Reports that the Kenya Kwanza administration has, through the Kenya Revenue Authority, placed taxed demands on both Moi and Kenyatta families in relation to their wealth is hardly surprising. FILE PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK
Reports that the Kenya Kwanza administration has, through the Kenya Revenue Authority, placed taxed demands on both Moi and Kenyatta families in relation to
their wealth is hardly surprising given that it is a script straight from the State capture narrative.Nonetheless, it is not the first time an incumbent President is putting his predecessor on the chopping board.
There are a number of precedents in the continent. The most dramatic one played out in Zambia between Fredrick Chiluba and Kenneth Kaunda.
Flimsily accused by Chiluba of being behind an attempted coup, Kaunda was thrown into a maximum security prison and later on put under house arrest.
It took the intervention of the then-former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere and President Robert Mugabe (then chairman of the Organisation of African Unity) to have Kaunda released. However, in a twist of fate, Kaunda would outlive Chiluba.
The next drama played out in Ghana between the then-former President Jerry Rawlings and John Atta Mills (although John Atta Mills wasn’t Rawlings’ immediate successor but his former vice-president).
In his narration, Jerry Rawlings spoke of even being denied the authorisation to obtain foreign exchange to pay for medical procedures for his ailing wife who had been hospitalised in Germany.
Once again, in a twist of fate, Rawlings would outlive John Atta Mills.
A mini-drama also played out in Egypt after the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first Muslim Brotherhood President, by the then-head of the Army Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Morsi was thrown into jail and eventually died.
Apart from the historical dramas, there are also active cases across the continent. In Botswana, the rift between former President Ian Khama and his chosen successor Mokgweetsi Masisi has grown so wide that in December 2022 a court issued an arrest warrant for the former President for the possession of illegal firearms, with the judge ordering that he should be arrested on sight.
Ian Khama himself fled Botswana and has been living in South Africa.
In Angola, current President João Lourenço has been dismantling the business empire of his predecessor the late Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Since coming to power in 2017, he set about reclaiming some of the assets that his predecessor’s family acquired over a period of three decades (mainly through the diversion of the country’s oil wealth).
In 2020, dos Santo’s son, who headed the country’s sovereign wealth fund for five years, was handed a five-year jail term by Angola’s Supreme Court on grounds of diverting money from the fund.
His sister, Isabella dos Santos, once listed as Africa’s wealthiest woman, has been stripped of most of her wealth and her name placed on a global red alert list.
In DRC, former President Joseph Kabila has had his political and business networks mainly in the lucrative mining sector gradually dismantled by his chosen successor Felix Tshisekedi.
A minor drama also continues to play out in South Africa between Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.
For the most part, retired Presidents in the continent have never had to roll up their sleeves. And indeed throughout Kenya’s four Presidential transitions, there has always been an unspoken rule of not subjecting former Presidents to the sword.
Instead, they are left to enjoy retirement peacefully. And the rationale is very simple: all politicians are cut from the same clothes. They all employ primitive accumulation as a means of personal wealth acquisition (for which they externalise all of it).
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Sooner or later they need each other’s protection to perpetuate wealth. Which is why baying for your predecessor’s blood amounts to ‘being the first to throw a stone’, which, in politics, contravenes the principle of piranhas.
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