Kenya’s third President, Mwai Kibaki died on April 22, a day after Queen Elizabeth’s birthday and three months to the 44th anniversary of the death of Kenya’s founding president.
Kibaki died just three months after Charles Njonjo and two years after his predecessor Daniel arap Moi. With the passing of these three, it is truly the end of an era, 58 years after Independence.
The generation of Kenya’s founding fathers is no more. I am mindful that James Osogo served as an assistant minister in the first cabinet. But contested as it may be, I don’t consider him a founding father.
Kibaki had many distinctions, many firsts. Many stories will be told about his time here on earth; as son, brother, father and politician. Like all of us, he made friends and some enemies. As a leader, he made good calls and bad calls too. But on balance, the third president will go down in history as one of Kenya’s truly consequential presidents.
With Tom Mboya, Kibaki was the architect of Kenya’s Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1965. It is instructive that the Paper concedes that “One of our problems is to decide how much priority we should give in investing in less developed provinces”. Heroically, the Paper posits that “The purpose of development is not to develop an area, but to develop and make better off the people of the area”.
Honestly, I don’t understand what Kibaki and Mboya were thinking at the time. The Paper explicitly argued that “development money should be invested where it will yield the largest increase in net output”. The founding fathers advocated investment in development without regard to equity, injecting into our lexicon the fallacy of high versus low potential regions.
In 2002, 37 years later, Kibaki won the presidency with a historic 63 per cent landslide. His election galvanised a sense of renewal, national unity and a palpable determination by Kenyans to rebuild the economy, end corruption and banish tribalism and reinstate equitable distribution of resources.
But Kibaki’s presidency, along with the political records of his successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, is stained with the unspeakable horrors of the 2007-08 post-election violence. The country as we know it was on the brink of annihilation. The nascent and rickety quest for nationhood was battered by the gales of ethnic vitriol.
We must appreciate that presidential legacies are complex. Kibaki must take credit for the 2010 Constitution. Despite its shortcomings, it is a far-sighted document. Core provisions of the Constitution such as devolution must be debated and refined. Similarly, the provisions of chapters 2, 6 and 11 are lofty but we must constantly strive to live to the ideals of our most solemn covenant.
We must not forget free primary education, a Kibaki policy that expanded opportunity for millions of Kenyan children. Mwai Kibaki was also steadier pair of hands on the economy.
Rest in peace my President, fellow citizen.
The views expressed are the writer’s
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