When Uhuru spoke on genesis of his discomfort with the media

President Uhuru Kenyatta addresses wananchi when he commissioned the construction of Ngong Road Phase II, at Prestige on March 22, 2018. PHOTO | MARTIN MUKANGU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Uhuru said he would be naïve to be associated with Mungiki in a majority Christian country as they would cost him votes.
  • He said it might be a good idea to meet senior editors but he was cautious that he didn’t want to be seen like he was lobbying for undue favours.
  • If President Kenyatta is uneasy with the media, his younger brother Muhoho has allergy for it.

My first and only eyeball to eyeball contact with Mr Uhuru Kenyatta was when he was minister for Local Government in the twilight years of the Daniel arap Moi presidency.

It was an informal meeting arranged by his personal assistant, Mr Geoffrey Gachagua, who is today MP for Mathira constituency.

I was a senior writer at the Daily Nation and had been invited to see Mr Kenyatta with Mr Mwangi Chege, who was News Editor at the People Daily before it was acquired by the Kenyatta family.

Mr Kenyatta was on his first presidential campaign in 2002 as the Kanu candidate in an election he lost to Mr Mwai Kibaki of Narc.

His campaign had not been receiving the best of media coverage and he wanted to informally hear from insiders what it is he wasn’t doing right.

ROWDY YOUTH
We found him, to use the words of retired President Kibaki, in a foul mood.

The previous day, a section of Central Kenya politicians led by Cabinet minister Ngenye Kariuki had led disruptive demonstrations in Thika town to support Mr Kenyatta’s candidacy.

The media reported the noisy youth were members of the outlawed Mungiki sect.

Despite not being in the best of moods, Mr Kenyatta received us with courtesy.

To make the session as informal as possible, he invited us to sit with him at the coffee table not at his official desk.

The man has a firm handshake and ability to make a stranger feel at ease.

“Welcome Kamau and Mwangi; my PA, Geoffrey, tells me you’re his good friends. Now tell me, why is it that the media is so unfair to me?” he opened the discussion.

COVERAGE
The incident the previous day had really got into his nerves and he was looking for a chance to ventilate.

“Look my friends,” he said, “I didn’t organise the demonstrations in Thika.

"The fellows who did so didn’t even have the courtesy to inform me in advance.

"I definitely would have rejected the idea outright and told them if they must demonstrate they do so in their home town and not mention my name at all.

"But see what the media has gone to town with: That it’s Uhuru who organised the demonstrations! Yet nobody from the media contacted me or my people. We just woke up to read about it in the newspapers! How unfair can media get!”

MUNGIKI
What annoyed him most was the association with Mungiki. 

A few weeks earlier, another group still calling itself Mungiki had denounced him in the city centre and burnt his effigy outside Jomo Kenyatta mausoleum.

“The other day another group still calling itself Mungiki demonstrated against me.

"Now a different group is purporting to demonstrate in my name. Can’t the media investigate and tell us who the so-called Mungiki is? Are these simply not jobless youths misused by selfish politicians?” he fumed.

He went on that he would be naïve to be associated with Mungiki in a majority Christian country as they would cost him votes.

MP 'DEATH'
He then referred to the one event that damaged his relationship with the media perhaps more than any other.

Days to voting in the 1997 General Election when he vied as MP for Gatundu South, his rival and incumbent MP Moses Mwihia was allegedly kidnapped in a crowded city street, “killed” and his “blood-stained” vehicle abandoned not far from the Kenyatta family ancestral home in Gatundu.

The entire plot sounded amateurish. That a candidate would have a rival, a sitting MP, kidnapped at daytime in a busy city street, killed and his car abandoned next to one’s home.

All the same, the media made headlines of the story without much effort to ask probing questions, much less seek Mr Kenyatta’s side of the story.

The kidnap story turned out to be a hoax. But the damage was already done. Mr Kenyatta lost the election by a wide margin.

Apparently he never forgave the media. Or even if he did, he never forgot.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
His litany of complaints that morning didn’t end there.

He was also bitter the media had declared him “a project” of President Moi.

He singled out a newspaper that had taken to doing caricatures of him as a toddler in nappies and Mr Moi putting a feeding bottle in his mouth.

“Look my friends,” he said, “Of all the presidential candidates in this (2002) election, I am the only one who went to college to study political science.”

Other notable candidates were Mr Kibaki, an economist, and Simeon Nyachae, who trained in provincial administration. 

POLITICS
Mr Kenyatta told us that right from college, he had resolved he would be in active politics one day.

He said that when he returned from the US in 1985, his first priority was to get a means of livelihood, then a family, before thinking politics.

His first job was as a teller at the city’s Kipande House KCB branch with a monthly salary of Sh3,000.

Then he founded a company to source and sell horticulture produce.

“I would personally fetch the produce in a pickup truck and learned how to evade speeding miraa vans on the Nairobi-Meru highway,” he joked.

MOI'S PROJECT
He told us that if President Moi was supporting him in that election, “it is because I have shown interest and he has seen the right qualities in me”.

At that juncture, I told him I had first seen him in the early 1990s at the Parklands cemetery during the burial of freedom fighter JM Desai, and where I overheard the doyen of opposition politics, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, invite him for a cup of tea at the old man’s office.

I asked Mr Kenyatta whether he honoured the invitation.

“Yes, I remember the occasion,” he replied. “Actually I went to see him (the elder Odinga) at his Agip House office.

"Now, if I was a political creation of Mzee Moi, should I have gone to see Mzee Odinga that time at the height of the multiparty crusade which the President didn’t want to hear about?”

SENIOR EDITORS
After he’d related his frustration with the media, we asked him whether he thought it important to have an informal session with senior media managers to tell his side of the story.

He replied it might be a good idea but he was cautious that he didn’t want to be seen like he was lobbying for undue favours.

“I don’t even need favourable coverage. All I’d ask for if I were to meet them is fair coverage,” he said.

I never got to know whether such a meeting took place.

We were also of the opinion that he needed more people with hands-on newsroom experience in his media team.

At the time, his team was mainly former government functionaries and some family members.

CAMPAIGNS
At least he did that in his second presidential campaign for his successful 2013 election when he brought on board hard-nosed media operatives who included my good friend Mr Munyori Buku.

But the President’s uneasiness with the media lingers even though at times it appears he has decided to live and let live.

If President Kenyatta is uneasy with the media, his younger brother has allergy for it.

An interesting incident I remember is one evening when I was coming down the staircase and Mr Muhoho Kenyatta was going up for a board meeting at his family-owned media house where I worked not too long ago.

A photographer was about to take a picture of him and he literally took a flight over the stairs to stop him.

“Never take my picture,” he cautioned. “You can fill the whole newspaper with my brother’s photos but never use mine!”

HANDOUTS

As we left Mr Kenyatta’s office at Jogoo House that day in 2002, I met a fellow who knew me in the lifts and he whispered in my ear: “Amewachotea ngapi?” (How much money has he given you?).

My reply: “Ni sisi tumemchotea! (It’s us who have given him money). I doubt he got the message.

But I pitied candidate Kenyatta. If all those people jamming his waiting room every day came for handouts, I figured the young man would be broke before the end of the campaigns!