Kenneth Matiba bestrode Kenyan football scene like a colossus

With 1972 Olympics 4x400m gold medallist Robert Ouko acting as the starter, Minister for Culture and Social Services Kenneth Matiba participates in a mock race when he tested the running track at Nyayo National Stadium on May 30, 1984. Kenneth’s challenger is William Strothmann, managing director of Achelis (K) Ltd, local agents of West German company EveroJav which laid the artificial turf at the stadium. PHOTO | FILE |

What you need to know:

  • The Olympic Youth Centres programme he had singlehande- dly started after roping in the Government of the then West Germany led the golden era of Kenya football.

Kenneth Matiba was the hands-on manager who so completely dominated the affairs of the Kenya Football Federation that when in 1978 he announced that he would not be defending his seat as chairman during that year’s elections, the football fraternity was stunned.

After only four years, it had become almost impossible to imagine a Kenya football scene without its whirlwind of a boss, a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy who turned up everywhere and whose head always seemed to be bursting with fresh ideas. Nobody had seen his announcement coming. And to add to the consternation, his entire executive committee opted out with him.

In his departure statement, he said: “I have served the game of soccer to the best of my ability and I have spared no energies to ensure its progress. But I must leave it to the Kenya public to judge the degree of my success... I will ensure proper handover of all KFF assets and books of accounts to the incoming executive committee.”

The incoming executive was led by his arch-enemy, Dan Owino. I covered the press conference in which Owino made a disparaging remark about Matiba that would later become the subject of the court case that lawyer Paul Muite wrote this week formed the start of their life-long friendship. I didn’t repeat Owino’s clearly actionable words and my paper and myself avoided joining Owino in his loss as it turned out to be.

It is all of 40 years since Matiba left football administration and Kenya’s demographics show that only a small minority of its people have any personal recollection of his time at the helm. But his death last Sunday, closing the chapter of the life of one the country’s giants in politics, business, farming and sports and recreation, gives us an involuntary chance to take him up at his invitation and render judgment on the degree of his success at the KFF.

CAMPAIGN AGAINST WITCHCRAFT

When he was chairman and I was a reporter, I had interactions with him in press conferences and in one-on-one interviews. After he suddenly quit, I never got to ask him the reason why but I remained intrigued.

The very first income I ever earned from writing – Sh40 - was from an opinion piece I published while in high school in a magazine called Africa Sports. It was a piece praising him for his campaign against witchcraft in football and launching a national youth development initiative called the Olympic Youth Centres programme.

He had singlehandedly started it after roping in the Government of the then West Germany. Out of its products, the epoch we consider as the golden era of Kenya football was born. It died a slow death after his departure and when those products retired, our attainable dreams of continental success became pipe dreams which they remain to this day.

I remained in the dark until decades later when I read his book, Aiming High published in 2000. And there it all was. He wrote: “I announced my intention to introduce professional football in Kenya.

For some reasons, still not very clear to me, my suggestion was vigorously opposed even by those who had previously supported me strongly. Because this idea was important to me, I decided not to offer myself for re-election when the elections came. For me, it was either professionalism or no involvement.”

Here was a man who was 30 years ahead of his time. When professionalism finally started making baby steps in the country, the train had long left station and the rest of the continent was playing in the Fifa World Cup as respectable competitors and countries like Cameroon were defeating world champions Argentina.

'READY TO ANSWER QUERIES'

Enough people have wondered whether it is possible to do business with public institutions in Kenya without being corrupt. Kenneth Matiba ran a corrupt-free KFF. That is why he handed over all the books of accounts and assets of the federation to his successors. He was ready to answer any queries.

What happened afterwards? As before him, corruption as a way of life returned with a vengeance and there was no bottom below which we could not fall. It is difficult to know where to even begin were you to attempt to do a Kenya football catalogue of graft. The list will range from the pettiest, the most brazen to the most bizarre.

For example, the five-acre property known as Fifa House in Jamhuri Park Matiba left behind simply evaporated. And to KFF, clubs were just cash cows to be milked unto death – which in fact is the fate that befell many of them. Facing court charges of stealing Sh55 million in 2004, officials of the federation defended themselves with the strange argument that it was not government or KFF money but Fifa’s. To them, stealing from Fifa was fine.

Earlier, in January 2002, top players of the league beamed before press and television cameras with the glittering trophies KFF had awarded them. But while making for the hotel door at the end of the ceremony, they were accosted by an anxious and evidently desperate young man who asked them to hand back the trophies.

He explained to the disbelieving footballers that KFF officials had only borrowed them from his shop that morning for the purposes of posing before the media. The whole farce had all been about hoodwinking the country.

Matiba has rightly been lauded as a hero of Kenya’s so-called second liberation. He has also been widely admired for his astuteness in business and farming, even as his involvement in Kenya’s volatile politics destroyed much of what he had built.

What surprises me is the little attention, if any, paid to his zealous commitment to integrity. I don’t know what this says about the character of the country he suffered so much for but I have not heard of a billionaire in Kenya, especially one who served in government, who opened himself up to so much public scrutiny.

In Aiming High, he has given a detailed account of how he made his money, thereby inviting whoever among us has evidence to the contrary to come forward and challenge him.

It is a story about loans from banks followed by strategic and sometimes impulsive investments, trial and error, long, long working hours, juggling many balls in the air, falling and rising, and eventually enjoying that lucky break that he left no choice but to come his way because of his persistence. He did not rob the public to make his money, but he lost it in its service.

He became wealthy after leaving the civil service. His peers enriched themselves while there. Today, some people join it to pursue a scorched earth policy of looting for which they mysteriously earn of a lot of respect and get rewarded with career upward mobility by the very people who still claim corruption is bad. But this much I can say: in the years that I first read about and then covered Matiba, the controversies were about policy, tragi-comic duels about witchcraft in football but never about stolen money.

I once asked his long time personal assistant, Sammy Lui, to describe his boss for me. His first words were: “He is fair.” Maybe that is why I never heard anybody accuse him of favouring his beloved Kenya Breweries FC, which he founded in 1970 and which reached the Africa Champions League semi-finals in 1973 and the Cup Winners Cup final in 1994.

Matiba’s greatest strength, an unbending commitment to principle and single-mindedness in pursuit of a goal once his mind was made up, was also his Achilles’ heel.

In his book, he acknowledges this aspect of his character and has sought to explain himself. But he cedes no ground.

Still, there are those of his followers who wished he would heed the advice of Jochanaan, the Second Temple era Jewish rabbi who counselled thus: “Unless there is a chance of winning, it is worse than useless – it is self-defeating – to react violently to whatever unbearable conditions an adversary imposes; it is suicidal to allow oneself to be provoked to violent reactions against an enemy, however insufferable his exactions, unless he can be defeated.”

For most of 2013, the big story was Kenya at 50. At that time, in addition to this column, I was writing special reports for other pages in this newspaper.

Matiba was long out of the limelight, living out his sunset years at his Safari Beach Hotel in Ukunda, South Coast. I called his daughter, Susan, and requested an interview with him and other family members.

She listened carefully. “Let me circulate your request among the family and I will get back to you,” she said. Two days later, she called.

“The family has accepted with one caveat,” she told me. “You won’t be able to speak to dad. But mama and the rest of us are available for you.”

I wasn’t exactly surprised or even disappointed, just sad. I travelled to Ukunda and all afternoon, Mrs Edith Matiba, then turning 78, held back nothing as she told me about her 52-year life with “Ken.” And since that day, a portion of me still wonders how much a family can take because of a country.

But through the account of decades in strife and desolation, I was able to see what must probably rank as Matiba’s greatest achievement: he built a very solid family. “We closed ranks,” his amiable son, Raymond, told me of the family’s reaction to the destruction of its businesses. I understood better the reason behind the circuitous route of my request to Susan.

Kenneth Matiba enabled me to speak without fearing that the wall is listening. He inspired me to scale the summits of Mt Kenya and Kilimanjaro to discover my inner strength.

And I know that if ever he had become President, he would have been the most pro-sports chief executive Africa or the world has known. But he is gone.

With a deep bow of gratitude to the family that gave him to us, I wish him peace and light in his travels henceforth.