Gachagua: A most successful classmate of UoN class

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua during impeachement hearing before the National Assembly on October 8. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]

My classmate, you believe you are going down and dread the experience. Impeachment and demands for economic accountability are giving you nightmares. Easy man.

Your “down” is too far for you to reach. If millions of shillings can be equated to downward steps, imagine how many you will clear before you reach down. It will take four lifetimes for you to arrive at the down that we the ordinary folks have belonged.

As your contemporary, a classmate, political and ideological rival in our youthful days at the University of Nairobi, I congratulate you on your massive achievements.

When you were sworn in as Deputy President at Kasarani on October 13 2022 I said to myself that you had turned out to be most successful of our class. The UoN Class of 1987.

We followed different ideological paths. In our youth, my team led by me ruled the polls albeit withstanding and surviving state bruises. Your consistency amazes me. Your relations with the then administration facilitated our demobilisation to various destinations. Prison, exile, expulsion while others went to heaven.

You hold the record for facilitating State House visits in our times in college. Every time those you took to state house came back, their liquidity radically improved. They bought better music systems - the radio cassette phenomenon was then the in thing, and lived large but more importantly they lost ideological balance.

Today when you claim to be a son of Mau Mau, we take it with a measure of consternation. A son of a freedom fighting family who turns into a spy breaking the secrecy code of his movement leaking confidential plans of his compatriots is no son of Mau Mau.

You will recall that immediately after my election as SONU Chair, I banned State House visits by students and further banned tribal organizations on campus. This was an attack on your power and liquidity. A series of meetings of state security operatives were launched which you attended and hell broke loose on us. 

I am not bitter with you for spying on us because the times were hard. It was understandable when one chose the easier and rewarding side of the ideological divide. Titus Adungosi, the SONU founding chair was serving ten years in prison. Mwandawiro Mghanga had just gone back for a second five year term in prison after serving one year in Kamiti prison. Gacheche wa Miano another university student had been detained without trial alongside Professor Katama Mkangi and Paddy Onyango. 

The choice to play traitor was thoroughly understandable. These days I look back at the insults we were being subjected to for instance being called “mad” and I have not been able to see sense in it. 

Several of my comrades have died from effects of the path we took. On your part you followed the dictates of the system choosing to betray your fellow students. You have enjoyed life, wealth and government jobs. On the other hand, some of my kind have served prison terms, exile, education terminated etc. 

I have been relegated to the village pursuing subsistence objectives as a direct result of the victories of your team. You have to be proud buddy.  You and your colleagues current Bungoma Governor Kenneth Lusaka and others, never addressed a single rally in the university. It is interesting that Lusaka is now my home Governor and you our Deputy President, though facing serious trouble. 

Miguna Miguna and I stuck our necks out in pursuing democracy and good governance, check where we are… Miguna is in exile and I am in Makutano village in Bungoma. Be happy bro. 

We both set out to capture power for different ideological objectives. The contest of our divergent worldviews produced casualties on my side as you smoothly swam into the billionaire club and got admission into bourgeois politics.

Going by the rules and practices of your club, you are generally innocent only that you outdid your colleagues. If we went by the law all those trying you will head to prison and political oblivion where you seem destined. 

Against this background I find myself feeling different about you being a former classmate and a boy I know. As fighters against you people, we lost big brother and we are still losing. Your pain and suffering is nothing compared to ours yet we still have hope in realizing our objectives however bruising the journey will be. 

Your tribesman and friend Kennedy Wainaina Maguta could not stand the tribulations that befell him. After being expelled from the university, he went to exile in Norway through Uganda. The only son of Maguta was so traumatized. It is said he got mentally ill. In this condition, he picked up a fight with a white man in Norway and got jailed for a few years. He committed suicide. I went to Chiromo Morgue to view his body but couldn’t dare go to his funeral at his home because in my mind, I knew reactionary forces led by you and progressive forces that I led had jointly occasioned the death of our brother. 

Wafula Wakhisi, the architectural and Design student resorted to drinking chang’aa and living in the slums after expulsion from college. When we came back from prison and exile, we pushed for re-admissions. He was given a second chance to finish his studies. He was so excited. He went to Kenyatta University for his drink but got crashed by a vehicle and died on the spot. 

I narrate these few stories to show you that as you feel pain over what you are going through, you may realize how happy you ought to be as a man whose life was and remains incomparably comfortable. 

Please take pride in that even as you undergo selective prosecution. I know you have learned a lot and would make a much better leader than you were given a second chance. 

You are obviously not great but your opponent deserves worse than what you are being subjected to. In a court of law, you would serve a jail term like most of your colleagues in power but President William Ruto and Interior CS Kithure Kindiki will get death sentences having presided over murder. 

It's this double stands that tilts my heart to your side. Yours are mainly political mistakes and standard "Kenyan" economic crimes most of them legalised while Ruto's are real grave crimes. 

Many have maliciously criticized you over your survival strategies such as connecting with your stronghold. In times of political crisis, withdrawing to ones stronghold is as old and commonsensical as history. In fact it is exercising the universal instinct of self-preservation. Kenyatta did it after the assassination of Tom Mboya, he pitched camp in Ichaweri Gatundu holding virtually running the country from there. Remember the oath taking in Kiambu? Jonas Savimbi similarly retreated to his ethnic stronghold of Southern Angola, Patrice Lumumba of Congo-Kinshasa was arrested on a retreat to his equivalent of your “Mount Kenya” among the Batetela people Kasai Province of Congo. General Ojukwu the self-declared leader of the state of Biafra which caused the Nigerian civil war otherwise known as Biafra war joined his Ibos in South East Nigeria when he found himself cornered. You don’t have to be apologetic about it. I too have retreated to my village in Bungoma eking out a living meeting my basic needs as you retreat to fight for your political survival. 

Your bravery to put our justice system on trial as a representative of the bourgeoisie puts the entire class on trial. The masses now know better why the fight for power in Kenya is always that abrasive and bare knuckled. Making money in Billions incomprehensible. 

If you were ever brought to my court I would disqualify myself for incompetence. Brother I believe you are in a vantage position to help this country heal. How about taking advantage of your current status to spill the beans on your colleagues? 

How about explaining to Kenyans all the murders and assassinations committed by the state? Grand corruption practices are wholly known to you. Why not parade the truth? Let Kenyans know how Chebukati helped a team of power hungry politicians rig the 2022 election. The biblical Samson was not entirely stupid. The true beneficiaries of a Samsonian move are the “hustlers” who propelled you to power and statistics tell us that most of them come from Morima, 

Whatever you plan to do, don't lose sight of the fact that your colleagues have you by your balls. It's a life or death situation. At the right time, make the right decision. I have the will to be sympathetic because I know you are better than your boss and as you realize, the choice of leadership for us as the vanguished is guided by a stupid logic; ” Which devil is better” 

By the way, do you still have my wallet? The one I gave you at Simmers restaurant after my time in exile. Remember? It was after a conversation with you, I dropped it as I left and when I came back you had picked it and kept it. You liked its leather quality. You said;

“Buke you dropped your wallet but I have checked it. It has no money. Why can’t I keep it instead since I have money and you don’t?”

You recall I told you I had been gifted the high quality leather wallet by a comrade in arms (of course he had been wary of you because of your state house links) Peter Owino Rang'inya upon his return from exile in Norway. You could not resist the quality leather.

Your acquisitive instincts won you the wallet. I left you a poorer friend, no money and no wallet. A bad meeting for me.  

Enjoy the limelight man, in bourgeoisie politics, you are better of talked about negatively than ignored. After your current trials, you have an audience for life.