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Uhuru Kenyatta does not spot a red rose on his coat lapels. Neither did his predecessor, retired President Mwai Kibaki.
But Kenya’s first two heads of state — Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi rarely left for office without fresh red roses on their lapels.
Former Attorney General Charles Njonjo continues this tradition on his bespoke pinstripes suits to date.
In his 2014 memoirs, Dash before Dusk, fomer diplomat and one-time Bahari MP, Joe Khamis, tells us that with his rose lapels and pinstripes Njonjo “looked everything like a typical British barrister with a persona that smelt of wealth.”
Njonjo was not without admirers. Khamis recalls that one Mathews Ogutu, Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, tried pulling the Njonjo look via buying a couple of pinstripes as did Jeremiah Kiereini, the former Defense PS and Secretary to the Cabinet in the Jomo and Moi governments respectively, who still wears pinstripes even as he bends his 80s.
Kiereini was Njonjo’s Best Man during his 1972 wedding alongside the late Bruce Mackenzie, Minister for Agriculture and Animal Husbandry and the only odiero Cabinet Minister in the first government.
Other government officials who spot red rose bud were Finance Ministers-but mostly during the reading of the Budget in June.
For the president, the red rose was part of the regal bearing and sartorial elegance of high office that was incomplete without the flywhisk (Jomo) and the rungu (Moi).
In fact, State House had the Superintendent of Gardens, a pensionable civil servant whose daily work undertaking involved tending the rose garden at the ‘House on the Hill.’
He ensured the president had a fresh rose lapel daily to complete his August visage in the case of Jomo Kenyatta, his pinstriped double breast suits or the Savile Row ones Moi spotted
Did you know the State House Superintendent of Gardens was once paid more than clerks at the National Assembly?
The disparities in salaries between its staff and those at State House became part of a Parliamentary motion on June 28, 1973 when Hon Julius Muthamia, MP for Meru South West Constituency, rose to lament that the State House Superintendent of Gardens treasured home an annual salary of £1,674 (Sh234, 000) yet “This man is only employed to look after flowers, but nothing else” moaned Muthamia adding that the ‘flower boy’s’ salary was more than that of the First Clerk of the National Assembly where Hansard Reporters also earned less than State House sweepers!
Over 10 years earlier in March 1964, the government, under Jomo Kenyatta as Prime Minister, had sought applicants for State House Superintendent of Gardens.
Qualification included sitting the Cambridge School Certificate and two years’ experience in an agricultural establishment. Those with horticultural knowledge had added advantage if they had worked in supervisory roles.
The successful candidate, whose work included “complete control of gardens, supervision of labour, annual replanting of flowers and vegetables, maintenance of gardens and supervision of arrangement of cut flowers at State House”, was to be attached to City Parks Department at the Nairobi City Council while on a six month probation.
