I got to the newsroom one Saturday morning in 1999 to find then-People Daily News Editor Mwenda Njoka anxiously waiting for me.
President Daniel Moi was scheduled to preside over a fundraiser at Kiambu’s Kirigiti Stadium that morning and a junior reporter had been assigned to cover the event, something the news editor thought was an error of judgment.
“This is a big job with potential for a splash (the newsroom term for the headline story),” he told me even before I could get to my desk. “We can’t just leave it to a junior reporter. I want you to go.”
Mwenda Njoka is an old school journalist used to smelling potential breaking news from a mile away, so I had no reason to argue with him and just proceeded to Kirigiti Stadium.
At the time, two important stories were quietly unfolding. President Moi was on his last term in office and had embarked on grooming a successor, but was keeping his cards close to the chest.
Concurrently, there was a high voltage campaign by the Opposition and civil society to have a new constitution through a referendum.
But President Moi didn’t want to hear the word referendum. He believed in boardroom engagement where he was sure to have it his way through coercion or co-option.
What does “Wanjiku” know?
Just like the news editor had predicted, President Moi didn’t disappoint at the Kiambu rally-cum-fundraiser.
On tow, he had two opposition MPs, David Murathe (Gatanga, SDP) and Chege Mbitiru (Laikipia West, DP), both who were paraded with gusto and allowed to “greet the crowd”.
The two didn’t mince words. They said President Moi was keen to have somebody from Central Kenya take over from him when he retired three years down the line.
In that case, they said, Mount Kenya region ought not to have any business in opposition but better join the President in Kanu and have an easy walk to State House.
As for a new constitution, the President gave the soundbite when he rose to speak.
He said there was no need to waste money writing a new constitution because the existing one had “served us well”.
But if there was a need to amend the existing one, he said, it should be in Parliament not in a referendum.
Then he asked rhetorically: “Why disturb wananchi with matters to do with the Constitution? What does Wanjiku know about the Constitution?”
Back in the office, I briefed the news editor, quoting the President word for word.
We there and then decided Moi’s remarks on the Constitution would be our splash, with a screaming headline: “Wanjiku knows nothing about the Constitution, says Moi”
The other two dailies, Nation and Standard, paraphrased what the President said but omitted the “Wanjiku” quote.
Having been at the Kiambu rally, I must be fair that from the body language and tone, President Moi meant to be positive by saying that “Wanjiku” (meaning the ordinary public) needed not be bothered with constitution-making since they had elected MPs to do the job for them.
The choice of the name “Wanjiku” to mean the ordinary person is because he was addressing a largely Kikuyu audience and thought it would resonate with the crowd.
But — based on the People Daily headline — the opposition and civil society gave the “Wanjiku” remark a twist to mean the President was so contemptuous of ordinary Kenyans that he thought they had no mind of their own to decide what they wanted in their Constitution!
Henceforth, “Wanjiku” became part of the Kenyan political lingo and is often used by rivals to portray the other as less sensitive and uncaring about the ordinary public.
I wish President Moi, Mwenda and I had patented the “Wanjiku” tag because we would be collecting royalties for its use.
And because President Moi has more money than he needs, he most likely would have let Mwenda and I share all the proceeds!
Six months to his exit, and after playing hide-and-seek, President Moi announced his preferred successor to be Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, then 41 years, and a relative newcomer in high-profile politics.
The ruling party Kanu exploded on account that President Moi had given false hope to several others only to suddenly throw them under the bus in favour of Uhuru.
On one hand was a faction led by Vice President George Saitoti, who all along believed Kanu was “theirs”, only for Mr Moi to publicly tell them Kanu had its “owners”.
On the other hand was Mr Raila Odinga who had dissolved his opposition party to join Kanu on an agreement he would be given a place at the high table.
In revenge, the old Kanu guards and Raila bolted. To pay Moi in his coin, they went flat out to ensure Uhuru wouldn’t be President, at least in that election.
They got a spanner in the works by saying he was Moi’s puppet and that in picking him his successor, Mr Moi was, in reality, succeeding himself.
They gave Uhuru the tag “Moi Project”, well aware that after 24 years of Moi rule, the last thing voters wanted to hear was Mr Moi in office a day longer than his term.
In that election, there could not have been a better way to spoil a candidate’s chance than to dub him a Moi clone.
It was like the case of Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 US presidential race, where Obama’s campaign made mincemeat of the rival simply by saying that to elect the Republican McCain was to re-elect outgoing President George W. Bush, whose term had come to an end, and who had become very unpopular because of the war in Iraq.
This year, aware of what damage the tag “project” did to his 2002 presidential bid, President Kenyatta was at pains during the commemoration of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s death.
He took offence with those giving 2022 succession politics a “dynasty vs hustlers” label.
It explains why he even announced the Kenyatta family had decided henceforth there would be no public commemoration of the patriarch’s death.
The two multiparty elections before Moi’s exit, too, had their share of name-calling and labelling.
When the original united Ford party could not hold in 1992 and split into Ford Kenya (Ford K) and Ford Asili (Ford A), rivals found a label for the other to blame for the fallout.
Ford K got a new name, Ford “Kisirani”, and Ford A was Ford “Silly” to the competitors.
When Mr Mwai Kibaki resigned from Moi government to found his opposition party, the Democratic Party (DP), rivals in the opposition said he had been “sent” by Moi to further split the opposition.
So DP earned the tag “Daniel’s (arap Moi) Party”. And for his late entry into the opposition, Kibaki became “General Kiguoya (coward)”.
In the 1997 election, Raila Odinga jumped the Ford K ship to contest the presidency on a new outfit, the National Democratic Party (NDP).
Ford K chairman Michael Wamalwa, a master in coining turn-of-the-phrases, said NDP must have been short for National “Disruptive” Party.
Meanwhile, Mrs Charity Ngilu quit the DP to launch her vehicle, Social Democratic Party (SDP) in which she contested the presidency.
A piqued DP spread the word that SDP merely stood for “Sister Democratic Party”.
But it is the disastrous 2007 elections that gave meaning to the saying: “Give a dog a bad name and hang it”.
Just from the distortions made in the names of the main contestant parties, the Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), you could predict there was going to be violence.
To ODM supporters, PNU stood for “Pitia Nyeri Uone!| (Dare not pass through Nyeri!). That because the PNU candidate, Mr Kibaki, comes from Nyeri.
The tag stuck all the more from a real event where, in the course of the campaigns, ODM candidate Odinga and his entourage made a stopover at Karatina town to have lunch, only to be told to keep his money and get lost!
On the other hand, to PNU supporters, ODM was the Orange Devils Movement!
But the most ominous in that election was the use of the tag “42 against 1” to profile one community.
At first, I had not seen the danger in the connotation until I had a drink with politician David Murathe — yes, the same David Murathe.
He told me those talking about “42 against 1” weren’t using it merely as a campaign slogan, but could have been planning something sinister.
He advised that as a journalist I keep my ears to the ground.
I took him seriously and made a personal trip to Eldoret in the company of a colleague. Those we talked to on the ground confirmed Mr Murathe’s fears.
I went a step further to compare notes with a friend who worked with the intelligence, and he painted an even more depressing picture.
Then the worst happened. At least my friend Murathe was kind enough not to call me to say: “I told you so!”
Talking about Mr Murathe’s nose to smell trouble from far, he long ago told me that he never believed — and thinks it is bad for Kenya — to talk about “10 years for Uhuru and 10 years for Ruto”.
In a conversation with him three years ago, he had posed the question: “Will the ten-ten business not bring up another tag, this time “41 against 2”, and a possible repeat of 2007 madness?
Anyway, we are talking about giving labels to a rival campaign, not about the “ten-ten” affair and Mr Murathe’s vow to bury it six-feet under.
I am amazed at how the “Tangatanga” thing came about and was turned around to poison 2022 politics.
I remember watching on TV the President speaking in Kiswahili somewhere in Eastlands in May last year, and giving a commitment that a certain project would be undertaken and that Deputy President William Ruto would be making a report about it when he shows up there as he “tangatangas” (roams about).
When the President said it, it sounded so harmless and humorous.
Indeed, a short while later, the DP gave the impression he had not taken offence at the remark when he joked about it in the presence of the boss during the burial of the mother of National Assembly Justin Muturi Speaker in Embu.
But alas! Today “Tangatanga” is, politically speaking, a dirty word.
Besides, it has given birth to another one, “Kieleweke”, which is just as bad, depending on which side one is throwing mud balls from.
But perhaps the most humorous one is how “Punguza Gunia” came about to disparage the Thirdway Alliance Party’s “Punguza Mizigo” (reduce the load) referendum campaign.
I was watching on TV the requiem service of late Kibra MP Ken Okoth when Mr Odinga took to the podium.
At the tail end of his speech, he asked his supporters to ignore “that thing called Punguza Gunia”.
Everybody thought it was a slip of the tongue and laughed, with Raila joining in the laughter.
But apparently, he said it deliberately to show contempt. “Punguza Gunia” is now what ODM stalwarts are calling the “Punguza Mizigo” referendum bid to ridicule it.
Update: Team “Kieleweke” has now degraded rival “Tangatanga” to Team “Taka Taka” (rubbish).
The latter has hit back by changing the name of a women lobby associated with “Kieleweke” from “Embrace” to “Embarrass”.
And the pot keeps stirred.
