by Alec Russell
Nthengwe lives and breathes the fire of educated Africans of his generation who are to be found all over the continent, men like Trevor Ncube, the editor of the Zimbabwe Independent who was a persistent thorn in the flesh of Mugabe, and Fred M'membe, the editor of the Post in Zambia who uncovered the allegations about Chiluba's origins, driven by a desire not to accept second-best.
In the old early days of independence it was the easiest thing in the world to gain popular acclaim. When Nkrumah came up with his mantra 'Seek ye first the political kingdom ... the rest will follow', everyone cheered, seemingly blind to the implicit carte blanche it gave leaders to ignore the basic rules of economy and good government. A leader would call for the media to take a more patriotic line, would point the finger of blame at the white man and the West and his halo would grow. After the long years as second-class citizens in their own countries it was easy to see why so many African intellectuals and journalists fell into line.
By the late Nineties, however, the argument that Africans had to work together to throw off the burden of their submissive past had lost its allure. It was not often outside government offices that you heard the white man taking all the blame for Africa's woes. Instead, governments were held to be accountable.
The most striking exception was South Africa. The African National Congress did regularly play the 'apartheid' card, not least because many whites disappeared into their laager and greeted the new order with resentment and fear. Black journalists were called in for a 'friendly chat' with Mandela and were urged to play a more constructive role. Critical white colleagues were accused of being racist and unpatriotic. It was a sensitive argument for black and white journalists alike. The former risked being branded as 'Uncle Toms', the latter as 'racist', and some did back down and take a less confrontational stance. But they found little sympathy among their peers north of the Limpopo.
It is easy to be pessimistic about the chances of journalists like David Nthengwe. Like teachers, human rights activists, priests and imams who, all over the continent, bravely defy the Big Men, they are 'little people' who can be ignored or silenced. Even when they are allowed to publish, governments tend to ignore their findings. But they are, at least, a living proof of a more critical vein running through the continent. Two years after taking office in Malawi, Muluzi warned journalists that he would not tolerate 'inaccurate reporting'. Far from huddling nervously over their typewriters, as he had no doubt hoped, journalists celebrated, assuming that his outburst meant that he had been stung by newspaper allegations that he had taken bribes from a local garage. The Nthengwes' task is huge and their resources few. The detention and torture of a Zimbabwean editor and reporter in January 1999 for claiming that twenty three army officers had been arrested for plotting a coup against Mugabe, was a sombre reminder of the contempt amongst African governments for free speech - Zimbabwe was, after all, still supposed to be one of the continent's less authoritarian states. But governments are at least finding it harder to fall back on the blather that helped sustain the Big Men so long.
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The Ngwazi maintained his disdainful distance from Africa to the very end. He also escaped the crocodiles: he was acquitted in December 1996. Banda was by then failing fast, but if he was aware of the verdict it almost certainly would have confirmed his belief that Malawi had gone soft. An acquittal in such a highly charged case would never have happened in his day. It was Banda after all who had authorized the traditional courts to try murder cases, as they allowed hearsay evidence, ensuring a conviction was a formality.
A year after his acquittal he was flown to a top hospital in one of Johannesburg's most exclusive suburbs, about as far from the gritty reality of Big Man land as you can get in Africa. He died a week later with 'Mama' at his side. For the first time in decades his great age was officially acknowledged. He was, it seemed, just short of his century. 'At ninety-nine the battle to recover from pneumonia is very difficult,' said a hospital spokesman. 'He went easy.'
In a tribute to Africa's spirit of forgiveness, but also to its short memory, his body was flown home for a state funeral. Large crowds met him at the airport. Many were genuinely sad to see the Ngwazi go. For Africa, however, there was nothing to mourn. Despots will continue to wield power. But the material for Evelyn Waugh parodies is waning. If they want the support of the outside world, African leaders are at last having to learn to behave in a less high-handed fashion - not that I would have guessed that as I sat in the waiting-room of Daniel arap Moi for the second day running with a crowd of importunate hangers-on.
3 - Kenya - Where the Kalenjin are Kings
Daniel arap Moi - The Ties of Tribalism
The highway north from Nairobi through the Rift Valley has to be one of the more dangerous roads in the continent. It is the overland route to the interior, linking Uganda and the tortured twins, Rwanda and Burundi, to the Indian Ocean. Hundreds of lorries grind their way along it each day, bringing valuable transit currency to the Kenyan economy. And yet the potholes suggest an incipient Zaire. The markings have long since faded. In the rainy season the road is blanketed by thick fog. Any driver mad enough to take to the road before dawn will pass a jack-knifed or overturned lorry every few miles and end up as I did early one morning in a lay by willing on the morning.
The road, however, suddenly changes on the far side of the central town of Nakuru. The tarmac is newly laid and the lines freshly painted. The fields mirror the transformation. Scrubland gives way to golden cornfields. Neat rows of sheaves gleam in the sun. A handsome school building fronted by a trim green lawn appears between black wrought-iron gates. The picture postcard image falters as scarred fields and potholes testify to over-crowding and disrepair. But the landscape resumes its pristine state on the road to the hill-town of Kabarnet and in the rugged hills of the Baringo area. For mile after mile the road is deserted. The handfuls of villages have gleaming pylons and new telegraph poles. It is like being in a millionaire's private estate, and in a sense it is.
Back in 1924 when the hedonistic aristocrats of 'Happy Valley' were in full swing, Daniel arap Moi was born twenty miles from Kabarnet, in a tiny village on the edge of a precipitous cliff. Sacho was then impoverished and illiterate back water among the last to be visited by missionaries, who were largely responsible for the spread of education through the region. Moi is a Tugen, a sub-branch of the Kalenjins, one of Kenya's smallest tribal groups, and although his 'herdboy-to president' motif has been embroidered in state hagiography, his was an archetypal peasant upbringing. Contemporaries recall that the young Moi walked to school, milked the goats, and felt uneasy with city folk. In the eyes of the Luo and the Kikuyu, the two dominant tribes of the then British colony, the Kalenjin were country bumpkins to be tricked and teased.
By the time of my visit, however, a remarkable facelift was under way. Every second street in Kabamet had a crane and a team of builders. Many of the sheerest slopes around Sacho had been expertly terraced. School-children were walking home from school as in Moi's time, but in bright blue uniforms with satchels. The average Kalenjin is as poor as any Kenyan, but no expense has been spared by the regional government on showpieces to give the impression that they are uplifting the president's backyard.
The contrasts reminded me of the difference between apartheid South Africa's impoverished tribal homelands and the white areas. As my guide, a Kenyan journalist, explained, the analogy was all too apt. The patch of pristine territory outside Nakuru was Moi's personal estate, Kabarak, a cornucopia of pineapple trees, oranges and sugar cane. The black wrought iron gates belonged to the Moi High School.
The chief was, my friend said with a wry smile, 'merely seeing his people right'.
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The monopoly of a tribal elite is nothing new. It has blighted the history of post-colonial Africa like a terrible cancer. Hardly an African president has been able to resist the temptation of stocking his household, cabinet and often civil service and army with his own tribe. Mobutu's inner cir
cles were all from his Gbande tribe. Banda promoted his fellow Chewe. Despite heady talk of reconciliation, soon after Zimbabwe 's independence in 1980 Mugabe favoured his Shona over the Ndebele of his rival, Joshua Nkomo. After a bloody purge of Matabeleland, the Ndebele homeland, the two leaders effected reconciliation, but Shonas maintained their most-favoured status. In1989, after a scandal over government officials selling subsidized cars on the black market, Mugabe sacked senior government figures but pointedly excluded those from his own tribal group.
Namibia exemplifies how tribalism pervades African society and politics. To outsiders the sparsely populated barren country in southwest Africa is a role model for the continent, a rare and welcome case of a peaceful and prosperous state. From a Namibian point of view the perception is accurate as long as you are an Ovambo. When President Sam Nujoma's SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization) took power in elections in 1989 after a long guerrilla war against South African forces Namibia became effectively the land of the Ovambos, the largest tribe. Driving through the parched interior I picked up a Herero hitch-hiker who spoke perfect English and had a string of qualifications but was struggling to find a job.
'The Ovambos have them all,' he said. 'They turn up in
Windhoek [the capital], see the right person and the job is settled. The civil service is packed with them and even businesses give them preferential treatment so they are seen as doing the right thing.' I remembered his words that evening as I trudged up a hill in Damaraland, the rugged semi-desert region inland from the Skeleton Coast. Our guide, a Damara, told a grim story about the guerrilla war in the Eighties. Twenty-seven Ovambos were passing through the area, he said, looking for work. They stopped for the night in the same hills we were walking in, and made a fire from a poisonous shrub. The fumes impregnated their food and all but one 'who had not been hungry' died. Our guide pursed his lips without comment and walked on up the hill.
Tribal preferment almost always brings ruination in its wake, but the risks of a backlash are seldom heeded. The Gbande went on exploiting fellow Zaireans to the very end of Mobutu's rule. So intense was the resentment against them that many Gbande who had moved to Kinshasa fled across the river Congo to Brazzaville, the adjacent capital of the Republic of Congo, after his overthrow, fearing reprisals. An even more catastrophic example was in Liberia, where in the Eighties Samuel Doe, an uneducated Master Sergeant turned psychotic president, gave his fellow Krahns carte blanche to kill and plunder other tribes. Before he took power in a coup in 1980, Liberia's history was untainted by tribal bloodshed. By the time of his bloody over throw ten years later - he was tortured to death - hundreds of thousands of Krahns were fleeing into exile to escape the tribes they had oppressed for so long.
The resentment against Kalenjins under Moi was not as intense but it was simmering. My driver in Nairobi was a member of Moi's bodyguard until he was squeezed out because he did not belong to the right tribe - he was a Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe, which dominated politics at independence in 1963. Kalenjins dominated Moi's inner circle. Nicholas Biwott, Moi's eminence grise, was of course a Keiyo, another sub-branch of the Kalenjins. He was linked to countless government scandals. He was named by Scotland Yard as a prime suspect in the February 1990 murder of Dr Robert Ouko, an outspoken former foreign minister who had called for an investigation into government corruption. After an international outcry Biwott was suspended from the cabinet, but was later rehabilitated and brought back into the government Moi, however, was craftier in his tribal politics than many of his peers. As a shy Kalenjin with halting English he was consistently under-rated in his early career. His credentials as well as his bloodstock stood against him. He had served as one of five African members of the Legislative Council, the colonial consultative body set up by the British in the late Fifties while Jomo Kenyatta and other nationalists were in prison, thereby implicitly taking the British line. That should have been a deathblow to Moi's ambitions as Kenya moved towards independence in 1963. Certainly he was seen as no threat by the Luo and Kikuyu powerbrokers when he was made Kenyatta's vice president in 1967. Indeed, he was regarded as a useful com promise candidate. The Kikuyus even broadly welcomed his succession to the presidency in 1978 after Kenyatta died, assuming he would be a pliant leader who would do their bidding. How wrong they were.
The naive country boy routine was merely a brilliant act.
Kikuyus were played off against Luos until the time was right to strike. The rise and fall of Charles Njonjo, his one-time attorney general and mentor turned 'non-person', was a classic case. As a Kikuyu powerbroker, Njonjo was a vital ally for Moi in the jostling for position in Kenyatta's last years. But Njonjo's lessons in the politics of power were clearly too good. As soon as Moi felt strong enough to cope without him, Njonjo was denounced, like an out-of-favour commissar from the Kremlin. Paul Muite, an ambitious lawyer and a leading light in the opposition party, Safina, which means Noah's Ark in Swahili, recalled acting for Njonjo in the mid-Seventies when it was clear Kenyatta did not have long to live.
'He [Moi] was just a hick. Njonjo used to joke to me that he had to take him shopping, that he did not know what to wear. He [Moi] also used to burst into tears in Njonjo's office, saying these Kikuyu will kill me when Mzee [Swahili for 'old man' an affectionate nickname for Kenyatta subsequently used of Moi] dies. And Njonjo literally took him by the hand and said, "Don't worry. Nothing will happen." Njonjo was vital to him and then when he felt strong he suddenly turned round and set the wolves on him.' The axe fell in 1983 when Njonjo was travelling abroad. Moi insinuated that a 'traitor' was hoping to replace him. Njonjo was disgraced and replaced.
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Muite's cramped office in central Nairobi was packed with clients hoping for advice. It is harder and harder to find good lawyers as the judiciary, like so much else in Kenya, crumbles beneath the weight of political pressure and corruption. In a brief break between consultations Muite ridiculed Moi's official image as tribal harmonist. Tribal jealousy, he reckoned, has influenced every step of Moi's career.
Way back in 1980 he came to open a regional office of the attorney general. There were fifteen or so of us there and by coincidence we were all part of the educated elite. I became increasingly puzzled. He had this expression I could not quite work out. The penny dropped when the last person was introduced. Moi turned to Njonjo and said: 'You are very lucky. If only I had four people like these in Baringo [Moi's home district].' The rest laughed as if it was a great joke. But I did not laugh. I could see he meant it and there was an intense jealousy burning in his eyes.
He preaches to you as if he was a tape-recorder. 'I hate tribalism blah blah blah.' That is all the British government [traditionally one of Moi's staunchest allies] hears. But every now and then he lets down his guard. I had been brought to State House on one occasion after speaking out against the government. The 'tape-recorder' was whirring away and then suddenly the tortoise popped out of its shell. And he shouted in Swahili, 'Yes, it is you people, the Kikuyu, who will suffer. You are the ones with the wealth. What do my people have, the Kalenjins? One or two cows ... isolated buildings.' There was the real man speaking from the heart.
By the early Nineties Moi was ringed by a coterie of Kalenjins, many of whom were, one old friend of his told me, 'country peasants trying to get in on every deal, the bigger the better, even when they had no idea of commerce.' Moi, however, is no fool. He appreciates the need to bolster his position outside the Kalenjin clique. In 1978, soon after taking office, he was given a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince. It was, one insider recalled with a note of derision, an abridged version, but the lessons were clear. Where tribal politics failed, Moi, like his predecessor and mentor, Kenyatta, flattered with money and land.
Koigi wa Wamwere, one of Kenya's most famous dissidents, knew Moi well in the Seventies when Kenya was a one-party state. Koigi was then an MP in the ruling party for Kabarak, where Moi has his farm, but he later broke with the government, accusing Moi of betraying th
e independence ideals. For his pains he has spent thirteen years in prison. His latest spell ended in December 1996 when he was released on medical grounds after serving the first of a four-year sentence on what international legal observers said were blatantly trumped-up charges.
We met on the verandah of a cavernous state-owned hotel in Nakuru. Koigi was a distinctive figure with an extravagant whirl of dreadlocks, which he once vowed not to cut off until Moi left office, coiled up under a Rastafarian cap. He was accompanied by two young acolytes who sat on an adjacent table. Two government goons - or at least I assume that is who they were - sat a few tables back. With a wry smile, Koigi recalled his early dealings with Moi.
The funny thing is I felt sorry for him in his early days. He was an underdog. When he was vice-president we had some empathy for each other as the ruling class did not want to see him inherit. He wasn't one of us [a Kikuyu]. He summoned my wife and me one morning to Kabarak when I was in trouble for criticizing the government.
It was early one morning and we had breakfast and then he asked me into a very small room next to the kitchen. He got straight to the point and said, 'Don't allow yourself to be used.' The threat was clear but then he softened and he asked me, 'So where do you stay?' And when I said I lived in town he said, 'But that's terrible. Why don't you stay in your constituency? You mean you don't have any land?' And he picked up the phone and said, 'Is there any land free in Koigi's constituency?' He then took out some money from his pocket, the equivalent of about 100 dollars, and gave it to my wife.
By admitting he took the money, Koigi somewhat undercut his dissident credentials. But he did later spend several stints in prison for dissent. The next and last time he was at Kabarak, he was given an even more straightforward choice. 'Moi told me,
