On Monday, youths thronged the
streets of Nairobi ostensibly to celebrate the Saba Saba day. The celebration
was organised as protests against what the organisers have termed as oppressive
regime.
The demonstrations turned
violent as was predicted leaving 31 people dead. Most of the deaths have been of youths and in major
towns. In the last incident, the riots appear to be receding to the central
Kenya region and spilling into nearby capital city.
On July 7, political leaders in
the opposition side mobilised the public to hold street protests in
commemoration of the onset of the second liberation movement. The movement
begun in 1990. Kenneth Matiba had fallen out with his erstwhile boss and ally,
president Daniel Moi. He pulled together around himself some Kikuyu disgruntled
leaders as Charles Rubia and Philip Gachoka to join the resistance movement
under Raila Odinga. The resistance movement was largely underground since the
constitution allowed only Kanu to operate as a political party.
It brought together
professionals in law and academia. Raila, Matiba and Rubia addressed a press conference
in which they announced a public rally at the historic Kamkunji grounds. The
meeting to be held on July 7, 1990, was to discuss and resolve to return Kenya
to multiparty democracy. The choice of July 7 was not accidental nor unique. In
1954, Julius Nyerere had used it as the day to launch the Tanganyika African
National Union, TANU. This marked the grand march to uhuru by the East African
largest state. The day is celebrated annually even after the nation joined with
Zanzibar in 1967 to form Tanzania and CCM as the ruling party. The Tanzanians
use the day to remember the gains they have made since they gained
independence. It is from this that the 1990 group took cue.
After 1982, Moi sought to
increase his hold onto power. The attempted coup shook him and his government
to the core. He no longer brooked dissent and moved to purge the national
leadership of any critical minds. He used the law that allowed detention
without trial to immobilise those politicians and social critics. Kanu became
more restrictive and revised its rules to control participation. The government
became subservient to the ruling and only political party. Once one was locked
out of Kanu your political obituary was written. This is the conundrum that
faced Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his son Raila and many leftist academics.
Matiba and Rubia were victims
of their own machinations. Sitting in the Kanu governing council in 1987, they
sanctioned the use of queue voting for the following general elections in
February 1988. Matiba struggled to win the Kiharu parliamentary seat and was
appointed Minister for Transport and Communication. But the party elections the
following year, 1989 saw him unceremoniously lose the branch chairmanship which
was then domiciled at the district. Kibaki underwent through similar
tribulations. He would later famously remark that even rigging required some
intelligence.
It is therefore the
frustrations of the Kanu cleaning exercise that forced Matiba and Rubia to
resign from the party and join the opposition and resistance movement. It
helped the movement that the duo had at their disposal vast resources which
went along way to support the logistics of the movement. This posed real and
direct threat to Moi’s administration. The Saba Saba rally could thus not be
ignored by the government.
The two were arrested and detained. Shortly after and
on the same day Raila was also picked up and detained. Saba Saba was more a
clarion call for the movement than the organisation itself. The movement was
established to restore multiparty democracy and allow other political parties
to be formed and participate in elections. It also sought to review the
constitution to enhance and secure the democratic space.
There was special
attention paid to the bill of rights and electoral justice. It was disturbing
that the Judiciary and Parliament acted as appendages of the executive arm of
government. The president acted and operated as an imperial head of state. The
champions of the movement were deliberate to realise the dream of the founding
fathers by establishing a republic that respected the sovereign will of the
citizens.
With the collapse of the Berlin
Wall and the control of the White House by the republicans, Moi and Kanu had no
choice but accede. In late 1991, the party’s national delegates conference at
Kasarani resolved to repeal section 2A of the constitution. Parliament under
the new Attorney General Amos Wako moved with speed to legislate the same. Ford
under the leadership of Jaramogi was registered as the first political party
within this new framework.
At the end of December of the
same year, health minister Mwai Kibaki resigned and launched the Democratic
Party. When Matiba came back from hospitalisation in London, things got thicker
for the opposition movement. He arrived to a rousing welcome by ecstatic followers.
The Uhuru Park grounds was full to the seams. He declared that only the people
would decide the presidential candidate for the opposition. This promptly led
to the split of the mammoth Ford into Ford-Kenya and Ford-Asili. Matiba went
with the Asili to Muthithi House as Jaramogi retained the Kenya bit at Agip
House. Even though Kanu got a breather and proceeded to win the December
general election, Saba Saba scored its first goal. Multiparty democracy was
restored. The Westminster model of governance resumed where official opposition
was recognised.
The opposition forces soon
realised that urgent legal reforms were required to secure the gains of
multiparty democracy. While the political parties were struggling to stay
afloat, the leaders all the same remained steadfast in pushing for reforms. The
1997 Saba Saba remains the bloodiest of all. The civil society actively joined
the movement and Moi was facing his last election with a stronger opposition force.
The agitation led to the formation of the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group
chaired by the venerable George Anyona. At the beginning of 1997 the opposition
parties remained as divided as they had been over the previous four years.
Numerous attempts to unite the opposition had failed dismally. The elusive
search for a single opposition candidate against the incumbent President Moi, remained
a political challenge. The exercise that had occupied the opposition over the
entire period of the opening of the democratic space, had yet to produce any
tangible result. At the time, therefore, Moi appeared to be cruising
comfortably to a fifth and supposedly final term.
By midyear, however, the entry
of the reform movement, the amalgam of civil society groups under the
leadership of the National Convention Executive Council into the political ring
under the slogan No Reforms No Election began to change the balance of forces.
These reforms would continue after the elections and culminate into the
Constitution of Kenya Review Commission under Raila as parliamentary chair and
Prof Yash Pal Guy as commission chair.
Under Kibaki as president in
2003 the commission developed the Bomas draft of the new constitution. It is
this draft that was refined by the Committee of Eminent Persons under Nzamba
Kitonga and promulgated as the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Therefore, Saba Saba
in 2025 should have been celebrating these gallant achievements. Instead the
organisers allowed the day to be hijacked by political buccaneers and
reactionary forces of the time. The current challenges of the nation and being
agitated for by the Gen Z are not of Saba Saba. Raila and team achieved their
objectives albeit not all. Political leaders should not seek to rewrite our
history.
The writer is a political and
policy analyst
