Death is cruel as to sting a family on, of all occasions,
Christmas Day. But, the greatness of some men and women is such that
their lives defy convention even in the terminal matters of death.
One-time Taifa Leo
reporter John Keen was such a man. An ebullient, bold,
straight-shooting spirit, Keen wasn’t the type to leave this world on
your normal, boring day.
In 1967, veteran journalist and former publisher of the Weekly Review,
Hillary Ng’weno, tells us, Keen was the first politician to be detained
by President Jomo Kenyatta. He thought President Kenyatta, Tanzania’s
Julius Nyerere and Dr Milton Obote of Uganda were paying lip service to
East African unity and told them as much – and paid for it.
“Nililikuwa mkorofi na Kenyatta akanitia ndani
(I was antagonistic and Kenyatta put me in prison),” he told me at his
Re-insurance Plaza shop-cum-office in the advent of the 1997 elections.
As
a KNA reporter in the late 1980s and early ’90s, I quickly learnt that
Keen was a favourite with the masses for not pulling his punches.
He
had lost the Kajiado North parliamentary seat to Philip Odupoy in the
disgraced 1988 queue voting but President Daniel arap Moi would later
nominate him to Parliament and make him an assistant minister – in the
Office of the President, no less. The idea was to keep the troublesome
politician on a short leash and away from destabilising Prof George
Saitoti, who had replaced Odupoy in Parliament and would later be Moi’s
Vice-President.
But you could
only contain Keen for some time. A wealthy landowner in the upscale
Karen, Kilifi and Namanga, he was not beholden to Kanu’s
patron-and-clientele politics. Come 1992 and he was firmly in the
opposition. Before forming the Democratic Party (DP) with former
President Mwai Kibaki and Njenga Karume, Keen would spare Prof Saitoti
his barbs, but not the rest of the Kajiado pack. Once he was in the
opposition, Prof Saitoti was fair game.
GERMAN BLOOD
At
a campaign rally in Loitokitok in 1992, Keen openly spoke about his
German blood and challenged “one Kinuthia” to declare his ethnicity.
That Kinuthia happened to be Prof Saitoti, who had deliberately kept his
ethnicity close to his chest.
Keen’s
DP friends were not spared his wrath either. He once bizarrely sued Mr
Kibaki over a Sh1 million debt but the matter was settled after Karume
told the two DP gentlemen to behave themselves.
In a loud, guttural voice he would demolish an opponent – to the chagrin of the polished mathematics professor.
As
a reporter, you develop a fondness for the politician who supplies
juicy quotes, and juicy ones Keen did supply. Many are the times when
Prof Saitoti would beckon me to his seat and ask me to water down Keen’s
acidic sentiments. On one such occasion, Keen had called Kenneth Matiba
and Charles Rubia names for dumping Kanu. Contrary to expectation, Prof
Saitoti asked me to “moderate” Keen’s sharp tongue, which I didn’t. But
more was in store for me.
At
the end of the rally in Ongata Rongai, Keen asked me to ignore his
sentiments altogether for they were meant for the ears of “these Kanu
people and the Special Branch”. Mainly a Moi-era political police wing,
Special Branch was the predecessor of the National Intelligence Service.
Of
course I ignored the politicians and reported accurately. A week later,
Prof Saitoti’s PA told me: “Mzee is not amused.” But Keen commended me
for sticking to my story. “You know, I’m a journalist,” he joked.
Years
after leaving KNA, fellow journalist Kamau Ngotho and I were
interviewing Keen about a Maasai rebellion against President Moi in 1997
that was led by William ole Ntimama and he was all for it.
Suddenly, the phone rang. After an exchange of pleasantries in Maa, the man thundered: “Tell him I’m not coming over. Mimi sio mtoto (I’m not a child). Tell him so!” and disconnected the line.
A MESSAGE
The
man on other end of the line, he told us, was Cabinet Minister Julius
ole Sunkuli, delivering a message from President Moi. The State House
invitation was in the context of cutting Ntimama to size.
Senior
citizens in Kajiado miss Keen’s epic supremacy wars with a giant of a
politician called Stanley ole Oloitiptip, a Moi ally. When I asked Keen
about those days, nostalgia was written all over his face as he said:
“These days the game is boring. No fireworks.”
Oloitiptip
would die at a witchdoctor’s shack in Loitokitok while undergoing
treatment after being associated with Charles Njonjo, a former
Attorney-General and later Minister for Constitutional Affairs. Njonjo
was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of running a seedy eating house in
Loitokitok without a trading licence. Kanu politicians branded him a
“traitor” out to overthrow President Moi.
For
the 10 years he was the Kajiado North MP, Keen held very few harambees.
I once asked Mr Keen why he barely donated more than Sh5,000, whereupon
he told me he believed governments existed to provide basic services
because they collected taxes and if people were daft enough not to
support their representatives in the push for such services, too bad for
them.
When Frank Sinatra sang
“I travelled each and every highway; And more, much more than this, I
did my way” that bold existentialist statement might as well have been
Keen’s.
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