I remember in 1990, then selling newspapers in the streets of Eldoret, I saw how it was a crime for one to be seen raising a two finger salute.
At the time, two fingers were associated with the dissenting opposition leaders led by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Masinde Muliro.
The same year, half of the Kenyan population alive today can remember how the Toyota pick-up truck, with loudspeakers mounted on its roof went through the streets of Nairobi, playing hide and seek with the Police, headed to Kamukunji grounds. A top that pickup, were Martin Shikuku, James Orengo, Philip Gachoka and Rumba Kinuthia, all of them flashing two-finger V-salute. And so, that marked the struggle for political pluralism in the country.
At the time, the only government-owned radio and television service ruled the airwaves. The other ‘free in word and not in deed’ press at the time was newspapers, apparently as we would learn later that they would never go to press until State House supplied its front-page photograph of Moi. At the time editors regularly fielded calls from the President.
Kenya was under the firm grip of Moi’s single-party regime. Moi held the bureaucracy and the security apparatus; Parliament sang his song; and the Judiciary was cowed into sniveling subservience. Virtually, every institution was a rubber stamp for the Moi Wishes.
His government had declared the debate on multiparty politics stirred by clerics closed even before it began. The word then was treason. Open defiance seemed like the only channel for starting a national conversation.
As its opening gambit, the Moi government declared the Kamukunji meeting illegal, and arrested Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia and Raila Odinga, three of the senior politicians who were organizing it, before subsequently detaining them without trial.
That was KAMUKUNJI ONE.
Last week, we saw another Kamukunji..
It was totally low key compared to what we saw in 1990. It however had every characteristic of a movement that has the ability to grow into a life of its own.
It reminds me of Arab Springs. This was a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes.
Media commentators the world over held various opinions, some vilifying them while others maintaining that the uprising presented what pro-democracy West had discussed for decades and no one paid attention.
This uprising led to toppling of regimes in several countries.
Back to Kamukunji.
What is the Azimio brigade saying to the country?
Are they raising pertinent issues?
Are they raising relevant issues?
Am afraid they are. The question here is why now and in less than 100 days of Ruto’s Presidency?
Ruto is enjoying a massive following in the country.
However, he has a majority of parliament even if it is not the two- thirds majority. He is in league with the Judiciary. He has restructured the security apparatus; he is in bed with the church.
In other words, Ruto is where Moi was. What I am saying is that Kenya Kwanza change of heart, and willingness to offer security to the meeting and what transpired is laced with elements of the Arab Uprising.
Kenya kwanza should be well advised to pre-empty Azimio schemes before it is too late to do so.
By Caleb Kitui