Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has defended his affinity for his mother tongue, saying all that matters is that his target audience understands him.
He dismissed concerns from his critics that this amounts to fronting tribal politics saying he’s best understood when he speaks in Kikuyu in meetings where the majority are people from his community.
“Communication is not what you say, it’s being understood,” he said. “You talk to people in a language that they understand better,” he emphasised.
The DP was speaking on Friday night after a daylong interaction with traders at Gikomba, OTC, Nyamakima, Tea Room, and Marikiti in Nairobi.
Gachagua spoke for a considerable time in his mother tongue, sparking criticism from Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja.
“I have for long avoided responding to the Deputy President's tribal diatribe, but today's activities leave me no choice,” Sakaja said in a statement on X.
“This morning, in a misinformed tribal diatribe, and while speaking in the vernacular in the heart of our nation’s capital, you have chosen to use falsehoods to incite traders against the measures we are taking,” he added.
But speaking at his official residence in Karen during an interview with Citizen TV’s Sam Gituku, Gachagua responded to the Nairobi governor.
He was candid.
“When I looked for votes for Governor Sakaja, I spoke in my mother tongue, he didn’t have a complaint. He was quite happy, he was all smiles. When I was looking for votes for President William Ruto in meetings where the majority are people from my community, I spoke in my mother tongue,” he said.
“I don't know why people have a problem, now that elections have been won when I speak to people in the language that I spoke to them when we were looking for votes. What was good then is still good today.".
The DP said that it does not prick his conscience to speak to people in his mother tongue now that he’s a public servant who should be held to the same standards as the President, who is the symbol of national unity.
In his opinion, the fact that he’s the Deputy President does not override his heritage and where he comes from.
“My language remains intact. Communication is about being understood, it doesn’t matter what language you speak. You speak that language that people understand,” he reiterated.
If anything, the DP said, he only used his mother tongue sparingly at the Wakulima market.
“I spoke 70 per cent in Swahili and 30 per cent I spoke in Kikuyu because the majority asked me to speak in Kikuyu. We have some mothers there who don’t understand Kiswahili properly. We have old men who have not lived in that market for a long time, they told me as our son we want to hear what are you telling us,” Gachagua said.
“I talked to them in my mother tongue for them to vote for Governor Sakaja, it cannot be when they are complaining that I cannot talk the same language that I talked to them when I was appealing to them to vote for him.”
