Lately, Dr Mukhisa Kituyi’s favourite phrase is ‘Enterprise Kenya’. That’s a country not merely surviving but prospering and fulfilling its obligations to its people.
But don’t get it wrong. The man who can readily talk shop and jargon has his roots in the deepest struggle for Kenya’s Second Liberation. He may not show it but he is alive to his painful peasantry background.
Journalist Isaac Otidi Amuke replays his two-hour conversation with Kituyi, as the former Unctad secretary general shares his trials, tribulations, triumphs and ideas on Enterprise Kenya. This is the first of three parts.
GETTING INTO GOOD TROUBLE
When Daniel Moi became president in October 1978, 22-year-old Mukhisa Kituyi was a buoyant third-year student of political science and philosophy at the University of Nairobi. He took in the seductions of both idealism and pragmatism.
These ideas of a better society were bandied about by a cadre of young professors who fancied Kituyi as their disciple. Starting almost immediately, and for the entirety of Moi’s 24-year rule, the student and the President wouldn’t see eye to eye; the student didn’t know it at first.
Before Moi’s hammer fell on Kituyi and his five comrades, there was good news.
If we turned the clock back to 1978, slipped into the Department of Political Science and assembled Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, former Head of Civil Service Dr Sally Kosgei, former commissar in the Social Democratic Party’s politburo Dr Apollo Njonjo and decorated scholar Prof Michael Chege, and asked them who was their favourite student, they’d all say Kituyi.
This is not a fable, it’s been well corroborated.
“Mukhisa was quite brilliant and outspoken,” Kituyi’s year- mate Josiah Apollo Omotto tells me. “He topped our political science class, researched for tutorials and addressed countless symposia. He was a one-man think-tank, eloquent in both English and Kiswahili.”
He adds that Kituyi was “extremely sociable, one of the best dancers and the ladies loved him.”
I ask what is my relevance? Will I leave a legacy of pride, say I tried to contribute or will I be a mere traveller sitting by, moaning how terrible Kenyans are?
I take Omotto’s word for it. Few people knew, or know Kituyi better.
Before reporting to the UoN in 1977, Kituyi’s maiden trip to Nairobi was in 1971 courtesy of his cousin, former Vice President Michael Kijana Wamalwa. He had tried to get him admitted to Starehe Boys Centre but they were time-barred.
And so Kituyi lounged at Wamalwa’s Woodley Estate residence, provided by the university where Wamalwa taught law. This was the perfect precursor for Kituyi’s city and campus life as after joining university, he rarely returned to the village.
His friends were Wamalwa’s teaching contemporaries who took on Kituyi as an apprentice.
“I had the privilege from my first year to sense my teachers appreciated me as an especially engaged person,” Kituyi tells me as we speak in his Nairobi living room. It’s decorated tastefully in a Swahili and Oriental aesthetic, making it seem like the parlour of a hideaway in Lamu, Zanzibar or Marrakech. There’s a Lamu daybed with cosy cushions.
“There were a few graduate students, who were three to four years ahead of me academically, who were inducted by my teachers into informal private conversations about the state of issues as I was being taken in,” Kituyi says.
Anyang’ Nyong’o, Sally Kosgei, Apollo Njonjo and Michael Chege adopted Kituyi.
Whenever the university closed, they would ask Kituyi to stay behind in Nairobi and help research various projects. In the process, Kituyi became an intellectual evangelist, passing on whatever he picked from his teachers and passing it onto his fellows.
It was this practice of iron-sharpening-iron among Kituyi and the professors and Kituyi and his fellows that the man from Kimilili believes he solidified his lifelong convictions.
“That period shaped the way Kituyi finds footing in society,” he says, “as I ask myself what is my relevance? Will I leave a legacy of pride and say I tried to make a contribution or will I be a mere traveller sitting by and moaning how terrible Kenyans are?"
And then it all fell apart.
As Kituyi and his comrades were getting all idealistic, President Moi and his Kanu brigade expressed their intent to make Kenya a de jure one-party state — as a reaction to George Anyona’s and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s move to register a political party.
Kituyi and others organised and led what Kituyi terms a peaceful demonstration in 1979. Moi struck. Mukhisa Kituyi, Josiah Apollo Omotto, Otieno Kajwang’, Rumba Kinuthia, Karanja Njoroge and Otieno Kungu were summarily expelled from the University of Nairobi. They were enemies of the state.
Kituyi had just entered his final year.
In what would swiftly become practice, Moi decided to ‘fuata nyayo’. Being marked a sore thumb by the state meant either detention without trial, going underground, self-exile or even a meeting with one’s maker.
The 1979 Six didn’t sit around and wait.
First, Omotto reached out to Henry Okullu, the first Black provost at the All Saints Cathedral and future bishop of the Anglican Church in Kisumu.
Okullu, who had worked in Uganda, activated his networks to secure the six lads a place at Makerere University.
The other front was opened by Kituyi, who hid in Dr Sally Kosgei’s home in Ngumo estate. Kituyi reached out to Prof Peter Nyong’o, who got in touch with Prof Mahmoud Mamdani at Makerere.
This combination of efforts by Okullu and Nyong’o in Nairobi and Mamdani and Prof Apollo Nsibambi (future Prime Minister of Uganda) in Kampala eventually yielded openings at Makerere in 1980 for The 1979 Six.
Before Makerere, however, there was a prolonged purgatory, a baptism fire.
As The 1979 Six took cover after their expulsion, it became apparent they had to leave Kenya one way or another, lest they be ensnared by police dragnets around their rural homes.
Luckily, Omotto had an uncle working as a guard at a government warehouse in Kampala, and so he reached out on a reconnaissance mission before alerting Kituyi and the rest to join him.
It was better to starve in Kampala than rot and die in Kamiti.
To make ends meet, we washed staff cars and did odd jobs. Mukhisa, Okungu and I easily adjusted to menial jobs.
“I was the first in Uganda, with the support of Bishop Henry Okullu — I can reveal for the first time today,” Omotto tells me. “Once in Kampala, I connected with professors Okullu had put me in touch with, who started working on our Makerere admission.”
Other than Nsibambi and Mamdani, two other professors were government ministers, Tarsis Kabwegyere and Otema Allimadi. They too tried to secure admission.
Omotto invited the rest to Kampala. They stayed with his uncle, an askari at the Commerce ministry headquarters.
“To make ends meet, we washed staff cars and did odd jobs. Mukhisa, Okungu and I easily adjusted to menial jobs while Kajwang’ and Rumba Kinuthia had serious difficulties coping," Omotto said.
Later, they were joined by recently expelled student leader James Kokonya, who was adaptable. They survived on kichwa na miguu za kuku, big portions of ugali and vegetables, beans and matoke.
They spent nights in abandoned cars.
“During the day,” Kituyi says, “we walked around Kampala lost, without a sense of purpose.”
Before they knew it, a year had passed. It was 1980.
By this time, all strings had been pulled and there was general agreement The 1979 Six should be allowed into Makerere. There was a last hurdle, though.
It wasn’t the norm for Makerere to admit expelled students from UoN, so Makerere registrar Bernard Onyango (who Omotto tells me is the father of veteran Ugandan journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo) had to perform one last task.
“Onyango wrote to Nairobi asking whether Makerere should admit us,” Omotto recalls. “We owe it to one individual, Prof Joseph Muigai, UoN’s vice chancellor, who wrote, “Please admit. The university had no problems with these students.”
Clearly, the expulsions had been the work of an overzealous Moi state.
Once admitted at Makerere, Kituyi credits friends of Rumba Kinuthia who introduced them to the UNHCR, which granted The 1979 Six refugee status and partial scholarships.
There was another hurdle for Kituyi. Commonwealth practice was for a student to spend two years at an institution to earn an undergraduate degree.
This meant as a third year from UoN, he had to go back to second year. He lost two years, one waiting and one going back to second year.
“My classmates in Nairobi graduated in 1980. I graduated in 1982.”
Here, Kituyi cites divine providence, saying he was the first of his University of Nairobi cohort to earn a PhD, in a sense, making up for lost time.
No matter how difficult life in Uganda was, Kituyi tried to make it bearable by having a social life within budget. It was during one of these boozy rendezvous that Kituyi experienced something he won’t forget.
They joined Kenyan friends at a busaa party in Nakawa.
“That was when Idi Amin had been ousted by Tanzanian soldiers,” Kituyi says, “and the new president, Godfrey Binaisa, had also just been deposed. And so as we spoke in Kiswahili, Ugandan agents pounced on us, suspecting we were Tanzanian operatives.”
Kituyi and his friends were taken to a military prison, where Kituyi saw pieces of human flesh, broken bones and blood splattered across the cell.
“It took some time before we could prove we were Kenyan students,”Kituyi says.
“It is for some of these reasons that those of us who have seen how failed states can be truly failed insist on caution when it comes to Kenyan politics, to not take things for granted.’’
In the midst of navigating school and Uganda’s turbulent politics, Omotto tells me, Kituyi found a friend in Yoweri Museveni, who had run for Parliament in 1981 and lost. His part won just a single seat.
But Museveni was a young Marxist intellectual fresh from the University of Dar es Salaam, and it is easy to see how he and the likes of Kituyi found points of convergence both politically and intellectually.
“When Museveni protested rigged elections, Mukhisa identified closely with his movement,” Omotto reveals, “and has since sustained rapport with President Museveni’s men to date. Of all of Kenyan politicians, Mukhisa is easily Museveni’s best buddy.’’
At just 26, Kituyi had already lived. And his entire life lay ahead.
(Edited by V. Graham)
Read part 2 tomorrow in the Star, Mgazeti.com and Debunk Media. This article is a collaboration between the Star and Debunk Media whose Editor-In-Chief is Isaac Otidi Amuke
