To love or hate Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was a puzzling choice

There are few old-school Kenyan democracy activists of the 1980s and early ‘90s shedding tears over the Monday death of retired President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi.

Those were not the most glorious days for Kenyan democracy, human rights, and economy, and Moi’s rule was to blame for that pain and hurt. Even after he stepped down from power in 2002, he was not immediately forgiven.

At the swearing-in of Mwai Kibaki in late December 2002, after he became the first leader of the opposition to win in the East African Community to defeat an incumbent party, Moi was booed and objects thrown on the pavilion, at him.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who was attending the ceremony, scolded the restive crowd, saying Moi deserved respect for what he done for the country and the region, and as an elder.

Attitudes have since dramatically mellowed, and as Kenya reeled from injustices of its visceral tribal politics, and more years of seemingly unrelenting corruption, the tide turned favourably and a Moi admiration industry regrew.

If Moi’s story teaches us anything, it is that in politics, even in the bleakest hour, it is still possible to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. His act of walking away in 2002 was turned by time into one of the biggest acts of political redemption in East Africa.

It’s doubtful, though, that if that were all he had done it would have been enough, for the wound Moi’s rule inflicted was deep.

As a young “progressive” journalist in Uganda in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, we were often called upon by other “comrades” in politics (many friends in our student activism or youthful leftist study circles days), several of them then in the Museveni government, to do private solidarity work and pan-African duty.

It was the kind of stuff they couldn’t do lest it was taken to represent official government policy, or for which the conservative circles in the state made it impossible for them to get resources for. We would scrounge together the money and work the networks they offered to help.

One day I got a call to a meeting, and I got my first major assignment. It was to help the family of exiled Kenyan academic and democracy activist Mukaru Ng’ang’a.

Ng’ang’a had been detained and tortured by the Moi regime. His family had fled the country. I was to deliver them to a safe house that, until then, I didn’t know existed, and to get the money for their upkeep.

Over the several months, I came to know of or meet dozens of such families and directly hear their horror stories as they passed through that and other safe houses on their way to safety.

But there was also another very opposite side of Moi. This was a busy week in Djibouti for the Intergovernmental Developmental Authority on Development (Igad), which is based in the Horn of Africa nation, including the breaking of ground for a new headquarters.

Among the several officials gathered here was Eritrea’s Tekeste Ghebray, Igad’s executive secretary from 1996 to 2000, and Kenyan diplomat Mahboub Maalim, who led the organisation for a record 12 years from 2008 until he handed over to Ethiopia’s Workneh Gebeyehu last November.

Both Mahboub, who rose in the civil service ranks in the Moi era and became a director in the President’s Office, and Tekeste spoke fondly of him. Both said he was “humble” and “kind” and that he conducted himself “properly like the African elder” that he was.

I had heard these words used many times before and in there are some of the reasons why many eventually came see Moi in a more nuanced and gentler light.

I met two Kenyans in Djibouti who had seen that side of Moi; one of them as a young man in his early 20s, the other older. Both spoke of being well fed when they visited Moi at his Kabarak home in the Rift Valley.

The younger man said as they left Moi said something like they could not travel empty-handed, without something to replenish their stomachs. It was not African. They were handed envelopes. In his, he found Sh1 million. This was in 1997, and he was basically a broke lad. He has never looked back.

The older one, who visited Moi earlier in the 1980s, was told he couldn’t go back alone and he would be given an escort. He got an envelope. There was Sh100,000 inside. With that, he secured his place in the Kenyan middle-class.

Moi, they said, always escorted his visitors to the door — a classy touch from an unlikely gruff figure. Time heals some wounds, but while Moi never won back Kenya’s mind, he re-established himself in the affection of many, through their stomachs and his salt-of-the-earth touch.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is curator of the Wall of Great Africans and publisher of explainer site Roguechiefs.com. @cobbo3