George Saitoti, president heir-presumptive who couldn’t read writing on the wall

Those who studied at the University of Nairobi’s Chiromo Campus will recall their mathematics professor — a tall, thin bespectacled man with a liking for dark suits and ties. On a good evening the lecturer would show up at the Esperia Hotel in Westlands driving a beaten VW Beetle. He’d sit alone at a far table talking to a bottle of Tusker or Pilsner.

At the time, Prof Saitoti was teaching abstract mathematics. Suddenly, President Moi appointed him Minister for Finance in 1983 — to do real maths at the Treasury. It was during his tenure that one Kamlesh Pattni came up with his own strange brand of maths known as export compensation, aka Goldenberg.

A lot has been written about the scheme that worked like claiming to “export” ice to the Eskimos during winter and getting paid billions for it. But that’s a story for another day. Today is the story of Prof Saitoti, Kenya’s fourth vice-president.

NEW YEAR FESTIVITIES

On the eve of 1997, Vice-President Saitoti drove to Nakuru State House ahead of his boss for the traditional New Year festivities.

Once inside, everybody pretended they didn’t know the VP was around. Told the VP had come, the man in charge of Nakuru State House, one toughie called Musa, asked in contempt: “Saitoti who? He didn’t tell us he was coming!” Reminds one of the recent incident when Deputy President William Ruto appeared at the Kabarak home of retired President Daniel Moi only to be served lunch and left to go back wherever he’d come from without seeing the old man.

SUFURIA YA UGALI

Fast forward to January 1998. The country had just come from a General Election in December and President Moi was to name his next cabinet.

Early one morning, the vice-president was called for a brief meeting at State House, Nairobi.  On leaving State House, the professor found the elaborate convoy missing with only one chase car left — befitting an ordinary cabinet minister. Nobody was there to give him an explanation. Later in the day, the President named his cabinet. In it, Prof Saitoti had been stripped of the VP portfolio and was left with just a ministerial docket.

For 16 months, the country would be without a vice-president. Then all of a sudden, the President made a stop-over on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway and made a roadside announcement that Prof Saitoti had been re-appointed — then sarcastically wondered if that would add the number of sufurias of ugali in households.

Immediately Prof Saitoti heard about his reappointment, he called a press conference at his city home to profusely thank his boss for “showing confidence” in him. He promised there would be “no revenge” which left everybody perplexed on whom the revenge would have been and for what. Apparently he assumed the vice-presidency was his for keeps. Unlike now when the deputy presidency is a constitutional office with security of tenure, then it was merely some job at the pleasure of the Big Man.

SCARED RANK OUTSIDER

Unknown to many, Prof Saitoti, though Number Two in rank, in reality was a scared rank outsider. I knew it one day in 1999 when in the office of a friend. Once seated, he’d told me: “Saitoti was seated where you are just a few minutes ago. He was shaking like a leaf!” Reason? A vernacular radio station had just opened and State House suspected Prof Saitoti was behind it with the intention to boost his quest to succeed President Moi. It happened the owners of the new station were friends of the South Korean owners of the Safari Park Hotel on Thika Road. The Koreans were also good friends of Prof Saitoti hence the suspicion he was secretly funding the station through them.

The owners of Radio Citizen would also experience state harassment on suspicion they were Saitoti people before they switched allegiance to Mr Mwai Kibaki.

Fast forward to March 18, 2002 Kanu delegates meeting at Kasarani Sports Complex. On that day, Kanu would be merging with Raila Odinga’s NDP and a new line-up of national officials unveiled. Early in the morning, VP Saitoti and cabinet minister Joseph Kamotho went to State House to ask the President whether their names were in the list of candidates for party vice-chairman and secretary-general respectively.

NAMES WERE MISSING

Mr Kamotho related to me that the President told them with a straight face that their names were in the list. But at Kasarani, they discovered they’d been led down the garden path. Their names were missing in the list of the “anointed”. Prof Saitoti was captured by media cameras bending over to whisper something in the President’s ear. His boss was seen waving him away as he said: “Professor tulia na uketi. Kama jina lako halipo basi halipo!” (Be calm Professor and sit down. If your name isn’t there then it isn’t!” It is at that juncture that Saitoti made the famous “there come (sic) a time” surrender speech.

Amazingly, he still believed he was Moi’s successor in Kanu. I would later learn that Intelligence head Wilson Boinnet had a lot of problems with the President when he gave him an analysis that Prof Saitoti was Kanu’s best bet to beat the opposition in the 2002 election. To keep his job, as far as the professor was concerned, the chief spy would henceforth give the President raw data as it came from the field minus any analysis.

DINNER WITH PRESIDENT

Months to the 2002 election, Mr Kamotho told me the President invited him for supper at his private city residence off Ngong Road. As they ate, President Moi ambushed him with the question: “This friend of yours Saitoti, is he serious he wants to take over when I retire?” When Mr Kamotho replied in the affirmative, the President said, shaking his head: “But how come he (Saitoti) wants me to do everything for him? He has no friends and doesn’t want to spend his money on anything!” But typical of Moi in concealing his intentions, he terminated the topic as abruptly as he’d brought it up.

When he finally named Mr Uhuru Kenyatta his choice of successor in Kanu, the President decided to tell off his No 2 at a public rally. It happened in Transmara, Narok. In the middle of his speech, Moi turned to face his deputy and said: “Saitoti here is my friend. But leadership isn’t about friendship. When I look around, I think Uhuru is the best placed person to lead when I retire.” Still Saitoti couldn’t resign and launch independent campaigns to be President. He waited to be sacked, which happened not long after.

In the words of Mr Kamotho, who wasn’t well known for kind language, Saitoti “was the tick that finds comfort zone in the inner side of the cow’s ear up to the very moment the cow is slaughtered and its head roasted with the tick still inside!”

MOI BALLOON  

Saitoti was a true illustration of what Mr Koigi Wamwere told me Moi used to tell scared MPs during the single-party era. “To me you are all like balloons”, the President would say during Kanu parliamentary group meetings. “I can inflate any of you like a balloon but deflate you to nothing when I want!”

When President Moi wanted Prof Saitoti, he had pulled him straight from lecture halls; nominated him MP, and appointed him Minister for Finance in 1983.

Later when he wanted him first elected to Parliament in 1988, he went out of his way to ensure he sailed through in Kajiado North constituency unopposed. His likely formidable opponent, John Keen, was bought out with a promise to be nominated to Parliament and appointed assistant minister.

MAIN CHALLENGER

His other main challenger, Philip Odupoy, was given a job to head a vegetable-growing State corporation, an odd job for a Maasai used to herds of cattle. His choice would have been to head the Kenya Meat Commission. But in Moi’s Kenya, you took what was given not what you were suited for. 

Back to Prof Saitoti. When the time came for his balloon to be deflated, he never knew which direction the spear came from. He’d finally discover that being heir-presumptive isn’t the same thing as being heir-apparent, that you can be too near, yet too far.

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