A reconciliatory President Uhuru Kenyatta is rattling ethnically inclined politicians from Central Kenya. This, they say, is not the Uhuru they voted for three times—2013 and twice in 2017.
The new Uhuru, who is seeking a unitary legacy, has thrown the 'base' into a terrain hitherto unknown.
The Handshake, which prejudiced Central politicians 'ogrenise', has a positive, nay patriotic, influence on the President. What's bad for a section of the Mt Kenya region, is good for Kenya.
Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua represents the clique given to jaundiced rants. The vitriol is a reminder of the 60-year-old politics of exclusion that the President wants to end.
Gachugua, in a trending video, claims Uhuru has built for Raila Odinga, the People's President, a port and 'flying' highways in Kisumu. He also claims every home there has running water.
Raila does not need a port or 'njia ya gorofa', but all Kenyans, including those in Kilifi county, merit these facilities. Kisumu, the proposed hub of the blue economy in East Africa, needs infrastructure.
These forces of regression are fuelling the rage against a rebranding Uhuru. Is Uhuru then, during his final term, the first president since Independence to run a government without a tribal mafia manipulating him?
Kenyans with a grievance have always identified shadowy hoarders of power. The word 'Mafia' describes this cabal. Mafia is hyperbolic when used in reference to Kenya, but it captures the general contempt for ethnic influencers of power.
Locally, Mafia is close to what common English dictionaries refer to as "a group regarded as exerting a hidden sinister influence" on elected leaders. The influence is often divisive.
Founding President Jomo Kenyatta had the 'Kiambu Mafia'. The gang claimed ethnic ownership of the President, thereby isolating the constitutional symbol of national unity from the rest of Kenya.
Even Nyeri, a Kikuyu district then, was a foreign land in the jaundiced minds of the Kiambu Mafia. The presidential standard and motorcade were not supposed to cross River Chania.
Power men Mbiyu Koinange, Njoroge Mungai, Charles Njonjo and Njenga Karume, among others, owned and protected power. Njonjo, then Attorney General, later abandoned the group that did not want an 'outsider' to succeed Old Jomo. Njonjo supported Daniel Moi, believing the second president was a passing cloud he would knock off to fulfil his presidential craving.
Jomo's successor, Moi, was the patron of the 'Rift Valley Mafia'. The shadowy influencers of power counted Hosea Kiplagat, Nicholas Biwott and Ezekiel Barngetuny (all deceased), among the guardians of the Kalenjin presidency.
The Moi gang was ejected as soon as their godfather handed over to Mwai Kibaki. Then Secretary to the Cabinet Sally Kosgei personalised their plight. She cried as Moi flew out of State House for the last time.
Kibaki, the third president, had the 'Mt Kenya Mafia' take over within a week of his election in 2002. The multi-ethnic constellation of the National Rainbow Coalition matchmakers did not live a day longer after settling Kibaki in State House.
Kibaki arrived with his mafioso, determined to make up for time and resources Central Kenya barons lost during the 24 years of Moi rule. Kibaki's Mt Kenya Mafia counted Matere Keriri, David Mwiraria, Chris Murungaru, Kiraitu Murungi, John Michuki and Martha Karua among its ranks.
Jomo, Moi, and Kibaki's power gangs were from their ethnic turfs. The presidential mafioso complemented the Jomo, Moi, and Kibaki Deep State in ways that left other Kenyans hovering on the fringes of power politics and the economy.
The sense of exclusion was palpable until the second term of the Jubilee regime. Oh yes, there is still a cabal confining top State appointments to the Mt Kenya region, but its insidiousness is not felt deeply like the mafiosos of the Jomo, Moi, and Kibaki eras of errors.
