‘Sir’ Charles Njonjo: The man and his quest for whiteness

Sir Charles Njonjo during the relaunch of Gallery Watatu at Lonrho House, Nairobi. [Courtesy]

Since it’s against our culture to speak ill of the dead, I’ll steer clear of past claims that the departed former Attorney General, Charles Mugane Njonjo, and his associates made a small fortune by adding a few zeroes to government tenders in his heyday.

After all, that would knock him off the hallowed perch of industry captains and consign him a slot in the growing list of tender-preneurs.

Neither shall I return to that small matter about organising a coup, or coups, on the continent, including one right here. The reason for my restraint is simple: a family is in mourning, so we should be sensitive - even if the man lived to 101 years.

He had died many times, figuratively, not just by being shunted to the periphery, as happened after he was disgraced in 1983, but more recently, when folks went online to announce his fictitious demise.

Njonjo’s response to the fake news of his death was simple: The news was exaggerated, he said; he was alive and well. This was a steep climbdown for a man who, at the peak of his power, introduced to our statutes a law declaring it treasonable for one to imagine or encompass the death of a sitting president.

He imagined himself as president, the Commission of Inquiry that cut him down was told, and had done everything possible to pave his way to the top. The higher the rise, the harder the fall, some sage counselled. Njonjo did not take heed, until it was too late…

I met him just once, in 2007, for an interview that we thought he had granted rather too easily and hastily. It’s now all too evident that he spent his last decade or so reaching out to explain himself and his decisions - many of them bearing flagrant displays of power without responsibility.

Sir Charles Njonjo's pin-striped Saville Row suits bearing his initials and shirts, it is reported, were sent to London for cleaning. [File, Standard]

But that’s not my problem. Rather, I’m interested in understanding the psychology of the man, the archetype of Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Njonjo was born into privilege, the son of a colonial chief who could afford to send him off to Britain in 1952, as the liberation war raged on.

The ways of the white man rubbed on him, forever. The pin-striped Saville Row suits bearing his initials and shirts, it is reported, were sent to London for cleaning - no Kenyan laundry was good enough for Njonjo.

And the man was so petty, he fell out with his peers who did not match his colonial, sartorial elegance.

Those who dared recover their cultural heritage, as did the esteemed Kenyan author, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who renounced his former Christian name, James, was ridiculed by Njonjo in Parliament in June 1978: “Some of the people teaching in this Faculty (sic) [it was the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi] think that if you call yourself Kamau wa Njoroge you are a very important lecturer, or a lecturer with a lot of know-how. You no longer call yourself James Kamau. If you want to be promoted higher, it is better to call yourself Kamau wa Njoroge…”

Ngugi had been detained without trial, six months earlier. And we know his life of writing has yielded an international following and decolonial efforts, across continents.

Njonjo’s suspect legacy, as we heard this week, indeed, is intact. History will judge him accordingly, and it’s only getting started.