Moi: Professor of politics at 90 years

We can, nevertheless, agree that last Tuesday, the former president of Kenya clocked 90 years. Why? Because, from records, from circumstantial happenstances and from many of his own statements, we can accurately calculate that Moi’s birthday coincided — give or take a handful of years — with the British government’s declaration of Kenya as a Crown Colony in 1920.

What that means is that when Kenya’s colonial and post-colonial history comes to be written comprehensively, Moi’s name will loom much larger than practically everybody else’s. He will be seen to have made the most spectacular escape from the most dangerous political game park.

Despite his many shortcomings, Moi will stand out in a cut-throat environment. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga — one of Moi’s most important later adversaries — was the first person to remark upon Moi’s “fitness” to survive in the ruthlessness of such a Darwinian terrain.

Said Jaramogi: “Moi is like a giraffe: he sees very far.” It was a powerful metaphor. The giraffe’s tall neck enables it, among other things, to see its environmental enemies from very far away.

Moi’s well-placed political “eyes” could also be likened to the antelope’s environmental alertness. It was what enabled the young man to arrive so safely at the apex of power in 1978 and rule for a quarter of a century in a political Amboseli infested with some of the world’s most dangerous predators.

However, good luck also frequently intervened. Indeed, luck was what triggered the rise to the top of this humble stripling, wielding nothing more than bucolic cunning.

In a situation where the European form of education had become all-important for career and for preferment into colonywide leadership, Moi was armed with nothing more than primary education and only a smattering of English.

Many commentators do not see that this was a blessing in disguise. His years as a herdsboy in a predatory terrain were what had put him in excellent stead. They had equipped him with the alertness which most of his later competitors had lost through too much European-style classroom and book learning.

Never looked back This was what the British government itself did not see when, reacting to the rising indigenous pressure for franchise and to the Mau Mau fillip it had received in 1952, London ordered the colonial regime in 1955 to nominate a handful of indigenes into the whites-only Legislative Council.

London assumed that their lack of academic learning would make them safe as legislators. Moi — a semi-literate lad — was among the nominees. But he arrived in Nairobi never to look back.

In 1958, the nationalists scored a constitutional mark when eight indigenes were elected by direct franchise. They included Tom Mboya, Masinde Muliro, Ronald Ngala, Jaramogi and Moi. But in 1960 colonywide nationalist parties were first legitimised.

The Kenya African National Union (Kanu) was formed with Jaramogi, Mboya, Arthur Ochwada and James Gichuru (standing in for Jomo Kenyatta, the chairman in absentia). But Ngala, Moi, Muliro and others walked out to form their own Kenya African Democratic Union (Kadu).

Their claim was that, through Kanu, the “big tribes” — the Kikuyu and the Luo — had ganged up to grab power with which to suppress the “small tribes” after Independence.

London, a master divide-and-rule tactician, rushed in to dredge this rift, openly favouring Kadu against Kenyatta’s more genuinely nationalistic Kanu. But a mere year after independence in December 1963, Kanu had so tampered with the Lancaster Constitution that majimbo — the Kadu-sponsored provincial interests which dominated it — had been scrapped.