When he appeared before the press this week Internal security minister John Njoroge Michuki looked agitated- or just annoyed by the pestering.
“Lets go”, he was heard telling his aides as the pushing by the press to get a comment from him continued.
Michuki - who once worked in Nairobi as a tailor- is always in a hurry to tailor things in his own style. Hardly twenty minutes after Mwai Kibaki named his cabinet after the 2002 Narc victory Michuki was already at the doorsteps of his new office ready to enter! It was at the Transcom House where he built respect and honour – which crumbled to smithereens this week.- eclipsing the image of Michuki’s past in the colonial administration.
As the smoke from smouldering Standard newspapers billowed into the night sky on early Thursday morning so did Michuki’s reputation.
Two years ago, Michuki had earned accolades as the man who had tamed the matatu madness, by putting back structures and rules into the chaotic sector. But as the Swahili avidly say: mgema akisifiwa tembo hulitia maji! This was Michuki’s week and it will be a week that the media will always wish away.
By trying to lord over the press and the freedom it enjoys the Kangema member of parliament appeared to have gone a bit too far in the guise of State Security.
By tackling the media, and from behind, the minister used measures he never used on the matatu sector and to make matters worse, in the cover of darkness.
This week, Michuki no doubt equated the media to either Kamjeshi, Mungiki, Taliban, or Jeshi la Mzee which are his waking nightmares and which literary and practically threaten state security. By taking on the media he has entered into a virgin territory where he can hardly win the way he lost in 1979 when he attempted to dislodge John Joseph (JJ) Kamotho from the Kangema seat despite a high profile campaign.
Although he managed to dislodge Kamotho on second attempt in 1983 following kamotho’s alleged association with the Charles Njonjo group - that was accused of planning a government take-over - Michuki may not be able to dislodge the media as one of the watchdogs of the Kibaki administration.
Trained by the colonialists as a future administrator, the Oxford-trained Michuki still possesses some mannerisms of his trainers- strict, ruthless and never negotiating. It is no wonder that he was nicknamed “Kimeendero” (The Crusher) when he plunged into Kangema politics and in reference to his days as an administrator in both Kiharu and kangema during the colonial days.
With the current campaign to intimidate the press bound to fail Michuki will be walking on the same path his predecessors passed when they tried to use archaic laws to suppress the media.. But Michuki is not known for relenting but defeated he is known to take a back seat and watch – although not from a position of comfort.
In his days as Executive chairman of Kenya Commercial Bank, Michuki passed off as an astute executive and used one of his pictures taken at KCB for his campaign poster. In the picture Michuki had his arms stretched on the table and comfortably posing as the man of the moment.
It is a pose he had taken since his days as the first African Nyeri DC, whose political slogan, like that of his friend Kenneth Matiba was Kuga na Gwika — a Gikuyu phrase that means action speaks louder than words.
But this week Michuki used both action – at night and words – during the day to show the sterner stuff he is made of.
“If you rattle a snake,” he told the media, “be prepared to be bitten”. It was a phrase that carried more weight than his Kuuga na Gwika slogan that had guided his politics in Murang’a District. Born in 1931 in Iyego location in Murang’a, Michuki has the Herculean task of dealing with the fallout and outrage that follows his Wednesday night raid on The Standard and Kenya Television Network (KTN).
It is will me more tougher than his childhood days when he had to finance his early education after his father, colonial chief Michuki wa Kagwi, left him when he was only nine years old.. With no shoes but with determination the young Michuki’s mother had the son enroll at muguru Primary school on the same year his father died.
That Michuki did not inform his fellow cabinet ministers of the raid is perhaps his character. He came from a large family where not everyone knew what the others were doing. Michuki grew without knowing his step-brothers and sisters since his father had more than 44 wives and more than 150 children scattered in different villages where he owned land and might!
If Michuki appears to be tough-talking and has no time for people who he perceive to be disobedient is also a character he picked in the administration – especially after he became the Nyeri DC which was the hub of Mau Mau politics.
But for his credit Michuki has struggled to the top using all rules in the book to succeeed the way he did when he founded Kangema Farlands Company with a membership of 6,000 members to buy land once held by colonial farmers.
Having dropped out of primary school in 1943 Michukileft for Nairobi where he did odd jobs at a tailoring shop, fixing buttons and, may be, ironing. It was here that the 12-year-old lad made some money to go back to school in 1944 but it ran out again in 1945 and he had to switch to Kiangunyi Primary School, where he struggled until he passed his Kenya African Primary Education (KAPE).
That is the kind of determination that he is putting for the wrong course – suppression of media freedom. Those who admire him since his days in Nyeri High School where he joined in 1949 say he is strict disciplinarian and refused to be bullied in Form One. But it is the chest thumbing aspect that make him lose some friends too.
If the raid on Standard Media group was violent, Michuki’s first attempt to capture the Kangema seat was vicious and violent and would only rival the rivalry in Mathira that pitted the late Davidson Kuguru and Matu Wamae, the former ICDC boss.
Michuki was then young and at 45 in 1979 he would have staged a vicious ground campaign. But appears that today he can sit back and belt out orders and switch gears the way he switched from Nyeri High School to the little known Mugoiri Boys secondary to be a day-scholar and reside in the house of his father’s friend, Chief Ignatius Murai – who locals simply called “Nyathiu”.
Michuki would later marry “Nyathiu’s” daughter, Josephine Watiri, whose sister, Emma Murai served as Kenyatta’s chief of protocal,
If Michuki is defending Kibaki with zeal he may be wishing to save his senior at Mangu High in 1951 where he joined Form One when Kibaki was already a prefect and in Form Four! But even his friends are afraid that Kibaki’s junior may have done the wrong this time around.
Michuki has not been media friendly and even when Kibaki appointed himn the minister for transport and communication he kept away from media glare. “I will only call you when I have something”, he once said as other ministers used the Narc euphoria to win media mileage. For Michuki, the media makes no difference in his political life and may be to his exclusive business - Windsor Golf and Country Club.
When Michuki and Kamotho fought in their backyard, the later described Michuki as as "tight-fisted, snobbish and cruel" after Michuki managed to have Kamotho thrown out of Kanu and into oblivion.
His friends say that Michuki had wished to join politics in 1974 when he was one of the senior GEMA leaders- a position that saw him and Njenga Karume , convicted and fined for failing to file returns! Via Gema, and with Karume on his side, he had hoped to be a senior insider in Kenyatta’s cabinet but had to wait for 30 years to become one.
Michukli threw his weight in 1974 behind a little known Nairobi lawyer Muturi Kigano who polled 7,031 votes against Kamotho’s 8,007, a close shave.
If the political enmity between Michuki and Kamotho was born here, the enmity between Michuki and the media was hatched this week .
A man who joined the civil service at the age of 25 in 1955, and at the height of Mau Mau war Michuki started work when the word state security was used to intimidate the African press. It was no wonder that when the former Busia DO faced the media and invoked the same, memories of the colonial era administrator flushed back.
If he could crack down on the Mau Mau — or witness the crackdown — his recent efforts and threat to crack down the media will earn him wrath for his "tight-fisted" tendencies. Unlike in 1970 when he was asked by Kenyatta to start up the Kenya Commercial Bank after the government bought the former National and Grindlays Bank., Michuki is this time flexing his muscles on the wrong people. It is a battle he can hardly win. Or can he?