My generation of youths in the early 1990s loved nothing more than to align with the nascent political formations in the just-restored multiparty scene, while also hitting the road to copy our luminaries in fighting for the second liberation.
We saw ourselves as the future heirs of the freedom torch, and outdid ourselves, often armed with stones and other crude weapons, in making our voices heard by the Kanu regime. That is how my peers and I found ourselves in the rather exciting Ford Kenya youth wing.
Now, if you were among the crack Ford Kenya youths between 1993 and 1997, one of the most discomfiting things then was that Kanduyi constituency, one of our party’s real strongholds, had a Ford Asili MP, instead of a Ford Kenya one.
You see, after the fallout between Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Kenneth Matiba in the original Ford, ahead of the 1992 general election, leading to the breakup of the mighty party, the former was left with Ford Kenya and the latter formed his Ford Asili.
The Bukusu community, domiciled in the then Bungoma and Trans Nzoia districts, had thrown their lot firmly with Jaramogi, and the rest of the Luhyaland had divided itself into Matiba and Ford Asili supporters (mostly the larger Kakamega, before the many defections after the 1992 election) and Moi and Kanu supporters (mostly within the larger Busia).
At the time, Ford Kenya vice chairman Wamalwa Kijana held the Saboti parliamentary seat, George Kapten did Kwanza, Mukhisa Kituyi roared in Kimilili, John Munyasia was running Sirisia while Musikari Kombo (before the Khulia Silulu scandal that removed him and installed Saulo Busolo in 1994) was the Webuye constituency supremo.
It was a clean Ford Kenya sweep of the Bukusu heartland, with the zone being so rabidly anti-Kanu and pro-Jaramogi that any counter argument was most likely made with pangas and other crude weapons.
Well, almost a clean sweep. There was the not-so-small matter of Kanduyi constituency, hosting Bungoma town, headquarters of the Bukusu nation. The MP there was one Lawrence Sifuna, former bearded sister, of Ford Asili. A Bukusu in Ford Asili, in a constituency it considered its own, was something the Ford Kenya fraternity wasn’t willing to comfortably live with.
To be fair, Sifuna had first sought the Ford Kenya ticket, but according to him, had been unfairly denied, allegedly because Wamalwa Kijana, the then Bukusu supremo, had conspired with others within the party to lock him out. The grapevine was rife with claims that Wamalwa was scared of strong Bukusu leaders who might overshadow him.
Word was that the Ford Kenya vice chairperson had been uncomfortable with Mukhisa Kituyi too, but the latter could hold his own in Kimilili because he was both a card-carrying member of the Jaramogi Young Turks who had direct access to the old man, and also because Kituyi was a distant cousin of Wamalwa.
After the death of the great Masinde Muliro in 1991, Wamalwa wanted a clean path to power in future, given that his boss Jaramogi was old and sickly. The Ford Kenya ticket for Kanduyi had therefore gone to the lacklustre Joseph Khaoya, and Sifuna in Ford Asili, duly whitewashed Khaoya of Ford Kenya in the 1992 election in the constituency.
I remember an incident in 1994 when youths allied to Ford Kenya set out to ambush Sifuna. There was a farmers’ riot outside the Nzoia Sugar factory by contracted Farmers of Nzoia Out growers Company, who lay siege to the factory, demanding the sacking of the Financial Controller over corruption and delayed payments to farmers. The youths got word that Sifuna was already inside the factory, being driven in a Mercedes car with GK registration, which added to the anger.
They prepared themselves for the final Kanduyi solution: soon enough, Sifuna emerged from the exact Mercedes as described. But instead of fleeing, he stopped, came out and asked those who had been sent to finish him to do it now, before disarming the angry youths with words.
What should have been a hostile encounter turned into a hilarious engagement, as the Kanduyi MP, master of the political platform, charmed his way past what should have been a wall of hostile enemy formation. Angry youth leaders would later be reprimanded, their charges for “letting that man speak first, yet you know how lethal he is with words!”
Sifuna passed on this past weekend after suffering a stroke, ending one of the most colourful and controversial political careers in the country. In a way, he had very few peers in the Hall of Fame of Kenya’s leftist politics, where revolutionary ideology held sway.
Many people with a nose for Kenya’s political history know him simply as one of the seven “bearded sisters”, a moniker fashioned by former Attorney General and later Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Charles Njonjo, to describe a group of firebrand members of Parliament who were a thorn in the flesh of the young Moi regime in the late 1970s’ and early 80s’.
But we hardly ever acknowledge the monumental risks these guys took in taking on the government at a time when that endeavour could easily lead to the grave or to permanent disability.
Whenever I check around, I always confirm that the younger generation of Kenyans has never even heard of the seven-bearded sisters and may never appreciate the whole freedom journey itself.
In the grotesque nature of Kenyan politics, most of the leaders who will line up to eulogiSe Sifuna’s principles and political ideologies are turncoats, regime apologists, corruption lords and ne’er-do-wells, who are not averse to auctioning their mandate at State House like Mogotio goats, when the powers that be call them.
In a way, the default setting of our politics today is the admiration of iconic works of others in the past, without any attempt to walk those paths trodden by principled trailblazers like Sifuna. We must ask our leaders to look in the mirror this time before they unleash their rosey funeral speeches.
The seven-bearded sisters may be in their twilight now, or at least the ones who are still alive, but there is a seed they planted that germinated nicely, before entrenched dictatorship was cowed and restored our freedom. I don’t know where Koigi Wamwere is these days. But I know James Orengo is still probably the only one of the lot who is still active, which tells you just how young Orengo was when he joined that stellar cast.
As one more of their own takes a final bow, it is a good enough time to say that Sifuna was a political icon and indomitable parliamentary debater whose biggest contribution remains an unmatched fight for liberty and free speech.
If there is anything to learn from him, it should be the sheer levels to which we have fallen in our parliamentary democracy, given the quality of leadership we now elect to the legislature, compared to Sifuna and his peers. I shudder to imagine what would have happened if Sifuna had made it to the Senate in 2022, to debate Senator Alexander Mundigi, for instance.
As we read the Sifuna eulogies, we probably also need to read the weather app to check when the rain started beating us, in terms of quality of leadership. That would be a brilliant way to honour the iconic fighter, before we can wish his soul a peaceful rest.
The writer is a political commentator