• Ever a schemer, another way Moi would use food was to invite people who thought they were friends to State House for a meal.
• “Moi would look at the plate of the person seated next to him, decide that the person had more than enough.”
Image: FILE
One of the best-kept secrets of President Daniel arap Moi’s State House was the maize — boiled or roasted — eating sessions, which the head of state himself presided over. To be invited to this rarefied occasion was a nod that you were rolling with the real crowd and not wasting time with the fringe merrymakers.
Insiders spoke of how careers were made or shattered at these maize-eating sessions. According to those in the know, an orchestrated campaign would go thus: two of the guests will start speaking ill of a fellow politician or a parastatal fat cat.
The conversation would often spin this way, “Do you know Mr X has become too arrogant? He is even claiming that he is his own man and can do without Kanu’s support?” This, the knowledgeable say, would definitely pique Moi’s interest and the old man would follow this issue.
Before long, the man in question would be reduced to nothing, having been stripped of his Cabinet post (if he was a minister), kicked out of Kanu (which was the only party), and state-leaning banks would call in their loans at once, leaving the man in question in penury and doom.
Ever a schemer, another way Moi would use food was to invite people who thought they were friends to State House for a meal. A journalist who did a lot of inside stories from Moi’s State House once told me,“Moi would look at the plate of the person seated next to him, decide that the person had more than enough. In a move reminiscent of a caring father watching his children eat, Moi would scoop food from one diner and pile the food onto the plate of the one he claimed was undeserved.”
The journalist said Moi used this strategy effectively, especially to have the then powerful Youth for Kanu ’92 officials always looking at one another as potential threats.
Because of these antics, many politicians considered being invited to State House as a matter of life and death. So much so that reports of people exchanging blows at presidential functions or even at State House itself were not farfetched.
Perhaps the most famous (or is it infamous) was when Eldoret North MP and now Deputy President William Ruto allegedly punched former politician Reuben Chesire in State House. A local newspaper reported the 2002 event. "I had gone to State House to seek permission from former President Moi to travel abroad on official duties," Chesire, then the chair of Kenya Dairy Board, recalled.
The following day, the media widely reported an embarrassing scuffle between him and Eldoret MP William Ruto. Chesire claimed Ruto punched him on the face, a claim Ruto strongly denied.
Away from State House, Moi effectively turned a hitherto professional outfit, the Special Branch, into a terror squad. Mysterious deaths were blamed on this killer squad, which threw all pretences at being professional out of the window and embarked on the use of brawn to achieve their mission.
It is not beyond politicians, even in the so-called developed and democratic countries, to meddle in the affairs of their respective agencies. However, Moi and his gang of kleptomaniacs, who looted everything in their way, went overboard.
People were arrested on trumped-up charges, and every conversation in public places was tempered with the gruesome knowledge that the walls had ears — the all-pervading Special Branch and its well-spread network of informers ensured that Moi ran a terror state of cowed men and women.
A lot has been said about the aborted coup of 1982, and many have commented that Moi and his inner circle knew about the impending coup but never made serious attempts to stop it. Why wouldn’t Moi stop the coup?One may ask.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that Moi wanted to use the fallout from the coup to assert his authority. Those who have studied Moi’s rule agree that the pre-coup Moi and post-coup Moi are two totally different individuals.
Crushing and humiliating opponents, Moi also had the ultimate accusation of murder levelled at him following the disappearance and death of his Foreign Affairs minister Dr Robert Ouko. Moi and those close to him would also be accused of the election-related deaths of 1992 and 1997. In his biography, The Making of a Statesman, Moi strongly denied the allegations.