? Did they name him intending to compromise him?

John certainly tends to that view. His feelings towards members of the group, with the exception of Harris Mule, are far more bitter than those towards any players in the Anglo Leasing affair. In his view, the old men he had trusted with his fate behaved like Abraham preparing his son Isaac for sacrifice. ‘The
wazee
…' He shakes his head in wonder. ‘They set me up. I was the puppet, and they the puppeteers.'