In the week that three electoral commissioners resigned “with immediately effect”, as one of them put it, the nation was engaged in something far less comical: mourning veteran politician Kenneth Matiba. Wait. Before we proceed, shall we dispense with a little matter?
Every time a big politician dies in Kenya, reporters talk about a nation thrown or plunged into mourning. Well, we all know what mourning is, don’t we? Is there such a thing as national mourning, to be sure? What does it involve? Where does it happen? Who mourns and how? What the media refers to, rather, are those self-serving condolence messages politicians send as a matter of course. Now, Kenya is bigger than politicians, correct? So, what national mourning do reporters talk about, really?
The media used the occasion of Matiba’s passing to the Ancestral World to reflect on his role in Kenya’s unfinished liberation – perhaps to inspire a deeper commitment to building the nation among an increasingly self-absorbed population. That was commendable. History is alive. Matiba was eulogized as the “father of multiparty politics”, “the last of the few remaining heroes of the Second Liberation”, etcetera.
In an editorial on Tuesday, 17 April, The Standard wrote poignantly about a man who “distinguished himself as one among a breed of selfless Kenyans who put philanthropy, political decency and strict observance of ethics and etiquette at the centre of their lives.”
Great mourning!
Mourning is by definition an emotional response to loss. Therefore it has no particular formula. Mourners can be excused, to some extent, for their choice of words and gestures. But should the mourning media distort history?
Kenneth Matiba was detained for fighting for multiparty democracy and suffered ill health as result, from which he never fully recovered. That was the big narrative pushed last week by the “media clergy” (radical Egyptian political economist Samir Amin’s term).
But the man under whose dictatorial rule Matiba suffered was hardly mentioned in the extensive mainstream media coverage of the politician’s death. The lives of many other dissidents were destroyed through unlawful detention, torture, assassinations, forced disappearance and exile. Massive looting of the national coffers and horrendous mismanagement of the economy left million of Kenyans languishing in poverty.
The man in power at that time is retired President Daniel arap Moi.
As the media canonized Matiba, it was left to the chattering classes on social media to ask whether or when Moi would send condolences to the Matiba family.
From most of the coverage, one got the impression that the media was being cautious not to disturb Moi’s peace by linking him directly to Matiba’s woes.
A prime example of this is a documentary carried by KTN on Monday, 16 April under the title, “Untold Story: Kenneth Matiba’s catastrophic detention.” Although the documentary attempted to bring out the tribulations of Matiba, especially to younger audiences who were not yet born or were too young to comprehend the events when they took place, there was really nothing “untold” about the story. The report revealed nothing new – yet questions remain about what happened to Matiba’s health while he was held in unlawful detention.
Last year, the High Court awarded Matiba a huge sum, now standing at Sh.1.7 billion according to his lawyers, for unlawful detention. Under the Moi and Kenyatta governments, detention without trial always involved atrocious torture.
But the KTN documentary steered clear of any discussion of torture. Nor did the reporter bother to find out from his medical sources what led to Matiba’s stroke while in detention. The TV station merely described Matiba’s detention as “catastrophic.”
The most that The Standard newspaper could say was that, “Sadly, Matiba’s detention manufactured illnesses, impaired his leadership and other abilities and escorted him though his remaining life to his death at the age of 85.” What sense is this supposed to make? Why this blatant attempt to hide certain uncomfortable truths behind meandering, imprecise prose?
No, detention did not “manufacture” Matiba’s illnesses. How now? Nor was his poor health just an unfortunate incident out of the blue. It was a deliberate plan by the government to destroy him.
Lawyer Paul Muite who once acted for the late politician, and was one of the prominent “Young Turks” of the multiparty struggles, put this point forcefully in a widely published piece:
“I have no doubt that Ken’s stroke was deliberately induced by the government. There was deliberate denial of drugs to contain his hypertension and refusal to have his doctor, Jim Nessbit, make the drugs available to him. The GoK was fully liable and responsible for Ken’s situation and consequences.”
Also missing from last week’s “national mourning” was a critical look at Matiba’s politics. He is being immortalized as a champion of multiparty politics in Kenya. Yes, but where had Matiba been all along? Single party rule did not start with Moi’s rise to power in 1978. Although Kenya became a single party state de jure only in 1982, it had been a de facto single party state since 1969 when President Jomo Kenyatta banned Kenya People’s Union, associated with Left-leaning politicians like Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Bildad Kaggia.
Right from Independence, there were voices raised against the excesses of the Kenyatta dictatorship and the failed promises of Uhuru. Some of those voices were from right behind Matiba’s backyard in Murang’a. But he never spoke up. He continued making his money and building a political career under these circumstances.
Matiba first served under the colonial regime and then in the Kenyatta and Moi governments without seeing any problems with single party dictatorship, until the 1990s. There was detention without trial, torture and assassinations, corruption and land grabbing during the Kenyatta years, but Matiba never spoke about them.
And how did his transformation occur? How did he see the light, so to speak? A lot of that was played down in the hagiographies the media carried throughout last week.
In parliament since 1978, Matiba was rigged out of the infamous Mlolongo charade of 1988. He resigned from the Cabinet in a huff. At that time, losing in the Kanu nominations meant one must spend time in the political cold.
Having fallen out of favour with the Moi government, and with the so-called “wind of change” to multipartyism sweeping across Africa and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only thing left for a shrewd politician to remain relevant was to join forces with the emerging champions of change. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure that out, does it?
There is hardly any evidence to show that Matiba’s move was motivated by philanthropy, political decency, strict observance of ethics and whatnot. He was simply pragmatic, not to say opportunistic.
Writing in The Standard, veteran journalist Joe Ombuor gave a more sensible peek into Matiba’s real intentions in joining the clamour for multiparty politics:
“Truth be told, so much as Matiba incontrovertibly played a crucial role in the second liberation, his heroic return in the run up to the epic 1992 multiparty elections served to stretch Kanu’s rule by a decade.” How so?
“In the illusion that he was super popular, Matiba chose to go it alone by splitting the formidable original Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and forming FORD-Asili on which he contested the presidency and narrowly lost to President Daniel arap Moi. It would have been a different scenario had he thrown his massive weight behind the aging Jaramogi or fellow tribesman Mwai Kibaki,” Ombuor wrote.
At that defining moment when his call came to end dictatorship and arguably put Kenya on a new path, Matiba failed. He wanted to be president.
Mourning the veteran politician is fine. But not at the expense of history.
