Details
of JM Kariuki's 1975 murder, as disclosed for the first time in the
year 2000, by a three part feature published in the "Daily Nation"
newspapers of 2nd, 3rd & 4th March 2000. Sections of the three part
feature reproduced verbatim below:
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Cover of the "Daily Nation" of Thursday, 2nd March 2000:
Startling new evidence about the murder of charismatic politician J.M. Kariuki is revealed by the Nation today.
The populist MP was interrogated at the Kingsway House headquarters of
Special Branch, exactly 25 years ago today, after being framed for a
series of bombings in the capital. JM was also questioned about secret
bank accounts he had allegedly opened and the supposed disappearance of
funds donated by foreign countries to the National Youth Service which
he had headed and to former Mau Mau fighters.
He was shot in the arm by the then head of the GSU (General Service
Unit), Ben Gethi, during a bitter exchange with one of his captors,
President Kenyatta's personal bodyguard, the Nation has discovered.
Then he was dragged out and driven to the Ngong forest where his body was found by a herdsman.
The Nation also reveals that JM was threatened by a powerful son of
President Kenyatta, Mr. Peter Muigai, two months before his murder.
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Pages 9, 10 & 11 of the "Daily Nation" of Thursday, 2nd March 2000:
Who fired the shots that killed Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (JM) Kariuki? New
evidence shows that the first bullet was fired by General Service Unit
Commandant Ben Gethi in a Nairobi building and that it was not intended
to kill and didn't kill him. The fatal shot was not fired until the
fiery Nyandarua North legislator was driven behind Ngong Hills by men
assigned by President Kenyatta's bodyguard, Senior Superintendent of
Police Arthur Wanyoike Thungu.
By early 1975, somebody had decided that Josiah Mwangi Kariuki - popularly known as JM - had to be eliminated.
President Jomo Kenyatta was old and ailing. JM was believed to have his
eyes on the presidency. Besides, JM had a dashing style and struck a
powerful chord with the masses. It earned him bitter enemies in
Kenyatta's State House.
Not only did the dapper Nyandarua North MP give generously to charity,
but his speeches were increasingly populist. He was known to have given
the princely sum of KSh 80,000 to a public cause at a time when the
President's highest known donation was KSh 3,000 to the Jomo Kenyatta
College of Agriculture at Juja.
His repeated attacks on the establishment did not help matters. On the
10th anniversary of Kenya's independence (1973), Mzee (Jomo Kenyatta)
joyfully extolled the country's achievements while JM remarked elsewhere
that Kenya had become a country of 10 millionaires and ten million
beggars.
The first danger signal to JM came a few days before Christmas 1974. JM
was playing darts over a drink at Nakuru's Stags Head Hotel with Mark
Mwithaga, his long-time friend and MP for Nakuru Town, when Assistant
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Muigai Kenyatta and Nakuru Mayor Mburu
Gichua walked in. They strode right up to the two and one of them barked
at JM: "You have brought trouble here from Nyandarua. Be warned: This
is Nakuru and we can finish you at any time!"
Mwithaga recalls their deep surprise. "Muigai and Gichua never even
bothered to say hallo to us. They just lectured JM and left. We were
very, very shocked". Muigai, President Kenyatta's eldest son by his
first marriage, was a key member of the Kiambu political mafia.
If JM wished to dismiss the Stags Head encounter as an isolated incident, he was in for a surprise.
In January 1975, a well-connected Assistant Minister asked JM out for
lunch at the Norfolk Hotel to "discuss a worrying matter". At the
mmeeting, the Assistant Minister spoke of a secret meeting by a
politically influential group which had decided that JM must be
eliminated. The conspirators, said the Assistant Minister, hoped to
convince President Kenyatta that JM was organising a citizens' revolt
against the government. They had shown Mzee selective extracts from JM's
speeches. And although Kenyatta had not approved their plan, the
conspirators believed they had sufficiently poisoned his mind. The
friend advised JM to seel audience with the President and give him his
side of the story. One hurdle stood in JM's way. The leading anti-JM
conspirators also happened to be the gate-keepers of Kenyatta's State
House.
JM's youngest wife, Terry Wanjiru, recalls her husband's fruitless
attempts to see the President in his final years. A chance presented
itself at the wedding of Attorney-General Charles Njonjo on November 18,
1972. Cutting through the throng of dignataries, JM walked over to Mzee
and gave him a warm handshake. An excited Kenyatta replied "You're so
lost JM. These days you don't come to say hallo to me!" To which JM
replied, "Mzee, I have always wanted to come to see you but your men
have been blocking me". "Is that so?" was Kenyatta's reply and he
promised to look into the matter.
By early 1975 nothing had changed. JM was still unwelcome at State House
yet he was increasingly desperate to meet Kenyatta. Driving home to
Gilgil in early February 1975, JM came across Njenga Karume, the
Nominated MP and inflential chairman of the powerful tribal organisation
GEMA (Gikuyu Embu Meru Association), near Naivasha. JM flagged down
Karume and the two chatted by the roadside. Karume, now the MP for
Kiambaa, recalls: "JM looked disturbed. He was not the confident man I
knew. He began by thanking me for having stood by him in 1974 when a
powerful clique wanted GEMA to campaign against him in the 1974
elections. Then he told me of the plot against his life and his
difficulties in reaching Kenyatta". Karume sympathised with JM's
predicament and promised to secure him an appointment with the
President.
Time was running out fast. By early February, JM's enemies had laid down
a scheme to "sort out" their problem. They resolved to stage a series
of events that would turn the public against JM and at the same time
convince Kenyatta that JM was a boil that had to be lanced. A shadowy
movement calling itself Maskini Liberation Organisation was formed as
part of the propaganda campaign. Since JM presented himself as the
"voice of the poor" the public would readily identify the movement's
violent activities with him. Leaflets allegedly issued by the movement
were printed and distributed in different towns. They bore the names of
JM, Charles Rubia and five others as trustees of the Maskini Liberation
Organisation, all of them "outsiders" to the tight clique around
Kenyatta.
Suddenly a spate of bomb hoaxes hit Nairobi. Anonymous calls would be
made to police and newspaper offices that a bomb was about to go off. In
the second week of February, a bomb exploded at the Starlight
Discotheque on the edges of the city centre. There were no fatalities
but the message was clear: Not all bomb alarms were false. Someone
called the Central Police Station claiming that Maskini was behind the
discotheque blast and there would be another bomb at the Tour
Information Office, next to Hilton Hotel. A bomb went off there two
hours later.
In Parliament that week, Embu East MP Njagi Mbarire asked the
Vice-President and Minister for Home Affairs Daniel arap Moi to confirm
or deny the existence of the Maskini Liberation Organisation. Moi
declined to answer the question, citing ongoing investigations.
Kamukunji MP Maina Wanjigi ventured that the VP was being non-commital
because Maskini Liberation Organisation was the creation of government
operatives. The conspirators were growing impatient. They met secretly
at Nakuru's Midland Hotel on Wednesday, February 26, 1975, and again at
State House, Nakuru, the following day. The JM matter, it was decided,
had to be settled that weekend.
Mzee Kenyatta had travelled to Gatundu for the weekend when the two
Nakuru meetings took place. Evidence would later emerge that Kenyatta's
chief bodyguard, Wanyoike Thungu, attended the Midland Hotel meeting and
arranged the discussion at State House. JM, meanwhile, was becoming
apprehensive. His doctor advised him to take a few days rest against
stress. A friend called Elizabeth Koinange booked the two of them onto
an OTC (Overseas Trading Company) bus bound for Mombasa on Friday,
February 28. At the last minute a friend, Isaac Macharia, dissuaded the
MP from going to the Coast. He was lucky. A bomb exploded in the bus he
would have taken, killing 27 people and injuring 100 others.
The plotters' February 27 meeting at State House, Nakuru, had resolved
that JM be put on a 24-hour surveillance until the "job" was done. A
friend who had borrowed the MP's car noticed that he was being trailed
by a well-known police reservist, Patrick Shaw, in a white Volvo. He
reported the incident but JM had more pressing matters to think about.
The next day GSU Commandant Ben Gethi, who had had been a close friend
of JM, had called to alert him of a plan to implicate him in the city
bombings and have him jailed without trial. Gethi pressed him to meet
the country's security chiefs and explain his innocence. But the MP was
adamant that. Witnesses later quoted him as saying: "Why should I
explain my innocence before anybody has openly accused me? I will wait
until they arrest me and I'll prove my innocence". Within two hours,
Gethi was on the line again. He told JM that he had thought over the
matter and convinced that JM's best option was to informally meet the
security team "in a friendly atmosphere". Gethi promised to be at the
meeting to ensure JM's security.
JM finally caved in to the GSU chief's pressure when the two men met at
the International Casino the next day. The meeting was set for Sunday,
March 2. That was the day JM would disappear, later to be found dead
murdered in the Ngong Hills forest. That Sunday morning Gethi visited JM
at home. It was a rather unusual visit, as the Parliamentary Probe
Committee later noted, but Gethi insisted that it "was just a normal
call to a friend's house".
Investigations now show that Gethi had taken to JM a pistol he had
promised him, to guarantee his safety during the Security Committee
meeting. Witnesses testified that Gethi's visit was so secretive that he
entered JM's bedroom instead of waiting for his host to be woken up.
At midday JM went to the Ngong Racecourse, where he and Gethi had a
brief chat. Later in the evening he popped in at the Hilton. Gethi would
deny before the Parliamentary Probe Committe that the two of them met,
but witnesses said they had seen him in the company of reservist Patrick
Shaw.
Witnesses have told the Nation that several things happened at the
Hilton while JM was away. At around 5 p.m. Patrick Shaw and a Mr. Young,
also a police reservist, chased away all parking boys who usually hang
around outside the hotel. Some taxi drivers were also asked to leave. It
has also emerged that then CID head Ignatius Nderi and then deputy
director of the National Youth Service Waruhiu Itote were seen briefly
at the Hilton with the two men. One of them was Pius Kibathi, a trained
policeman who never joined the force, and the other Councillor John
Mutung'u of Olkejuado County Council. JM arrived at the Hilton's Coffee
House at about quarter to seven. He was about to settle down with a
friend when Gethi suddenly appeared. He excused himself and walked away
with the GSU boss. Apparently Gethi had not to find JM with anybody
else. On noting the dilemma on Gethi's face, JM quickly excused himself
as he told Macharia: "By the way, Gethi and I were to meet, let me have
some minutes with him".
A hotel security man, Mr. Fred Sing'ombe, saw JM and Gethi enter a
Peugeot station wagon behind the hotel. JM's white Mercedes Benz,
Registration Number KPE 143, was left in front of the Hilton Hotel,
where the family found it when the MP disappeared.
His movements from the hotel have for years been a mystery, even to the
House Select Committee. But the Nation has now established that the two
men went to the Special Branch headquarters at Kingsway House in Muindi
Mbingu Street. Gethi and JM entered the building through a back entrance
and headed for the office of a senior Special Branch officer. In the
room were the senior officer himself, Kenyatta security chief Wanyoike
Thungu, the NYS's Itote, CID director Nderi and reservist Patrick Shaw.
JM was apprehensive to see Thungu in the meeting. The two had never had
time for each other ever since JM worked as Kenyatta's private secretary
in the early 1960s. He also knew of Thungu's roles in the Nakuru
meetings which plotted against him.
At Kingsway House, Gethi left JM to be questioned by Nderi and Shaw on
the bombings. The MP, says a senior retired policeman, answered all the
allegations raised by Nderi and Shaw until the two appeared satisfied
that he had nothing to do with the bombings. Thungu, who remained
silent, then took over the questioning. He wanted to know why JM had
been "going around the country insulting Kenyatta". JM denied that he
had ever insulted Kenyatta and that all he had talked about was social
justice for all Kenyans, which was quite in line with Kenyatta's
beliefs.
Thungu then touched on a raw nerve. He asked JM to account for some
money he allegedly received for schorlarships while serving as a private
secretary to Kenyatta. He also referred to money issued as compensation
to Mau Mau fighters who had lost their land during the independence
struggle, which was handled by JM when he was an assistant minister for
Agriculture with special duties. Itote, who had worked closely with JM
at the NYS (National Youth Service), talked of money from the Chinese
Government which JM had allegedly received on behalf of the service.
The exchange between JM and Thungu became heated. Thungu, says an
impeccable source, lost his temper and punched JM viciously in the
mouth, knocking out three of his teeth. JM's body found at the City
Mortuary eight days later had three lower teeth missing. Instinctively,
the bleeding JM reached for a pistol in his pocket, the same gun he had
been given by Gethi that morning. But Gethi, the only person in the room
who knew JM had a gun, was quicker on the draw. He whipped out his
service revolver and shot JM in the upper right hand arm to protect
Thungu. As JM collapsed in a pool of blood, Thungu phoned a senior
politician to inform of what happened. It is not known what the senior
politician said. However, evidence received by the JM Probe Committee
and later corroborated by Gethi in a confession to JM's sister many
years later, stated that after the telephone call, Thungu called three
men who had been waiting in another room (the three were named in other
circumstances by the Probe Committee).
He ordered them to handcuff JM and take him to a car downstairs. They
had been brought to Kingsway House by Nderi to give evidence on JM's
alleged involvement in the city bombings. The vehicle into which a
bleeding and wailing JM was bundled belonged to a councillor, John
Mutung'u of Ngong ward, the area in which JM's bullet-ridden body was
discovered by two Maasai elders the following morning. Councillor
Mutung'u was later summoned by the Parliamentary Probe Committe and
asked to bring with him his car, a green Peugeot station wagon with a
red inscription: "Meat Park".
In it's final report, the JM Probe Committe recommended that Councillor
Mutung'u be investigated alongside Thungu, the Minister of State Mbiyu
Koinange, his bodyguard Peter Karanja, Nakuru Mayor Mburu Gichua, then
Nyandarua District Commissioner Stanley Thuo, NYS deputy director
Waruhiu Itote and JM's rival in the 1974 General Election, one Evan
Ngugi. A member of the JM Probe Committe who talked to the Nation
disclosed that it suspected that Mbiyu Koinange was the person Thungu
talked to on the telephone after JM had been shot.
The MPs established that Thungu had driven to Nairobi from Nakuru by a
discreet route on the afternoon of March 2. Questioned by the committee,
Thungu insisted that he spent March 2 with the President at Gatundu.
The President, of course, couldn't be summoned to verify this. A
confidential witness testified before the Probe Committee that Gethi
remained alone at Kingway House until past midnight, chain smoking and
talking on a police radio.
Before his death on September 12, 1994, Gethi confessed to JM's sister,
Rahab Mwaniki, that he had taken JM to Nderi and Shaw, for questioning
on the bombs. He said he had left JM with the two senior police officers
and returned much later to find a Mr. Pius Kibathi and two other men
dragging a bleeding and groaning JM to a vehicle behind Kingsway House.
But other sources say Gethi never left Kingsway House until JM had been
taken away.
In his memoirs "A Love Affair with the Sun", Sir Michael Blundell, a
well-connected former politician and businessman, said one some of the
cartridges recovered from the place where JM's body was found in Ngong
were fired from a pistol belonging to a presidential guard he did not
name. The House Committee established that two different pistols were
used to kill JM. Clearly, he was shot at different places, first at
Kingsway House and later at the Ngong Hills scene of murder.
The guns were either a .38 Walther or a .38 Mann, both of which also
happened to be the pistols used by members of the GSU Recce Company.
Officers in the Recce Company are used for special duties, the main one
being providing escort to the President and visiting heads of state.
Probe Committee members believed that JM's murder was a foregone
conclusion and would have taken place even if Thungu had not provoked
the shooting at Kingsway House.
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"How Kenyatta doctored the report", as appearing on page 13 of the "Daily Nation" of Thursday, 2nd March 2000:
June 3, 1975, was a day of great expectation - and suffocating tension.
The committe investigating JM's murder had completed its work and a
report was due to be tabled in Parliament. Mr. Elijah Mwangale, the
chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, was in conference with
his 13 members in Room 7 on the first floor of Parliament Buildings.
They were going over the details of the 38-page report when word came
through the Clerk's office that the committee was required at State
House, Nairobi.
Three copies of the report had been done. Mr. Mwangale took one with
him. The other two were each put in the "custody" of former Butere MP
Martin Shikuku and former Wajir East MP, the late Diriye Amin. Their
instructions were simple: They were not to leave the precincts of
Parliament until the afternoon session of the House was over. Meanwhile,
Mr. Mwangale left for State House with a few members of his committee.
They included former Starehe MP Charles Rubia and former Lurambi North
MP Burudi Nabwera. The two MPs with the other copies were "policed" by
other MPs. All the windows of Room 7 were locked inside and the keys
taken from the sergeant-at-arms and kept in the custody of the two MPs.
Were all these precautions necessary?
Suspicions were high. Attempts to sabotage efforts to table the report
could not be ruled out. Every so often the custodian MPs took turns to
visit Room 7 to confirm the copies were still intact. The tension was
aggravated at 2.30 p.m. when the afternoon session of the House started
without any word on when the Mwangale team would return.
Meanwhile, at State House, Mr. Mwangale and his team were facing Mzee
Kenyatta and had been asked one question: Why were the names of Cabinet
Minister Mbiyu Koinange and that of the president's bodyguard, Senior
Supt of Police Arthur Wanyoike wa Thungu, in the report?
Rubia: "Kama ni hivyo Mzee, tunaweza kuondoa hayo majina alafu tuipeleke
bunge" ("If that is the case Mzee we can delete the two names and
thereafter we table it in Parliament").
Kenyatta: "Kama ni hivyo sawa sawa"! ("If that is the case it is alright").
Mzee Kenyatta gave Mr Mwangale a green pen. He made him delete the two names and sign against each deletion.
Back in Parliament, Mr. Shikuku and Mr. Diriye entered the Chamber with
their copies clutched under their arms. Without warning Mr. Mwangale and
his team entered the Chamber, eliciting sighs of relief, foot-thumping
and loud cheers. Mr. Mwangale tabled the report minus the two names.
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"How JM fell foul of Kenyatta clique and became an obstacle", as
appearing on pages 8 & 27 of the "Daily Nation" of Friday, 3rd March
2000:
To understand the animosity between JM Kariuki and President Kenyatta's
bodyguard, Arthur Wanyoike Thungu, is partly to unravel the motives of
the killing which nearly brought down Mzee's government.
Wanyoike was among the top security men gathered to question the
Nyandarua Naorth MP at the Kingsway House Special Branch headquarters on
Sunday March 2, 1975, the day JM disappeared and was later found
murdered. It was he who had drawn JM into a bad-tempered argument over
missing foreign funds. The exchange resulted in the MP being shot on the
arm by Ben Gethi, the GSU commandant.
But what united different people in Kenyatta's court against Josiah
Mwangi Kariuki? What traits of his character set them so firmly against a
man, who, like them, was a former Mau Mau detainee and a veteran of the
freedom struggle? The Nation's investigations show that JM left a trail
of of bitter and powerful enemies wherever he worked.
His first job in independent Kenya was as a private secretary in charge
of political affairs in the office of Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta,
later President of the new Republic, between 1962 and 1964. Kenyatta had
first heard about JM while in prison. The young freedom crusader, who
was detained between 1953 and 1960, had made a name as a spokesman for
victims of colonial oppression, even in prison. On his release in 1960,
JM visited Kenyatta, who was still in detention at Maralal. The two men
hit it off instantly. JM then left the country for Oxford University and
returned to become Kenyatta's private secretary.
Mzee trusted JM so much that all delicate missions, like securing
overseas training for the President's security men, were handled by him.
Kenyatta also used JM secretly to negotiate for compensation to victims
of the Mau Mau liberation war.
Thungu had two reasons to dislike JM for life; one was personal and the
other communal. Kenyatta's security when JM became his private secretary
was dominated by men like Thungu, who hailed from the President's
Gatundu village. Many of these had been youthwingers of Mzee's Kenya
African Union (KAU) party, (Kenya African National Union's) KANU's
predecessor, before Kenyatta's imprisonment in 1952. JM was strongly
opposed to Kenyatta's choice of bodyguards, none of whom had proper
police training or formal education. He proposed that a National Youth
Service be set up to absorb the former KAU youth and Mau Mau fighters
for vocational training. Over the question of Kenyatta's security, he
found stauch allies in then newly-appointed director of Police
Intelligence, Bernard Hinga, who would later become the police
commissioner, and the head of the Prime Minister's Escort Guard, Sir
Alex Pearson. At the intervention of the three officers, Kenyatta
dropped the idea of taking all his former youthwingers as bodyguards but
refused to be separated with a few from his Ichaweri neighbourhood. He
instructed that they be sent overseas for training. Thungu was among
those selected few. He never forgot that he had narrowly missed the
chop. For that he would never forgive JM.
But JM had an even bigger problem, He came from Nyeri District.
Kenyatta's State House was largely a Gatundu-Kiambu affair. JM was a
stranger. A palace campaign was launched to discredit JM in the eyes of
Kenyatta. Matters were not helped by the fact that JM was openly
ambitious and pushy. Slowly, Kenyatta began to mistrust JM. In "Politics
of Independence of Kenya", historian Keith Kyle recounts an incident
where Kenyatta sent JM to secure six training slots for his bodyguards
in Israel. However, he turned to Dr. Gikonyo Kiano, who was not a State
House employee, to decide who would have the scholarships. So vicious
was the anti-JM campaign at State House that a young woman he was in
love with and for whom he had paid half dowry as dissuaded from marrying
him. The girl was later married to a member of Kenyatta's security who
is today a Cabinet Minister.
In early 1964, Kenyatta was finally prevailed upon to drop JM as his
private secretary and to scrap the job altogether. JM was moved to the
newly-formed National Youth Service (NYS), the same place he had wanted
to dump Thungu and company. As National Leader of the NYS, JM toured the
country, overseeing recruitments and inspecting project sites. But a
new set of trouble awaited him. The NYS Act ranked the force's National
Leader together with Service Commanders, allowing JM to sit in national
security meetings. The Kiambu clique that had hounded him out of State
House were uneasy with this situation. They resolved to strip him of
this new post as well.
JM played right into their hands when one day in 1968 he entered
Parliament in full NYS uniform. He was then MP for Aberdares
Constituency, later renamed Nyandarua North. Immediately JM entered the
Chamber, a Cabinet minister prompted by Attorney-General Charles Njonjo
asked the Speaker whether it was in order for JM to enter the House in
forces uniform. Speaker Hunphrey Slade ruled there was nothing wrong
with it as long as the uniform did not include a cap. The matter didn't
end there. Some ministers took it to the Cabinet and complained to
Kenyatta that JM had gone to the House in uniform to rival the
Commander-in-Chief, the only person known to have entered the Chamber in
military uniform. A few weeks later, JM was sacked as NYS National
Leader and the post scrapped.
Yet Kenyatta still had a soft spot for his former secretary. He
appointed JM an assistant minister in the ministry of agriculture, with
Special Duties. This vague post meant he could rival his own minister.
JM's role in the ministry of agriculture soon got him on a collison
course with the Cabinet member in charge, Bruce Mackenzie, and his
friend Njonjo.
In early 1969, JM took advantage of the minister's absence from the
country and sacked by notice two expatriate directors of agriculture and
five other senior expatriates in the ministry. Mackenzie cancelled his
trip and flew back home in a rage. He immediately raised the matter at a
Cabinet meeting. Kenyatta supported JM, arguing that he had the powers
of a minister and was covered by the rule of collective responsibility.
The Cabinet couldn't disown the decision.
Mackenzie and Njonjo never forgave JM. Kenyatta later transferred JM
from the ministry of agriculture to the ministry of Tourism and
Wildlife.
The 1969 General Election gave JM a chance to demonstrate his
organisational capabilities and the respect he commanded among
colleagues. By now JM had set his sights high. At a victory party JM
hosted for his supporters and friends after the 1969 elections, he
confided in them that he would be going for "big things". It was the
beginning of the increasingly radical JM projected through word and
deed, snipping at the Kenyatta government at every opportunity.
Speaking during a student graduation at Highridge Teachers College in
early 1970, he said that the Kenya Government had betrayed the vision of
the freedom fighters. Colonial white settlers had only been replaced by
black settlers. He told a stunned crowd: "I believe firmly that
substituting Kamau for Smith, Odongo for Jones and Kiplagat for Keith
won't solve what the gallant fighters of our uhuru (freedom) considered
an imposed and undesirable social justice". A few weeks later he
received a standing ovation at Nairobi University when he declared: "It
takes more than a National Anthem to create a nation".
Later he hopped to Uganda's Makerere University and declared Kenya's
policy on African Socialism a hoax. JM was now the man to watch. A GEMA
delegation called on Kenyatta to complain about the MP. But Kenyatta
dismissed their worries, saying JM was "just a young inexperienced bull
that doesn't know from which side to mount a cow".
But clearly others did not think so. A scheme was put in place to slow
JM by denying him permits to hold or address meetings. The restriction
was extended even to innocuous gatherings like family parties. A
birthday party he had scheduled for March 21, 1971, aws cancelled at the
eleventh hour by the State. And on January 1, 1972, a huge rally he had
organised to be attended by a number of cabinet ministers and MPs was
cancelled at the last minute. An incensed JM later told Parliament:
"This anti-JM campaign is now bordering on stupidity".
Denied a chance to speak outside Parliament, JM turned to the House to
air his views. The then deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr.
Munyua Waiyaki, recalls: "JM would call and ask me not to miss
Parliament as he was preparing a bombshell. He particularly liked the
days when I was in the Chair as he knew I wouldn't deny him a chance to
say whatever he wanted". JM's other strategy was to give generously to
development projects. The contributions aroused suspicion that he was
being externally funded by foreigners who preferred him as a future
president of Kenya. JM countered the rumours by saying that it was not
how much money he had but how generous he was at heart that mattered.
But the suspicions grew, as JM had no known sources of income to support
the large sums he gave away. At the time he died, his known businesses
included a shareholding in the Rift Valley Trading Agencies, which he
co-owned with Vice-President Moi and Moi's brother-in-law Eric Bomett.
He also owned a tour company with Israeli businessman Ernest Kahane, a
mining company with his brother-in-law Harun Muturi and two restaurants
in the city. Many thought those investments could not finance JM's
private race horses and his ostentatious casino gambling habit.
It was whispered that the Chinese were behind JM's seemingly endless
resources. But his widow Terry denies that JM had any forign backer.
"For all the time I lived with him, he never held a secret bank account.
In any case, the government had the machinery to uncover such an
account had it existed", she says.
JM's political enemies went on the offensive in the 1974 General
Election. All his campaign meetings, except one, were cancelled. He was
virtually banned from visiting his constituency during the campaigns. In
the meantime, Nakuru's Mayor, Mburu Gichua had camped in Nyandarua
North with instructions to ensure that JM didn't go back to Parliament.
To the great chagrin of his detractors, JM retained the seat with three
times more votes than the combined total of his opponents.
During the swearing-in of the new Parliament in November 1974, MPs gave
JM a standing ovation. It rivalled the applause they had just given
Kenyatta, who was in the Chamber. It was about this time that secret
meetings began in Nakuru and in the city on how to stop JM. Taped
speeches of his addresses were played to Kenyatta but Mzee was not
alarmed. He only suggested that the MP should be warned to change his
ways. According to the the Nakuru Town MP, Mr. Mark Mwithaga, the Stae
House clique that wanted JM eliminated were themselves interested in
keeping a hold on the presidency after Kenyatta. Which is why they held
meetings in Nakuru and resolved that JM must die on March 2.
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